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The Girls of West Author and Old West history expert R. Michael Wilson discusses some
of the Notorious Women of West!
Pablita Sandoval (Paula Angel)
Pablita Sandoval was born in Mexico in 1835. She moved to Loma Parda, New Mexico
with her mother and started a home-based seamstress business. When she met smarmy
Mexican Miguel Martin, married with five children, a steamy affair quickly followed.
Finally Martin decided to break off the entanglement, so Pablita asked her lover
to meet her one last time. She took this opportunity to stab him to death, but made
no attempt to flee. She was tried at Las Vegas, NM, convicted and sentenced to hang.
On April 26, 1861 twenty-six year old Pablita was placed in a wagon, driven beneath
a stout limb, and hanged. She was the first woman executed west of the 98th Meridian,
but also the first recorded bungling of an execution when Sheriff Antonio Herrera
forgot to bind her wrists and ankles before driving the wagon from beneath her feet.
Delores Moore
The importance of Delores Moore is that she was the first reported female “deported,”
or banished, for criminal activity. She has persistently been listed as hanged in
1865 but in fact that is the year her sentence of death, for murdering her husband
in 1863, was commuted to banishment from the United States.
Pearl Hart
Pearl Hart is a significant “old west” icon because she is the only genuine female
pistol-wielding stagecoach robber in the wild west. Pearl Taylor-Hart went west to
“see the elephant” after her marriage to Bret Hart failed in 1893. She made her way
at various mining camps as a cook or housemaid, and after a brief reunion with her
husband which turned violent, she met Joe Boot. According to Pearl, she began receiving
requests for money from her ill mother, who was then raising her son, and when she
sent all she had Joe kicked in his nest egg. When the final request came Pearl and
Joe decided to rob a stagecoach. On May 29, 1899 Joe and Pearl, armed to the teeth
and looking desperate, stepped into the road and stopped the coach. For their efforts
they got less than $500 and started making their way to the train depot at Benson.
Within two days they were captured, Pearl managed to escape from jail but was recaptured.
In November the two defendants
appeared in court where Boot pled guilty and received thirty years, but he escaped
on February 6, 1901. Pearl was acquitted, which outraged the judge, so she was arrested
and charged with stealing the driver’s pistol. She was convicted and sentenced to
serve five years but she was pardoned in December 1902, with the stipulation she
leave the Territory until her sentence expired. She later returned to Arizona, married
Calvin Bywater and they settled near Globe. Pearl died in Arizona on December 30,
1955 at the age of eighty-five.
Eva Dugan
Eva Dugan was working as housekeeper and care-giver for A. J. “old man” Mathis at
his Tucson, Arizona ranch. In January 1927 Mathis disappeared and, when foul play
could not be proven, Dugan sold all of Mathis’ assets she could and drove his automobile
to New York. The sheriff, after several months with no sign Mathis was alive, began
an exhaustive search for his body but to no avail. Finally in desperation he went
to New York, charged an arrogant Dugan with car theft, and extradited her to Arizona.
He tried by every means to trick his prisoner into some incriminating or informative
disclosure, but Dugan was sure Mathis’ body would never be found. Dugan was sentenced
to serve six months for auto theft. Experience has proven that fate often takes a
hand in murder cases, and in this case it was a wayward camper who chose a particular
campsite during a heavy Arizona wind storm. In the morning he stepped through the
flaps of his tent into a newly uncovered grave. The body would not have been identifiable
except that, in her haste to dispose of the remains, the murderess had failed to
remove Mathis’ false teeth. Dugan was charged with murder, convicted and sentenced
to hang at the prison in Florence. When the trap was sprung Dugan fell through to
the floor, with her decapitated head rolling about near her body. This bungled execution
so outraged the public that bills were introduced to end hanging as the sole means
of execution in Arizona. Two more men would be hanged, without incident, before Arizona
adopted lethal gas as the means of inflicting capital punishment.
R. Michael Wilson - Robert Michael Wilson, a retired law enforcement officer, has
turned his expertise to examining stories and incidences that occurred during the
"old west" time period. He has a penchant for the truth, making sure that what he
writes is factual--at the same time, he has the knack of bringing the old west characters
to life. Author of numerous western history non-fiction books, he has written numerous
articles for various publications, and appeared on the History Channel's production
'Massacres' as an old west consultant.
Best Western Coronado Motor Hotel in Yuma, Arizona- Located in historic downtown
Yuma, Arizona, the Best Western Coronado Motor Hotel offers affordable, newly remodeled
Spanish-style guest rooms that are equipped with a refrigerator, microwave, flat
screen cable satellite television with HBO®, and free wireless high-speed Internet
access.
The Girls of West
R. Michael Wilson -