Crime and Punishment

The 601 and a Downtown Lynching

When you think of lynching, you generally think of the Wild West, back in the days when gunslingers and cattle rustlers ruled the streets. Either that, or long-ago racist elements in other parts of the country where a man might be lynched based solely on the color of his skin. I'd be willing to bet that few people think of downtown Reno as the location of a lynching. But it happened.

The old iron bridge that crossed the Truckee River in downtown Reno is long gone. Its 1905 replacement is set for demolition sometime in the near future. In all likelihood, the ultra-modern bridge that will replace it will also be haunted by the shadowy figure of an angry and confused man. He is the ghostly Luis Ortiz, and he seeks the justice that he didn't receive in life.

The lynching of Luis Ortiz took place on Reno's downtown iron bridge one September night in 1891. The secret vigilante group, known as the 601, had no patience for lawyers and trials (although some of them might well have been lawyers or judges). Like the 601 of Virginia City and that of Carson City, Reno's group was composed of several prominent male citizens who wanted swift justice done. If that meant taking matters into their own hands, so be it. They aimed to keep their community safe and free of violence one way or another. If a man threatened Reno's tranquility, the 601 Vigilance Committee would be ready.

Luis Ortiz was a young Winnemucca ranch hand who turned mean after a few whiskeys. He severely injured three men in a knife fight and was convicted of assault in July 1891. He was a problem that Reno didn't need. So Constable Dick Nash escorted Ortiz to a westbound train and saw him off. Luis Ortiz would be another town's problem, or so Constable Nash thought. But he was wrong.

Luis liked Reno. He came back to town on September 17, 1891. But first things first, Luis stopped in at the nearest saloon, at the Grand Central Hotel on the corner of Plaza and Virginia Streets in downtown Reno. One whiskey after another fueled his mean temper. As the hours wore on, he grew angrier and started looking for a fight. But no one obliged him — no man was that stupid. Around midnight, Luis was told that the saloon was closing, but he didn't want to go elsewhere to drink, so he pulled his gun and fired wildly. Constable Nash arrived, accompanied by two men, and tried to subdue Ortiz. Nothing doing — Ortiz was not to be subdued, nor was he going to jail. All he wanted was a drink and a fight. Looking Nash in the eye, he raised his pistol and fired, striking him in the stomach.

Constable Nash was taken to a doctor's house, and Luis was taken to jail. A day passed. While the well-respected constable clung to life, bad news broke. There was no hope for Nash; his doctor said his patient's injuries would prove fatal. When questioned in jail by reporters, Luis Ortiz claimed it had all been a blur. He had been so drunk he couldn't remember a thing. This, of course, did not help Constable Nash. The 601 was listening. Justice must prevail. They sprang into action. And Luis Ortiz would pay.

They waited until the town was sleeping and then went to the jailhouse for Ortiz. Deputy John Caughlin was tricked into opening the jail door. Once he did so, he was overcome by the mob.

"Ortiz, you are wanted downtown," one of the men said.

Those words meant but one thing. With their frightened prisoner struggling to get away, they crept to the Virginia Street Bridge.

"Do you have any final requests, Ortiz?" someone asked.

"A priest and a glass of water."

A man proffered a whiskey flask. "Whiskey's all we have."

Ortiz gulped. Trembling, he told them where to send his personal effects and bravely faced his executioners.

"Ready," he announced firmly.

The next morning, Ortiz's lifeless body was cut down from the bridge. Miraculously, Constable Nash made a full recovery. The Weekly Gazette Stockman of September 1891 had this to say about the affair: "Ortiz Hung! The County and Town well rid of a worthless vagabond. The man who was so handy with his gun departs this life at the end of a rope."

As for those who took part in the murder of Luis Ortiz, no one was ever arrested or even questioned about that night. And as you might suspect, no one ever publicly admitted to having been anywhere near the iron bridge on the night of September 24, 1891. Obviously, the ghostly Luis Ortiz wants justice. He aimlessly wanders the bridge seeking answers. He has the habit of rushing up to someone as if to ask a question and then turns and wanders away. Those who don't see Luis Ortiz have sensed his unhappy presence on the northwest side of the bridge.

Sometime before October 15, 1905, when the new bridge was erected, a tourist who'd heard of the Ortiz lynching went to the bridge and asked for a sign from Ortiz's ghost. He got one. A spider dropped down and bit the man on the neck. Was it Luis or was it a coincidence?

Now, if you think it's a coincidence, let me tell you this. One night during the ghost walk, we had a group of about twenty on the bridge, and we were telling the Luis Ortiz story. When we got to the part about the spider, a woman gasped and jumped. She'd been bitten on the ankle — by a spider, presumably.

At this writing, the old 1905 Wedding Ring Bridge is being demolished and a new bridge is being erected. As he did with the 1905 bridge, Luis Ortiz will probably continue his lonely trek on this new bridge, still seeking justice.

