March 4, 2026 • 13 mins
You might be familiar with the outlaw Johnny Ringo from the movie Tombstone. He was indeed a real-life black hat gunslinger, and a tragic figure at that.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff Josh, Chuck, Jerry, Infra,
Dave and we are quick on the draw. You're on
short stuff, pew.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
That's not lasers, though you can.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Draw a lasers consola.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Okay, good point. But not in the Old West unless
it's Westworld, I guess, because we're talking about the Old West,
and we're talking about a lesser known Old West gun
slinger by the name of Johnny Ringo.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Yeah, not Johnny Angel. Johnny Ringo, although you can substitute
his name for that for Johnny Angel in the song
if you sing it in your head.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I bet you could.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
He is. He was at the time very well known.
He was an outlaw. He was one of those cowboys
he was. He was a highed gun. He was a mercenary,
which I guess is a higher gun. He also ran
gangs that were known to murder and that kind of stuff.
But he wasn't like a bank robber. He wasn't a
(01:01):
train robber even. He just seems to have been a
guy who just kind of made his way from town
to town, ended up in kind of famous situations, and
did nefarious things here there, just enough to make a
name for himself.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, he was born in May eighteen fifty in what
is now Greens Fork, Indiana, shout out to greens Forks
and eventually got tangled up. Like you said, he sort
of found himself getting tangled up with various more famous
people that included early on the younger Brothers who were
(01:36):
led by Jesse James and Frank James, the bank robbing group.
But he was had a pretty awful incident happened to
him that when he was a teenager that seemed like
it really kind of shaped the rest of his life,
and how could it not.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Absolutely, his parents and his brothers and sister were all
on the trail to move from Missouri to California, and
part way through Martin Ringo was I'm not sure what
he was doing with his rifle or shotgun. I saw both,
but it went off when it happened to be pointing
up at his head from his chin, and he died instantly,
(02:14):
obviously in a very gruesome way, right in front of Johnny.
And you can basically explain the rest of Johnny Ringo's
life from that incident, because it doesn't matter was eighteen fifty,
ten fifty, twenty fifty If his son sees his dad
die in that manner that's going to shape your life
(02:36):
pretty much single handedly.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, for sure, he was obviously traumatized. They had to,
you know, they were moving, like you said, to California,
so they just had to kind of keep going. They
buried him along the road, kept that wagon train going.
And by that age he was he was a pretty
good shot himself. He was pretty good with a quick draw,
good with a rifle. They landed in San Jose, his
mom and his brothers and sisters, and he was there
(03:01):
till about eighteen seventy when he moved to Mason County, Texas,
where he kind of fell in with a bad gang
of cattle rustlers.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, it almost seems like so he was twenty then.
It seems like he just basically moved to Texas to
look for trouble and he found it very quickly. There
was a Texas ranger, well a former Texas ranger turned
outlaw named Scott Cooley, and they just kind of hit
it off pretty quickly. They became friends. And this is
where Johnny Ringo really kind of started to become known
(03:29):
as a like an outlaw gun slinger.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, for sure, because Mason County. You know, if you've
ever seen like the Three Amigos, you know had Germans
in it, and you kind of don't really think about
the Old West having like, you know, British people and
German people, but they did. In fact, Mason County was
mainly colonized by German and British descended cattle people, and
(03:54):
the tensions between them were pretty rough. Between those groups,
they were often accusing one of her stealing their stock
and taking their cows and rustling horses. And then in
eighteen seventy five it really sort of launched when a
couple of the Brits, including a guy named Tim Williamson,
were pulled out of jail by these Germans and killed
(04:17):
in retaliation for a cattle theft.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, and they were being transported by a deputy sheriff
named John Worley, and these Germans assumed Germans who killed
Tim Williamson and took some other guys and hung them
and shot them. Scott Cooley, who was friends with Tim
Williamson and some of the other guys, he assumed that
(04:41):
John Worley had allowed this to happen, that he was
basically in on it. So this kicked off what became
known as the Mason County War or the Hoodoo War.
