Episode 1 – Rattlesnake Dick

 Welcome to the very first episode of Lost Threads. My name is Cameron Ezell.

And I’m Cory Munson. 

And to put it Simply Lost Threads is a podcast about forgotten stories from history. So what we intend to do with Lost Threads is bring you stories about people and events that most of our listeners have probably never heard of.

Yeah. So this first episode, we’re going to be talking about Richard Darling, AKA Rattlesnake Dick. We’re gonna have our story in the mid 19th centuries to the 1880s out in rural western Nevada. 

You know, these are lost tales from history and Rattlesnake Dick, if you search him right now on Google, you will probably find a Wikipedia article. But I want to start by saying that is not who this is. And in fact, our subject, Rattlesnake Dick, stole his nickname from the more famous outlaw Rattlesnake Dick. 

It wasn’t the only thing he stole throughout his life, but I really do like the idea that this guy took the mantle of Rattlesnake Dick, who was an, if I remember, he was an outlaw from about 30 years earlier who lived in the West. Then this guy that we’re talking about took the same name, so it’s kind of like a mask of Zorro sort of deal passed on from the one to the next. 

I don’t know why he felt he was deserving of the title. It is funny that he gave himself the nickname Rattlesnake Dick. Nobody gave it to him. He didn’t have a friend who decided he’s worthy of that name or whatever. He just decided I’ll be Rattlesnake Dick. 

It’d be cool if Outlaws did that more often, you know, carried on some sort of a moniker. 

I mean, we have a list that we can dig into later of some great names of outlaws that we’ve found during this research, but we can get into that later.

Uh, do you know when Nevada became a state? Cameron 

1864. There’s actually a local bar by that name. 

That’s true. 1864. I wanted to ask, do you know, like at this time, 1880, like what the biggest cities are in Nevada? Because I, let me give you a clue here. None of these cities are the biggest cities now, except for one of them, which it’s not the biggest city, but it is a city that at least people know about.

Well, I know for sure Virginia City was one of the biggest, it was probably the biggest in Nevada at the time. Pretty much a ghost town these days. 

Yeah. So 1880 biggest town in Nevada. 11,000 people. Um, and a lot of your newspaper sources are basically from Virginia City. Right. ’cause that was the metropolis they had. I mean, mark Twain was there. They had, uh, the opera hall, they had, uh, stock tickers. They they had a lot. It was a big town. 

Yeah. They had a lot of money just from silver. 

Okay. I’m gonna name just the top 8 eight here really fast. Number number two is Gold Hill at 5,000 people. There’s no one in Gold Hill anymore. I mean, there’s like a couple hundred people. It’s basically gone. Carson City at 4,000. Eureka at 4,000. Austin at 1500, and then Elko at, uh, at 1300. So most of these towns are still here. Elko is the only one. Elko and Carson are the only ones. Like you’re not, Las Vegas isn’t a thing yet. Reno isn’t a thing yet.

And uh, one interesting thing that I found reading about Virginia City is that they, people were driven there from the comstock lode, which was just a huge vein of silver ore that they discovered. And so all these miners came out trying to get all this silver, which at the time was the same price as gold. They were seen as the same. Like today we always see silver as a runner up, but back then they went hand in hand together and we, you know, you’ve heard about the gold standard that the US used to be on. Silver was part of that as well, the Comstock lode, there was so much silver pulled out of the earth in Nevada that it completely upended the economy, drove down the price of silver and changed it forever. But I’m still, I’m still investing. I think there’s gonna be a big comeback. I just bought a bunch of GameStop stock and silver. Uh, but first, uh, just to introduce Rattlesnake Dick, his real name is John Richard Darling, and he was born in Illinois in 1827. And there’s not a lot on his early life that I could find, but he ended up serving in the Mexican War when he reached his twenties under, uh, Elias B Zabriski’s company. 

Um, do you know what he was doing in the war? Like, was he just a infantry man or what, what was his decision? 

As far as I know, that’s all that he was doing. He, he served out of Fort Churchill for a while. So the first story we’ll get into here, you know, after the war, he roams the West coast. He kind of goes between Utah, California, and it finally settles in Nevada. And what I found looking through some of these old newspapers. So this is the Virginia Evening Bulletin, September 12th, 1863. Rattlesnake Dick is enlisted in Captain Baldwin’s company at Fort Churchill. And the woman who is his wife has made some objections to the fact that he’s going to be moving them to the fort. She doesn’t wanna live there at all. She doesn’t like that he’s enlisted even. So what she does is she goes to Johnson and Floyd’s Ranch, which is three miles from the fort. She arms herself with a double barreled shotgun and she hangs out there. She told Dick that that’s what she intended to do and stupid Dick, he runs over to the ranch and she just discharges both barrels of the shotgun at Dick 

into her husband. 

