The murder of John Smoot and its forgotten place in Montana history

It was Christmas Eve in McClellan Gulch in 1867 when a young man wrapped up some late evening grocery shopping before heading to saloon to have a drink to celebrate the holiday.

Among the miners celebrating the holiday, John Smoot soon found himself in an affray that would cost him his life and lead to an important - but almost entirely forgotten - milestone in the history of Montana jurisprudence: the first legal murder conviction in Montana Territory.

The tale of the event first found its way into the Helena Press on Jan. 2, 1868. According to the story republished in Virginia City's Montana Post two days later, a man got into a quarrel with a "fast" Spanish woman called Rosella (or Rufella) and a woman named Fanny Clark during a "free and easy" Christmas Eve dance at "Doyles Saloon." As recounted in 'Gold Pans and Singletrees' a duel between Rufella and the unidentified man was in the offing when Smoot, from Blackfoot City, intervened on the man's behalf. That in turn prompted a fight that led to Smoot receiving a fatal cut to the abdomen 'by an unknown assailant." In that recounting, Rufella was "skullcracked" by a pistol, Mike Doyle was badly cut and no arrests were made.

All in all, it's a very "wild and woolly" western tale, evoking an untamed frontier.

But ... apart from Smoot's death, that tale seems to be wrong on nearly every count.

The story was considered so inaccurate at the time that six people from McClellan Gulch familiar with the event sent a letter to the press with a more comprehensive account.

Their account, published in the Montana Post Jan 24, 1868, indicated Smoot's death was prompted by a simple offhand comment, and was alarmingly brutal.

According to the later account, Smoot had purchased groceries at the Oleson and Newsham store before going to the saloon of Mike Dolan (spelled Dolin in their letter) for a nip of holiday cheer.

While there, he met an inebriated acquaintance named James Dolan, who was among a group of equally intoxicated men, including John Sullivan, 30, Owen Mullen, 32, and Thomas Baggs, 31.

Dolan reportedly commented to Smoot, "John, these boys don't like me," to which Smoot was said to have jokingly replied "those that don't like you can go (to hell, presumably)."

An 1897 account of the court case published in the Anaconda Standard backs up much of that story, and details how Sullivan, Mullen and Baggs attacked and cornered Smoot, who drew a knife to defend himself and "cut his way out." However, one of the men got the knife away from him, and the three of them took turns using it to cut him, leaving him with several grievous wounds. James Dolan was also said to have received a shallow knife wound trying to break up the fight.

According to the Jan. 24 Post account, Smoot received "one fatal wound in the stomach, the knife ranging upward though his left breast, making a wound several inches in depth, and his bowels protruding through another cut across his abdomen."

Smoot managed to escape through the saloon's kitchen, with Baggs in pursuit. Smoot fell over stump, where Baggs reportedly caught him and stabbed him in the back.

Meanwhile, Mullen had retrieved a shotgun and Sullivan a revolver before they headed out through the kitchen to finish the job. By then Smoot had made it to safety in a friend's cabin.

Messengers headed to Blackfoot City and to Lincoln for medical help, while armed citizens surrounded the cabin where Sullivan, Mullen and Baggs lived.

A Justice of the Peace was said to have arrived from Lincoln early the following morning to take Smoots statement and authorize the arrests, but apparently he wasn't yet qualified to act, due to a paperwork issue. Instead, three men were appointed to arrest Sullivan, Mullen and Baggs "'X' fashion, without papers."

Smoot lived long enough to identify Sullivan and Mullen as two of his attackers, but he wasn't able to positively identify Baggs as the third.

The authors of the letter to the Post, who weren't identified by the publisher, explained that, contrary to the first report, there wasn't actually a dance that night, and that neither Rufella nor Fannie Clark were aware of the incident until it was over. They did, however, credit the women with caring for Smoot until "he was placed in his coffin."

Sullivan, Mullen and Baggs were jailed in Deer Lodge to await their fate.

Prior to the establishment of the Montana Territory, most disputes were handled by Miner's courts. Since those were largely designed to handle claim disputes, they weren't particularly effective when it came to major crimes, with some cases allegedly being decided on the basis of how popular the accused was. That ineffectiveness, in part, gave rise to the Vigilance Committees.

With the creation of the territory in 1864 came the organized territorial court system, complete with a supreme court. It took some time to become an effective and recognized arbiter of law and order, and in the interim extrajudicial trials and executions were still often conducted by vigilance committees or without the presence of a judge.

The trial of John Smoot's killers marked the shift away from vigilantism and toward a legitimate legal system.

Sullivan, Mullen and Baggs were tried in Deer Lodge near the beginning of May, 1868. Judge Lorenzo P. Williston - an associate justice of the three-member Montana Territorial Supreme Court - presided. On May 5, following a five day trial and 20 hours of jury deliberation, a all three were found guilty of murder. On May 14, Williston sentenced them to be hanged July 3, 1868.

Clerk D.P. Newcomer signed the death warrants June 24, but the trio never saw the noose. They escaped from the Deer Lodge County Jail before the sentence could be carried out, apparently with the help of a Deputy named John Kane.

An extended search was made, but none of the three were ever recaptured. A July 29 report in the Montana Post said three men matching their description were spotted in the Flint Creek Vally, on the Ft. Owen trail and headed for "the coast."

Saloonkeeper Mike Dolan was indicted for complicity in the murder, but was acquitted.

Deer Lodge County Sheriff Phil McGovern was indicted for letting the trio escape, but the indictments were dismissed. He lost his re-election bid in 1869.

John Smoot is buried in the old Blackfoot City cemetery near Avon.

Without more information, the fates of Sullivan, Mullen and Baggs remain a mystery. However, old newspaper articles provide some intriguing, if speculative, possibilities.

In 1892, a man named Owen Mullen - who had no family and was about the right age, given the uncertainty of such reporting at the time - was devoured by wolves near Ione, Calif., probably after dying of heart disease.

Two men named Thomas Baggs met more violent ends, although it's possible neither were the Baggs of our story. In 1892 an "old train conductor" named Tom Baggs died in Tehama, Calif. after being stabbed 13 times in drunken quarrel over a card game. A decade later, on June 24, 1902, a man named Thomas Baggs -said to be a gambler, fighting dog trainer one-time Pocatello saloon keeper - was murdered in a Butte bar by James Cusik, who coincidentally had an uncle named John Sullivan.

Regardless of the true fate of Sulivan, Mullen and Baggs, the death of John Smoot and their conviction for his murder was far more significant to the history of Montana than just a "drunken affray in McClellan Gulch."