And the first victim in this war, after Williamson, was
John Worley, who was killed by Scott Cooley, who not
only killed them but scalped him on August tenth, eighteen
(05:02):
seventy five.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
That feels like maybe a time for a break, I think, so,
all right, we'll be right back with Moron Johnny Ringo
right after this.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Stopped.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
All right, so when we left you, the Hoodoo War
had kicked off, John Morley had been killed and scalped.
This is eighteen seventy five, and Ringo was a part
of this war. And you know, it seems like he
was sort of just a sideman, supporting his buddy Coolie
and whatever he wanted. He was friends with the guys
(05:54):
in his gang. He was part of the gang essentially.
And when a guy named Moses Baird, he was a
part of the gang, was killed in that Hoodo War.
About a month later, in September of that year, Ringo
went on the attack big time. Shot two of the
guys that he suspected was involved in the murder, a
guy named Dave dool and another guy named James Cheney
(06:16):
went to their houses and shot him, and he actually
went to jail for this one, but because it was
the Old West, he escaped not too long after, right.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So, I mean like he's really starting to build on
his legend as a black hat outlaw. Right. He spends
the next few years moving around looking for new cattle wars,
New Mexico, Arizona, Texas. He was known to do things
like he pistol whipped and then shot a man who
he offered a drink to and the guy refused. He
(06:46):
murdered another man that he saw harassing a woman, robbed
a poker game that he had just left because the
players wouldn't loan him any money so he could stay
in and keep playing. But his his I guess the
if anybody has heard of Johnny Go it's because of
he crossed paths. It's his association with the guys from
the Ok Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Doc Holiday and Wyatt
(07:10):
are in Virgil or you can't forget Virgil.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, I mean, if you've seen the movie Tombstone, you
were probably yelling, like, guys, we've heard of Ringo. He
was in the movie.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
It was Michael Bean, right, Yeah, John Connor's dead.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, that's right. So Ringo didn't like these guys. He
didn't like Holiday and IRP either, IRP. And eventually they
did like a real Old West sort of high noon
showdown in the middle of the town streets and it
was pistols were going to be drawn, for sure, but
a local constable came in intervened and nothing happened at
(07:45):
that point. But that was about a year before Johnny
Ringo would be found dead against a tree.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, and I have never understood what that I'm your
huckleberry meant, So I looked it up. Do you know
what it means?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I've never seen too, believe it or not all the
way through.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I haven't either. I just know that that Val Kilmer
says that.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yeah, anyway, that's a hole for me, for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
He says I'm your huckleberry. And what I guess that
was the old timey way at the time was saying like,
I'm the man for the job. I can do this,
And I guess he was saying, I'm the man who
can kill you essentially or take you down, or at
least gunfight you. Okay, So at any rate, he didn't
fight at Doc Holliday in Wyatt or he wasn't there
(08:28):
at the famous gunfight at the Ok Carral. Apparently he
was out of town that day, and I'm sure he
was quite upset when he came back to town and
found out what had happened, because he definitely would have
been on the side of the other guys. And like
you said, all that happened about a year before. He
was found dead just outside a tombstone, up against a
tree on July fourteenth, eighteen eighty two. He had a
(08:51):
single gunshot wound to his head and a cold forty
five revolver in his hand, so it seemed like it
was probably a pretty clear cut case of suicide. He'd
been known to have been deep in the drink at
the time, was very depressed, and he'd given an interview
to the Tombstone Epitaph newspaper just before his death that
(09:14):
he said that he was going to be run down
or killed at some point, and a local historian named
Bob Bo's Bell, so that he certainly sounded down in
the interview, So you could make a pretty good case
that it was suicide.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, you know, other people say it was probably you know,
in the movie at least it was Val Kilmer. It
was Doc Holiday, and that historian Bell was like, you know,
everyone thought pretty much that this is a suicide until
that movie came out. There were of course whispers that
it could have been Holiday and erb in the gang,
(09:49):
but it was really that movie that kind of solidified
it in the minds of people, because you know, it
was a big Hollywood movie.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, but there's some problems with that one. Doc Holiday
was almost certain li in Pueblo County, Colorado, a few
days before Ringo's death and after because he had to
appear in court and he's on the record as having
been there. It's a fifteen hundred mile trip in three
days that I guess you could make, But that seems
like a lot of trouble to go out of your
(10:17):
way when Doc Holladay could have just killed them basically
at any time. And then Wyatt Earp he did claim
credit for him, right.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, he for sure did. But this seems to be
one of those things where and I think this kind
of happened a lot in the Old West, where it
was a badge of honor and you could claim that
you murdered someone when you didn't at all, and that
seems like it had some pretty big holes, Like the
account of his killing wasn't it didn't line up with
like how the body was found. And he also recanted
(10:45):
later and was like, you know, I didn't really kill
that guy.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah. And there was another piece of evidence that just
kind of at least it's circumstantial, that was written later
by Doc Holliday's common law wife, Big Nose, Kate Cummings,
And not only does it kind of support the idea
that he died by suicide, it also really paints him
as a tragic figure. If you'll indulge me, will you chuck? Yes?