Uh. Yeah. And, uh, because he had beaten her viciously and so that’s why she’s protecting herself. Uh, this goes right through the left breast, they say, his chest and they weren’t sure if he was gonna die in the newspaper, they say, uh, if not mortally wounding him. He manages to stumble from the house to the road where he’s picked up by the captain of his company and taken in a, uh, wagon to the fort. That is the first detail I can really find in the newspapers. So that kind of sets the stage for who Rattlesnake Dick is. 

Okay. So I’m just trying to piece together, so he serves in Mexico, he comes back, he is asked to, to station in Fort Churchill with his family. Because I know you, you mentioned that he had a couple of spouses. Do you know if this was like spouse number one or so? 

That’s an interesting thing. So I could not find who this woman was. I couldn’t find what number wife. All I’ve found in my research is that at one point in time, he was the most married man in the United States. He’d married more women than any other men, man.

Oh my gosh. He’s like a, he’s like a, like a. Like a old Mesopotamian King. He just has like a, did he have a lot of children? I’d have to assume he did.

That was the other thing. I couldn’t find any record of children that he’d ever had and, but this is also not polygamy. This is him just getting married and divorced or left and married and divorced and left.

Sure. Yeah. 

Uh, just one after the other. And at one point in time he was actually married to the daughter of John Dean Lee, who I had never heard of, but he was a notorious Mormon murderer who took part in the Mountain Meadows massacre. 

His father-in-law was in the Mountain Meadows massacre. Was he part of the Mormon contingent or was he like one of the pioneers crossing across the state?

He was the Mormon. Contingent. 

Okay. How much do you know about the Mountain Meadows massacre? Uh, as much as I remember from reading the Wikipedia article, if you know more, I mean, I don’t, definitely don’t wanna into it. 

I don’t know that, I don’t know that much. I, I mean, I stopped by there once when I was driving through. Um, I. Southern Utah. 

Oh, I, I don’t know much. I’ve just been to the site and I know a bit about it before we recorded this, but yes, go on. 

All, all that there is on the side of the highway is just a placard that you can view the meadow at. I don’t think you can actually go down there, but all I know is that it was some pioneers from like Arkansas or Texas or something like that. They were crossing across Utah territory. 

I think it was Arkansas. 

Yeah, and at at this time, Utah was like not friends with the federal government of the United States because Utah wanted to be its own country and they were really not wanting any outsiders to come in. They didn’t know if this was like an invasion force, so the Mormon militia stops them. I think they besieged them for a couple of days. Then they’re like, Hey, we’re actually gonna let you go. Just give us all of your guns and ammunition. And the pioneers are like, okay, here. And the Mormons are like, okay, go ahead and start walking. And once the pioneers start walking, they just start picking everybody off. They let some kids survive. Is that right? 

Yeah, that’s what I saw is that a handful of children were left to survive. Like that is just so brutal. 

Yeah. I mean, it, it kind of goes to show just how insular Utah was at this time, where they not welcoming anybody like they were, they were definitely going to be their own country. They, they believed, I think it was the nation of Desiree, and this would go away pretty darn soon, just as soon as the Continental Railroad passed through and kind of connected the United States up a little bit more. Dick has an association with this event. 

Yeah, it’s light, but he is associated with, uh, family members of it. So about a month after Rattlesnake Dick was shot by his wife. Um, I found a story in the Goldhill Daily News. October 13th, a man named Faucet was murdered by a man named Miller. So Miller and Rattlesnake Dick are friends. Or acquaintances, associates, I couldn’t quite find out. But they arrived together at Fort Churchill and a lieutenant there immediately recognized Miller. So he pulls Rattlesnake Dick aside and he just right away just told the lieutenant that, yeah, Miller was the murderer. For sure he did it. And so like this kind of sets up the idea that I think his nickname should be Rat Dick. ’cause he just rats everybody out at the first opportunity he gets. 

I saw in the newspaper they, uh, they refer to him as a pigeon dually. Yeah, which is kind of funny for a journalist to call, I had to look it up, but I knew what a dually was. But a pigeon stoolie is just basically someone that sits on a stool and sings to the police, tells them everything. 

Yeah, and I mean, that’s something I wanted to touch on too, is the fact that like the newspapers, just the editorializing is great. They’ll just inject their opinion into these, uh, articles all the time. And we’ll talk about, oh, “he was just a scoundrel” and “we are quite familiar with Rattlesnake Dick” and, uh, you know, going so far as to like, just say when he finally dies, “he will not be missed”. 

Mm-mm. No one will mourn him. 