The Ghost of Joseph Rover

There's a reason that J.W. Rover's ghost is usually spotted around the Washoe County Courthouse. He was hanged in the courtyard on a snowy February morning in 1878. Today, that area is the new courthouse annex, so any comments about a ghostly man skulking in that area of the building are assumed to be sightings of Joseph Rover.

Nowadays, state executions are carried out at the state prison in Carson City, but in the late nineteenth century, those judged guilty were generally executed in the county of their crime. So it was with Rover. He had been convicted of murdering his business partner, L.N. Sharp, out in the Black Rock Desert. But the case was appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court, which overturned it on a technicality and ordered a retrial. The second trial ended with Rover being found guilty of first-degree murder. A second appeal was made to the Nevada Supreme Court, which once again found for the appellant. The judge had given wrong instructions in defining reasonable doubt. The third time was not a charm for Joseph Rover. His third trial resulted in a hung jury. A fourth trial was held, and Rover was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to die.

All hope was gone for Rover — unless his attorneys could convince a special sheriff's jury that he was insane. If they did so, Rover would rot in prison — dismal, but a better alternative to hanging.

You sometimes have to wonder at people of earlier times. How a public execution could draw a crowd of otherwise civilized people is a question for a sociologist to answer. Suffice it to say, there were many onlookers gathered in the Washoe County Courthouse to await the jury's finding. The sheriff's jury pondered the facts, and after four hours, a decision was reached. Rover was as sane as any man. And he would die for the grisly dismemberment murder of L.N. Sharp.

With the verdict, Sheriff Kinkead saw no reason to delay any further. Rover naturally disagreed. When Sheriffs Kinkead and Lamb came to escort him to the gallows, he began to weep. Trembling, he stood and nearly collapsed. Father Pettit and Father Twormey assisted him as he shuffled toward doom. The two priests would stay on the scaffold and pray with him until the very end. This was some small comfort, and he slowly walked up the gallows' steps and seated himself in the only available chair.

The first and only execution in Reno would take place in the courtyard, hidden from public view by a tall fence. Sheriff Kinkead had invited two hundred men to witness the execution, and they shivered in the cold.

Asked if he had anything to say, Rover said, "Gentlemen — I have nothing much to say; I am so prostrated by this long persecution, that I am unable to say what I desire to, and the time too, will not admit of it ..."

He spoke there in the bitter cold for fifty-two more minutes, claiming it was a conspiracy between the state's attorney and his accuser. McWorthy was the actual killer. Sheriff Lamb placed the rope around his neck, and Sheriff Kinkead placed the black hood over his head.

"Oh! Lamb ..." Rover said softly.

He didn't get the chance to finish his sentence. The signal was given and the trap sprung. The Daily Nevada State Journal of February 20, 1878, said of his execution, "He has gone, and with his death the law is satisfied. Let us all think as charitably as possible of the deceased, who has gone where none but his God can judge him."

But J.W. Rover's ghost was not satisfied. He was on a mission. Now the ghostly man would proclaim his innocence from the spirit realm. Within a week of the hanging, the Reno Gazette printed the following story.

Rover Visits Mrs. Bowers

Mrs. Bowers, the Washoe seeress called on Gen. Clark the other day and said to him, "General, Rover was innocent."

"How do you know?" said he.

She answered. "I was eating dinner when someone tapped me on the shoulder and I heard a voice say, 'I am J.W. Rover, and have just been hanged in Reno, but I am innocent.'" Until this visit Mrs. Bowers declares that she did not know that Rover had been hanged. Since this occurrence the Carson spiritualists have held three or four séances; Rover is called for, appears and tells the same old story, so oft repeated.

Eilley Bowers had a reputation as an eccentric old woman. Her assertions were not considered accurate. After all, how often is much attention paid to the word of ghosts and those who converse with them? Twenty years passed. Some still questioned the guilt or innocence of Rover. The following story appeared in the July 24, 1899 issue of the Reno Gazette:

SLIGHTLY MISTAKEN

The Carson News says that McWorthy, the rabbit hole Sulphur man, who early in the '70s was the principle prosecuting witness in the trial of J.W. Rover for the murder of I.N. Sharp at Rabbit Hole, Humboldt Count, died in Arizona a few years ago and confessed to being the murderer of Sharp, who Rover was hung for killing, in the Court House yard of Washoe County. The News is mistaken, for McWorthy is alive today and living in Oakland. Rover killed Sharp and paid the penalty with his own life.

Was J.W. Rover guilty? We will never know. If he were innocent, this could be a case of unfinished business as far as his ghost is concerned. A shadowy apparition has been seen in the annex area of the courthouse and out near the side of the building — still trying to proclaim his innocence, no doubt. The same thing can be said if he were guilty. The old adage "There are no guilty people in prison" might apply here. Either way, J.W. Rover's ghost walks the area.

Baby Face Nelson, aka Lester Gillis

There is a commonly accepted theory regarding ghosts: if you were a good person in life, you will be a good person in death. The opposite holds true. Bad person equals bad ghost. Imagine, then, how hateful the ghost of Baby Face Nelson can be. But wait a minute — Baby Face Nelson was a Chicago Prohibition gangster turned killer who met his demise in Barrington, Illinois. Why would his ghost be haunting an alley in Reno?

