Some More Bad Guys In Texas History...!

Here is a little more Texas history involving outlaws, crooked law enforcement folks, and the strange ways of justice!

Texas has changed a lot in many ways...and stayed the same in many more since all this took place! Sometimes the wheels of justice roll slowly, but sooner or later what goes around, comes around!

This story from yesterday's Chronicle explains the whole thing, except for how a guy that was sentenced to 25 years for killing at least 14 people, got out of prison so early and then, to top it off, was able to become a lawyer!

Today in Texas History: Lawman kills John Wesley Hardin

On this date in 1895, a crooked constable named John Selman killed the notorious mass murderer John Wesley Hardin in a gunfight at El Paso's Acme Saloon.

Hardin was born in 1853 in Bonham and was known for his violent personality at a young age. In 1867 he stabbed another youth in a schoolyard squabble, and at age 15 he shot and killed a man during an argument.

In the fall of 1868 he claimed to have killed three Union soldiers and another soldier the next year. As he made his way up the Chisholm Trail, Hardin killed at least ten men and then four more upon returning to Gonzales County.

Texas Rangers tracked him down and captured him in Pensacola, Fla., in 1877. Hardin was tried for murder, convicted, and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

He was pardoned in 1894.

Hardin had been studying law while in prison. After his release, he was admitted to the bar and practiced law in Gonzales County and then in El Paso.

In El Paso, he began seeing a woman married to one of his clients. When the husband found out about the affair, Hardin hired several law officials to kill him.

Constable Selman, an Arkansas native, was one of the hired killers, and was rumored to have killed Hardin because Hardin never paid him. Selman was tried for Hardin's murder but released when the trial ended in a hung jury.

Selman died shortly thereafter in a gunfight.

Hardin and Selman are both buried in El Paso's Concordia Cemetery.

Did you noticed that the Texas Rangers tracked Hardin all the way to Florida and arrested him there? Gotta love those Rangers!

Let's get some fresh coffee and sit in the kitchen for a bit! We can swap some historical facts!