Customer Reviews

The Death Of Warren Baxter Earp, A Closer Look

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In this gargantuan volume, Michael Hickey presents a conspiracy theory in the aftermath of the death of Warren Earp (Wyatt's brother) that would perhaps do credit to a JFK assasination buff, but hardly qualifies as good history. To accept his conclusions, in my opinion, requires the reader to discard logic and common sense. There is a wealth of primary source material presented, and for that I will give the book two stars, but I do not advocate that anyone read this book in the expectation of learning the truth.

Warren Earp, by all contemporary accounts a rather unlikable and violent drunk, was killed in a 1900 Arizona saloon brawl, or at least that is the conventional version of history. Michael Hickey tells a very different and impossibly convoluted story. An avowed worshipper of the Earps, he wants his work to be considered the vindicating and definitive "Warren" commission investigation into the death of Wyatt's younger brother. But, unlike the real Commission's investigation into the death of John Kennedy, Hickey presupposes a hidden second gunman, and that the man known to have killed Warren Earp did not actually shoot, but was a willing patsy in a conspiracy that then put the smoking gun in his hand. If that does not stretch the intelligent reader's credulity to the limit, the author tops it by claiming that all the witnesses to Earp's death, as well as the officials investigating it, were involved in the conspiracy. But, wait, there's more. Wyatt Earp and his allies were so clever that they masterfully avenged Warren's death by rubbing out all the "bad" guys, and left not a single trace of their second "vendetta ride."

Don't expect a clear narrative of events around 1900, or even anything of an investigation into the life and character of Warren Earp. Rather, settle down for a long-winded and disjointed assemblage of working notes, correspondence and conversations about Hickey's tortuous quest to prove his theory almost a century later. The gargantuan opus can be something of a page-turner if you can't wait for the next twist of Hickey's fevered imagination as he libelously smears many people who had nothing to do with Earp's death.

This Oliver Stone wannabe is no historian or detective. Violating basic principles of research and logic, Hickey places more importance on belated and uninformed rants of popular writers and on distorted memories of gossip than he does on the testimony of Earp's contemporaries who actually knew something. The sheer amount of data he has accumulated can be misleading. Some assertions are demonstrably wrong while most are quite irrelevant to his thesis. The "evidence" often consists of nothing more than suspects' guilt of association for having been born in the same state. It is no spoiler to cut to the chase on page 694, where Hickey admits he has rushed into print with only "circumstantial evidence." Worse, he fails to locate relevant sources that others before him had little trouble finding, and then amusingly speculates about the probable content and hidden meaning of those untapped sources. Even the author's inability to locate proof for his theories constitutes other peoples' conspiracies to hide the evidence. When one of his researchers has difficulty photographing the grave of one of the suspects, Hickey sees ghosts deliberately hampering his quest for the "truth." This conspiracy theorist evidently does not want to be confused by facts. But even if Hickey's amateur hand obscures important clues that contradict his preconceptions, much of the truth about Earp's death can be found buried in these pages thanks to the author's penchant for reproducing many sources verbatim.

This 824-page self-published personal fantasy masquerading as documented history should have been judiciously edited into 20 pages of fiction. That might then have had the makings of a movie script that would exploit holes in the historical record to tantalize the viewer with a ripping good yarn. On second thought, movies are where most Americans learn "history," and more distortions of reality enrich nobody but the perpetrators.

Hardcore Earpiana addicts will want this hefty tome as coffee table decoration. But, as Clifford Stoll has sagely noted, data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, and understanding is not wisdom. Hickey's magnum opus does not even cross the data threshold, so other would-be purchasers should consider a less expensive and more functional doorstop.

I have often kidded Michael Hickey and Lee Silva about their works passing the test for weight and density. Perhaps we need a word for this sort of publication and I suggest "bulkritude."
Lots of broad brush general history of interest, but as Bruce Trinque comments in another of his "right on" views, accepting the logic of this book would be a helluva pill to swallow.
If you do buy it, ask the publisher to send along with it a scrap of carpet such as used traditionally in the American past to wrap around bricks to use as doorstops. He is a good fellow and might actually send one. Don't expect a Bokara, however.