(11:14):
Kate Cummings wrote, Ringo was a fine man anyway you
look at him physically, intellectually, morally. He was six feet tall,
rather slim and build, although broad shouldered, medium fair is
to complexion, with gray blue eyes and light brown hair. Kay,
so far, so good. His face was somewhat long, Okay.
He was what might be called an attractive man. So
(11:34):
she described him physically as basically handsome, and then she
says his attitude toward all women was gentlemanly. He must
have been a gentleman born. Sometimes I noticed something wistful
about him as if his thoughts were far away on
something sad, and he would say, oh well and sigh.
Then he would smile. But his smiles were always sad.
There was something in his life that only he himself
(11:56):
knew about. He was always neat, clean, well dressed, show
that he took good care of himself. He never boasted
of his deeds, good or bad, a trade I have
always liked and men. John was a loyal friend, and
he was noble for he never fought anyone except face
to face. Every time I think of him, my eyes
fill with tears.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Yeah. I mean that sounds like a guy who was
haunted by seeing his father blow his own head off
by accident.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Absolutely, And I think it says a lot that that
was Doc Holliday, his sworn enemy's wife who wrote that
about him.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So that's Johnny Ringo. Kind of a murder mystery, but
not necessarily and anyway you slice it, one of the
unsung outlaw bandits of the Old West. Attractive Chuck said,
that's right, which means short stuff is out.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio Opup Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff Josh, Chuck, Jerry, Infra,
Dave and we are quick on the draw. You're on
short stuff, pew.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
That's not lasers, though you can.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Draw a lasers consola.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Okay, good point. But not in the Old West unless
it's Westworld, I guess, because we're talking about the Old West,
and we're talking about a lesser known Old West gun
slinger by the name of Johnny Ringo.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Yeah, not Johnny Angel. Johnny Ringo, although you can substitute
his name for that for Johnny Angel in the song
if you sing it in your head.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I bet you could.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
He is. He was at the time very well known.
He was an outlaw. He was one of those cowboys
he was. He was a highed gun. He was a mercenary,
which I guess is a higher gun. He also ran
gangs that were known to murder and that kind of stuff.
But he wasn't like a bank robber. He wasn't a
(01:01):
train robber even. He just seems to have been a
guy who just kind of made his way from town
to town, ended up in kind of famous situations, and
did nefarious things here there, just enough to make a
name for himself.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, he was born in May eighteen fifty in what
is now Greens Fork, Indiana, shout out to greens Forks
and eventually got tangled up. Like you said, he sort
of found himself getting tangled up with various more famous
people that included early on the younger Brothers who were
(01:36):
led by Jesse James and Frank James, the bank robbing group.
But he was had a pretty awful incident happened to
him that when he was a teenager that seemed like
it really kind of shaped the rest of his life,
and how could it not.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Absolutely, his parents and his brothers and sister were all
on the trail to move from Missouri to California, and
part way through Martin Ringo was I'm not sure what
he was doing with his rifle or shotgun. I saw both,
but it went off when it happened to be pointing
up at his head from his chin, and he died instantly,
(02:14):
obviously in a very gruesome way, right in front of Johnny.
And you can basically explain the rest of Johnny Ringo's
life from that incident, because it doesn't matter was eighteen fifty,
ten fifty, twenty fifty If his son sees his dad
die in that manner that's going to shape your life
(02:36):
pretty much single handedly.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, for sure, he was obviously traumatized. They had to,
you know, they were moving, like you said, to California,
so they just had to kind of keep going. They
buried him along the road, kept that wagon train going.
