welcome back to the deep dive today we are holstering
up and walking straight into the dusty streets
of the american west but before you picture that
you know the square -jawed hero staring down
the bad guys i want you to pause because the
man we are talking about today wyatt erp is probably
not the man you think you know It is a classic
case of the legend completely eclipsing the human
being. Yeah. I mean, when most people hear Wyatt
Earp, they think of law and order. Right. The
OK Corral. They think of the OK Corral. They
think of a white hat. Exactly. We think of Henry
Fonda or Kurt Russell, this this sort of stoic
icon of justice. But we have been digging through
a massive stack of source material, biographies,
court records, census data. A lot of it. And
the mission today is to peel back those layers
because the real Wyatt Earp. He was messy. Messy
is putting it lightly. I mean, really lightly.
We're talking about a man who was, yes, a lawman.
Yeah. But he was also a pimp. He was a saloon
keeper. He was a boxing referee and a really
controversial one at that. He was a wanderer
and at one point a horse thief who broke out
of jail. And that is the aha premise for this
deep dive, isn't it? We tend to view Earp through
the lens of his final years or, you know, the
movies made after he died. But if you look at
the trajectory of his actual life, his fame during
his lifetime didn't really come from being a
hero. In fact, for a huge chunk of his life,
he was more likely to be arrested than to be
doing the arresting. So let's unpack this. We
need to go back to the beginning. Before the
musk ash, before the Buntline Special Revolver.
Wyatt Barry Stapp Earp was born March 19, 1848
in Monmouth, Illinois. And right from the start,
you see this restlessness in his character. The
source material paints a picture of a kid who
just could not sit still. The Civil War breaks
out when he is barely a teenager. His older brothers,
Newton, James, Virgil, they all go and join the
Union Army. And Wyatt, he's only 13, but he tries
to run away and enlist multiple times. 13, wow.
Yeah. And every single time, his father, Nicholas
Earp, has to go find him and drag him back home.
It's almost cinematic, this kid desperate for
action. But the real drama, the thing that really
shapes him, it starts a little later, after the
family moves around Iowa, California, and eventually
Wyatt lands in Lamar, Missouri around 1869. This
is where we see the first major tragedy. This
is what we call the first spiral. The first spiral.
Right. He's in his early 20s. He takes over his
father's job as the local constable. It seems
like he's on a straight path, you know. He marries
a woman named Euryla Sutherland in January 1870.
They're building a life. He buys a lot for $50,
builds a house. They are expecting their first
child. And then catastrophe. Typhoid fever. Euryla
dies later that same year carrying their unborn
child. And this is just a pivotal moment in Earp's
psychology. The sources really suggest this death
just broke him. Completely understandable. He
goes into this rapid downward spiral. And when
we say spiral, we don't just mean he was sad.
He started ending up on the wrong side of the
law almost immediately. Immediately. He gets
hit with lawsuits. He was supposed to be collecting
license fees for the local schools in Lamar,
basically acting as a tax collector, but he was
charged with failing to turn the money over.
So he was pocketing it. He was pocketing it.
Then, in March 1871, it escalates. He's charged
with stealing two horses in Indian country. Wait,
hold on. Horse theft in 1871? That's not like
stealing a car today where you get probation.
That's a hanging offense in some places, isn't
it? It was incredibly serious. A horse was a
person's livelihood, their transportation, their
tractor. Stealing one was seen as a fundamental
attack on a person's survival. So he gets arrested.
He was arrested. Bail was set at $500, which
was a huge sum at the time. But here's the kicker.
He didn't wait for the trial. He escaped. He
broke out. Like something out of a movie. He
literally climbed out through the roof of the
jail and fled to Illinois. So the future marshal
of Tombstone, the face of American law and order,
is technically a fugitive horse thief. Precisely.
And he lands in Peoria, Illinois. Now, if you're
imagining he went there to start fresh and become
a respected citizen, think again. Okay. This
is where we get to the era of the Peoria bummer.
I love this nickname, the Peoria bummer. Why?
It sounds funny to modern ears, like a bad sports
mascot, but it was not a compliment, was it?
Not at all. A bummer in 1872 was synonymous with
a loafer, a tramp, someone who imposes on hardworking
citizens. It was a slur for the underclass. A
drain on society. Exactly. And the records from
Peoria are just eye -opening. In February 1872,
the police raid a brothel. And who do they arrest?