So let’s pick back up in May of 1866 because at this point Rattlesnake Dick is a piece of shit, but he hasn’t really had a life of crime so far. But 1866 is kind of where everything changes. I don’t know if like in that three years he got hit on the head or something, but something changed. In 1866, his enlistment has ended at this point, he arrives in Virginia City and ends up stealing a watch and some money from a woman who he was a passenger with on a stage coach from Austin. He immediately goes into Virginia City with all this money and the watch and goes on a spending spree and cashed in the watch just to get drunk and hires a prostitute by the name of Bertha. And I love this line from the newspaper: “we scarcely know, which feeling predominates in our mind; detestation of the scam for imposing on a confiding woman or pity for the latter in being so easily duped”. It is very evident this lady will not do travel alone. Like just victim blaming immediately. 

She shouldn’t have had such a nice watch. 

Yeah, I mean, maybe if she didn’t travel alone. 

Can you, can you list again all the things that he was able to get by selling this watch? Uh, prostitute. 

All I found was that he got a prostitute and he got a bunch of liquor. And what happens is Dick ends up getting so drunk, he passes out outside of Bertha’s door and so she just calls the police and they come and arrest him. He wanted to get revenge, so about, uh, or actually it was the next day, uh, he goes back to the saloon and the bartender has his back turned. Rattlesnake Dick just clubs him on the back of the head and goes upstairs to find Bertha, uh, Bertha’s not there. So he just sits down and drinks her liquor and passes out outside of her door again. So the police come and arrest him, again. And unfortunately the bartender couldn’t prove it was Dick who clubbed him because he had his back turned. So Dick was released

Didn’t they have like those brassy mirrors, like on this backside of the bar, like near the cash machine? You know, like where you can barely see someone’s silhouette? You know what I’m talking about? 

Yeah. I I definitely, they still have those in Virginia City too, but maybe he was one of those bartenders who had a glass eye and uh, was kind of just focused on wiping out a glass for an hour.

I’m just gonna go ahead and say this, this dick guy sounds like a pretty bad customer. I don’t really like anything that I’ve heard about him so far. 

No. 

When, when he got arrested here, was it his first time ever? I’m sorry, like, ’cause he’s gonna serve a  prison sentence after this, right?

Well, he was arrested, but he couldn’t be charged with, um, anything more than I think, public drunkenness or anything. And I think they got him for stealing the watch, but you know, that’s not gonna land him a prison sentence, I don’t think. But only two weeks later, Rattlesnake dick, quote, from the Goldhill Daily News “continues onward in his career of rascalities.

I love that. 

So. He goes to the Occidental Saloon in Virginia City and he perpetrates a horrific crime against a Patrick McCauley. Uh, one other person was with Dick: M.M. Woods, and what they did is they just beat and robbed McCauley at the saloon arguing over a card game. So after they take Macaulay’s money, they flee to Over City and the Virginia City police pursue him and they arrest him, and that is going to lead into his first long prison sentence. 

Okay, well maybe he’ll reform in prison once he goes. 

Well, you know, the first story I have from prison is quite interesting. This is 1868, so two years after his arrest for beating up Patrick McCauley. 1868 happens to be an election year. Only the second presidential election since Nevada became a state in 1864. 

And the race is between Grant and Democrat Horatio Seymour. 

This is also the first presidential election after the Civil War. 

Yes. Yeah, 1864 was right in the middle of it, and Grant ends up winning, obviously, but he wins Nevada with 55% of the vote. What I found is the Carson Daily appeal reported on November 7th, 1868. They were reporting the votes cast from the prison. What I found is that there were 25 votes cast, grant received 16. Seymour received nine and Rattlesnake. Dick was asking his fellow inmates to vote for Anderson for Congress, and Clayton for judge. Couldn’t find much on these people except that they both lost. But Rattlesnake Dick swore that he and Clayton were very tight and Dick had stood guard over him at Fort Churchill and he was quoted as saying, “if you fellows want to get out of here, just put him on the board of Pardons and he’ll help you through. He’s my friend”. 

Oh my gosh. So he’s like lobbying the prisoners to, to get his guy in office so he can get. He can get pardoned. 

Yeah. He’s like, Hey, I’ll get you outta prison if you vote for my friend. 

Didn’t work though. 

No. Uh, just not enough prisoners voting. 

Okay. So that’s like a local election, but if we could just talk about the 1868 election itself, the presidential election between Grant and Seymour. Now we know that grant wins, but do you know anything about Seymour? 

Well, I looked him up. He’s got a funny neck beard, and his platform was a wee bit racist from what I could tell. 

Oh my gosh. He does have a funny neck beard. It’s horrible. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. I mean it was, it was like basically let’s revert the south back to pre-Civil war. Right. And it is kind of crazy, like the United States fights the Civil War. They bring the South back into the United States. They dissolve the Confederacy, and then immediately southern politicians and people that were confederate sympathizers are running for president. Right. And this election was, it wasn’t close in the electoral college, but it was very, quite close in the, in the popular vote. But he, I mean, it was, it was like confederacy stuff, right? Like he was concerned about American or Yankee troops in the South and about the, as they say, the “Negro supremacy” in the South. And I will say that like after this period in time there were quite a few black like congressmen and senators that were starting to really secure their, their political power in the south. And, and people like Seymour were like, see you give them the right to vote and they’re just gonna do this. So that, that’s what their platform was, was running on, was. Let’s end reconstruction. Let’s not let there be this, again, “Negro supremacy” in the in the south.

