On a dark night in Deadwood the nearly blind ex-jailer whispered about another murder to Panhead John who was trying to bleed his 1960 Panhead juice brakes. John snapped and hit his bald head on the unforgiving handlebars while trying to straighten up. “Another murder?” John questioned.
“Yeah, but don’t tell Bandit,” Teetering Tom said trying to find the edge of the shop bench in the dark. John worked by candlelight, but Tom couldn’t tell. There coulda been a bank of flood lights. Tom couldn’t see for shit.
The story went something like this. Gary Gurwell, and ex-drunk missionary rode to the rally in 1987, the first year I returned to the Black Hills. He came with his Utah babe, Cathy Plaggemeyer. They camped in Whitewood and fell in love with each other and the Black Hills. They refueled every day and roamed the hills, the parties, the concerts and the Bars. The more they enquired the more they wanted to make the Black Hills home. The beauty, the historic vibe, the perfectly manicured country roads and the friendly folks drew them into the region.
They rapidly shifted from being traveling, party bikers, tourists to potential residents and they fell in love with mining history rich Lead and discovered a small clapboard home for a price Gary couldn’t pass up. He cut a deal and shortly after the rally in the bloom of love and adventure Gary asked Cathy to be his girl forever in their new Black Hills Home. Unfortunately, there was a catch. Where she didn’t have a pot to piss in to recover or handle in Utah, he did and it forced to return to take care of business, he kissed her deeply goodbye and cut a dusty trail back to Utah.
Cathy, with her sparkling blue eyes, wavy blonde locks, narrow waist, knockout cleavage and a party smile hit the number 10 saloon in Deadwood, and it wasn’t a month before she danced the night away with Richard “Dick” Barton. What started as a line dance lesson turned into a slow dance and kisses on the soft curve of her neck.
It wasn’t long before Dick moved into Gary’s under contract home and into what Gary thought was the love of his life. Phone calls with Gary smelled of wandering, impatient and disenchanted blonde and corruption.
Gary needed to return and did. He packed his shit on his Evo ex-cop bike and cut a determined trail to the Number 10 Saloon fighting mad. He searched the bars then headed to his home where he discovered the two lovers. Pissed to the gills he stormed the rickety wooden porch confronted the two inside and nothing went right or Buddhist calm. Time for threatening action Gary stormed into the small bedroom and snatched his loaded .50 gage Black Hawk, black powder, mussel-loading rifle minus the firing nipple, or so he thought.
The Traditional Hawken Woodsman, a serious plainsmen hunting rifle, had all the classic styling and handling of the time-honored percussion cap Buffalo rifle from the 1820s. Both the percussion and flint models boasted a hooked breech for easy barrel removal, click-adjustable rear hunting sight, double-set triggers in an oversized glove-fitting trigger guard with finger rest and a solid brass patch box. His 100-year-old model, .50 caliber had a 28-inch octagonal blued barrel. At 44.5 inches in length, it weighed 7 7/8 lbs and hadn’t been fired in 50 years.
About three sheets to the wind, mad as a hatter, determined as the devil at midnight, he knew the black powder device was incapable of firing without a nipple attached to the barrel. Somehow in his whiskey haze he grabbed octagonal barreled cannon and returned to the chipped and creaking porch to stand his ground for his honor and his property.
“Nobody takes my girl, and this is my home you sonuvabitch,” Gary shouted and raised the rifle.
“What are you going to do with that old piece of shit?” Dick asked standing up from the bent porch railing and stepping toward the small single-pane front door. “That bastard won’t fire, and you don’t have the balls.”
Dick opened the front door but then turned to face Gary. “Were you going to shoot me in the back, punk?”
He turned, reached out and grabbed the heavy barrel and yanked. Gary looked down and surprised saw the nipple and percussion cap in place. The cannon went off in a blast of spark and a cloud of black powder. The historic cannon blew Dick into the center of the Livingroom. Someone replaced the firing nipple. He was dead before he hit the nicked hardwood floor, shot directly through the heart. Everyone including dead Dick were surprised by the explosion. No one expected the old 1800s rifle to fire. “You shot him,” Cathy said and didn’t know whether to run to Dead Dick’s side or to her previous lover and fiancé Gary Gurwell.
Gary stood stunned, dropped the old, classic weapon to the deck. His life suddenly altered forever, he didn’t know where to turn except to his old cop bike. Just 25 years prior he did time in New York’s Rikers prison for breaking the Sullivan Law and brandishing a loaded weapon in public during his early drinking days. Shortly after he faced three years in an Ohio State Penn for armed robbery. He wasn’t any good at getting away with shit.
Drunk, disillusioned and in shock he took one final look at the woman who he planned to make his wife and scrambled down the steps to the single-car garage built into the side of the hill. He yanked open the leaning and twisted wooden door and snatched his leather gloves off the cop saddle. He searched quickly for his night goggles, threw his leg over the seat and fired the old Harley to life. Slipping in the muddy driveway he made his way to a street so narrow and steep it enhanced his sobriety as he grappled with gears and brakes to make it to the bottom of the steep decline, where he slid to a stop.