Wyatt Earp. And he wasn't just there as a customer.
The charge was keeping and being found in a house
of ill fame. Keeping is the operative word. So
he's working there. He was working there. He
was fine. And it wasn't a one time thing. He
gets arrested again in May and then again in
September. This time he's on something called
the Beardstown Gunboat. The Beardstown Gunboat.
That sounds like a warship. Far from it. It was
a floating brothel. Get out. Yeah. A keelboat
fitted with a ramshackle wooden house that floated
on the river. The idea was that by being on the
water, they could drift between jurisdictions
and make it harder for the local police to raid
them. That's actually pretty smart. So he's running
security or management for a floating sex barge.
Essentially. The newspaper reports from the time
are brutal. They list him as the Peoria bummer
and group him with contemptible loafers. He was
essentially working as a pimp or an enforcer
for these brothels. This is the part of the biography
that Hollywood ignored for decades. This is such
a stark contrast to the legend. Later in life,
didn't Earp try to cover this up? Because if
I were trying to be a famous hero, I would not
want brothel bouncer on my resume. Oh, absolutely.
Years later, when he was talking to his biographer,
Stuart Lake, Earp claimed that during this exact...
period, the winter of 1871 to 1872, he was out
hunting buffalo on the plains. Of course he was.
He painted this picture of himself as the solitary
frontiersman commuting with nature. The classic
I was hunting buffalo alibi. Yeah. Sounds much
better than I was in jail in Peoria. Right. But
the court records in Peoria place him squarely
in jail or in court paying fines for running
brothels. There is zero evidence he ever hunted
buffalo during that specific window. It was a
complete fabrication to hide his criminal past.
So he eventually leaves Peoria, probably a good
idea given the reputation he was building, and
heads to Wichita, Kansas in 1874. This is where
the lawman persona finally starts to emerge,
right? It does, but it's still adjacent to the
vice trade. How so? He goes to Wichita because
his brother James is running a brothel there.
It really was a family business for a while.
That is wild to think about the Earp brothers
as a syndicate of vice managers. It seems so.
But in Wichita, Wyatt pivots. He joins the marshal's
office. And by all accounts, he was actually
good at it. He was physically imposing. He was
intimidating. He developed a reputation as an...
excellent officer, but, and there is always a
but with Wyatt during these years, he couldn't
stay out of trouble. What happened in Wichita?
Politics in his temper. In 1876, a former marshal
named Bill Smith accused Wyatt of using his office
to hire his brothers. Nepotism, basically. Wyatt
didn't take it to court. He took it to the street.
He found Smith and beat him in a fistfight until
he was unrecognizable. Which I assume didn't
go over well with the city council. You can't
just beat up your political rivals in the street.
No. He was fired. The council voted against rehiring
him, and they essentially withheld his pay. So
he moves on again. This is the pattern. Do good
police work. Get entangled in politics or violence.
Get fired or leave town. Move to the next boomtown.
And the next boomtown is the big one? Dodge City.
Dodge City, Kansas. 1876. The queen of the cow
towns. This is where the legend really starts
to gain traction. He's appointed assistant marshal.
But even in Dodge, he had his clumsy moments.
I found the story in the notes hilarious. Tell
us about the loose gun incident. Because we always
picture him as having nerves of steel and perfect
control. Laughing. It is hard to square this
with the movie image. January 1876, he's sitting
in a saloon back room. He leans back in his chair
and his revolver falls out of his holster, hits
the floor and discharges. Great gunfighter shoots
himself. He shot a hole through his coat. The
report says it caused a lively stampede from
the room as people scrambled for cover. It's
a reminder that these were real people with primitive
firearms, not superheroes. It humanizes him.
But Dodge is also where he meets the other half
of the legend, Doc Holliday. How did that happen?
Because in the movies, they usually meet in a
saloon in Dodge, but the source says it started
in Texas. Correct. In 1878, Wyatt was tracking
an outlaw named Dave Rudabaugh. He followed him
all the way to Fort Griffin, Texas. Wyatt goes
into the Beehive Saloon, owned by an old acquaintance,
and asks about Rudabaugh. The owner points him
to a skinny, sickly gambler sitting at a table.
That was Doc Holliday. And Doc had the intel.
He did. He told Wyatt that Rudabaugh had headed
back to Kansas. But that meeting sparked a friendship.
