THEODORE MEYERS AND THE TRAGEDY OF 1871-3--EMPLOYED ON A RANCH NEAR
DENVER, HE KILLS HIS EMPLOYER, GEORGE BONACINA, AND MAKES AN EFFORT TO
MURDER HIS SISTER, MRS. NEWTON--HE PLANTS SEVEN BUCKSHOT IN HER
BREAST, BUT SHE IS NOT KILLED OUTRIGHT, AND AFTER A HORRIBLE NIGHT
ALONE SHE GETS TO DENVER, WHERE SHE TELLS HER STORY TO GEN. COOK, WHO
TAKES THE ROAD AND RUNS THE MURDERER DOWN.
There has been but one execution of a criminal in Denver to the present
time since the 24th day of January, 1873. On that day Theodore Meyers gave
up his life on the gallows in expiation of the crime he had committed on
the night of the 8th of August, 1871, in the murder of George Bonacina, a
ranchman living on the Platte, twelve miles above Denver, and four miles
beyond Littleton.
Meyers was arrested not alone for the murder of Bonacina, but also for an
attempt to murder his sister, a Mrs. Belle Newton, who lived with her
brother on the ranch. Mrs. Newton was a woman at that time about thirty
years of age, and was of prepossessing personal appearance. She was
possessed of fascinating manners, and had the reputation in the
neighborhood in which she resided of being quite too "exclusive" to please
the other residents. She had resided in Omaha previous to 1869, when she
came to Cheyenne, whence she removed to Denver in 1870. Soon after coming
to Denver, Mrs. Newton established herself in the millinery business, and
while so engaged she became engaged to and married a Mr. Benjamin
Friedenthal, removing with him soon after their marriage to the ranch
already described on the Platte, where they lived for a few months. But
their married life was not a happy one, and they separated. Mrs. Newton's
brother had joined her on the farm, and they continued to reside there
after Friedenthal had taken his departure.
To properly understand the interest which was taken in the tragedy at the
ranch it should be known that rumor had wagged a busy tongue in the
neighborhood in which Mrs. Newton resided. It was alleged that Bonacina
was not the brother of the woman, but a clandestine lover, and some
asserted that his intimacy with Mrs. Friedenthal, or Mrs. Newton, had been
the cause of the separation between her and her husband. One supposition,
when the story of the murder was first told, was that Friedenthal had been
in some way responsible for the crime. Another theory was that the
murderer had sought to establish intimate relations with the woman
himself, and that Bonacina had stepped in the way of his desires. These
were some of the surmises which filled the air, and which rapidly grew
into reports which professed to be accurate.
Mrs. Newton brought the first account of the tragedy into Denver herself.
She arrived in the city about 11 o'clock on Friday, the 11th of August,
1871, and was conveyed to the Tremont house, standing then as now on
Twelfth street, at the intersection of Blake.
A physician was at first sent for. He dressed the ugly wounds which the
poor woman bore. As many as seven buckshot were ascertained to have been
planted squarely in her breast, near the heart, four of them passing
entirely through the body and the others lodging under the skin in the
back. None of the balls had touched the heart, but it hardly seemed
possible that so many pieces of lead should have plowed their way through
a human body without producing a fatal result. Her physician told her that
she did not have one chance in a hundred. But Mrs. Newton was a woman of
nerve, and she replied that whether she lived or not she wanted the
murderer of her brother brought to justice.
Sending for Gen. Cook, who was then sheriff of Arapahoe county, she told
him the story of the shooting so far as she was able. She lay on a bed in
her room as she related the circumstances. Her face was as white as death
from loss of blood, and her voice sank to a mere whisper as she attempted
to make the patient officer understand sufficiently well to pursue the
murderer with some certainty of capturing him. Her talk was a series of
moans and groans, interspersed with words painfully drawn out.
She had no doubt, she said, that the man whose name is given as Meyers had
done the shooting, but she did not know his name, describing him as "a
Dutchman, whose first name was Theodore." Relating the circumstances of
the affair, and those leading up to it, she said that this man had come to
her and her brother some few weeks before the killing to obtain work, and
had been employed as a hand on the farm. He had previously been engaged by
a man named Lewis, who resided in the neighborhood, but had been
discharged. Bonacina had stacked his grain some distance from the house.
Meyers represented to him that while working for Lewis he had heard
threats made to burn it, and so wrought upon the feelings of his employers
that they procured guns and ammunition, and Bonacina and Meyers began
sleeping at night at the grain stacks, some fifty yards from the house,
for the purpose of protecting the grain from the attacks of incendiaries.
They had been thus engaged for about two weeks, when the murder and
attempted murder occurred.
The two men went to their out-door beds as usual on the fatal Thursday
night, leaving Mrs. Newton alone in the house, where she retired soon
after the men had taken their departure. She was sleeping soundly when she
was awakened by the sound of a pistol, which was soon followed by a second
report. The reports appeared to be in the direction of the grain stacks,
and Mrs. Newton rushed to the window, thinking that some one had come to
burn the grain, and that her brother and the German had fired upon the
intruder. She had been out of bed but a second when she heard some one
evidently approaching the house from the direction of the grain, and
calling her loudly by her first name, "Belle! Belle! Belle!" three times
in succession.