Yeah. What I saw is his, he was basically quoted as saying that it’s a, this is a white country that should be ruled by a white government, essentially. It seems on the surface that that is just a losing platform like the Confederacy lost. You’re gonna argue to just bring it right back after a big, bloody civil war?

Yeah, I mean maybe they were just trying to accomplish it and, you know, instead of getting their aims through, uh, through conflict, they were trying to do it politically, which, you know, they ostensibly could do in a democracy if they get enough people to vote for an idea or a platform, they can kind of get away with whatever they want.

Yeah, I guess so. 

So he doesn’t vote in the guy, that’s the judge that’s going to acquit him. So he, I guess he gets to hang out in prison. 

He hangs out in prison until 1870, excuse me, 1871. That’s when he gets pardoned and after serving about five years of his 14 year sentence. Backtracking just a little bit, one thing I wanted to note is that The only story I could find other than that while he’s in prison is that a lot of these people were in there for hard labor and just smashing stone all day. And he actually got really talented at doing engravings and carvings and a lot of the prisoners did. And so they were actually able to sell their art. And um, there was note that Rattlesnake dick made a beautifully carved and ornamented cribbage board. 

Oh my gosh, I love cribbage. 

Yeah, we both do. We both play. I’d love to see what his cribbage boards looked like. 

That’s gonna show up on Antiques Road Show, huh? Yeah. This is a cribbage board from 1875, made by the murderous rattlesnake dick.

It’s worth $10. 

Pegs made out of the bones of his victims. Dude, we’ve been watching a lot of, uh, antiques Roadshow lately, and it’s like, it’s crazy how, how things are priced. Like it could be just like a little wooden box and if it’s made by the right artist it’s worth $200,000. But what we noticed is a lot of things on that show, like the furniture, especially colonial furniture, is just so low in value. Like yeah, this is an 18. Sorry, a 1780 walnut, uh, Spiro or, or, or working desk with secret compartments, and it’s in perfect condition. With the original enamel, you can probably get about $2,500 for it. I don’t know why furniture is so low priced. 

I mean, it’s maybe just that there was an abundance. It’s like how you can still buy Roman coins, but they’re not worth a whole lot just because so many were minted.

That’s true. You can buy like a hadrian coin for 20 bucks on eBay. 

So 1871. Rattlesnake Dick is pardoned. About a month after he’s pardoned, Rat Dick is back. He knew of a plan that was taking place in the prison for a huge prison break so all the prisoners in there were going to, uh, escape and he knew of the plan and he wanted to make sure that he wasn’t implicated as trying to help from the outside. So, he goes to the police and he lets them know, please, uh, put a watch on me. I want you to know I’m not helping in any way. I don’t want to be implicated. They’re planning on breaking outta prison, and essentially the police just didn’t believe Dtick at all. So in the end, 29 prisoners end up escaping even though they were warned ahead of time, and it’s still to this day, the largest prison break in US history. 

So you said 29? 

29 At once. 

Oh my goodness. Like we, uh, we do the whole Alcatraz Escape movie. Was that with Clint Eastwood? Mm-hmm. What’s that movie called? Is it, is it Escape from Alcatraz? 

Yeah, it’s Escape From Alcatraz. 

Good Lord. Okay. So we, uh, we kind of honored Escape from Alcatraz for three people getting out, but 29 at, at that point, that’s not really a prison break. That’s a, that’s a mutiny of the prison system because I can’t imagine that Nevada had a lot of people locked up at this time, it wasn’t a huge state.

That’s the difference is escape from Alcatraz was a much more clever, uh, finessed escape. You know, they had the paper mache heads and everything. This, they just like ended up overpowering the guards and all escaping. So that was, that prison break took place in September of 1871. 1872, about a year after the prison break. Dick has been arrested again along with William Chamberlain. Uh, he’s an old offender from Elko County, Nevada. 

Represent.

Corey and I both grew up in Elko County, so we know those people. So they were charged with the robbery of Colonel M.M. Stone on his way from Empire to Virginia City. What happened is they’ve got masks over their face, they’ve got dusters on and they pulled up.

 I bet they looked so cool. 

Oh yeah, I’m sure he looked awesome. Uh, except Colonel Stone recognized, uh, Rattlesnake Dick. He actually knew what he looked like. So they steal Stone’s watch, and he ends up going to Colonel Stone in Virginia City saying, Hey, I think I know who took your watch. If you gimme a hundred bucks. I can get it for you probably. And so, uh, Colonel Stone says, sure, yeah, bring me it. And he goes and gets the police and they just arrest Dick right away. 