Later, when Doc came up to Dodge City, he reportedly
saved Wyatt's life in a saloon standoff with
some cowboys. And that cemented it. That cemented
a bond that, frankly, defined the rest of their
lives. It's fascinating because on paper, they
shouldn't be friends. Wyatt is the lawman, the
stoic. Doc is the chaotic, dying gambler. I guess
opposites attract, especially when bullets are
flying. We also have to mention the George Hoyt
shooting in Dodge. This is often cited as a moment
of Wyatt's incredible marksmanship. But the facts
are a little murkier, aren't they? This was July
1878. Some drunken cowboys are shooting up a
theater, actually causing a comedian on stage
to dive for cover. Wow. Wyatt and Bat Masterson
respond. The writers are fleeing, galloping away
in the dark. Wyatt fired her. And he claimed
he drilled the guy, right? Wyatt told his biographer
later that he saw George White against the morning
horizon and fired a fatal shot. It sounds very
heroic, but the historical record shows Hoyt
fell, yes, but he died a month later from gangrene
after his leg was amputated. It wasn't quite
the dead center shot Wyatt remembered, but it
certainly stopped the outlaw. So by 1879, Dodge
is calming down. It's becoming civilized. And
for a man like Wyatt Earp, civilized means boring.
And less profitable. Exactly. The Earps were
always looking for the main chance, the next
big boom. Virgil Earp was already out in the
Arizona Territory, and he writes to Wyatt saying,
come to Tombstone. Tombstone. The name just sounds
ominous. But they didn't go there to be lawmen,
did they? No, and this is a crucial distinction.
They moved to Tombstone in December 1879 to get
rich. Okay. They wanted to invest in silver mines.
They bought claims. They bought water rights.
They wanted to be businessmen. Pinning on a badge
was plan B. But the law pulled them back in.
Well, the mines didn't pay out as quickly as
they hoped, so they fell back on what they knew.
Virgil was a deputy U .S. marshal. Wyatt started
working for Wells Fargo as a shotgun messenger.
But the real friction in Tombstone, the thing
that led to the OK Corral, wasn't just good guys
versus bad guys. It was political. It was deeply
political. Let's pause on that because I think
we missed this context today. We think of the
Wild West as just anarchy. But Tombstone was
basically fighting the Civil War all over again,
wasn't it? Absolutely. You have to understand
the demographics. The Earps were Northerners.
They were Republicans. They represented the Union,
the federal government, and big business interests
coming from the East Coast. And the people they
were fighting against. The cowboys. Now, in 2024,
cowboy sounds like a compliment. It means a hardworking
guy on a ranch. Right. But in 1880, Arizona,
cowboy was a pejorative. It was synonymous with
rustler or gangster. And politically, these guys
were southerners. Many were Confederate sympathizers.
They were Democrats. They represented the rural,
agrarian, don't tread on me mindset. So the gunfight
at the OK Corral is basically Republicans versus
Democrats with revolvers. In a way, yes. It was
a culture war. The Cowboys, the Clantons and
McClurys saw the Earps as interfering city slickers
trying to impose federal law on their territory.
The Earps saw the Cowboys as a criminal syndicate
holding back progress. And stuck in the middle
of this is Johnny Behan. Johnny Behan is the
antagonist of the story. He was a county sheriff.
Now, in those days, the sheriff job was incredibly
lucrative because the sheriff got to keep 10
% of all the taxes they collected. Wow. We're
talking $40 ,000 a year in 1880s money. That
is astronomical. That's millions today. Easily.
It was the prize everyone wanted. Both Wyatt
and Behan wanted that job. And according to Wyatt,
they made a deal. Behan would take the sheriff's
spot and appoint Wyatt as his undersheriff, and
they'd split the fees. But Behan reneged. He
did. He got the job and appointed a Democrat
instead. Wyatt was a Republican. So you have
this political rivalry, but then you throw a
woman into the mix. Josephine Marcus. Josephine
Marcus. She arrived in Tombstone with Johnny
Behan. They were living together. She was a Jewish
actress from San Francisco, very spirited, very
independent. But eventually she kicks Behan out,
allegedly after finding him in bed with another
woman. And she ends up with Wyatt. No, wait.