Concise thought fought through the drunken fog. Could he make it to the sprawling interstate 90 and fly west? He heard a siren in the distance and leaned quickly left up the steep incline to the only signal in town and turned hard right on Highway 85. All downhill out of the Black Hills through Deadwood, the gamblers historic town with ridiculously low speed limits, he scrambled. He knew Deadwood housed more cops than any other town in the Black Hills.
Trying desperately to hold his mud he rumbled over the slippery cobblestone streets through town to the second signal in Deadwood where he could fly down the pass to Interstate 90 west into Wyoming. He wove out of the Black Hills due North to the Freeway where the South Dakota Highway Patrol waited and a highspeed chase ensued at over 100 mph until just west of Spearfish a roadblock ended his escape.
The time suddenly came, when Gary Gurwell encountered the notorious Deadwood Jailer. The Highway patrol delivered him to the jail in the center of downtown Deadwood. The Jail I wasn’t allowed to tour during our last story. The Jail where Tom, the biker Jailor resided as a city employee for over a decade.
Like most drunks the awakening reaction to his delusional deadly deed bordered on hysteria and denial. The scruffy old jailer reminded him of his current dire predicament and his need to hold his mud, but Gary, a former minister and a biker with prior jailtime experience sought someone, anyone to speak to. His love gone, life in shambles and only iron bars and block walls surrounding him he experienced a barrage of constant questioning from the press, the Deadwood detectives and the DA.
His former wife, Rose, who he spent years with him in the ‘60s as missionaries in the West Indies flew out from Tennessee. She told Judge Moses, “He had the right to defend his honor and his home.”
From Gary’s first arraignment of first-degree murder through trial and plea-bargaining episodes his position changed from first degree murder to self-defense, to not guilty, not guilty due to mental illness, to manslaughter. The Deadwood Sheriff wanted a murder conviction and Tom, the Jailer wished for manslaughter. Through plea bargains Gary ultimately pled guilty to first degree Manslaughter. He received 75 years in the South Dakota State Prison System with over 29 years before he could file for parole.
He was fucked as the Jailer chained and shackled him and led him onto the almost empty prison bus and padlocked him to his iron chair at the front of the city vehicle. Alone and distraught he slumped into the slightly padded chair about 2/3s up the rows of cracked and rusting benches from the stern of the old school bus turned black South Dakota prison transport.
The bus rumbled out of historic Deadwood as Gary stared at the diamond-plate, iron rusty deck at his feet. Less than a foot in front of him a wall of iron mesh separated him from the front compartment. As the smokey diesel-powered bus coughed and headed to the notorious intersection where Gary snatched his FXRT throttle and tried to escape desperately, they hit a bump, and the bus jumped enough to jar Gary’s dour attention and he looked up.
On the other side of the mesh wall sat a diminutive woman with blonde curly hair and blue eyes wearing prison garb. Also jarred by the lump in the road she looked across the bus and outside as the heavy vehicle began its 90 degree turn up the steep incline and then she turned to the only other prisoner in the bus, Gary Gurwell. A quirky smile crossed her tender face, and her eyes seem to glow and sparkle.
Mesmerized, Gary just stared, his green eyes questioned his mental station. Suddenly, he no longer faced life in prison. Her smile grew and so did his separation from his current predicament. For long moments he was free from his confines. She shifted in her tangled restraints to face Gary. “I’m Gloria Jean,” she said in a voice only bestowed on angels. “I killed my husband, but suddenly it’s okay.” She said and curled two fingers around the iron mesh.
Gary could reach forward just enough so his fingers touched hers. “Tell me more,” Gary said. Gloria told of constant abuse and neglect until she blew her husband away with a sawed-off shotgun. “Have at it, sister,” her husband muttered as Gloria pulled the trigger and jacked another round into the chamber. For hours of the rumbling bus ride, they shared their stories, while the female guard next to Gloria napped.
Gloria headed to a women’s prison and Gary to the dilapidated South Dakota penitentiary. For 17 years they corresponded, wrote letters in support to each other to attorneys, judges, and prison wardens. They professed their love, undying support and engagement. They were ultimately married, released and returned to the Black Hills.
They bought a small ranch house in St. Onge. After settling Gary reached out to the Deadwood Jailer and his wife. “How about coming out for dinner,” Gary said.
“The steak tips are killer,” Gloria Jean chimed in.
Tom made a note. “I’ll check with my wife.”
When he arrived home in the presidential district of Deadwood on Jackson St. his wife met him at the door. The old biker took his wife in his arms and told her of the offer north of Whitewood. “So, you want to go to dinner at the home of two murderers?”
Ultimately, they declined the offer. But that’s not the end of the story. The two murderers ultimately divorced, but Gloria’s story was captured in a book by Bill Griffeth, “HAVE AT IT SISTER.” Gloria was the cousin of Bill Griffeth, a retired TV anchor on CNBC and PBS. Her story drew him into a years-long obsession to understand the heart of the story behind the brutal killing of her husband. The case around her arrest was even more macabre.
