Wayne Brazel
(1876-1915?) - A stockman in
New Mexico,
Brazel allegedly killed
Pat
Garrett in 1908. Brazel was born in Greenwood City, Kansas in 1876 but
the family soon moved to Brown County, Texas before making their way to
Lincoln County,
New Mexico in
the early 1880s. At the age of 15, Brazel went to work as a cowboy on W.W.
Cox's 100,000 acre ranch in San Augustine. Later, Brazel was running his
own goat ranch on land owned by
Pat
Garrett, and the two got into a dispute when
Garrett wanted to break
the lease. Though the deal was not
friendly, terms were finally agreed to and the pair were planning to close
the deal in Las Cruces,
New Mexico on
February 29, 1908. However, as
Garrett
was traveling, Brazel caught up with him and words grew heated. In the
end,
Garrett was shot to death and Brazel confessed to the slaying, though
many believed that the shooting was a conspiracy, involving two more people. Allegedly, Brazel
took the "fall" for the murder because he was single. Brazel was later tried; however, he was
acquitted of the crime. Later, Brazel moved to Lordsburg,
New Mexico,
where he married and fathered a son. However, when his wife died he sold
out in 1913 and moved to
Arizona. He
later disappeared but was thought to have been killed by an outlaw in
Bolivia about 1915.
 Jack
Langrishe (18??-1895) -
A native of
New York,
Jack (John) S. Langrishe, an actor, impresario, and production
manager, had been operating different theatres for some 17 years before
his arrival in
Deadwood,
South Dakota in 1876. Married to a wife named Jenette, and preferring working in the
Old West to the stages of New York's Broadway, the pair opened several theatres
during their careers, including one in Denver,
Colorado
and another in Helena,
Montana,
before opening their
Deadwood operation. Over the years,
the pair worked with several well-known names of the time including Fanny
Price, Charlotte Cushman, Jim and Belle Gilbert, Augusta Chambers, Viola
Porter, and more. Later,
Langrishe
would would be elected justice in Coeur d’Alene,
Idaho
1886, and managed the Wardner News in 1891. He died in Wardner,
Idaho
on December 12, 1895
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 Peter
Maxwell (1848-1898) - The only son of
New Mexico
land baron,
Lucien B.
Maxwell and his wife, Ana de la Luz Maxwell, Pete was born in in
Taos,
New Mexico on
April 27, 1848. In 1870, the elder
Maxwell
purchased the old Fort Sumner buildings
and surrounding land for some $5,000 and the following year, he relocated his family from northeast
New Mexico
and refurbished the buildings into proper housing. The family lived in
a large house, which was once the officers' quarters.
Lucien Maxwell soon turned
over his affairs to his son Peter and passed away a few years later. Following
the
Lincoln
County War, Peter became friends with
Billy the Kid
and other members of the Regulators, who had fled to
Fort Sumner, even hiring
Charlie Bowdre
and Doc
Scurlock to work on his ranch as cowboys. However, their friendship
began to deteriorate when Peter found out that
Billy was
having a relationship with his little sister, Paulita, and was
allegedly the father of her unborn child. It was in Pete's home that Pat
Garrett shot
Billy the Kid
on July 14, 1881 and has been theorized that Pete himself betrayed the
Kid in
order to put a stop to the relationship between
Billy and
Paulita. Pete died at Fort Sumner on June
21, 1898.
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