In the gun-smoke and confusion of the famous gunfight near the O. K. Corral, one question has refused to die for more than a century: Was Tom McLaury actually armed? The witnesses gave conflicting accounts.
Weapons were supposedly found after the shooting. The testimony that followed only deepened the mystery. If McLaury was unarmed, then one of the most famous shootouts in American history may have played out very differently from the legend known today. The stakes of that question became vivid decades later, in a memory preserved by historian Opie Randle Burgess in her 1967 book Bisbee, Not So Long Ago.
Burgess recorded her mother Florence Robinson Randle’s memory of arriving in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, in March 1882. Florence and her mother traveled by horse-drawn wagon to the mining town, where Florence’s father, who worked nearby, met them with a rented carriage. As the family headed toward their lodging, they heard a procession approaching. Florence’s father pulled the carriage to the side of the road and explained that they were letting the funeral procession of Morgan Earp pass.
Morgan’s remains were being taken from Tombstone toward the railroad at Contention, and from there they would continue west. His brother James Earp accompanied the body to Colton, California, where Morgan’s parents and wife were waiting. Several armed men on horseback rode at the front carrying short rifles across their arms, followed by the wagon bearing the coffin. Behind it came a carriage with two women in mourning clothes, and additional armed guards followed in the rear.
Florence’s mother, struck by the sight, remarked that she had never before seen firearms take the place of flowers in a funeral procession. That observation captured the mood of Tombstone in the spring of 1882. Even a funeral could reflect the fear and uncertainty surrounding the Earp family. Morgan had survived a serious wound during the famous confrontation near the O.
K. Corral on October 26, 1881. A bullet struck the upper part of his body, entering near one shoulder and exiting near the other. Exactly who fired that shot remains uncertain.
Wyatt Earp would later link Tom McLaury to the wound, but surviving eyewitness testimony is contradictory, and other historians have attributed Morgan’s injury to Billy Clanton. Less than five months later, Morgan’s luck ran out. On the evening of March 18, 1882, he was playing billiards at Campbell and Hatch’s saloon in Tombstone when a bullet fired from outside the building struck him from behind. He died shortly afterward, with Wyatt and several friends nearby.
His death intensified an already bitter feud and became a key event leading to Wyatt Earp’s later pursuit of the men he believed responsible. Morgan’s body left Tombstone the following day, March 19, which was Wyatt Earp’s birthday, beginning its journey toward California. The armed funeral procession Florence remembered was more than a colorful frontier anecdote. It offered a living glimpse of a community where grief, political division, and personal danger were so tightly woven that the dead man’s final journey required an armed escort.
Long before Tombstone became famous for silver, cattlemen had settled the rich grazing lands of the San Pedro River and Sulphur Springs Valley. By the early 1880s, legitimate cattle ranching coexisted with widespread cattle rustling and smuggling across the nearby Mexican border. In Tombstone, the word cowboy could mean far more than an ordinary ranch hand. When townspeople and newspapers used it to describe certain men loosely connected with the Clanton and McLaury families, it increasingly carried the meaning of cattle theft or other illegal activity.
Not every rancher in Arizona Territory was an outlaw. Politics made the situation more complicated. Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan was a political and personal rival of the Earps and maintained friendly or official relations with some men connected to the cowboy faction. Earp supporters accused Behan and his political allies of being too sympathetic to them, although describing Behan as a partner in their illegal activities goes beyond what surviving evidence can prove.
Tombstone itself was deeply divided. The cowboys spent money in local businesses, and cheap cattle, some suspected of being illegally taken across the Mexican border, could benefit merchants and consumers. At the same time, ranchers, businessmen, and other residents increasingly demanded stronger law enforcement against cattle theft. Contemporary newspapers reflected these divisions.
