The McGlincy Family Massacre and the Manhunt for James Dunham

In the early morning hours of May 27th, 1896, Santa Clara County Sheriff James H. Lindon was informed that there had been a killing out at the McGlinsy ranch.

He expected to hear that a rustler got himself shot or that a fight between farm hands turned deadly.

Instead, when he asked who was killed, an ashen-faced deputy delivered the grim news that it was all of them.

The whole family, he said, “Someone killed them all.”

An hour later, by the light of a full moon, Sheriff Lyndon arrived at McGlinsy’s ranch located seven miles outside of San Jose between the towns of Campbell and Los Gatos.

The area was the center of the fruit growing industry and was often referred to as Orchard City.

He thought that it seemed an unlikely place for a mass murder.

Then, as he rode up the long driveway to the house, he passed a glowing lantern placed as a marker beside the lifeless body of a man.

When he arrived at the two-story Victorian farmhouse, he was introduced to two witnesses, Elsie Ross and George Shyel, who conducted the first search of the house.

“All right, show me what you found,” he said.

They took him to the back parlor where the body of a man lay on the floor.

Above his head was an ax covered in blood.

Then they took him to the room across the hall.

“She’s in there,” Ross said, looking sickly pale.

Both witnesses hesitated, neither one wishing to go back in.

The moment the sheriff entered, he understood why.

When he came back into the hall, he asked about the other two women.

He was told they were on the second floor.

As they began climbing the stairway, someone ran into the house, announcing excitedly that they had found another one in the field behind the shack.

“This makes six. Six of them killed,” he said, nearly out of breath.

For the sheriff, a hardened Civil War veteran, death was a familiar sight, but not in the homes of good, peaceable folk.

He asked if anyone in the family was unaccounted for.

“Just one, sheriff,” George Shyel said. “Jim Dunham, the son-in-law. He’s the one who done for the Colonel and Bob and these other ones.”

“He’d have done for us all if he had the chance.”

The sheriff knew he was standing in the middle of the biggest crime scene, not only in the history of Santa Clara County, but in the entire state.

Colonel McGlinsy was an important and well-liked man, and once word of what happened spread, the cry for justice would be immediate and, unless he got to the suspect first, explosive.

Turning to his deputies, he ordered them to get word back to San Jose to raise as many men as they could and have them here before sunup.

Our grave exploration brings us to Oak Hill Memorial Park.

Founded in 1847, its history dates back to the time before the California Gold Rush.

Upon its sun-splashed lawns and shaded corners are the graves of pioneers of the Old West, mingled with the pioneers of the new millennium.

Most of the silent stones give no hint of the lives and stories connected with them, while others give us clues about the people resting beneath our feet.

One such plot belongs to the McGlinsy Wells family who lived in the nearby town of Campbell.

Of the six cracked and weatherworn marble slabs, five are inscribed with a Bible verse from Romans 12 that reads, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”

The segmented verse appears on the graves of five people who were butchered by a member of their own family.

The McGlinsy murders were crimes of passion, but without any clear motive.

The wanting brutality of the alleged killer shocked the nation, yet he had no history of violent behavior.

The manhunt to bring him to justice would last for years, but now, after more than a century, the case remains unsolved.

Come walk with me into the heart of darkness and revisit the night when death came to a peaceful Northern California town.

The township of Campbell was in the heart of Northern California’s fruit growing industry.

The bustling city supported not only orchardists but schools, churches, shops, and amusements.

It even had its own bank.

Canneries and packing facilities sprang up along the rail line that ran through town from which local products were shipped nationally.

The area’s farmers had formed the Campbell Fruit Growers Union, and in the center of all this prosperity landed Colonel Richard P. McGlinsy.

He was born in Jefferson County, Virginia, and fought for the South during the Civil War.

Serving the entirety of the war, he rose to the rank of colonel, a title he would use long after his military career had ended.

McGlinsy was an industrious man who had the common touch, whose presence was welcome in any circle he cared to inhabit.

He sat on boards and committees and was a grandmaster in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

He had a wide range of interests and was simultaneously involved in newspaper publishing, animal husbandry, horticulture, and politics.

He wrote at length about the concerns of dairy farmers, and his advice was read nationally.

After the war, he settled in Illinois.

When he reached middle age, he began a new life in Campbell, California, where he purchased a 56-acre cherry farm.

