L. P. GRISWOLD AND HIS DENVER EXPERIENCE--HOW HE TOOK A "CASE" WHICH
HE WORKED UP SO WELL AS TO PRODUCE THE DEATH OF THREE MEN--HE MURDERS
AN INNOCENT MAN, PRETENDING THAT HE WAS LYNCHED, AND STARTS TO FLEE
THE COUNTRY--GEN. COOK LOOKS INTO THE CASE, SEES THROUGH THE STORY,
AND HAS MR. GRISWOLD ARRESTED, DEVELOPING A COLD-BLOODED
ASSASSINATION.
There are snide detectives just as there are shyster lawyers, quack
doctors and dead-beat newspaper men. We have our share of the pretenders
and dead beats, and they do us more harm than good. The worst case which
has ever disgraced our annals here in Denver was that of one L. P.
Griswold--a hard nut, too, he was. His machinations here resulted in his
own tragic death, and in that of one other man, certainly, if not of a
third; also developing several plots of intricate and diabolical design,
and bringing many people into the affair before it was ended.
The series of occurrences with which Griswold was connected had their
beginning in the summer of 1870, and did not terminate until in the winter
of 1872, covering a period of eighteen months, owing to the delay of the
law. Griswold had been a great deal about Cheyenne. Cheyenne was a bad
place in those days. It was enjoying its railroad boom. Times were lively,
and murders, holdups and burglaries were frequent. There was a vigilance
committee which did some good work. It was frequently considered necessary
by this committee to pronounce sentence of death upon offenders in the
community, and Griswold was for a long time employed to execute the
decrees of the court of Judge Lynch. This was not wrong, but the committee
made a mistake in the employment of Griswold as the executioner. He was a
bad man--such a man as would kill a fellow-being for a few dollars.
Whenever sentence of death was pronounced upon a victim he was turned
over to Griswold, who would secure a gang and hang and rob him.
But to come to the story. Cheyenne finally quieted down, and Griswold was
without a calling. He came to Denver and to Gen. Cook, of the Rocky
Mountain Detective Association, one day, wanting employment, professing to
be a detective. Cook told him he could do nothing for him, but would give
him a "pointer" on a case which he could have if he desired, not knowing
his real character then.
Some weeks before, the Myers Fisher ranch on Clear creek had been
burned--houses, stables, etc.--and Fisher had come to the conclusion that
the fire had been caused by an incendiary, and he offered a reward of $400
for the capture and punishment of the perpetrator of the crime. Cook
looked into the case, and he became convinced that the fire had been
caused by accident, and would have nothing to do with it. This was the
case which he gave Griswold, who was glad enough to get it. In the hope of
receiving the reward offered, as it afterwards developed, Griswold then
began to lay a plot which was simply hellish in design.
It so happened that Fisher, the owner of the ranch, had had some trouble
with one James O'Neal, a man who lived some twelve miles away, near
Littleton, and, although O'Neal was a quiet and law-abiding man, Griswold
determined to fasten the crime of incendiarism upon him. He also
discovered that there had been a fire on another ranch near that of
Fisher's, owned by a man named Patrick. To this man and his sons he went
with his story. Knowing that he could never convict O'Neal, he asked the
Patricks if it could be proven--as he afterwards stated in his
confession--that O'Neal had fired both places, they would consent to the
capture and lynching of him. They were willing. He brought them what they
considered sufficient proof of O'Neal's guilt, which Griswold had procured
in his own peculiar way.
Griswold and George Patrick, son of the old man, then came to Denver and
swore out a warrant before James S. Taylor, then a justice of the peace in
Denver, under false names, for O'Neal's arrest, Griswold getting himself
appointed a special officer. He accomplished this by stating to the
justice that he had seen Cook, who was then sheriff, which was not true,
and that Cook had stated that he was unable to go out to make the arrest.
The constable he declared he could not find. He further represented that
it was essential that O'Neal should be arrested that night, and at last
succeeded in making it appear necessary that he and his friend should be
sent upon the mission. Their statements proved to be false in every
respect, as will appear, and were the first clue which the detectives had
when it came to looking up the case.
Having procured their warrant, the two men drove out to O'Neal's ranch,
where they arrived late in the afternoon of the same day. They introduced
themselves to the unsuspecting man as officers and told him their mission,
but were, withal, so pleasant as not to create any suspicion that his
arrest was merely a trap to secure the poor fellow for execution. He never
dreamed what character of man he had to deal with in Griswold, and that
hell-hound had coolly made up his mind to take his life, although he
believed him not guilty, for a pitiful sum of money.
"All right, gentlemen," O'Neal replied. "I will go with you. I am willing
to stand my trial, especially as I feel confident of my own innocence, and
know that I can prove it. I have nothing to fear. But it is late; come in
and take supper with me before starting."
This invitation, extended in all courtesy and hospitality, was accepted by
the two men, who, although they may have been hungry, were more anxious to
gain time than to appease their appetites.
