In September of 1875, something was brewing in Silver City, New Mexico.

George Schaefer, a small-time crook who went by the moniker Sombrero Jack, convinced a

local teenage delinquent to help him knock over a small laundry shop.

The laundry was run by Charlie Sun, one of Silver City's few Chinese residents.

For Sombrero Jack, this meant that it was easy pickings.

He made the gamble that the local authorities wouldn't bother looking into a theft if it

happened to only affect one of the town's few racial minorities.

Given the prejudice nature of the times, it was a reasonable gamble, but not one that

would necessarily pay off.

After breaking into the laundry and stealing a bag of clothes and two pistols, Sombrero Jack

then ditched the stolen goods in a ditch and beat it out of town.

His young accomplice was given the task of retrieving the clothes, hiding them in the

boarding house he was staying in, and keeping the goods protected until Jack thought it was

safe to mosey on back into town.

Unfortunately for the teenager, a few days after the crime had gone down, the woman who ran

his boarding house came across the stolen clothes while doing some cleaning in the boys'

room.

Shocked and upset that one of the boys under her charge had been involved in a crime, she

immediately marched into the Silver City Sheriff's office and reported the teenage thief

to the local authorities.

Sheriff Harvey Whitehill dutifully tracked down the delinquent and put him under arrest.

When he was questioned, it was clear that the boy had been manipulated by the much older

...