An Almanac of Infamy

Tom Horn braiding rope in the Cheyenne County jail  On November 20, 1903, Tom Horn was hanged in Wyoming for the murder of 14-year-old Willie Nickell, a crime that many historians believe that the infamous hired killer did not actually commit. While Horn certainly was responsible for many deaths in the Old West, whether or not he murdered the sheep rancher's son and his possible motive are still a subject of debate and speculation. Thomas Horn, Jr., known as "Tom" was born in 1860 in Memphis, Missouri. He was the fifth of twelve children and suffered at the hands of an abusive father. His only companion as a child, a dog named Shedrick, was killed by two boys who Tom had gotten into a fist fight with. By the time he reached his teen years, it was clear that Tom Horn was a very skilled hunter and marksman. Legend has it that, at the age of sixteen, he shot and killed another man in a duel over a sex worker. After heading out west in the mid-1870s, he held various j