We need to stop here. Because the movies usually
show Wyatt and Josephine riding off into the
sunset. But the source material mentions someone
else. Someone that the movies often leave out
or minimize. Maddie Blaylock. This is one of
the tragic parts of the Earp story that often
gets erased. When Wyatt came to Tombstone, he
wasn't single. He brought his common -law wife,
Maddie. She was a former prostitute he met in
Dodge. By the time they are in Tombstone, she's
suffering from severe headaches and is addicted
to laudanum, which is a potent liquid opiate.
And while Wyatt is courting Josephine, the glamorous
actress, Maddie is just... She's being pushed
aside. And the sad reality is, after Wyatt leaves
Tombstone with Josephine, Maddie is left behind.
She spirals. She has no support system. She goes
back to prostitution in a mining camp called
Pinal City. Oh, that's awful. And in 1888, she
commits suicide by taking a lethal overdose of
opium. That is heartbreaking. It really complicates
the hero narrative when you realize he abandoned
a dependent partner who was struggling with addiction.
It does. And Josephine Earp, in later years,
worked very hard to erase Maddie's name from
any biography of Wyatt. She didn't want the world
to know about the other wife. She wanted to be
the only love story. So, back to the pressure
cooker in Tombstone. You have the political rivalry
with Behan, the romantic scandal, and the criminal
element of the cowboys escalating. Right. And
remember, the cowboys were a real threat. They
were stealing army mules, robbing stagecoaches.
The tensions were rising for months. There were
death threats. The cowboys were telling the Earps
to get out of town or face the consequences.
Which brings us to October 26, 1881, the gunfight
at the O .K. Corral. It's the most famous shootout
in American history. But if you blink, you miss
it. It lasted only 30 seconds. 30 seconds. All
that legend, all those movies, for half a minute
of violence. That's it. Around 3 o 'clock in
the afternoon, Virgil Earp is the town marshal.
He deputizes Wyatt. Morgan Earp is there, and
so is Doc Holliday. They go down to Fremont Street,
actually a vacant lot near the OK Corral, not
inside it, to disarm the Cowboys. And facing
them are Ike Clanton, Billy Clanton, Frank McClory,
Tom McClory, and Billy Clybourne. The spacing
was incredibly tight. They were only about six
to ten feet apart. Wow. Can you imagine staring
at someone who wants to kill you from six feet
away? Who fired first? That is still debated
to this day. Witnesses gave conflicting accounts,
but the outcome isn't debated. In 30 seconds,
roughly 30 shots were fired. And when the smoke
cleared? Tom McLaurie, Frank McLaurie, and Billy
Clanton were dead. Virgil was shot through the
calf. Morgan was shot across the shoulders. Doc
was grazed. And Wyatt? Wyatt stood there, completely
unstazed. He was the only one not hit. And that
fact alone contributed massively to his mystique
later on. The idea that he was invincible or
divinely protected. Now, usually the movie ends
there. Or maybe a few minutes later with a victory
lap. But the reality was a legal nightmare, wasn't
it? They weren't hailed as heroes. No, they were
arrested for murder. Ike Clanton, who had run
away when the shooting started, filed charges.
There was a month -long preliminary hearing.
Johnny Behan, the sheriff, testified against
the Earps. Of course he did. Claiming the Cowboys
were trying to surrender when the Earps opened
fire. So it could have gone either way? They
could have hanged for this? Absolutely. But Judge
Wells Spicer ruled in the Earps' favor. He ruled
it was self -defense. He noted the cowboys were
armed and had been threatening the Earps. But
the town was split. Half saw them as heroes who
cleaned up the trash. Half saw them as cold -blooded
murderers. And the cowboys? They weren't done.
Not by a long shot. This is where the story gets
really dark. This isn't law enforcement anymore.
This is a blood feud. It is the vendetta. The
cowboys decided that if the courts wouldn't punish
the Earps, they would. In December 1881, Virgil
is ambushed walking across the street at night.
A shotgun blast shatters his arm. He survives,
but he's maimed for life. And then Morgan. March
1882. Morgan is playing billiards. He's leaning
over the table. A shot comes through the window
from a dark alley. Assassinated. Struck in the
spine. He dies 40 minutes later, and this is
the breaking point for Wyatt. Up until now, he
has tried to use the legal system. But watching
his brother die, he realizes the courts can't
touch these guys. The system is broken. So he
pins on a deputy U .S. marshal badge. gathers
a posse, and goes rogue. He becomes a vigilante
with a badge. Exactly. He wasn't trying to arrest
anyone anymore. He was hunting them. The first
target was Frank Stilwell, who they believed
killed Morgan. They found him at the Tucson train
station. Wyatt filled him with buckshot. It was
a brutal execution. And then the Iron Springs
shootout. This one feels like an action movie
scene, but the sources say it actually happened
like this. It really did. Wyatt's men scatter
for cover. Doc Holliday dives for cover. But
Wyatt, he just walks forward. Into the fire.