The colonel was embraced by the community almost from the moment he arrived.

They thought so highly of him that in 1893, he was chosen to represent the agricultural bounty of Santa Clara County at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

However, his pruned horse was jeered at and described as a freakish dime museum curio.

McGlinsy’s personal life flourished as well.

After his first marriage ended in divorce, he met the widow Ada Mariah Wells, whom he took as his second wife.

They lived together with her two adult children, Hattie and James, in the handsome Victorian house that dominated his ranch.

At the age of 50, the colonel had settled into the life of a country gentleman whom fortune favored.

That might have been how his story ended, but his fate and the fate of everyone living under his roof would turn with the coming of a new addition to the family.

No one could claim to have been close to James Dunham.

Most of his life was spent in the margins.

He was there, but not there.

He was seen, yet unseen.

Those who did come into contact with him found him cold and dispassionate.

His eyes were lifeless like a doll’s, leading one acquaintance to note that he had a way of looking straight through a person that made them feel uneasy.

Although he didn’t have a history of violence, he was given to dark moods that erupted into sudden outbursts of rage, especially when he didn’t get his way.

His existence was transient and unpredictable.

He took odd jobs when he needed money, and being a free hand, he was always in need.

When work wasn’t available, he turned to his mother for cash, sometimes resorting to intimidation to get what he wanted.

Once, when Mrs. Dunham refused to give in, James stormed out to the yard and began killing her chickens.

James’s solitary nature made him seem destined for a life of bachelorhood, which was why his decision to marry Hattie Wells came as a surprise to everyone.

Especially when it was known that Hattie had been engaged to James’s younger brother, Charlie, but broke it off after he was seen with another girl.

It prompted rumors that the marriage was for spite and not true love.

After the wedding, James’s wanderlust continued.

With Hattie in tow, he journeyed across the state with the idea of settling down.

But the demand to provide only made James’s money problems worse.

A string of failed businesses and defaulted loans had ruined his credit and put a strain on the marriage.

While the couple were living in Sacramento, Hattie discovered that some jewelry and her favorite watch had gone missing.

After reporting them stolen, her belongings turned up at a local pawn shop.

The receipt proved that her husband was the one who had sold them, though no charges were ever filed.

Although Hattie’s family did not approve of the marriage, it did not stop them from taking them in after they fell on hard times.

However, James’s brooding manner pervaded what was normally a happy home.

He quarreled with Colonel McGlinsy and even threatened to sue his benefactor over a minor injury he sustained while working on the farm.

Hattie’s mother, Ada, who was famous for her congeniality and graciousness, found it impossible to warm to the unstable addition to the family.

More disturbing, James had become verbally abusive towards Hattie, often belittling her without mercy.

This led to clashes with his brother-in-law, Jimmy, that on several occasions nearly came to blows.

In this climate, Dunham often left the house, sometimes for days.

There were even whispers that a divorce was imminent.

Therefore, it was with surprise in late 1895 that Hattie announced that she was pregnant.

The news brought a period of harmony to the McGlinsy house.

Even James, now aged 30, seemed resolved to get his life together.

In the spring, he enrolled in pre-law classes at Santa Clara University.

Then on May 4th, 1896, Hattie and James celebrated the birth of their son, Percy Osborne.

It was a happy moment, but those familiar with the father silently wondered how long it would last.

As the sun rose over the grisly murder scene, word had reached Sacramento.

Two eyewitnesses had identified James Dunham as the sole killer, and California Governor James Budd approved a $1,000 reward for the fugitive, dead or alive.

An additional $10,000 was pledged that would be raised through private donations.

The reward money guaranteed that Sheriff Lyndon and his deputies would have no shortage of volunteers to join in the search.

The sheriff presumed that Dunham had fled south and would lay low until nightfall.

With such an immediate response, confidence was high that Dunham would be apprehended or at the end of a rope within 24 hours.

At the McGlinsy farm, curiosity seekers were milling the grounds and peeking in the windows of the murder house.

Inside, a hastily convened coroner’s inquest was being held in the front parlor.

Using evidence found at the scene and witness testimony, they began piecing together the hellish sequence of events that unfolded the night before.

At 8:30 in the evening of May 26th, Colonel R.P. McGlinsy and Jimmy Wells crossed the front porch of the house and climbed into the carriage waiting for them.

At the reins was George Shyel, who drove off the moment the colonel gave the signal to go.