Baby Face Nelson lived in Reno briefly. During that time, he went by the name Jimmy Burrell, and he worked as a chauffeur and nightclub bouncer for two of Reno's most notorious underworld figures, James McKay and William Graham, who incidentally worked for George Wingfield. Prohibition was the law of the land, and gaming had not yet been legalized in Nevada. This didn't matter to Graham and McKay, who ran illegal gambling operations, saloons and brothels. In Reno, if it was illegal, these two men were involved. Baby Face was a natural who is believed to have played a role in Reno's most famous disappearance, that of Roy Frisch. But we'll get to that story later. Let's get to that alley, which runs alongside Sundance Books all the way to the Nevada Museum of Art, a block or so away.

Graham lived in a mansion on California Avenue, cattycorner to the alley where the ghostly gangster has been seen running from south to north. The apparition never acknowledges anyone and always seems to be in a big hurry. In life, Nelson probably took this route to and from his employer's home many times. He may have been late for work at the nightclub or trying to escape what he saw as danger. This repetition could have led to what is referred to as place memory. It is a ghost of sorts, not interactive but more like a movie in which one scene replays itself over and over. Don't be alarmed if you should encounter the ghostly gangster, and certainly don't waste your time trying to communicate with him, either.

MA BARKER AND THE GANG

Was she just a sweet little old lady or the coldblooded matriarch of a ruthless gang of killers? That depends on whom you ask. For a time during the fall of 1933 and the spring of 1934, Ma Barker and two of her sons, as well as other members of the Karpis-Barker gang, chose to hang out in Reno.

Because they were in town at the time of Roy Frisch's disappearance, there was some speculation that members of the Karpis-Barker gang had taken part in it. Nothing was ever proven. Ma Barker and her sons lived quietly under the name of Blackburn in a small house on Pueblo Street. During the time they lived in Reno, the gang was rumored to have driven to California to rob banks. Yet another story that's gone around Reno for years concerns Ma Barker's violin case.

The notorious Ma Barker, or so the story goes, carried a gun around Reno hidden in a violin case. This may have been standard operating procedure for gangsters of that era, but it's doubtful that the matronly Ma actually toted a Tommy gun in such fashion. In fact, the woman the FBI dubbed "Bloody Mama," may not have been the ruthless gang leader at all. While J. Edgar Hoover referred to Ma as "a veritable beast of prey," her underworld friends remembered her as just an old woman who didn't have the smarts to plan such activities as kidnapping and bank robbing.

The FBI believed that Ma Barker and the gang had several friends in the Biggest Little City. In March 1934, FBI agents in Reno attempted to ensnare Ma and other members of the gang, but their efforts were thwarted by friends who tipped the gang off. It was this Reno connection that may have led to the final bloody confrontation with FBI agents. Ma and her son Fred were located by the FBI through letters that were mailed to Reno and then forwarded on to them in Florida by a friend.

On January 16, 1935, the FBI closed in on Ma and Fred's hideout cottage at Oklawaha, Florida. After a gun battle that lasted several hours, Ma and Fred were corpses. Upon hearing of her death, J. Edgar Hoover, who had a few skeletons rattling in his own closet, proclaimed Ma to be "a jealous old battle axe."

Ma Barker's friends in Reno wisely lay low, kept their mouths shut and never publicly claimed any connection to her. But like Baby Face Nelson, Ma Barker has chosen to return to the Biggest Little City. The specter of an elderly woman walking along Pueblo Street has been spotted numerous times since Ma met up with the Grim Reaper. No, she doesn't carry a violin case, and yes, there is a tendency to assume ghosts are those of well-known people. Still, I'd be willing to bet it's the ghostly Ma Barker looking for a likely bank.

Priscilla Ford's Thanksgiving Day Massacre

I'm often asked about the most haunted location in Reno. I'm not sure of that, but a busy downtown sidewalk would have to be close. Too many people have heard heart-wrenching screams and felt overwhelming sadness, fear and nausea while walking on this sidewalk for it not to be so. Ghosthunters who use the K-2 meter can tell you that meter readings are usually erratic and high here. The deaths that occurred here were violent and unexpected. One minute you're in this plane, and the nextv ...

Thanksgiving 1980 is one that Reno will never forget. The weather was mild. A throng of tourists crowded into downtown Reno for a three-day weekend of gaming fun. Legalized gambling was still in Nevada only; if one wanted to tempt Lady Luck, the choices were clear: Reno or Las Vegas. Along North Virginia Street, hotel/casinos were busy serving up traditional turkey dinners with all the trimmings. The aroma of roasted turkey wafted through the air. The sidewalks were bustling with people headed toward one casino or another, where gambling and food awaited. Those who had eaten their Thanksgiving feast were sitting at favorite blackjack tables, slot machines and Keno lounges; those who hadn't hungrily made their way toward casino coffee shops.