Tom Horn Hits the Auction Block

The former Pinkerton detective and hired gunman hanged for the murder of a rancher’s 14-year-old son, Willie Nickell—a crime he confessed to in 1903. Yet historians debate to this day whether or not he committed the murder. A mock trial in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1993 proclaimed Horn innocent, basing the new verdict on the jury’s belief that the confession Horn gave was questionable since it had been alcohol-induced. They deemed his statements at trial as being said by a braggart whose fe