How did Dick think that that was going to work and what was this watch worth that made like a hundred dollars a good deal for Stone?

I have no idea. He’s not a smart guy 

because like, if Stone was willing to pay a hundred dollars for this watch, I would assume that the watch was worth more than a hundred dollars, or it was extremely sentimental for this guy, right? 

Mm-hmm. 

So, I don’t know why Dick didn’t just like go pawn it off for $70 so he could go visit Bertha again.

I think Dick felt bad because three years later he’s in prison. At this point, he was, uh, convicted pretty early on. Very swift justice back in those days. 

Wait, so he was in prison again for stealing stones’ watch. 

Yes. Uh, he gets sentenced, uh, back to the state prison and he’s carrying out his sentence. And in 1875, about two and a half, uh, three years after, uh, holding up Colonel Stone, Dick ends up carving a nice cribbage board as an apology and sending it to Colonel Stone. And, uh, on one end is a carved picture of a man with a pistol stopping two horses attached to a buggy representing the robbery. And beneath it are the words, “Darling versus Stone”. Again, Rattlesnake Dick’s name was John Richard Darling. On the other end are the words, Stone vs Darling and above is a man with a ball and chain attached to his leg with a mallet and chisel in his hand, cutting a block of stone.

Oh my gosh. So he gives a cribbage board to the man he stole a watch from as an apology gift with like Egyptian hieroglyphs, like, like detailing the scene of the robbery and just like, aha, you got me. And then I got you we’re like friends, right? 

Yeah. I mean like it’s. I would love to see it. It sounds very elaborate for a cribbage board 

Dude, there’s gotta be a way to track that down, right? We just go through Stone’s family, see if they’re still in Western Nevada. 

Hey, if you’re related to Colonel Stone and you’re listening to this. Uh, give us an email, we’ll have it on our website lostthreads.org. 

There are two Colonel Stones, right? Cameron, if you look at, if you Google Colonel Stone, that’s a, that’s another, there’s another one that’s a little bit more famous, right?

Yes. During that time. So I was confused at first. I thought that this was the more famous Stone, the one that was robbed, was very involved in local politics. The one that I got confused by, he was much more involved in national politics and was actually hired by Lincoln as security for his inauguration.

But he was actually in the Knights of the Golden Circle, right? 

No, no. He, uh, was, he found out plans from the Knights of the Golden Circle, I think it was, or whatever, and was able to stop their plan to have a coup, just like there was on, you know, there was going to be on January 20th, 2021 with Joe Biden. You know, there was this big armed plan to take over the inauguration. 

Gosh. Okay, so not the Stone we’re talking about from our story, a totally different Stone works for Lincoln and says that you’re gonna get assassinated by the Knights of the Golden Circle, which were like a, like a Southern Confederacy secrecy group, right? Like a Masons of the Confederacy. 

Yeah. So there were actually people within Buchanan’s administration, including the vice president who were members of this order. 

So while you were reading about this false Colonel stone that wasn’t really related to what we’re talking about today, you did find out that through the Knights of the Golden Circle, allegedly they buried a treasure in California. That was their bankroll. If they had taken over the United States and successfully killed Lincoln, they would have like a giant treasure trove ready to go. 

Yeah. They had gold buried just to fund the next civil war. And like in 2013, they discovered like 1400 gold coins just buried on a California ranch, and they don’t know exactly the source of it, but that is one of the theories is that the Knights of the Golden Circle, it belonged to them.

It was like a husband and wife and they were just walking their dog and they saw a coffee can hung on a tree branch, but the wood had grown over the the can a little bit. And they were like, well, that’s kind of weird. That’s probably been there a while. And then, yeah, just on their walk and they start digging a little bit under the tree and they find a treasure chest with $10 million worth of, you know, in today’s money, gold. How crazy is that? 

Yeah, it’s nuts. Is that what you found is it’s worth 10 million? 

Yeah. Yeah. And again, I wanna restate this has nothing to do with Rattlesnake Dick, unless he was a part of the, uh, Knights of the Golden Circle, which I wouldn’t put it past him from what I’ve heard about this guy, actually.

Well, as soon as there was any kind of threat, he would’ve turned on every single one of those nights. 

Yeah, that’s true. That pigeon stoolie. All right. So he sends this cribbage board to, to the other stone as an apology. 

Yeah. So he sends the cribbage board to Colonel Stone as an apology, and in 1875, about three years after sending that cribbage board about four years into his current prison sentence, and in 1880, about eight years after, uh, he was sentenced to prison, Rattlesnake Dick makes national headlines. Actually, I found this, uh, story in papers in states outside of Nevada. But he ends up killing W.R. Chamberlain, a fellow convict with a pick. And if you remember, W.R. Chamberlain, William Chamberlain is the guy who was involved in the robbing. 

So they were buddies.