Remaining at home were Ada, Hattie, Baby Percy, and Minnie Shesler, the housemaid and nanny.

James had been in San Jose since Sunday, where he was presumably attending classes.

In a small cabin that stood 100 yards from the house, Bob Brisco, who managed the farm, was also settling in.

It was the middle of the cherry harvest, and the work was made more demanding by the unusually hot weather over the past several days.

Bob stretched out on his cot, looking forward to a peaceful night’s rest before having to start it all over again in the morning.

Elsewhere on the property, James Dunham waited and watched.

He had secretly returned to the farm at dusk and, like a lone wolf, remained hidden in the shadows.

Sometime after 9:00, he left the hiding place and went to the barn, where he took a single-bladed axe.

He entered the house through the back door and stepped silently into the hall, where he paused outside of Ada McGlinsy’s room and listened.

All was quiet save for the ticking of the parlor clock.

Then he climbed the stairs, careful to avoid the creaky steps.

From the stairwell, he observed the bedroom across the hall.

Hattie was seated at the dressing table brushing her hair.

Next to her was the crib where their son was sleeping.

Dunham glanced around the corner to where Minnie was quartered in the servant’s room.

The door was partly open, but the room was dark.

Downstairs, the parlor clock chimed the half hour, and Dunham made his way into his wife’s room.

Perhaps Hattie saw him coming towards her in the mirror, but she could do little else.

Dunham tossed aside the axe and gripped her throat before she could make a sound.

His pent-up rage was now free, and he focused all of it on his helpless wife.

The autopsy later revealed that he had crushed several of Hattie’s cervical vertebrae.

When her body went limp, he let it drop to the floor before reaching for the axe.

The sound alerted Minnie, who got out of bed and hurried into the room.

Dunham was ready, and the moment she appeared, he swung the axe.

The San Francisco Examiner reported that the blow split her skull in two, causing immediate death.

Then, for reasons unknown, he tore strips of bed linen and stuffed them into the victim’s mouths.

The frightful sounds from upstairs awakened Ada McGlinsy.

Putting on her robe, she left her room and called out if everything was all right.

The answer came in the hulking form of James Dunham carrying a blood-soaked axe, but the matronly Mrs. McGlinsy refused to go quietly.

Upon seeing him, she fled into the dining room, and as Dunham pursued, he was met with a shower of cups and plates thrown at him from the cupboard.

But the assault only heightened his fury and backfired on the victim.

When her ammunition was exhausted, the chase continued around the dining room table.

The broken china sliced Ada’s bare feet, leaving bloody tracks to tell the tale.

In a final effort, it is believed that Ada somehow managed to gouge Dunham’s face with her fingernails.

It might have given her the edge to limp back to her room, but there her defiant struggle ended.

The position of her body suggested that she was crawling away when the death blow was delivered.

But Dunham’s bloodlust was at its zenith, and he rained down all his fury with each swing of the axe.

The Examiner reported that the murderer seemed to take special satisfaction in mutilating his victim.

What James Dunham did next is speculation.

At some point, he took two of the colonel’s revolvers and filled his pockets with shells.

Then he placed his wife’s body on her bed and covered it with blankets.

Perhaps then he went to his son, the only person who was immune from his savagery.

Whatever he did, he had over an hour before resuming the gory carnival of death, as one newspaper described it.

At around 11:00, the carriage containing Colonel McGlinsy, Jimmy Wells, and George Shyel rolled up the driveway.

Their conversation was undoubtedly about politics, as 1896 was an election year, and they were returning from a meeting of the American Protective Association, a political faction whose aim was to stop the alleged Catholic influence in the federal government.

As McGlinsy climbed down from the carriage, he instructed Shyel to leave the barn doors open that night so the horses would stay cool.

He then wished him a good evening and strode up the steps to his house.

The moment he stepped inside, someone emerged from the shadows and struck him over the head with a blunt object, knocking him senseless to the floor.

Jimmy Wells, who was following a few feet behind the colonel, watched as the attacker raised an axe to strike again.

Without hesitation, he lunged forward, taking hold of the axe before the assassin could strike.

Jimmy was an athletic 22-year-old, and although weakened from injuries suffered in a recent bicycle accident, he managed to wrench the axe out of the killer’s grasp.

For a moment, he might have believed he had gained the upper hand.

But then an explosion rang out and something struck his shoulder.

