The Last Bad Man Of The West

True Crime Historian

Richard O Jones

True Crime, Performing Arts, Documentary, Arts, Society & Culture

4.5 • 720 Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Scoundrel Tom Horn

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Episode 454 takes us back to the end of the Old West era, where a cattleman’s agent is arrested for the murder of a sheep farmer’s son. Yes, that was a real conflict back then. Tom Horn, the hired gun, had a long history of adventure, deeds good and foul, but the murder of a fourteen-year-old boy was a bullet too far for the colorful Tom Horn, who wrote a book about his life and exploits that you can download at the Safe House.Culled from the historic pages of the Chicago Inter-Ocean, the Salt Lake Herald, and other newspapers of the era.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Cheyenne, Wyoming, October 30th, 1902.
0:07.0	Tom Horn, bad man of the West, will probably pay the death penalty for having killed a 14-year-old boy.
0:15.0	Horn is bad in every sense of the word. He has killed more than half a dozen and wounded twice that number.
0:23.1	He once served as a government scout in expeditions against the Indians and played no small part in
0:29.1	the Spanish War. It was Tom Horn, now a convicted murderer, who committed the famous
0:34.8	theft of General Shafter's cow. Horn had gone to Cuba as the leader of a band of
0:39.8	scouts. On the first day of his arrival, he learned that a Cuban had presented General Shafter with a cow.
0:45.5	That night, the cow disappeared. Two days later, it was found nailed to a tree in front of Shafter's
0:51.1	tent. The animal furnished a feast for the scouts. Shafter raged and swore,
0:56.4	but never discovered who had stolen the animal. When Horn returned from the war,
1:00.7	he obtained a position as a private detective for the cattleman of Montana. It was while performing
1:05.8	this work that he is alleged to have killed 14-year-old Willie Nicol. Sometime after the boy had been slain,
1:11.6	Horn boasted to a man of the name of Lafour's, a government detective, that he had committed the murder.
1:18.6	It was upon this statement that he was arrested and placed on trial. After the jury had announced
1:23.6	its verdict finding Horn guilty of murder in the first degree, he yawned and requested his guards to take him back to jail.
1:31.3	He said, quote, they'll never swing me for this.
1:34.3	In the first place I didn't kill the kid, and in the next place, that jury simply had it in for me.
1:40.3	When a man who's ever done anything in his life gets into jail, everybody wants to take a fall out of him.
1:46.7	That's the way it is with me. The bad man has plenty of friends here who believe he is the victim of
1:52.2	malicious persecution. Most of these friends are young fellows from the plains. They look upon Horn as they
1:58.4	would a dime novel hero. They believe that the law-abiding element in Colorado framed up a case against him
2:04.5	just because he has figured in numerous desperate fights.
	...

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