Yeah, they were kind of buddies, but I think more just partners in crime. I don’t think that they had a deep affection for one another. 

He killed him with a pick. 

Yeah. 

So that is a horrible way to go. Let me just say that. 

Yeah, so sounds bad. Here’s what I’ve found. Dick goes to the Iron Gate. Which opens from the inner prison to the stone yard and told some of the officers, quote, “there’s a dead man out here and I have killed him”. Chamberlain is found lying. A face down on the ground, bleeding copiously from his head. There’s five wounds in his head from that pick ax and he’s in a state of unconsciousness until 1:00 PM when he died. So he was in agony, just barely clinging to life while they tried to resuscitate him with five holes in his head.

The first one did it right, the first one killed him, and then the guy went and does four more, and then soberly walks over to the guards and he is like, I killed him. Did he say it was like self-defense? 

Yeah, that’s where this ends up leading. So he makes this statement quote, “I’ve been expecting trouble with Bill for a long time. A few days ago he said, I had been the means of getting him here, and he would get even.”

He said my, he said My cribbage boards were ugly. 

“He acted very strangely and I thought he was looking for a row this morning. We had some words, and finally I hit him with the pick. That’s about all I have to say, anyhow”. So that afternoon, he makes a longer statement. So here’s the full quote from the Carson Appeal, uh, which I found quoted in the Goldhill Daily News. And again, this is July 2nd, 1880. “I was hewing stone in the remote corner of the yard when Chamberlain refused to do as I told him. I was appointed as a sort of boss and was held responsible for the work. I told him to do as I said

but he made some back talk and said he wouldn’t. I stopped down to take up a pick. When I saw him raise his pick to strike me, I raised my hand and caught the point of the pick here.” And it says in uh, brackets, the witness showed the jurors his right hand, which was badly gashed at the base of the thumb, and also showed where the point of the pick had penetrated his clothes Back to Dick: “We struggled for the possession of the pick for some time when he suddenly let go the pick and grabbed up a hammer. Just before he let go, I’d gashed him over the eye with it and the blood was streaming from his face. When he raised the hammer, I hit him three or four times on the head pretty quick as I did not have time for a full swing. At the fourth blow, he fell and I came in and reported. We were working by ourselves at a point about 400 feet from the gate. 

Okay. I will just say to give Dick some credit if this story is true, this does sound like a case of, you know, self-defense. 

And that is exactly what the jury thought as well. Uh, he did not get charged for this murder. 

But he was still in prison. 

He was still in prison, yes. But he gets pardoned, uh, shortly afterwards, uh, for good behavior.

I gotta say, I’m starting to lose track of how many times he’s been in prison. Is it like three now? 

I think this is his second substantial sentence at this point.

Got it. Okay. 

So 1880, shortly after murdering someone in prison, he’s actually, pardoned. Uh, this is the Sacramento Daily Record in July 13th, 1881. Shortly after Dick is pardoned. They report that the jewelry store of W. Manning was entered by burglars last night and $2,000 worth of watches, rings, chains, and other goods were stolen. The burglars were apparently able to get in by digging through the rear stone wall that was two and a half feet thick. There was no trace of the stolen goods they could find. Rattlesnake Dick was kind of a big suspect ’cause he had just been released and he was arrested on being connected with the robbery.

Sure. I mean like if you need to get through two walls of stone, I think the best way to do that would be to have some sort of proficiency in, uh, stone picks, which this guy certainly had. 

Oh yeah, he’d been smashing stone for years now in the state prison, but I don’t think that he ended up being charged for this. I could not find any record of him being arrested further or put back into prison. So he was arrested for suspicion, but I can’t definitively say that he was involved. 

Can I just say like, how easy it was to get away with crimes or like a lifestyle of crimes back in this day? Because there’s like, 

Oh yes, forensic science wasn’t really a thing.

No security cameras. Like if you wanted to be an asshole and kill somebody or take something from somebody, like, you could generally do it if there wasn’t any eyewitnesses, and then you could just deny and be like, no, I wasn’t there. But like really you buried that treasure out in the mountains and you’re just waiting for the heat to die down.

Now, we are nearing the end of Rattlesnake Dick’s story. 

How old is he by this time? 

Well, he was born in 1827. We’re in 1883 now. 

Come on, Cameron, we already said I was educated in Elko. I don’t, I can’t just, just tell me please. 

He’s about 56 at this point, I believe. 

56. Wow. So he’s not like marrying ladies while he’s in prison. Right? Because you said he had lots and lots of wives. Did he do that all before he served it, uh, in the, in the war? 

Yeah. As far as I can tell. It was before and during. 

All right. So we’re getting towards his demise. 

Yeah, so we’re in the final year of his life by 1883 and two months before his death Rattlesnake Dick, it was reported, was cut in the groin by one-eyed Ned McLaughlin in a quarrel over a game of horseshoes. And, uh, the Carson Morning appeal, uh, editorialized a little bit saying Rattlesnake Dick is well known here and it is safe to assert he will not die. 

