Mysterious Dave Mather: The Gunfighter Who Vanished Without a Trace

The Wild West Extravaganza

Wild West Josh

History, Education

4.8 • 833 Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mysterious Dave Mather was one of the Old West’s most elusive figures. Born in Connecticut and orphaned at a young age, Mather drifted west, where his life became a blur of gunfights, gambling halls, and questionable alliances. He wore a badge in towns like Dodge City and East Las Vegas, but just as often found himself standing trial for murder. Known for surviving situations that should have ended him, Mather’s story takes an even stranger turn at its end. At the height of his notoriety, he vanished completely. Theories about his fate range from the believable to the bizarre: that he fled to Canada, started over under a new name, or died in some forgotten corner of the frontier. And then there are the claims that Dave Mather was abducted by a UFO in northern Mexico. Buy Me A Coffee – https://buymeacoffee.com/wildwest Check out the website https://www.wildwestextra.com/ Email me! https://www.wildwestextra.com/contact/ Free Newsletter! https://wildwestjosh.substack.com/ Join Patreon for ad-free and bonus content! https://www.patreon.com/wildwestextra Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You ever hear of a gunfighter so slippery that he was able to dodge bullets, murder charges,
0:04.4	and possibly even gravity itself? Meet mysterious Dave Mather, part outlaw, part law,
0:09.2	part lawman, and total, question mark. Mather may have ran with the likes of Wyatt Earp and
0:14.0	Dirty Dave Roodleball, but at the very peak of his infamy, he simply vanished. No grave,
0:19.3	no body, no final dramatic shootout, nothing. He was just gone.
0:23.8	The only question is where? How true are the stories about Dave fleeing to Canada have become
0:29.1	a mountie? What about the rumors that he was killed by moonshiners in Tennessee or that he reinvented
0:34.0	himself out west in California? Or did something far stranger catch up with him?
0:39.4	Something otherworldly, perhaps.
0:41.8	And yeah, I am referring to little green men from outer space.
0:45.3	Buckle up because this one is definitely going to get weird.
0:48.1	My name's Josh, and this is the Wild West extravaganza.
0:52.5	The Wild West extraravaganza.
1:07.1	David Allen Mather was born on August 10, 1851, and what's now known as Deep River, Connecticut.
1:11.4	And for those of you looking for a thorough rundown of Dave's early life, well,
1:14.8	I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there's just not a lot out there.
1:20.7	Story goes to Dave's father, Ulysses, abandoned the family in 1856, to become a ship captain,
1:25.7	which in hindsight may not have been all that great of a decision as he was murdered by his own crew in 1864.
1:31.7	Sadly, Dave's mother Lydia would also die before he reached adulthood.
1:38.7	By 1860, he was living with his maternal grandfather, and by 1870, and either 18-year-old mother, could be found on the federal census living in Westbrook, Connecticut, employed as a
1:43.7	laborer.
1:45.0	Wasn't until later on in that same year that he and his little brother, Josiah,
	...

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