The Tombstone Epitaph generally supported the Earps, while the rival Nugget often represented the opposing political camp. Virgil Earp held an important position in this tense environment. By October 1881, he was serving as deputy U. S.
marshal as well as Tombstone’s chief of police, a position that had developed from the city marshal system. His brothers Wyatt and Morgan also performed law enforcement duties at various times, although their precise positions and powers changed depending on circumstances. They were prominent figures in Tombstone law enforcement, but not the only ones, as some later accounts suggested. Sheriff Behan, deputies, and other officials operated within overlapping territorial, county, and municipal jurisdictions.
By the fall of 1881, the conflict was as much political and personal as it was legal. Some Tombstone residents supported the Earps’ efforts to impose greater order, while others distrusted them or preferred Behan and the cowboys. The town was effectively split into rival camps, a division even contemporary newspaper coverage documented. Those tensions reached their decisive moment on October 26, 1881.
Shortly before 3:00 p. m. , Ike and Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLaury, and Billy Claiborne gathered near a narrow vacant lot off Fremont Street, next to C. S.
Fly’s photography studio and behind the O. K. Corral. Wesley Fuller, another man connected with the cowboy faction, was also nearby for part of the incident.
The famous confrontation did not actually take place inside the O. K. Corral itself. Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton were at least visibly carrying revolvers.
Tombstone had an ordinance restricting the carrying of weapons inside the city, with exceptions for those arriving, departing, or temporarily depositing their weapons at a stable or similar location. Whether every man present violated that ordinance, and especially whether Tom McLaury carried a firearm, would soon become one of the central disputes of the entire case. Virgil Earp decided to confront the group and disarm them. He was accompanied by Wyatt and Morgan, as well as Doc Holliday, whom Virgil said he enlisted because of the seriousness of the situation.
Before the confrontation began, Billy Claiborne and Wesley Fuller withdrew from the immediate scene. When the Earps and Holliday reached the group, Virgil ordered the men to surrender their weapons. What happened during the next few seconds became the subject of sharply contradictory testimony. Virgil later insisted he had not intended to start an armed confrontation and tried to prevent one when he saw weapons being drawn.
Wyatt’s account likewise asserted that Billy Claiborne and Frank McLaury were preparing to use their revolvers. However, many witnesses sympathetic to the other side claimed some of the cowboys had raised their hands or were trying to comply. Ike Clanton, apparently unarmed at that moment, left the scene immediately. The gunfire that followed lasted only about half a minute.
When it ended, Billy Clanton and the brothers Frank and Tom McLaury were dead, while Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday were wounded. Wyatt was unharmed. Almost immediately, Tombstone began arguing over what had happened. Earp supporters portrayed the event as a lawful attempt to disarm men who had issued repeated threats and were openly challenging municipal regulations.
Their opponents offered a completely different explanation, claiming the Earps and Holliday acted unnecessarily against men who were surrendering or not fully armed. Tom McLaury became the focus of that dispute because no revolver that could be confirmed as his was found on his body. Several witnesses claimed he was unarmed, while others testified to circumstances suggesting he had obtained or used a weapon during the confrontation. More than a century later, historians still disagree about how to resolve these contradictions.
That uncertainty matters because Tom’s status could significantly change the interpretation of the gunfight. If he was armed, it becomes easier to match the Earps’ account that they faced an armed group. If he was not, the accusations made by their critics become much more significant. The surviving evidence does not allow the matter to be settled with complete confidence.
The legal proceedings that followed were also more complicated than the simplified story often told today. A coroner’s inquest examined the three deaths, and Ike Clanton later filed a complaint that led to a lengthy preliminary hearing before Justice of the Peace Wells Spicer. That hearing was not a murder trial but was meant to determine whether Wyatt and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday should be bound over for trial. For nearly a month, Spicer heard conflicting eyewitness testimony.
Sheriff Johnny Behan and several other witnesses gave evidence damaging to the Earps, while Virgil, Wyatt, and supporting witnesses offered a completely different reconstruction of events. On November 30, 1881, Spicer issued his decision. He concluded the evidence did not justify sending the defendants to a criminal trial. Although he criticized some of Virgil Earp’s decisions, especially taking Holliday along, he ultimately decided the Earps’ actions were justified under the circumstances and connected to Virgil’s attempt to perform his official duty.
