Ben Sippy is best known as the man who beat Virgil Earp in the election for Tombstone marshal in 1880—and then suddenly (and somewhat mysteriously) left town in 1881. But there’s more to him.
Researcher Peter Brand finds that Sippy spent most of his teens and 20s in Missouri institutions, usually for burglary or safe cracking. And within two months of his Arizona departure, he was again arrested in his hometown of St. Louis. His criminal career continued in a life of misdeeds broken only briefly in Tombstone.
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