He barely had enough time to register that he had been shot before the gun fired again, sending a bullet crashing into his chest.

His final instinct was to dash into the parlor, and in so doing, another bullet struck him in the back.

The axe fell from his hand as he dropped to the floor.

While he lay there dying, Dunham fired a final bullet into his head.

When they found Jimmy Wells’s body, it was said that his clothes were still smoldering from the powder burns.

With his brother-in-law out of the way, James Dunham went to finish off Colonel McGlinsy, whom he left unconscious in the entry hall.

But when he returned to where he left him, the old man was gone.

He realized that when he swung the axe, the blade missed, and he struck him with the handle.

Merely dazed, the colonel roused himself and ran outside.

He found him on the driveway crying out for help as he ambled toward the cabin where Brisco was sleeping.

Alarmed that the colonel might escape, Dunham aimed the revolver and pulled the trigger, but the hammer fell on spent cartridges.

Cursing, he dropped the gun on the porch and produced another, which he began firing wildly into the night.

About 300 yards away, neighbor Elsie Ross was lying awake in bed.

The window was open that night to catch the night air, but the room was still uncomfortably warm.

He tried to induce sleep by reading, but nothing worked.

Then, sometime before 11:30, he heard the crack of gunshots and cries for help.

They had come from the McGlinsy farm, which he could see from his window.

Sensing something was terribly wrong, he got out of bed and hastily dressed before rushing to his neighbor to see if he needed help.

By then, McGlinsy had taken refuge in the cabin where he found Bob Brisco.

The farm hand had been jolted out of sleep and was standing in the corner of the cabin, frozen in terror.

The colonel barred the door as Dunham stood outside, demanding that he come out at once.

McGlinsy refused, and Dunham fired two bullets through the door.

There were cries from within the cabin, and the killer repeated his demand.

McGlinsy remained defiant, telling him that he’d been shot and was done for anyway.

Robert Brisco smashed the rear window and climbed through it to make his escape, but Dunham was on him and killed him instantly with a bullet to the heart.

Perhaps thinking about his family, the colonel’s very last decision was to get to the house.

Weakened from loss of blood, he left the cabin and stepped into the open.

Dunham would have no trouble now.

He stood behind the colonel, raised the pistol, and fired.

His victim fell face first onto the dirt path.

Then, with the cold detachment of an executioner, James Dunham shot him twice in the head.

Colonel Richard P. McGlinsy, who had survived some of the fiercest battles of the Civil War, died only a few feet away from his front door.

Elsie Ross reached the McGlinsy farm in time to witness the final two murders.

Although he could not see the assassin’s face, he recognized the voice of James Dunham.

After the last victim fell, Ross ran home and told his father what he had seen and asked him to send for Sheriff Lyndon.

Then, without any plan or idea what he was getting into, he loaded a shotgun and started back to the McGlinsy farm.

George Shyel was finishing his chores in the barn when gunshots rang out.

Ducking out of sight, he watched the same scene unfold as Elsie Ross.

He too recognized James Dunham’s voice, but once he had shot down the colonel, that very same voice began calling out for him.

Dunham knew that one witness was still standing, and he demanded George to surrender to the same fate as the others.

When no answer came, he looked inside the cabin but found it empty.

He went to the barn, he checked the house, and then the barn again, but nowhere could his prey be found.

He cried out for him until his throat was raw.

And all the while, George Shyel was hiding in the hayloft, where he lay as still and silent as the grave.

At one point, Dunham had only been inches away when he searched the barn.

George was certain he would be discovered, but the killer did not see him.

Then, perhaps assuming that George had gotten away and was bringing help, or perhaps after six brutal murders, his bloodlust was finally satisfied, James Dunham resolved that the time had come to make his escape.

He selected a buckskin horse that had belonged to Jimmy Wells and rode off into the night.

In his haste, he didn’t bother to use a saddle.

As Ross made his way back to McGlinsy’s, he encountered George Shyel, who informed him that Dunham had ridden off some minutes ago.

Ross asked if he had seen any other members of the family, and George said that he had not, nor had he investigated the house.

Both men agreed to go back together to check on the welfare of the others.

They found the body of Colonel McGlinsy where they had seen him fall, and after confirming he was deceased, they carried on.

The house was dark and silent and seemed just as void of life as its former master.

Ross and Shyel entered the rear parlor through a side door and immediately noticed a burning odor.