And by that age he was he was a pretty
good shot himself. He was pretty good with a quick draw,
good with a rifle. They landed in San Jose, his
mom and his brothers and sisters, and he was there
(03:01):
till about eighteen seventy when he moved to Mason County, Texas,
where he kind of fell in with a bad gang
of cattle rustlers.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, it almost seems like so he was twenty then.
It seems like he just basically moved to Texas to
look for trouble and he found it very quickly. There
was a Texas ranger, well a former Texas ranger turned
outlaw named Scott Cooley, and they just kind of hit
it off pretty quickly. They became friends. And this is
where Johnny Ringo really kind of started to become known
(03:29):
as a like an outlaw gun slinger.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, for sure, because Mason County. You know, if you've
ever seen like the Three Amigos, you know had Germans
in it, and you kind of don't really think about
the Old West having like, you know, British people and
German people, but they did. In fact, Mason County was
mainly colonized by German and British descended cattle people, and
(03:54):
the tensions between them were pretty rough. Between those groups,
they were often accusing one of her stealing their stock
and taking their cows and rustling horses. And then in
eighteen seventy five it really sort of launched when a
couple of the Brits, including a guy named Tim Williamson,
were pulled out of jail by these Germans and killed
(04:17):
in retaliation for a cattle theft.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, and they were being transported by a deputy sheriff
named John Worley, and these Germans assumed Germans who killed
Tim Williamson and took some other guys and hung them
and shot them. Scott Cooley, who was friends with Tim
Williamson and some of the other guys, he assumed that
(04:41):
John Worley had allowed this to happen, that he was
basically in on it. So this kicked off what became
known as the Mason County War or the Hoodoo War.
And the first victim in this war, after Williamson, was
John Worley, who was killed by Scott Cooley, who not
only killed them but scalped him on August tenth, eighteen
(05:02):
seventy five.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
That feels like maybe a time for a break, I think, so,
all right, we'll be right back with Moron Johnny Ringo
right after this.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Stopped.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
All right, so when we left you, the Hoodoo War
had kicked off, John Morley had been killed and scalped.
This is eighteen seventy five, and Ringo was a part
of this war. And you know, it seems like he
was sort of just a sideman, supporting his buddy Coolie
and whatever he wanted. He was friends with the guys
(05:54):
in his gang. He was part of the gang essentially.
And when a guy named Moses Baird, he was a
part of the gang, was killed in that Hoodo War.
About a month later, in September of that year, Ringo
went on the attack big time. Shot two of the
guys that he suspected was involved in the murder, a
guy named Dave dool and another guy named James Cheney
(06:16):
went to their houses and shot him, and he actually
went to jail for this one, but because it was
the Old West, he escaped not too long after, right.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So, I mean like he's really starting to build on
his legend as a black hat outlaw. Right. He spends
the next few years moving around looking for new cattle wars,
New Mexico, Arizona, Texas. He was known to do things
like he pistol whipped and then shot a man who
he offered a drink to and the guy refused. He
(06:46):
murdered another man that he saw harassing a woman, robbed
a poker game that he had just left because the
players wouldn't loan him any money so he could stay
in and keep playing. But his his I guess the
if anybody has heard of Johnny Go it's because of
he crossed paths. It's his association with the guys from
the Ok Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Doc Holiday and Wyatt
(07:10):
are in Virgil or you can't forget Virgil.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, I mean, if you've seen the movie Tombstone, you
were probably yelling, like, guys, we've heard of Ringo. He
was in the movie.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
It was Michael Bean, right, Yeah, John Connor's dead.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, that's right. So Ringo didn't like these guys. He
didn't like Holiday and IRP either, IRP. And eventually they
did like a real Old West sort of high noon
showdown in the middle of the town streets and it
was pistols were going to be drawn, for sure, but
a local constable came in intervened and nothing happened at
(07:45):
that point. But that was about a year before Johnny
Ringo would be found dead against a tree.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, and I have never understood what that I'm your
huckleberry meant, So I looked it up. Do you know
what it means?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I've never seen too, believe it or not all the
way through.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I haven't either. I just know that that Val Kilmer