Mr. Hickey assembled a top notch team of research assistants to comb every archive, newspaper, bio file, family history, unpublished memoirs, coroner and medical reports, travel itineraries and photo libraries to put together the mystery of Warren Earp's killing and it's participants. Such researchers as Rita K. Wilburn Ackerman of Phoenix Arizona, Gary S. McLelland of Glendale Arizona, Robert N. "Bob" Cash of Austin Texas, Dorman W. Brown of Wilcox Arizona, Jeff Hickey (not related) of Seattle Washington, Steven C. "Steve" Levi of Anchorage Alaska, Richard Lapidus of Simi Valley, California, Phyllis de la Garza of Wilcox Arizona, W. French Anderson, M.D., University of Southern California, Ben T. Traywick of Tombstone Arizona, and many more were instrumental in digging up and seperating the facts from fiction. There are some astonishing finds and pearls of research found in this volume. Each of the main participants is given their own chapter and working notes.

"This massive tome dissects Warren's death, inch by inch, particle by particle, and peers into the background of every player in that grubby episode at the Headquarters Saloon in Wilcox, Arizona Territory...Mr. Hickey's basic premise is that Warren was assassinated in a murder for hire plot, and the killing made to appear as nothing but a drunken squabble between two men," states Leo W. Banks in the book's forward. He goes on to say that, "Conspiracy theorists will swoon- and others will roll their eyes at the numerous possibilities discussed here." I agree. I don't see shadows on the wall, or the "grassy knoll" like Mr. Hickey sees wherever the Earps are concerned, and the book does have some leads and connections that are pretty fantastic to say the least. There are some factual errors I found while reading the MS but that shouldn't distract from the overall book Mr. Hickey has done and the enormous amount of work, new research and connections to Cochise Counties cowboys from the 1880's. Like a good mystery, don't read the last chapter just to find who did it, but follow along the paths of the suspects and see where it leads you. You might be surprised. As Ruth Mellenbruch told Phillip Rasch in 1951, "I know who the man was that hired the two men as killers." Read on and see if you can flush them out too.

It seems that this writer continued his characteristic practice of employing researchers. But the rub is, to quote Bacon on the school-men who are famous for speculating on how many angels could repose on the head of a pin: "From an infinite agitation of wit, they produced not very much matter." Implicit in Bacon's criticism is that such investigations overlook a lot, such as that many even in his day questioned the existence of angels. And even many that didn't question that would wonder why angels would waste their time sitting on a pin. Many, we may be sure, also didn't give a damn one way or the other. And drawing a parallel may suggest why this book doesn't rate high in Amazon's sales record.

The main theory of this author that Wyatt Earp avenged his brother's death by stalking and ultimately killing all those he suspected had a hand in it, falls short of tenable in that the killer named by the coroner's jury, who was not seriously trying to hide out since he lived under his own name, was allowed to live for years and die a natural death.

Certainly Wyatt and his brother Virgil (and even his brother Jim whom history has perhaps consistently underrated) would have looked into the matter, and undoubtedly did, and stories of old timers, for what they are worth, which is sometimes quite a bit, state that at least brother Virgil was seen in the area not long after the killing took place.

It is a worthy speculation that Virgil, and perhaps Wyatt, after personal local inquiry, which would have gone beyond that in the record today, concluded as anyone would who read no more than the recorded testimony of the coroner's jury, that Warren - a great pain in the neck even to his own family - was asking for what he got. In view of this, it is unlikely that either of those two rather careful men would jeopardize their futures by entering into a blood feud simply because a malodorous family member had been killed. Wyatt's last wife said that Virgil was evasive about the matter when she asked him directly. Possibly he thought the Earp Brothers were expected to have exacted vengeance and would be criticized if they hadn't.

As a criticism of this book's touted thoroughness, one wonders how that "legion" of researchers, who led to the author figuratively dragging in the history of every yellow dog roaming the streets the day of the killing, missed the fact that Warren had been married. Or that he made a college try at killing his partner in Spokane, Washington in days of yore.

We know why they didn't try to scout up the living descendants of his wife for whatever they might contribute? But think what they missed. Was he a wife beater? Why did the marriage break up? Does he have surviving relatives? Was Warren so malodorous that even his wife's family would not have said anything good about him? They certainly should have been given a shot at the record if they could be found. The above are questions that might have been answered. Does that family have old letters from the other Earps explaining that they looked into Warren's "offing" and deemed it justifiable?

