Posts Tagged ‘Keno Wilson’

Murray caught; on his way to San Diego. He gave up like a cuss. Terrible excitement. Parties have started out to catch and lynch him. Will keep them back all I can . . . —Thomas Weller, deputy constable, July 1889.

A surprise telegram announcing the capture of an “assassin” came as a huge relief to all San Diegans. Only days before the county had been stunned by the slaying of Charles Wilson, the popular City Marshal of Oceanside. Now the “cold-blooded murderer from Texas”–as the newspapers called him–was in the hands of a posse and on his way to a jail cell in downtown San Diego.

The story of Killing the Marshal.

The closing of the Stingaree.

Strolling down Fifth Street any evening, the ear is rasped by the notes from asthmatic pianos, discordant banjos and fiddles, and half-drunken voices that sing boisterous and ribald songs. The eye is pained to see one, two, or perhaps three men on each corner, so intoxicated that they can barely stand . . . the lower Fifth Street in San Diego is fully as bad, if not worse than the notorious Barbary Coast district of San Francisco . . .

Read about the Stingaree.