As a result, Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp, and Doc Holliday were released rather than tried for murder. Virgil was not treated as a defendant in quite the same way because his injuries initially prevented him from appearing, but Spicer’s ruling did not end the historical debate. On the contrary, the testimony recorded during the hearing ensured the debate would continue. Witnesses disagreed about who started the action, who tried to surrender, what weapons were present, and most frustratingly, whether Tom McLaury was armed.
The narrow vacant lot connected with the beginning of the O. K. Corral confrontation opened onto the south side of Fremont Street. Harwood’s house lay to the west, while C.
S. Fly’s photo studio and lodging house bordered the area to the east. It was an extremely confined space for that many people. Eight men and two horses gathered in or near the front of the lot, leaving little room to move once the confrontation began.
The use of black-powder firearms would also have filled the surrounding area with smoke quickly, making an already chaotic scene harder for witnesses to see clearly. That confusion is one reason historians have found it difficult to determine exactly who was responsible for each individual wound. The problem is compounded by the sharply conflicting accounts given afterward. Witnesses connected with the cowboy faction portrayed the Earps and Doc Holliday in the worst possible light, while the Earps and their supporters naturally defended their actions.
Even Wyatt Earp, many years later, acknowledged how difficult it was to determine each shot precisely. In a letter dated September 13, 1928, to his future biographer Stuart Lake, Wyatt referred to the event as a street fight and explained that Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury were hit multiple times. He added that it would therefore be impossible to determine exactly which participant caused each one. That admission remains an important warning against overly precise modern reconstructions of a confrontation that lasted only seconds.
When the confrontation ended on October 26, Billy Claiborne was near Harwood’s house on the Fremont Street side of the lot. He seems never to have reached his horse. Frank McLaury had led his horse toward Fremont Street before the frightened animal bolted, and Frank ended up on the north side of the street opposite the lot. Tom McLaury had moved behind a horse, generally identified as Billy Claiborne’s, during the fight.
He then moved east and ended up near the southeast corner of Fremont and Third streets, near a house adjoining the Harwood property. These movements matter because horses may have blocked witnesses’ views during critical moments. Tom’s position behind one of them became particularly important in later testimony, as some witnesses and the Earp accounts claimed he was holding or trying to use a firearm from behind the animal, while others insisted he was unarmed. The physical evidence provided clearer answers regarding two of the other cowboys.
Coroner Henry Matthews recorded Colt revolvers associated with Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton, including their serial numbers. The historical record commonly identifies Frank’s revolver as Colt number four (6338) and Billy’s as number five (2196). However, no revolver was definitively documented as belonging to Tom McLaury at the scene. That absence became one of the most important pieces of evidence for those who argued Tom was unarmed.
At the same time, other testimony complicated matters. Some witnesses claimed they saw Tom with what appeared to be a revolver, and Virgil Earp later testified that Tom moved toward a rifle carried in a saddle scabbard. Wyatt Earp also continued to say Tom had a revolver and that it had later been removed. None of these claims can now be proven beyond doubt.
The surviving testimony is too contradictory. Even modern accounts of the O. K. Corral continue to acknowledge that the question of whether Tom McLaury was armed remains unresolved.
Another difficulty lies in the documentary record itself. Decades after the gunfight, Stuart Lake examined parts of the handwritten records relating to the coroner’s inquest and the preliminary hearing before Justice Wells Spicer. Lake later described obtaining the original handwritten materials while researching Wyatt Earp. During the 1930s, Hal Patt Heighrest worked on transcribing the hearing testimony as part of the Federal Writers’ Project connected with the Works Progress Administration.