says that.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yeah, anyway, that's a hole for me, for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
He says I'm your huckleberry. And what I guess that
was the old timey way at the time was saying like,
I'm the man for the job. I can do this,
And I guess he was saying, I'm the man who
can kill you essentially or take you down, or at
least gunfight you. Okay, So at any rate, he didn't
fight at Doc Holliday in Wyatt or he wasn't there
(08:28):
at the famous gunfight at the Ok Carral. Apparently he
was out of town that day, and I'm sure he
was quite upset when he came back to town and
found out what had happened, because he definitely would have
been on the side of the other guys. And like
you said, all that happened about a year before. He
was found dead just outside a tombstone, up against a
tree on July fourteenth, eighteen eighty two. He had a
(08:51):
single gunshot wound to his head and a cold forty
five revolver in his hand, so it seemed like it
was probably a pretty clear cut case of suicide. He'd
been known to have been deep in the drink at
the time, was very depressed, and he'd given an interview
to the Tombstone Epitaph newspaper just before his death that
(09:14):
he said that he was going to be run down
or killed at some point, and a local historian named
Bob Bo's Bell, so that he certainly sounded down in
the interview, So you could make a pretty good case
that it was suicide.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, you know, other people say it was probably you know,
in the movie at least it was Val Kilmer. It
was Doc Holiday, and that historian Bell was like, you know,
everyone thought pretty much that this is a suicide until
that movie came out. There were of course whispers that
it could have been Holiday and erb in the gang,
(09:49):
but it was really that movie that kind of solidified
it in the minds of people, because you know, it
was a big Hollywood movie.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, but there's some problems with that one. Doc Holiday
was almost certain li in Pueblo County, Colorado, a few
days before Ringo's death and after because he had to
appear in court and he's on the record as having
been there. It's a fifteen hundred mile trip in three
days that I guess you could make, But that seems
like a lot of trouble to go out of your
(10:17):
way when Doc Holladay could have just killed them basically
at any time. And then Wyatt Earp he did claim
credit for him, right.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, he for sure did. But this seems to be
one of those things where and I think this kind
of happened a lot in the Old West, where it
was a badge of honor and you could claim that
you murdered someone when you didn't at all, and that
seems like it had some pretty big holes, Like the
account of his killing wasn't it didn't line up with
like how the body was found. And he also recanted
(10:45):
later and was like, you know, I didn't really kill
that guy.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah. And there was another piece of evidence that just
kind of at least it's circumstantial, that was written later
by Doc Holliday's common law wife, Big Nose, Kate Cummings,
And not only does it kind of support the idea
that he died by suicide, it also really paints him
as a tragic figure. If you'll indulge me, will you chuck? Yes?
(11:14):
Kate Cummings wrote, Ringo was a fine man anyway you
look at him physically, intellectually, morally. He was six feet tall,
rather slim and build, although broad shouldered, medium fair is
to complexion, with gray blue eyes and light brown hair. Kay,
so far, so good. His face was somewhat long, Okay.
He was what might be called an attractive man. So
(11:34):
she described him physically as basically handsome, and then she
says his attitude toward all women was gentlemanly. He must
have been a gentleman born. Sometimes I noticed something wistful
about him as if his thoughts were far away on
something sad, and he would say, oh well and sigh.
Then he would smile. But his smiles were always sad.
There was something in his life that only he himself
(11:56):
knew about. He was always neat, clean, well dressed, show
that he took good care of himself. He never boasted
of his deeds, good or bad, a trade I have
always liked and men. John was a loyal friend, and
he was noble for he never fought anyone except face
to face. Every time I think of him, my eyes
fill with tears.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Yeah. I mean that sounds like a guy who was
haunted by seeing his father blow his own head off
by accident.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Absolutely, And I think it says a lot that that
was Doc Holliday, his sworn enemy's wife who wrote that
about him.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So that's Johnny Ringo. Kind of a murder mystery, but
not necessarily and anyway you slice it, one of the
unsung outlaw bandits of the Old West. Attractive Chuck said,
that's right, which means short stuff is out.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio Opup Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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