Into heavy fire. Curly Bill shoots at him with
a shotgun but misses. Wyatt fires his own shotgun
and practically cuts Curly Bill in half. Then
he pulls his revolver and shoots another outlaw.
And there is this myth about his coat, right?
Yes. After the fight, when the adrenaline wore
off, Wyatt checked his gear. He claimed his long
coat was shredded by bullets on both sides through
the tails of the coat. He said his saddle horn
was shot off, but his skin never touched. It
reinforced that supernatural aura around him,
the man who couldn't be killed. But after this,
they can't stay in Arizona. They are wanted men.
They are. They have warrants out for the killing
of Stilwell. The posse has to flee to Colorado.
And that is really the end of Wyatt Earp, the
lawman. He spends the next nearly 50 years of
his life doing, well, everything else. This is
the second act that I find so fascinating. Because
he doesn't just retire to a porch. He becomes
a grifter. He essentially becomes a career gambler
and opportunist. He drifts around the West. In
Gunnison, Colorado, there is a story about him
pulling a gold brick scam. What exactly is a
gold brick scam? Is it just selling a fake brick?
It's a classic con. You take a rock or a lead
brick and you coat it in gold or drill holes
and fill them with gold dust to make it way right.
Okay. Then you find a wealthy, gullible tourist,
in this case a German visitor, and sell it to
him for $2 ,000, claiming it's pure bullion.
This is the man who stood down the cowboys, selling
fake rocks to tourists. It's a stark comedown.
He moves to San Diego, runs gambling halls. He
buys racehorses. He's trying to be a respectable
businessman, but he's always operating on the
fringe. But the thing that really defined his
reputation while he was alive, the thing that
made him a household name before the movies,
wasn't Tombstone. It was a boxing match. The
Fitzsimmons -Sharky fight in 1896. This is crucial
for understanding Earp's life. He was living
in San Francisco. He was asked to referee the
heavyweight championship of the world. That's
a huge gig. That's like refereeing the Super
Bowl. It was. Bob Fitzsimmons versus Tom Sharkey.
Fitzsimmons is the favorite. He is dominating
the fight. He is pummeling Sharkey. In the eighth
round, he lands a massive uppercut and knocks
Sharkey down. Sharkey is out cold. So Fitzsimmons
wins. He should have. But Wyatt Earp steps in
and calls a foul. On what grounds? He claimed
Fitzsimmons hit Sharkey below the belt. But here's
the thing. Practically nobody else saw it. Oh,
no. The crowd went nuts. They booed him out of
the building. It was widely believed the fight
was fixed and that Earp was in on it. So for
decades, if you said Wyatt Earp, people didn't
say Hero Tombstone. They said that crooked referee.
Exactly. He was pilloried in the press, caricatured
in cartoons as a blind man or a thief taking
a bribe. That was his legacy for a long time.
A washed up. Crooked ref. So he escapes the bad
press and heads north to the Alaska gold rush.
1897. He heads to Nome. But again, he's not there
to dig for gold. He's there to mine the miners.
Of course. He opens the Dexter Saloon. Which
is incredibly fancy for a tent city. It was a
palace compared to the rest of the town. Two
stories, thick carpets, mirrors, and according
to the sources, a brothel upstairs. He was back
to his old tricks. Of course he was. He made
a fortune. An estimated... $80 ,000? That's millions
today. He should have been set for life. But?
But Josephine, she had a gambling habit. The
poker face lady. She loved to gamble. And she
wasn't particularly good at it. She apparently
burned through that fortune almost as fast as
Wyatt made it. So they end up in Los Angeles.
