The real life Western hangings were much more than what old Wayne portrayed in Hollywood's hyped Westerns.

There is a fairly new book out on Cattle Kate which argues that she and her common-law husband (they had a problem with a marriage license) were hung by vigilante ranchers who wanted her prime piece of grazing land near Rawlins, WY. The names of her executioners read like the Blue Book of WY. The book includes more research and reveals more about those who killed her, than ever before. I highly recommend it. You can read parts of it at Amazon.

My daughter went to school with the grandson of one of those ranchmen and they still had Kate's brand-new mocassins taken from her the day she was murdered. Here's a small blurb on her with a link to something which I have not read yet, by a descendant of hers: Cattle Kate

Then there was Big Nose George Parrott, who apparently was thought to *deserve* hanging and then some:

Big nose George was lynched in Rawlins, Wyoming. He was the most hated man in the town. After he was killed, the body was donated to the local doctor who made a pair of shoes out of his inner thigh, a medicine bag out of his chest and an ashtray out of the top of his skull. In the 1950's his remains were found in a whiskey barrel where the doctor's office used to stand. All that was kept of his body was his skull. The shoes and skull are on display at the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins. Nobody knows what happened to the medicine bag.

Carbon County, WY seems to have been pretty rough and ready, so to speak. There's another one which my college history prof. told us. I cannot remember the guy's name, but they hung him from a telegraph pole. According to my teacher, who had several books to his name and was a WY native, the outlaw's wife had his body cut down, then pickled in alcohol in a lead-lined coffin which she kept under her bed. She supposedly pulled it out, with help, every once in a while to check on him.

kat