A non-fatal Dick cut.

And a little prescient. But uh, you know, that’s two months before his death. They say he will not die. 

You know, like I’m not, I, I don’t like Rattlesnake Dick very much, but I just wanna say like one, I admit, what the hell? You don’t do that. 

Yeah, it’s horseshoes. 

Yeah, it’s not cribbage. I don’t think that that would be an accident. I think he legitimately went for a non-fatal cut in the penis. 

Yeah. I don’t get why you aim for there. One-eyed Ned sucks. 

You know, I, there’s very few people in this, uh, in this show that I like right now.

No, they’re all awful people. And we’ll close out Rattlesnake, Dick’s life on August 24th, 1883 when he’s murdered by James Warren, better known as Jimmy Fresh. This was in Hawthorne, Nevada. The murder took place around 6:30 in the morning. So the night prior, Dick and Jimmy Fresh had a bit of a disagreement in the dance house, fighting over a prostitute. Jimmy Fresh leaves and comes back way drunk. It’s 6:30 in the morning and Dick is still out at the bar at this point. When he sees Rattlesnake dick in there, he says, “you blank blank”. That’s what it says in the newspaper. “You blank blank. You threatened to shoot me last night. Take that!”, drawing his revolver and shot him twice in the head.

Killing him. Right. That kills him. 

Oh yeah. He, he dies immediately. 

I think it could be fun for us to fill in what blank, blank is, just based on these, based on the time, like you damn rap scallion or you butt eater. What would, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t have any good 1880s insults ready. 

You, uh, you. Chinese man. Wait, we won’t put that in. What a tragic end to a tragic man. 

Yeah, and there’s not a lot on Jimmy Fresh I could find. He was just a brakeman on the C&C railroad.

Yeah. The Colorado and Carson Railroad. 

Oh, I, I didn’t even bother to look up what C&C stood for. 

Yeah, they were, they were trying to make a, uh, a railroad between basically Lake Mead and Reno-ish, that area, but they had to go through Hawthorne to do that. I think that was kinda the only reason that Hawthorne was there in the first place. But what, what I was reading is that they messed up when they were making this railroad that, well, they didn’t mess up. They wanted to make it cheaper, so they made a narrow gauge railroad when everyone else was making a wider gauge. So they actually couldn’t use that railroad anymore. So fresh is there, working on this brand new railroad that’s going from Vegas north up to Reno and uh, because the trains didn’t have that same gauge they had to actually unload any trains that were on that particular stretch and then reload them onto another train just like people had to just carry everything off of one train and put it onto another. That was the same gauge. 

What a pain in the ass. 

Yeah, it was a failed project. And actually I was looking, ’cause he was in Hawthorne and this is 1883, right? 

Yeah. 

So if you look at the Nevada census in 1880, Hawthorne’s not on here because Hawthorne hasn’t been founded yet. So this is a brand new town. I mean, I’m guessing that these guys are in a saloon in Hawthorne. There’s probably not more than a couple dozen people if that in this community. Um, and by the way, if. If, if anyone has ever seen Hawthorne, like it is, it is even today, pretty out in the middle of nowhere. So it’s kind of, 

There’s a McDonald’s.

Yeah, there’s a McDonald’s. The reason like anyone would go, ’cause we, we both live in Reno and the reason you would go to Hawthorne is if you want to drive South. Basically the only road that takes you south to go down to Vegas. 

Every time I go visit my parents. 

There’s not a lot of towns on that road. There’s uh, there’s Hawthorne, there’s Beatty, there’s Tonopah. That’s basically it. So it’s a pretty desolate road. 

It is a site for a big Army depot these days. You go there, you just see all these big concrete mounds out in the surrounding Hawthorne. 

Yeah. So like I was reading that Hawthorne was designed to be this place where all the railroads were going to go through. That didn’t end up happening because of the gauge of the railroads. So Hawthorne kind of started to dissolve a little bit. It was losing its population. It did not really start to build up any kind of an industry until that Army Depot came in in the 1920s, like it was basically surviving by surrounding mining operations that were going on. But, you know, it was definitely on life support. But what I was reading was the only reason that that depot went to Hawthorne in the first place is because in, uh, July 10th, 1926, the original ammunition depot that was in Lake Denmark, New Jersey exploded. The whole thing just blew up. Just caught on fire.

And the most natural place you go from Lake Denmark, New Jersey is to Hawthorne, Nevada. 

Yeah. ’cause they wanted to find somewhere that would be cheaper, but like this explosion was huge. It was one of the largest explosions to ever happen in the United States. It was 600,000 tons of explosives, $47 million in damage at the time. 21 deaths like. It was, it was absolutely huge. So at the time that Rattlesnake Dick was alive, of course this wasn’t out there. They were hoping this would be a railroad town, and I’m just, do you know why he was out there? Because like, there was nothing out there at the time. 