Upon the floor was Jimmy Wells.

His face, along with the clothing on his upper body, were charred.

It appeared that the highly flammable celluloid shirt collar he was wearing had been ignited by the muzzle blast of the gun used by his killer.

From the rear parlor, they moved into the dining room, finding it littered with shattered crockery.

They followed bloody footprints into the adjoining bedroom that was thick with the smell of death, and there was the mangled corpse of Mrs. McGlinsy.

The floor, walls, and ceiling were covered with her blood.

After finding the other downstairs rooms empty, Ross and Shyel climbed to the second floor.

In the room opposite the stairs, they discovered Minnie Shesler.

There were no signs of Hattie or the baby.

They looked under the bed and in the closets, but broke off the search when they heard the approach of a horse and buggy.

Slowly, as word about the murders spread, people began arriving on the scene.

It was 1:00 in the morning of May 27th before the body of Robert Brisco was located in the field behind the cabin, but there was still no sign of Hattie and the child.

Searchers wondered, had Dunham moved her body?

Might she still be alive and in hiding somewhere?

Some even quietly speculated that she had had a hand in what happened and escaped with her husband.

All questions and theories were silenced, however, with the muffled cries of an infant.

The sounds led them to the upstairs room where they had found Minnie.

On the bed, hidden under a pile of linen, was the pitiful child lying beside the cold body of its mother.

Elsewhere in the world on May 26th, 1896, in Victoria, British Columbia, an overloaded streetcar plunged into the upper harbor when the Point Ellice Bridge collapsed.

Of the 143 souls on board, 55 perished, making it one of the worst transit disasters in the city’s history.

In Moscow, following the May 26th coronation of Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia, a public celebration was held at Khodynka Field.

The event drew more than 100,000 people.

However, the festivities turned to tragedy when a rumor spread among the crowd that the free food and beer had run out.

The resulting crush of people left more than 1,000 injured and 1,400 dead.

On May 27th, a tornado swarm ripped through the central United States.

In St. Louis, Missouri, at about 5:00 p.m. local time, a massive cyclone touched down, carving a mile-wide swath out of the downtown area.

The tornado then crossed the Mississippi River, extending its path of destruction through East St. Louis, Illinois.

Homes, businesses, schools, churches, and transportation were all devastated.

The cost of the damage was estimated at $10 million, or roughly $400 million today.

When it was over, thousands were left homeless, and the confirmed death toll stood at 255, although some estimates were nearly double.

It remains one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in US history.

It was in the midst of these sensational events that the news about the Orchard City massacre broke.

When weighed against the human toll of the other tragedies, it hardly compares.

Yet, newspapers across the country reported the story on page one below the masthead.

It struck a deep psychological chord with the public, who reckoned that if it could happen to a family like the McGlinsies, it could happen to anybody.

The panic was heightened by a note found amid the carnage.

It was a few lines written on a scrap of paper that read, “Please say goodbye for me to my dear mother, brother, and stepfather, Hattie.”

It implied that Hattie had known she was about to die and scribbled a short farewell before her husband’s hands closed around her throat.

However, after comparing handwriting samples, it was believed that the killer was the note’s true author.

Then there was the matter of the sole survivor of the house of horrors, Percy Dunham, whose cries led investigators to his mother’s corpse and was put in the care of neighbors.

The boy was later adopted by his maternal grandparents, Harriet Brewer and her husband, Michael.

The first victim to be laid to rest was Minnie Shesler.

Her funeral was held on Thursday, May 28th, less than 48 hours after her death.

The burial took place at Oak Hill Cemetery, where she lies in an unmarked grave in section P.

It was intended to be a private gathering, but many from the community were on hand to pay their final respects.

The memorial service for the remaining victims took place on the next day and was conducted by the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

A procession of five hearses left the McGlinsy home and arrived at the Congregational Church in Campbell, where the service began at 2 p.m.

From there, the procession continued on to Oak Hill Cemetery, where the dead were buried together in a mass grave.

Osborne Wells, Ada’s first husband, who preceded her in death by 13 years, rests beside her.

Within the community’s grief was a strong undercurrent of indignation heaped towards James Dunham.

While the procession was en route to the cemetery, a false rumor went around that the killer had been arrested and was being conveyed back to San Jose.

Almost instantly, there was talk of lynching.

One of the speakers at the gravesite was Odd Fellows Grandmaster Pearly Gaskill.