That transcript later became an important source for historians trying to reconstruct the proceedings. However, Heighrest’s transcript presents its own difficulties. Later writers, including Lake, complained that Heighrest omitted material or changed context when deciding which portions deserved preservation. Lake used particularly harsh language in describing the result.
Since the original court documents later disappeared, historians cannot simply return to a complete original manuscript and independently resolve every disputed reading. Fortunately, Heighrest’s transcript is not the only remaining window into the proceedings. Reporters connected with the two major Tombstone newspapers also recorded testimony from the coroner’s inquest and Spicer’s hearing. The Tombstone Epitaph generally favored the Earp side in the political dispute, while the Daily Nugget was more aligned with Sheriff Johnny Behan and interests associated with the cowboys.
Surviving accounts suggest the Nugget’s reporter used shorthand, while the court recorder wrote in longhand. The published or preserved reports through the Epitaph offer another version as well. As a result, the same witness’s testimony may appear differently depending on which record is consulted. These differences do not necessarily mean one entire source is false and another completely reliable.
Shorthand may capture speech differently from longhand. Newspaper reporters selected and condensed material for publication. Court records may contain omissions, and later transcription opens another door for errors. For historians, the safest approach is to compare all available versions rather than rely exclusively on a single record.
This becomes especially important when investigating the case of Tom McLaury. A phrase present in one contemporary report but absent in another could significantly affect whether a witness saw Tom holding a weapon, reaching for one, or holding nothing at all. One of the strongest pieces of evidence supporting the idea that Tom was unarmed came from saloonkeeper Andrew Mehan. On November 7, Mehan testified that Tom McLaury had deposited his revolver at the Capital Saloon sometime between 1:00 and 2:00 p.
m. on October 26. The weapon, according to Mehan, was still there when the confrontation occurred less than two hours later. The defense did not argue that Tom had handed over that specific revolver, but that did not necessarily mean Tom could not have obtained another firearm afterward.
Albert Billicke, owner of the Cosmopolitan Hotel, testified that he saw Tom enter a butcher shop around 2:00. According to Billicke, Tom’s right trouser pocket appeared flat when he entered, but when he came back out it was bulging in a way that made Billicke think something like a revolver might be inside. He admitted frankly that he never actually saw a weapon. Former army surgeon Dr.
J. B. W. Gardner also gave evidence leading him to believe Tom was armed.
Taken together, Billicke and Gardner offered the defense a possible alternative. Tom may have deposited one revolver at the saloon and later obtained another. However, neither witness could conclusively prove that what they observed was a firearm. The Earps themselves were far more certain.
Virgil Earp stated that when the fight began, Tom used a horse as protection and appeared to fire a weapon from behind it. Similarly, Wyatt testified that if Tom was actually unarmed, he did not know it at the time. He believed Tom fired toward the Earp group before Doc Holliday turned his attention toward him. During autobiography interviews published in the San Francisco Examiner in 1896, Wyatt described Tom moving behind a horse and using the animal as cover while directing a shot toward Morgan Earp.
That account, written fifteen years after the event, cannot be considered independent confirmation of Wyatt’s original testimony, but it shows his version of Tom’s actions remained consistent in one important respect. Wyatt continued to insist Tom possessed a firearm. Around 1918 or 1919, writer Forrestine Hooker produced an unpublished manuscript titled Arizona Feud, based largely on information provided by Wyatt. In Hooker’s version, Tom moved under or beside a horse and used a firearm during the opening moments of the fight, and the account even identifies his action as beginning the exchange of gunfire.
There are important limitations. Hooker did not witness the Tombstone events herself. Her manuscript was based on Wyatt’s memories from decades later and contains other disputed material. It is therefore useful as evidence of what Wyatt remembered or wanted recorded in his later life, not as an independent eyewitness source.
Wyatt made another attempt to preserve his story through his old friend John H. Flood Jr. during the 1920s. Flood produced an extensive manuscript based on conversations with Earp.
