The Montana Vigilantes, led by James Williams (pictured on the left) lynched Red Yeager in December 1863. Supposedly, he had warned an outlaw that the vigilantes were coming for him. Just before he was hanged, Red gave a list of outlaw names to his executioners.
That handwritten list was never found and later copies didn’t match. It’s not clear that Yeager sounded the alarm to anybody—or knew anything about organized crime in the region.
He may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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