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Posts tagged as “tom horn”

Good Cop… Bad Cop

SHERIFF CYRUS “DOC” SHORES and STOCK DETECTIVE TOM HORN

Tom Horn braiding rope in the sheriff’s office shortly before his execution in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1903. Courtesy Wyoming State Archives, Dept. of State Parks and Cultural Resources.

By Judy Buffington Sammons

Both Doc Shores and Tom Horn were law enforcement officers in the frontier era of Colorado’s Western Slope. Shores, upon his death at the age of ninety, had become a celebrated peace officer, who would be recalled thenceforth as “… just, fearless, and above reproach.” Horn, on the other hand, abused his power, besmirched his reputation, and died at the age of forty-three, swinging at the end of a rope. Unlikely as it later seemed, these two men once worked together as a team and were very successful in the apprehension of horse thieves and train robbers.