Describing the beginning of the confrontation, his account indicates smoke appearing from under the neck of Tom McLaury’s horse, again implying Tom possessed and used a firearm. Most intriguing is a sketch associated with Wyatt and Flood. On that map, a note near Third and Fremont streets indicates that Wesley Fuller recovered Tom McLaury’s revolver after the fight. The same basic claim also appears in notes recorded by Stuart Lake while working with Wyatt in 1928.
Tom owned a firearm, and Fuller allegedly took it afterward. If that accusation were true and proven, it would solve one of the O. K. Corral’s most enduring mysteries.
But there is a significant evidentiary problem. The alleged revolver was never definitively identified, and surviving contemporary records do not prove Wesley Fuller took it. The Flood map and Lake’s notes were created more than forty years after the event, and they ultimately derive from Wyatt Earp’s recollections, not from newly discovered physical evidence. Later Earp material must therefore be treated with caution.
It shows Wyatt consistently insisted Tom McLaury was armed and believed the missing weapon had been taken from the scene. It also shows that at least two writers who worked directly with Wyatt included a version of that claim in their manuscripts. What it does not prove is that Tom actually possessed a revolver on October 26, 1881. Contemporary evidence points in two directions.
Andrew Mehan stated firmly that Tom deposited one revolver before the fight. Billicke and Gardner offered circumstantial evidence that he may have obtained another. The Earps insisted they saw him use a firearm, while other witnesses said they never saw him holding one. When Stuart Lake began working with Wyatt Earp in 1928, he filled notebooks with Wyatt’s recollections of the Tombstone events.
Those notes, now known among historians as the Earp/Lake notes, contain one of Wyatt’s clearest late-life claims about Tom McLaury. According to Lake’s notes, Wyatt recalled Tom moving behind one of the horses and firing two shots toward Morgan Earp. Wyatt also stated that Tom was still holding a revolver when he fell, and claimed Wesley Fuller picked up the weapon and carried it away. There is even a fragmentary reference in Lake’s notes suggesting someone from the Fuller family later told Wyatt that Fuller had Tom’s revolver in his possession.
Those claims ultimately influenced Lake’s famous 1931 biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal. In the published version, however, Lake simplified the story considerably. He described Tom McLaury moving behind a horse, which Lake identified as Frank McLaury’s horse, though other reconstructions suggest it was most likely Billy Clanton’s, using the animal as a shield while aiming his revolver toward Morgan. Lake also portrayed Tom as one of the most serious threats faced by the Earp group during those chaotic seconds.
In his version, Tom repeatedly used the horse for protection while continuing to participate in the gunfire. But Lake’s account presents a clear problem for historians. Published fifty years after the O. K.
Corral confrontation, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal freely dramatized parts of Wyatt’s story. Historians have established that other famous details in the book, most notably the so-called Buntline Special, cannot be regarded as confirmed historical facts. The book is valuable for understanding Wyatt’s later recollections, but it cannot serve as independent evidence of what Tom McLaury actually did. That returns us to witnesses who were much closer to the time of the event.
One of the earliest was prospector Rubin F. Coleman. On October 27, 1881, just one day after the fight, the Tombstone Epitaph published an account attributed to Coleman stating that Tom McLaury fell at the beginning of the fight, then rose enough to fire a weapon once more. If that testimony was reported accurately, it is significant because it appeared almost immediately after the event and clearly places a firearm in Tom’s hands.
However, Coleman’s formal testimony shortly afterward was far less certain. In the surviving text of the coroner’s inquest, Coleman described Tom moving along Fremont Street and falling after the first moments of the fight. Coleman acknowledged the account published in the Epitaph was generally close to what he remembered, but when specifically asked about Tom’s weapon, he admitted he had not actually seen Tom holding a revolver. He also admitted his memory of that part of the event was confused.
