More Ringo Demise Opinions

 November 29, 2025

   He was found with brain matter running down his cheek by a wood hauler's dog.

Ringo Sitting Silently In The Bough of A Tree

       And the opinions keep rolling in:

  "Ringo was, in my opinion, targeted and murdered. The timing is suspect, the opportunity present, and the motive crystal. To say Wyatt himself did it is a bit on the nose, though. Wyatt didn’t have to. He had friends in all the right places. To say Ringo’s wound was self-inflicted is to give the man too much credit. Death was at his doorstep, sure… and he’d seen how TB could turn a man’s lights off, but I don’t know of anyone who ever took their boots off before meeting their maker. Hat, perhaps. Boots, never."

—Janelle Molony, author of Birds Gone Wild (And Other Stories of Arizona Ostrich Ranching).

 

   "I’m not going to speculate on Ringo’s death, for that’s exactly what it would be, speculation. However, I will point out that the Tombstone Epitaph reported that those 'intimately acquainted' with Ringo were equally divided as to whether the Cowboy was murdered or took his own life. So it is today, but now with historians and buffs in place of Ringo’s associates. If we had an eyewitness to Ringo’s death, things would be different. Then again, hundreds of people witnessed the Kennedy assassination – and we even have film footage of it – and yet that event remains one of the most controversial in American history. Quién sabe."

—Mark Lee Gardner, author of Brothers of the Gun: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone (Dutton Books, 2025)

"He said he was as certain of being killed as he was of living then. He said that he might run along for a couple years more, and may not last two days."

—Sam Purdy, of The Tombstone Epitaph