Supper being over, dark was coming on, and the three men prepared for
their ride, the terminus of which it was supposed would be for all in
Denver. Griswold and Patrick had ridden out in a two-seated buggy, but
they requested O'Neal to take a seat between them, and all three started
off in quite a jovial mood. This joviality was soon increased, for the
vehicle was well loaded down with whiskey and cigars, and the three men
were soon laughing and joking and drinking with each other like old-time
friends.
Thus they journeyed on to the crossing of the Platte. The chances are that
by this time poor O'Neal was well filled with whiskey and capable of
making but little resistance against any attack upon him. Be that as it
may, he was taken from the buggy at Brown's bridge, and when he was next
seen his soul had deserted its flesh tenement and taken up its abode in
another realm.
When found the next day the body was dangling from a girder of the bridge,
with a card pinned on the back stating that the man had been lynched
because he had burned Fisher's and Patrick's ranches and stolen cattle,
and that he had made full confession of the fact. In conclusion, cattle
thieves and evil-doers generally were warned to beware of their ways, and
notified that the vigilantes were ever on their track.
Gen. Cook was among the first to view the body. Griswold and Patrick were
the murderers. So much may be stated here. They early sought to cover up
their crime and, like many more enlightened criminals, made the newspapers
useful in their work. Coming into Denver that night, they went to the
offices of the public journals and told how they had been sent out as
special officers to arrest O'Neal on the charges above related, giving the
same false names which they had given Justice Taylor, and stating that
they had proceeded as far as Brown's bridge with their prisoner when they
were set upon by a band of disguised men, who compelled them to deliver
over the prisoner at the muzzles of a hundred revolvers. They told how
they had pleaded in vain for the life of the prisoner, and how that
individual, after quivering and quaking and making a faint denial, had at
last confessed the crime. Their prisoner being taken, they had, they said,
been compelled to drive on, and were then ignorant of his fate, though
they supposed he had been lynched.
The newspapers which told this story the next morning bore a revelation to
Gen. Cook. He had kept no track of Griswold and the O'Neal case, supposing
that when the supposed detective should find that the charges were
unfounded he would drop it and cease his efforts. Furthermore, he was
sheriff of the county, and thought he would have known, or at least
thought he ought to have known, if any arrest of as much importance as
that of O'Neal had been made. But he was totally in the dark. The names of
the officers given in the papers were not even recognized, Griswold and
Patrick having used their false names in the story.
Mr. Cook began to investigate. His work was soon well under way. He
obtained his first clue from Justice Taylor, who related the
circumstances of the two men swearing out warrants for O'Neal's arrest and
stating that Cook had refused to go and make the arrests. From the
justice's description of the two "special deputies," Cook inferred that
the two men were Griswold and Patrick.
"A clue and a big one," he soon afterwards told one of his men. "Griswold
is the murderer of O'Neal. He gave his wrong name to the justice, and he
lied about me. Here is where he began to cover up his tracks. Griswold is
the man we want. This newspaper story is all bosh."
But the case had still to be worked up. So far he had no basis for his
operations but inference. There was a great deal more to know before an
arrest could be made. And he must operate rapidly and shrewdly, otherwise
his man might escape. He determined to visit Brown's bridge and obtain
whatever clue he might there.
Gen. Cook, accompanied by one of his officers, rode rapidly out the road
towards Littleton, feeling quite confident that he would find that O'Neal
had been murdered, and hopeful of obtaining some clue as to the identity
of the murderers. He was not disappointed, and every step taken confirmed
his suspicions previously formed, that Griswold had murdered O'Neal, and
that the report of the lynching was a mere pretense. He found the body
swinging as it had been left, awaiting the action of the coroner. Some of
the country people had begun to gather about the scene of the killing,
having heard of the finding of the body. They viewed the ghastly sight
with horror and with manifestations so marked as to destroy all idea which
the bogus special deputy had sought to convey that the enraged populace
had taken the man from them and hanged him.
A few were found by the officers who had seen the two men who had come out
to arrest O'Neal, and their descriptions of the men were so accurate as to
clear away whatever trace of doubt that might have remained with the
detective as to their being Griswold and Patrick.
But still a stronger circumstance remained to aid in completing the theory
which Cook was gradually forming. The snide officers had told the
newspapers that a large number of men stopped them and took their
prisoner from them. Cook found the place at which the buggy had stopped,
and where the prisoner had been removed; but instead of the tracks of a
hundred men, or of fifty, or twenty, he discovered the footprints of but
three of them. Of these, evidently only one had approached the buggy,
while three had left it, dragging the prisoner, as the surface of the soil
afforded every evidence. Hence Mr. Cook decided that the two men in the
buggy with O'Neal had strangled him there while, perhaps, he was under the
influence of liquor, and that they had been assisted in taking him out and
stringing him up by a confederate who had joined them at Brown's bridge.
One more clue only is necessary to make a complete chain of very strong
circumstantial evidence. The rope with which O'Neal was hanged--where did
that come from? Bringing it to Denver with him, Gen. Cook succeeded in
ascertaining where it had been bought, and that it was purchased on the
afternoon before the night of the murder by Griswold.
If there are any who think Dave Cook not a shrewd detective, they ought to
be convinced of their error after reading the story of the working up of
this case.