This contradiction led some later writers to argue that Coleman softened his story after the initial newspaper interview. The original text goes further, suggesting his family’s possible economic ties to the local cattle trade may have made him sympathetic to the cowboys, and that pressure from that faction may have influenced his testimony. However, no conclusive historical evidence proves such pressure existed. Walter, Coleman’s son, ran a restaurant in Tombstone, but the suggestion that the business knowingly bought illegally obtained cattle remains speculative.
Even if such a connection existed, it would not prove Rubin Coleman changed his testimony for political reasons. The more cautious conclusion is simply that Coleman gave two versions that are difficult to reconcile. His earliest quoted statement seems to support the claim that Tom McLaury used a firearm. Yet his later sworn testimony does not go that far.
Coleman therefore offers evidence suggesting it may have happened, but he does not provide a definitive answer. Another striking account came from a Tombstone visitor named Mrs. J. C.
Colyer. She was from Kansas City and was visiting relatives in the Tombstone area on October 26, 1881. When the fight began, she was reportedly sitting in a wagon near the post office at the corner of Fremont and Fourth streets, less than one building east of the vacant lot. Her recollections did not appear in the Tombstone Epitaph until December 30, more than two months after the event.
Colyer described seeing the Earp group approach the cowboys and order them to raise their hands. According to her account, the cowboys then began using their weapons and the scene quickly became very confused. She remembered one participant continuing to use a revolver after falling to the ground. Most importantly for the question of Tom McLaury, she described another cowboy using a horse for protection and directing a shot from under or around the animal’s neck.
Some historians have identified that man as Tom McLaury. That reasoning is understandable. Both Wyatt and Virgil Earp recalled Tom moving with a horse during the fight, and Wyatt repeatedly insisted Tom used the animal as cover. At first glance, Colyer’s account appears to offer independent support for the Earps’ version.
Other eyewitness testimony places Frank McLaury with a horse on Fremont Street during part of the fight. Billy Claiborne was also associated with a horse before the fight began. Later reconstructions therefore differ about which cowboy Colyer saw. One historical analysis explicitly suggests witnesses may have confused Tom’s movements with Frank’s during the rapid sequence of events.
Colyer also gave her account weeks after the event, and not under questioning at the coroner’s inquest or Spicer’s hearing. Her statement was never tested by cross-examination, and she never identified the man by name. In fact, her value lies precisely in her apparent status as an outsider, not a member of either Tombstone political faction. Her description provides independent evidence that at least one cowboy used a horse for protection while using a firearm.
What she cannot prove conclusively is that the man was Tom McLaury. Taken together, Lake’s notes, Coleman’s early newspaper statement, and Colyer’s later recollections form an interesting body of evidence supporting Wyatt Earp’s lifelong belief that Tom was armed. But the quality of that evidence varies greatly. The Lake material comes directly from Wyatt but was recorded nearly half a century later.
Coleman’s first account seems to place a weapon in Tom’s hands, yet Coleman later said he never actually saw Tom with a revolver. Colyer described an armed man using a horse for protection, but she never named him. The strongest historical conclusion is therefore narrower than the claim sometimes made in pro-Earp accounts. There is credible evidence that Tom McLaury may have possessed and used a firearm during the O.
K. Corral confrontation, but the surviving testimony does not prove it beyond doubt. That ambiguity is precisely why the question remains interesting. Tom’s known revolver was still in the saloon.
No second revolver was conclusively found to be his, and yet several accounts, some contemporary and some recorded later, describe actions that seem consistent with Tom McLaury being armed. The most important evidence for determining whether Tom McLaury was armed comes from a supposedly neutral witness, laundry worker Peter H. Finlay. In the Heighrest transcript of the coroner’s inquest, Finlay described how the youngest Earp brother directed his fire toward a man positioned behind a horse as soon as the fight began.
Doc Holliday was firing at that same man, as well as at another person who had crossed to the other side of the street. Finlay recounted watching the man holding the horse drop the reins and stumble repeatedly before falling backward near the animal. That man kept his revolver in his hand the whole time, although Finlay did not see him fire it after falling. Finlay then approached another young man lying on the sidewalk and offered assistance, and later picked up a revolver that was a few feet away and placed it beside him.