Mrs. Newton was clad in the thinnest kind of night clothes, wearing
nothing but a light undergarment. She was so thoroughly excited, however,
at the noise of the pistol reports, and at the calling out of her own
name, that she rushed to the door and opened it. As she swung it back, the
German employé stepped up, with a shotgun in his hand, and appeared to be
considerably excited, replying to her hurried inquiry: "They're here!
They're around!"
"Who's here?"
"The grain burners; don't you know!"
"But where is my brother--where is George?"
"Oh," replied the man, "he is pursuing one of them--he's down there."
The moon was just about its first quarter and was sinking over behind the
adjacent mountains, but still gave out sufficient light to afford an
indistinct view of surrounding objects. It was a mellow, warm evening, and
a thousand flies, bats and whippoorwills buzzed and sang around. Long
shadows fell upon the ground and seemed in their great length and
intensity to add a hundred-fold to the already lonely and weird view
surrounding. It was a still, dead scene that presented itself as Mrs.
Newton, clad in her ghost-like garb of white, stepped out of her door with
her hand raised over her eyes to peer along the lines of the shadows down
to where her brother was. She had scarcely turned her back when--bang!
crash!--thundering came the report of a gun in her immediate proximity,
and she felt the hot leaden messengers tearing through her vitals.
The entire load of buckshot from one barrel of the gun had been emptied
into her breast.
"My God, what--what is this? I am shot! You have murdered me. You have
murdered George and now you have murdered me. You have shot me to the
heart. What does it mean?"
The badly wounded woman did not fall, but staggered to the door and
continued to support herself and got into the house. Meyers cried out as
she disappeared:
"They have shot you, too; I will find them," and started off around the
house. Seeing that his second victim still lived, he concluded to make
sure of her, and before she had entirely disappeared he raised the gun in
the attempt to fire another shot. The weapon missed fire, and a second
later the door was closed upon him, and the wounded woman was alone with
her agony and her blood.
As she staggered into the house she took her right hand from her breast,
where it had served to stanch the flow of blood, and caught at the door
facing. For long years afterward, and probably such is still the case, the
imprints of Mrs. Newton's hands, as she clenched the wood with the grip of
death, remained to mark the scene of the tragedy. Wash and scrub as much
as one might, the stain refused to come out.
A lone, long night it was that followed--full of intense bodily suffering,
of great mental anxiety for her own welfare, full of distress for her
brother, and with death staring her, a lone woman, square in the face.
Fearful that a vital spot had been touched by the bullets, and considering
it probable that her would-be murderer would return at any time, she must
have been filled with fear and anxiety. She chanced to pass a large mirror
in the room as she went in, and then for the first time fully appreciated
the extent of her wound. Her one garment was even then a mass of blood.
The life fluid was running out from the bullet holes in spurts. Little
wonder that the poor woman at first became frightened and lay down upon
her bed undetermined what to do.
"But I will not be a coward," she at last said to herself. "I will save
myself if I can. I am dying. I must not die. If I die no one will know who
has committed this horrible deed. I will at least live long enough to see
that this murderer is brought to justice."
She had strength left to get up and procure towels to wrap herself and
stop the blood flow and to get a bottle of liquor which she knew to be in
the house, and finding that she did not bleed so freely when standing or
sitting as when lying, she mustered all her strength and remained up the
greater part of the night, thinking over the thousand horrible things that
would naturally troop through the mind of any one situated as she was,
even the strongest nerved of the stouter sex.
Added to her other horrors was the knowledge that there was no one nearer
than a mile from her, except, perhaps, the man who had shot her, and his
proximity was her greatest dread. She had already convinced herself that
her brother had been killed; otherwise he would have come to her
assistance. "And all was silent then, and I was alone through the whole
wretched night," she said to Gen. Cook. But we shall not attempt to
picture the agonies of those few lonely, dark hours. The reader may well
imagine the experience of the woman, and if he can not, no description
would prove adequate.
At last the glad signs of day began to make their appearance. The gray
dawn first peered in through the windows and cracks, and soon afterwards
the long, slanting rays of the big summer sun were coursing their way
across the floor of the dreary, bloody room, bringing with them messages
of faint hope to the sufferer. How she must have prayed for the sight of a
friendly face! By and by there came a rumbling sound as of an approaching
vehicle. She went to the door. The road was some distance from the house,
but there was a wagon passing by. Mrs. Newton cried out to the driver and
waved her bloody hands in the air to him. Again and again she shouted at
the top of her voice. But to no purpose.
She saw another hope pass away as the driver went on without turning his
head, and gradually disappeared around a turn in the road, to be seen no
more.
Once out of the house the wounded woman determined to obtain assistance of
some sort. Her nearest neighbor was a Mr. Lyman, living down the road
almost a mile distant. Thitherward Mrs. Newton bent her footsteps,
dragging herself along with an energy and courage that would have done
credit to a strong man.
At last this haven was reached, and, after taking a rest, Mrs. Newton's
desire to be brought to Denver where she could have medical assistance and
see the officers was granted. She was accordingly brought into town, and
with her arrival we are brought back to the beginning of the narrative.
This is the story to which Gen. Cook had listened. It had been told with
great incoherence, but he had kept the threads of it well together, and
was relieved when the tragic tale had been concluded. Although the
description of the murderer, who Cook believed to be the German farm hand,
was not complete, he had hope of finding further evidence at the ranch,
and started out with the promise to the woman that he would overtake the
murderer of her brother and her own would-be slayer. And he kept the
promise to the letter.