At this point, he was working as a brakeman as well. He gave up his life of crime and decided, you know, in the final two years of my life, I’m gonna stop being a piece of shit. 

So if you go, it’s, if you ever drive through Hawthorne, it’s pretty impressive. There’s just hundreds and hundreds of bunkers outside of the town. 

And, uh, Rattlesnake Dick is still laid to rest to this day at an unmarked grave in the Hawthorne Cemetery.

Maybe we should go down and see if we can dig up. Any, anything else about him? 

Eh. I did see during my research, I thought it was funny that Goldfield, Nevada has a cemetery and there’s a grave marked for a guy who died in the early 1900s. He’s an unknown man. They don’t know who he is, but he died from eating library paste, and he, they just like the town doctor just, they just found him dead. They don’t know who he is. And he had an empty bottle of library paste next to him. So their assumption was he just drank all the library paste and then died. 

That’s like some Ralph Wiggin stuff. Like that’s, that’s crazy. What a weird thing for somebody to do. Like, and I, we can’t say that he was on PCP or something like that ’cause that didn’t exist at the time. He just thought that that was a good thing to do. Maybe he had like, uh, rabies or something. 

Or maybe library paste just hit different back then. 

Yeah, and we make it with opium. Makes it stickier. Hey Cameron, can you read some of those outlaw names?

Oh yeah. Let me pull those up. So yeah, I found this list in a newspaper of what they found to be enjoyable outlaw nicknames and Rattlesnake Dick is in this list, but there’s some other great ones. So right off the bat, one of my favorites. The first one, the name “Sleeve Button Tony”. Like Tony is known for having sleeves with buttons on it.

No one button on his sleeve. We got “Tommy the Boatman”, which is like a, maybe he was ushering people into the underworld. He’s just like, take a coin from them and then I shoot them. 

Now this one’s interesting. “Liver & Bacon”. I don’t know if that’s a duo or if it’s one person who’s called “Liver and Bacon”.

Um, we got Six Toed Pete, Long Fingered Barney, and Mush Head Bill. Mush Head Bill especially I don’t imagine was a very attractive individual. 

You know, I actually looked up Six Toed Pete. I was curious about him. He was the first sheriff of Yuma County, Arizona. 

Was he? Wow. 

Yeah. 

He was also an outlaw.

I guess at some point. Uh, I did see that somebody, like a 15-year-old boy tried to kill, uh, Six Toed Pete at one point to avenge his father’s death, but he survived. 

Okay. Are you just describing the Princess Bride right now? Okay. I’m gonna, I’m gonna name one and I want you to tell me why they got that name ready? Mm-hmm.

Pancake Charlie.

Well, obviously his favorite food and, uh, he’s known around the campfire for eating so many pancakes. 

I would be, uh, Carrot Cake Cory. I think that’d be mine. 

It’s also possible he killed a man with a pancake. 

Now that’s just absurd. There’s also Strawberry Pete. 

This is one on the list: Appetite Dan. 

These are some hungry criminals we’re getting ourselves round up with. 

Yeah. Stinkfoot Charlie. 

Oh, I was just about to say that one 

Jew Ned, like you can’t come up with something more about Ned? 

What’s the craziest thing about him? He’s a Jew. 

Wow. Crazy. So we’ve covered the life of Rattlesnake Dick. Uh, we know that he’s kind of been lost a time. We unearthed all this, just doing some searching through old newspapers. Do you think that he deserves a place in history? 

I don’t think this guy is the worst person to ever exist in history. What’s interesting about him to me is that he was a person who existed on the frontier in a lawless society where you could basically do anything you want, be anything you want, and he just kind of shows like a tragic suffering human that just could not cope. Like it sounds like he could have used a lot more structure in his life, uh, and maybe if he’d like stayed in the east, he would’ve kind of had more of a life that was put together. I think Rattlesnake Dick was just one puppet, one character, one mannequin in, in this unfolding tale. And he was kind of a tragic story, but what do you think should, should he be remembered?

No, I think it is funny to look back on these people who were just kind of local characters. So Virginia City and Carson kind of knew Rattlesnake Dick at the time, and I think it’s just best that he’s been lost to time. I don’t think he really had much of an impact. I think that he’s just one of these fleeting people throughout history that we’re gonna probably run into a lot during the course of this podcast. And uh, so yeah, we just contributed an hour of our lives talking about him for a public audience ,but if you are listening and you have any more information about anything we brought up that you think should be mentioned, if maybe you are a descendant from Darling or the Colonel Stone, or any of the people mentioned, reach out to us, you can find our website at lostthreads.org. Is there anything else you wanted to mention, Cory? 

No, that’s it. Thank you so much for listening. 

Yeah, we’ll catch you next time.