He addressed the roiling mood by quoting one of the order’s tenets that states, “It would be wise for all to remember the word of God who said, ‘Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.'”

Those same words were inscribed on the tombs of the murdered to be seen for all time.

Shortly after midnight on May 27th, ranch hand Charlie Starrett was walking home from Campbell when a man on horseback rode past, calling out that Colonel McGlinsy had been killed.

Charlie stood there dumbfounded.

He worked next door to the colonel and knew everyone on his ranch.

Minutes later, he heard the hoofbeats of another horse quickly approaching from the same direction as the last.

This time, the rider pulled up beside him and asked if he had seen George.

Charlie replied that he had not, then added he heard there was trouble out at McGlinsy’s place and asked him what he knew about it.

The horseman stared at him in stunned silence, and in the moonlight, Charlie thought he looked a lot like the colonel’s son-in-law, James Dunham.

But the rider said he didn’t know anyone named McGlinsy and asked who he was.

Charlie was about to speak when the rider reached into his belt and drew a revolver that he pointed directly at his face.

After a tense few moments, he rode off to the east.

Later, when Charlie learned what happened and that Dunham was a suspect, he reported his strange encounter.

At dusk on Thursday, May 28th, two locals, Oscar Parker and Everett Snell, were in the foothills of Mount Hamilton near Smith’s Creek Hotel when they encountered a stranger leaving Snell’s cabin.

He was on an unbridled and unsaddled horse that matched the one taken from the McGlinsy ranch.

The rider looked disheveled and tired, his face was scratched, his clothes torn, and he wore gunny sacks over his feet.

By this time, Parker and Snell knew about the Orchard City massacre and the savagery of the murderer.

As they came closer, the stranger pulled his hat down over his eyes, but they both recognized him as James Dunham.

Snell had worked with Dunham a few years earlier and was certain it was him.

The tale of his deed showed in his cold black eyes and was literally written in the deep scratches on his face that were made by Ada McGlinsy before he smashed her skull into pulp.

Parker and Snell were hard men, familiar with the ways of the world.

Yet, it was impossible to not be moved by what happened.

But throughout their encounter, they managed to keep the pretext of not knowing who he was.

The stranger seemed antsy, but was talkative.

He explained that he hadn’t eaten in several days and had broken into the cabin and took some food.

Parker noted that he looked like he could use some rest and offered him a place to stay for the night, but the invitation only made the stranger grow nervous and anxious to be on his way.

He refused his hospitality with the excuse that he needed to reach the San Joaquin Valley by nightfall and asked if he knew the best route.

Parker told him to stay on the main trail, as there were bandits in the hills.

However, his advice was a ruse designed to keep him in the open where he would be easier to find later on.

With that, the men parted ways, and once the stranger was out of sight, Parker and Snell rode over to Smith’s Creek Hotel, where there was a telephone, and notified the sheriff’s office.

Sheriff Lyndon mobilized his posse and raced toward Mount Hamilton.

Located in the Diablo Range east of San Jose, Mount Hamilton has been the site of the Lick Observatory since 1888.

Lyndon enlisted the help of San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Steven Cook, who arrived in San Jose the day before with his famous bloodhounds, said to be the best trackers in the state.

By the time they reached Smith’s Creek Hotel, a thick fog had rolled in, making it impossible to conduct a search.

By first light, Sheriff Lyndon had divided his deputies and volunteers along every road and pass that Dunham might take out of the mountains.

Sheriff Cook’s hounds were brought to Snell’s cabin, but their keen noses failed to pick up his scent.

It was shaping up to be another fruitless day of searching until the discovery of a buckskin mare was made in the vicinity of Indian Gulch.

The horse was found cropping the grass in a clearing with no signs of its rider.

Nearby, searchers located the spot where the killer had camped for the night.

In and around the area were torn scraps of the May 28th edition of the San Jose Mercury newspaper carrying reports of the murders.

About an hour later, as the search of the campsite was winding down, a distant gunshot was heard.

And as the echoes faded away, the deputies wondered if James Dunham had just eliminated any chance that he would be brought out of the mountains alive.

While the victims were being committed to the earth, news reached San Jose that the killer’s horse had been found.

Many read it as the fugitive was already in irons.

Eager citizens gathered at the county courthouse, hoping to be among the first to hear official word of his capture.

