Vicente Silva led a double life in Las Vegas, New Mexico. By day, he was a successful businessman. By night, he was an organized crime boss for nearly two decades. He went out of control around the end of 1892.
He had one of his own gang members killed in October—then had his brother-in-law murdered the next February, afraid the man would squeal on him.
Silva’s final act: ordering gang

August 2016
In This Issue:
Features
Western Books & Movies
More In This Issue
- Outrunning the Apaches
- Crime Boss Vicente Silva
- Holbrook, Arizona
- Tales of a Legendary Western Life
- The Johnson County Invaders
- A Tall Bucking, 1881 Style
- Poet, Professor, Historian—his West Begins in the East
- The Bisbee Massacre
- Apache History from the Ndee
- The Most Significant July Event in Western History
- Wyatt Earp vs. a Tombstone Mob
Departments
- Why would a pile of small seashells be in the Arizona desert?
- Queen of the Cowtowns
- Tragic Fight on the Devil’s Backbone
- Western Events for August 2016
- On the Hunt for Geronimo
- A picture hanging in a restaurant in Prescott, Arizona, is labeled, “Wyatt Earp.” Is this a photo of him?
- The Myth of Whiskey
- Did Bat Masterson carry a cane?
- Building the Central Pacific Railroad
- Geronimo Prize Breaks Record
- Tombstone’s True Hero
- What is the origin of bib shirts?
- Butch Cassidy and the Last Standing Bank
- In the 1985 film Silverado, British-born John Cleese plays the sheriff. Did any Britons become frontier sheriffs in the USA?