John Wesley Hardin: The Preacher's Son Who Killed a Man for Snoring

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In 1871 a man in Abilene, Kansas was shot dead through a hotel wall because he snored too loudly. The shooter climbed out a second story window in his night clothes, hid in a haystack, and fled the state on a stolen horse. He was John Wesley Hardin, born in Texas in 1853 to a traveling preacher and named for the founder of the Methodist Church. This episode follows his path from a schoolyard stabbing to his first killing at 15 in late 1868, after which his father, distrusting Reconstruction authorities, told him to run. He stayed a fugitive for years.

Hardin treated killing as a craft. He had holsters sewn into the chest of his vest for a faster cross draw and practiced it every day, and he inflated his own body count because fear made opponents hesitate. The episode covers his standoff with Wild Bill Hickok, his role as a gunman in the Sutton-Taylor feud, and the 1874 killing of Deputy Charles Webb that got his brother and two cousins lynched. Then comes the strangest chapter: 17 years in Huntsville Prison, a law license, and a new office in El Paso.

• Ordered by Marshal Hickok to hand over his guns, Hardin offered them butts first and then spun them back into his hands. Hickok laughed it off.
• Asked about the hotel shooting of Charles Cougar, Hardin objected only to the rumors, insisting he killed just one man for snoring.
• Texas Rangers intercepted a letter and caught him on a train in Pensacola, Florida in 1877, where his revolver tangled in his suspenders.
• His prison autobiography claimed 42 kills, while contemporary newspapers attributed about 27 to him. He also ran the prison Sunday school.
• On August 19th, 1895, Constable John Selman shot him in the back of the head at the Acme Saloon as he rolled dice. In 1995 a court fight broke out over moving his grave.