C'mon. This is not a biography and is actually a rambling speculation about a killing that only attracts notice since the deceased was a brother of a man who achieved wide spread but "questionable" fame.

Carefully examined, the life of Warren Earp makes obvious that he wouldn't have deserved a biography for any reason. As much would have been concluded about his brother Wyatt if those who wrote of him knew in time that he had stolen horses, that he was a notorious whore master and pimp who, moreover, had deserted his wife of at least a decade for a wiggly little thing. As for the deserted wife's legal status, she certainly qualified as a common law wife. The "wiggly little thing" confirmed that in the eyes of her collaborators on her aborted biography, who said that she still evinced guilt over the deserted wife, who later committed suicide, and that her guilt was PRONOUNCED even after the passage "of all those years." Over fifty at the time. (Letter extent in a private collection.)

This book is not worth the price, certainly not as what it claims to be, but has some merit for independent research of frontier characters and matters. It is not in my opinion a "must" book for Western buffs' libraries, or even for many libraries of any kind. It ranks as curiosa and not much more.

There have been numerous books published about Wyatt Earp and his brothers, "The Fighting Earps", over the years. A few of them are very good. Most of them are very bad; being either a repitition of the well-known facts or a distortion of them to present Earp in a particular way.

Michael M. Hickey's "The Death Of Warren Baxter Earp" is one of the very good books on this subject. Yes, of course, this massive (over seven hundred pages) work on the strange death of Wyatt's younger brother in 1900 can be labled a "conspiracy theory", but with such persuasive evidence it is an intriquing one. Hickey and his team of researchers have discovered an impressive amount of new information on a very familiar topic. All of this primary source material is reproduced on the page so that the reader can judge for themselves. Perhaps Wyatt Earp's vengance against his enemies did not end when he rode out of Arizona in 1882.

If you think you have read everything about Wyatt Earp then this fascinating and provocotive work about a little known part of his life will surprise you. Anyone with an interest in the Earp brothers, western lawmen and outlaws or justice (and the lack of it) in the old west will find this book hard to put down. It is highly recommended.

"Michael M. Hickey's latest book, 'THE DEATH OF WARREN BAXTER EARP, A Closer Look' is a huge, handsomely presented volume, which contains a vast array of primary source materials and photographs. Using this material, Hickey dissects the murder of Warren Earp and comes to some startling conclusions. Researchers will want this book for the massive collection of photographs, document reproductions and illustrations alone but it is also a 'must have' for anyone interested in the Earp family, the characters of Tombstone, and the history of Southern Arizona. Sure to become a collector's item."

Recent years have seen the emergence of someone who has proved to be a relentless pursuer of the truth, an historical researcher of the first order: Michael M. Hickey. In the early 1990s, Hickey published no less than three books looking in great detail at the thirty-second "O.K. Corral" gunfight and then, in 2000, produced a volume that has really given Earp historians something to think about. "The Death of Warren Baxter Earp: A Closer Look" puts forward the proposition that, subsequent to the shooting down of Wyatt's youngest brother, Warren, in an Arizona saloon in the summer of 1900, Wyatt went on yet another "trail of vengeance" and killed all those whom he held responsible.

This enormous book of 759 pages is the most exhaustively researched book yet on the doings of Wyatt Earp - and in an area of his life about which little is known. Aided by a small army of field investigators from all over the States, Hickey has come up with an extraordinary story which, if true, puts a whole new light on the character of Wyatt Earp. This is a truly fascinating read and is the sort of history we Earp enthusiasts want, packed full of primary source material, expertly, and entertainingly, edited.

David Ashford, England

I have just finished reading this stimulating and thought-provoking book, 'THE DEATH OF WARREN BAXTER EARP, A Closer Look'.

I find it unbelievable to think that Wyatt and Virgil Earp would sit idly by and do nothing after brother Warren was murdered! It simply does not fit their M.O. Those who may think that murder conspiracies did not exist back in the 1880s, need only to be reminded of the murder conspiracy which led to the death of Julius Caesar. Such conspiracies have been in existence since the beginning of time.