The final chapter. The Hollywood years. This
is the 1920s. Wyatt is an old man. And it sounds
kind of sad. It is a bit melancholic. He's living
in small rental bungalows in L .A. In the winters,
he's driving out to the Mojave Desert to work
these tiny copper claims, just trying to scrape
together enough money to pay the rent. But he's
also hanging around the movie studios. He's a
consultant. An unpaid consultant. He visits the
sets of Silent Westerns. He becomes friends with
Tom Mix and William S. Hart, the big cowboy stars
of the day. They loved him. They loved hearing
the real stories. And there's a connection to
John Wayne. Right. Yes. A young prop boy named
Marion Morrison, who would later become John
Wayne met Earp on set. No way. Wayne later said
that he based his walk, his talk and his entire
onscreen persona on Wyatt Earp. So every time
you see John Wayne, you're seeing a reflection
of the real Wyatt Earp. But Earp was desperate
to tell his own story. He wanted to clear his
name after the boxing scandal. He was. He wanted
people to know he was a hero, not a crook. He
starts working on a biography with his friend
John Flood. They sit in Wyatt's kitchen drinking
coffee, smoking cigars. But there is a problem.
Josephine. Josephine is the gatekeeper. She sits
there and censors everything. Don't tell them
about Maddie. Don't tell them about the brothels.
Make it sound nicer. The resulting book. It is
famously unreadable. Josephine insisted on it
being peppy. She literally demanded that Flood
write the word CIEC in all capital letters every
time a gun went off. Crack. Crack. Oh, that sounds
like a comic book. Publishers rejected it immediately.
They called it stilted and florid. So Wyatt dies
in 1929, largely believing he failed to clear
his name. He dies in a small rental bungalow.
Tom Mix cried at his funeral, but the general
public, they had mostly moved on. But then, two
years later, resurrection. Stuart Lake. Stuart
Lake publishes Wyatt Earp. Frontier Marshall
in 1931. And this book, it basically invents
the modern Western hero. Is it accurate? Not
even close. It is largely fiction. Lake took
the stories Wyatt told him, stripped out all
the messy parts, the pimps, the scams, the mistresses,
and turned Wyatt into a stoic teetotaling knight
in shining armor. He invented conversations.
He glorified the violence. People loved it. It
became a massive bestseller, and that book is
the reason we have the movies. My Darling Clementine,
Gunfight at the OK Corral, and Tombstone. The
Wyatt Earp we know is a fictional character based
on a real man created by a writer two years after
the real man died. And Josephine, she got her
way in the end. She did. She controlled the narrative.
She successfully threatened litigation to keep
Maddie Blaylock out of the story for decades.
She crafted the Sadie and Wyatt romance legend.
Before we wrap up, we have to talk about the
grave. Because even in death... Wyatt Earp couldn't
escape drama. It is bizarre. He's buried in Colma,
California, in a Jewish cemetery, the Hills of
Eternity Memorial Park. Right. Josephine was
Jewish, and she buried him in her family plot.
Which is surprising to a lot of people who expect
him to be in Tombstone or Dodge City. Right.
But the headstone? It kept getting stolen. Stolen.
Like, taken. Multiple times. People wanted...
a piece of the legend. In 1957, grave robbers
actually tried to dig up his ashes but failed,
so they stole the 500 -pound stone instead. 500
pounds? How do you even move that without a forklift?
Determination, I guess. It eventually showed
up at a flea market. Hugh O 'Brien, the actor
who played Wyatt on the TV show, had to offer
a reward to get it back. That is just... You
can't make this stuff up. It perfectly encapsulates
his legacy. It's never just peaceful. It's always
a little chaotic, a little criminal, and very
public. Exactly. Even his grave is a scene. So
what does this all mean when we look at the source
material, the stack of facts versus the stack
of movies? Who was he? He was a man of his time.
That's the most honest answer. The frontier wasn't
a place for clear -cut morality. He was violent
because the world was violent. He was opportunistic
because you had to be to survive. He was loyal
to his brothers, absolutely. But he was also
a man who used the law when it suited him and
ignored it when it didn't. He was a survivor.
He was. And he was a reinventor. From farm boy
to horse thief to pimp to lawman to vigilante
to gambler to saloon owner to Hollywood consultant,
he lived ten lives in one. And thanks to a biography
published after he died, we only really remember
one of them. Which raises the most provocative
question of all. If Stuart Lake hadn't written
that exaggerated book in 1931, would we even
know Wyatt Earp's name today? Or would he just
be a footnote, that guy who fixed a boxing match
in 1896? A sobering thought to leave you with.
Sometimes a legend is just better print than
the truth, but the truth is a heck of a lot more
interesting. That's it for this deep dive on
the real Wyatt Earp. Thanks for listening.