That second man had fallen on the north side of Fremont Street. This testimony suggests the man behind the horse, whom Holliday and Morgan Earp targeted, was not the same person who ran across the street and fell on the north sidewalk. Other testimony from the Spicer hearing establishes that the second person, who led his horse out of the vacant lot, never positioned himself behind it, and finally fell on the north side of Fremont Street, was Frank McLaury. That leaves Billy Clanton or Tom McLaury as possibilities for the man behind the horse in Finlay’s account.
Since additional testimony confirms Billy Clanton never approached his horse, the man who fell backward near the horse while still holding his weapon must have been Tom McLaury. But the analysis does not end there. The word horse in Finlay’s testimony, as reported in the Heighrest text, differs noticeably from how the same testimony appears in two contemporary newspapers. The Nugget stated the man beside the horse staggered until he fell, still holding his revolver.
But the Epitaph version quoted Finlay differently, saying the man fell on his back a few feet from a house, rather than a horse. That one-word discrepancy is important because it connects to the testimony of another overlooked witness, mining man Charles Hamilton Hamlight. Hamlight was in his room at the Aztec House at the corner of Third and Fremont when he heard two gunshots and moved toward his side window overlooking Fremont Street. According to the Nugget of October 29, Hamlight testified he saw a man stagger and fall at the south corner of Fremont and Third, right beside a building.
He also noticed another man standing and leaning against a structure near the vacant lot. Hamlight said the fallen man never moved after collapsing at the street corner, and Hamlight did not witness that man firing any shots. Since Hamlight did not witness the fight from its beginning, he likewise would not have seen the man who fell at the corner firing. What Hamlight’s account confirms is that two different men were hit on the south side of Fremont Street: Billy Clanton, positioned beside Harwood’s house within the vacant lot, and Tom McLaury, who fell at the southeast corner of Fremont and Third.
This means Hamlight’s description of a man near the house confirms that Finlay’s reference to a man with a revolver beside a house, rather than the word horse in the Heighrest text, must refer to that same individual, Tom McLaury. Additional complications add to the broader dispute over whether Tom McLaury was armed. Notably, Finlay, Hamlight, and Coleman were never called to testify at the subsequent murder hearing. The Earps most likely avoided calling Finlay because during the coroner’s inquest he gave testimony suggesting that before the Earps and Holliday approached the vacant lot, Virgil Earp said that despite the men’s threats, he would not arrest them, but would act against them on the spot.
That testimony risked raising the potential charges against the Earps and Holliday from a lesser offense to first-degree murder, a far more serious matter. At the same time, the cowboy faction likely avoided calling Coleman because his testimony at the coroner’s inquest had changed so dramatically from his original Epitaph account of October 27 that the change appeared to reflect outside influence on his memory. Given that the cowboy faction’s strategy depended on the claim that the Earps and Holliday fired first on the unarmed Tom McLaury, they had reason to avoid Coleman returning to his earlier account describing McLaury as armed. This leaves three witnesses besides the Earps themselves, Coleman, Mrs.
Colyer, and Finlay, whose testimony supports the conclusion that Tom McLaury carried and used a firearm during the fight. The basic logic also supports this conclusion. One of the few firmly established facts of the incident is that Holliday used a double-barreled shotgun against Tom McLaury. Additionally, Wyatt Earp testified at the Spicer hearing that he directed his fire first toward Frank McLaury and then toward Tom McLaury.
This raises a logical question. With Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury engaged in their own fight from roughly fifteen feet away, would Wyatt and Holliday have turned their attention and effort toward Tom McLaury if he had not been an armed threat? More than 140 years later, the evidence still refuses to give a final answer. Tom McLaury may have been armed, or he may have become one of the most controversial figures in the O.
K. Corral story precisely because no weapon was ever conclusively linked to him. The evidence points in two directions, and the mystery endures.