More about Joe

Here’s Joe Elliott while under arrest after the Johnson County Invasion of April 1892. This photo was taken probably within days of his 32nd birthday. To the chagrin of most Johnson County residents, none of the invaders were convicted, mostly due to the county’s lack of funds. The county’s case against Joe Elliott for the November 1891 attempt on Nate Champion’s life was also dropped. (Champion identified Joe as one of his 3 attackers that morning, but Joe vehemently denied any involvement, stating in the Hope interview that he had never met or seen Champion until the April ‘92 standoff at Kaycee, where both Champion and his companion, Nick Raye, were killed.)

Joe Elliott was released in the fall of 1892. Shortly afterward, a Gillette, Wyoming, newspaper announced his arrival in that city with Mike Shonsey, another stock detective who participated in the invasion. Joe told B. W. Hope the following:

After the trial was over, Mike Shonsey started to Montana to take charge of a herd there, and I went along as, I suppose, what you’d call a bodyguard. We left the train at Moorcroft, and Billy Ricketts, of the Half Circle L, met us at the 101 with horses. He warned us to turn back, said we’d be killed if we didn’t. The man in charge of the ranch at the 101 asked us if we planned to spend the night there. We said, yes, we’d planned to. He said, “You’re welcome, of course, but if you stay I’m going to take my family and get out of here, because there’ll sure be a battle before morning.” Well, that convinced us, and we turned back.