On the night of July 30, 1904, a terrible crime was committed.

According to the Santa Cruz Surf and Superior Farmer, a rancher in the Santa Cruz mountains named Thomas J. Laws shot and killed his 40-year-old employee, Elizeur Wright.

Laws and Wright had worked together for about 7 months. They lived in separate cabins connected by a tent, where they did the cooking. On July 30, 60-year-old Laws shot Wright with a shotgun. 30 hours later, Wright died from his wounds.

The long and short of it was that Laws had shot Wright because he was on a bender. There was no argument, no cause. He was just drunk.

Elizeur Wright gave a statement before he died. He said Laws had been drinking red wine for several days. At 11 p.m. on the night of July 30, Wright heard Laws making a lot of noise. He opened his cabin door and saw Laws standing outside. Laws shouted at him: “G– d— you, Lipes! Get out or I’ll shoot you.”

Wright said, “Lipes is not here.” (we aren’t told who Lipes is)

Laws replied, “I’ll kill you anyway.“ And then he shot Wright with a single barrel shotgun using “No. 4 shot.”

I had to read up on shotguns. Apparently, each shell contains a number of pellets. So if you fire once at close range, like Laws did, it wouldn’t be like one bullet hitting a target. One shell could do massive damage.

The shot struck Wright in his abdomen and he dropped to the ground. Laws staggered over to him and roared, “I’ve a notion to give you the other barrel!”

Wright said, “Don’t shoot again. You’ve killed me already.”

Laws did not shoot a second time. When Wright begged for water, Laws brought him wine. “For God’s sake get a doctor!” he pleaded. “Can’t you take me to Boulder Creek?”

Laws considered. “I can, but I’d get 12 years for that.” Having rejected the idea of getting Wright any help at all, he called him “chicken-hearted” and advised to brace up, he’d be fine. Then Laws went back to bed, leaving Wright lying on the ground in agony.

Early in the morning, Wright got dressed somehow and walked 3 miles to his nearest neighbor, Louis Barretti, who instantly went for a doctor. The doctor patched Wright up as well as he could, but told Baretti they would have to take the injured man to the county hospital. Wright was still lucid enough to give a statement at 5 p.m.

At 3 a.m. on Aug 1, Elizeur Wright passed away.  Sheriff Trafton went to the ranch and found Thomas J. Laws asleep in his cabin. The rancher was arrested, charged with murder, and put in jail.

There’s often a little humor in these stories, always at inappropriate times. I found this article in a Santa Clara paper, which summarized Wright’s death as well as that of a cat in Missouri.

Three days after Wright died, on August 4, the inquest was held.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel described Laws as a heavily bearded man with matted grey hair; bleary, bloodshot eyes; and a broken nose. His hands trembled, he was uneasy, and he contradicted himself often. He admitted to killing Wright.

Initially Laws said he shot Wright because he thought his employee was coming at him with a stick of wood. “He was bigger and younger than me.” Later he changed his story and said he fired at Wright because “he called me a vile name.”

Laws explained he didn’t think Wright was seriously injured. Isn’t that an amazing thing to say after you shoot someone in the stomach with a shotgun?

In his version of events, Laws helped Wright into bed and got up during the night to give him water. He admitted Wright asked for a doctor “but I was the worse for liquor and I knew I couldn’t drive down the mountains.”

The autopsy found Wright had come to his death from 29 wounds from the shotgun blast tore his liver, spleen, and kidneys, and entered his lungs. The inquest jury’s verdict was that Wright’s death was caused by a gunshot wound Laws had inflicted “with willful and murderous intent.”

On October 28, exactly 90 days after he shot Wright, Laws was convicted. On the first ballot more than half the jurors wanted a first-degree murder conviction so Laws would hang for his crime. However, it was difficult to bring everyone around to that. Ten ballots later, the jury compromised on second-degree murder.

One week later, Thomas J. Laws, age 61, was sentenced to 20 years in Folsom Prison.

I can’t muster a bit of sympathy for Thomas J. Laws but his mugshot is beautiful. Many prisons at the turn of the century allowed or required people to wear a hat for their mugshot. Folsom Prison photographed prisoners three times: with a hat and without a hat in regular clothes, then with their head shaved and in prison stripes.

What are your thoughts on this one?