But as afternoon gave way to night, there was only silence.

Eventually, a week passed without an arrest, but reported sightings flooded in.

One said Dunham purchased food, a rifle, and a box of ammunition from a rancher who knew him but hadn’t heard what he had done.

Another said that a man fitting the killer’s description paid $5 for a bottle of whiskey.

A call came in saying that Dunham had made it out of the mountains and hopped a train to Fresno.

Indeed, practically every set of tracks, broken twig, or missing property reported from Sacramento to Bakersfield was attributed to James Dunham.

To the frustrated and exhausted Sheriff Lyndon, it was remarkable how the fugitive managed to be every place that his deputies were not.

With so many false reports and dead ends, the sheriff theorized that the most likely scenario was that Dunham, feeling trapped and alone, took his own life in Indian Gulch.

If so, it would explain the gunshot everyone heard on the day his horse was found.

But most refused to accept that he committed suicide.

They said the gunshot could just as easily have been from someone hunting quail or squirrel.

When buzzards were spotted in the sky above Indian Gulch, the posse rushed to the area, where instead of finding the killer’s bones, they discovered a deer carcass.

Without a body, the skeptics remained convinced that their man was still at large, and for those looking for swift justice, it was becoming clear that there wasn’t going to be a lynching party anytime soon.

The one thing on the public’s mind just as much as Dunham’s whereabouts was his motive for slaughtering six people.

Initially, there didn’t seem to be any plausible reason other than a sudden attack of insanity.

Then, on June 1st, nearly a week after the murders, Ada McGlinsy’s will was unsealed.

It was executed a mere 80 days before her death and began by stating that by mutual understanding, none of her assets would go to her current husband, Colonel R.P. McGlinsy.

Then, surprisingly, she bequeathed the entirety of her estate valued in excess of $35,000 to her son, James Wells, while her daughter Hattie was left the meager sum of $100.

Ada’s will was a powerful declaration of her disapproval of Hattie’s marriage to Dunham, and it provided a likely motive.

Not only was he aware of this development, but he also most likely saw it as an enticement for Hattie to file for divorce and thereby permanently cutting him off from any inheritance.

It was from this point that the plan to eliminate the family began to formulate in his fevered brain.

All he would have to do was wait until his child was born.

Dunham would have known that with everyone dead, Ada’s estate as well as the colonel’s would pass to his son, with himself as trustee until the boy came of age.

It painted a far more sinister picture of the killer who coldly plotted the systematic extinction of his family out of greed.

But what wasn’t clear was how he planned to get away with it.

The answers would have to wait until he was caught.

However, as the weeks turned to months, the leads began to dry up, and the volunteers who were spurred by emotion and reward money trickled away to nothing.

After a year had passed, even the most stalwart manhunters agreed that the trail of James Dunham had gone hopelessly cold.

Sightings of Dunham continued to pour in, but from far-flung places.

In January 1897, a merchant seaman who worked with the Campbell killer said that he fled the country on a steamboat bound for Cuba.

Another informant claimed to know the address where the fugitive was hiding, but refused to divulge the location unless he was first paid the $11,000 reward.

There was a report of a prisoner in a Mexican jail under suspicion of being the murderer.

Photos were sent to Sheriff Lyndon, who ruled him out as being their man.

However, the district attorney wasn’t so sure and sent a close acquaintance of Dunham down to Mexico to interview the suspect in person.

As Sheriff Lyndon had said, he wasn’t their man.

At the same time, other tips came in, placing Dunham in Texas, Wyoming, Arkansas, and Massachusetts.

Another said he was on his way to China.

Closer to home, two men came forth with a theory that James Dunham was not the actual killer, but was himself the victim of an impostor who stole his identity.

The real James Dunham, they said, was buried in McGlinsy’s orchard.

The pair spent days digging but failed to locate any remains.

In the spring of 1901, as the fifth anniversary of the murders approached, a man going by the name Charles Krill, who bore an unfortunate resemblance to Dunham, was arrested in Wichita, Kansas.

He was brought to San Jose, where police, despite lacking any real evidence, charged him with six counts of murder.

At long last, authorities felt they had their man.

Among other similarities, he was the same age and the same height, weight, and shoe size.

The slant of his nose, the scars on his body, and the fillings in his teeth all matched.

People who knew the killer before the murders said without any doubt in their minds that Krill was indeed Dunham.

However, there were others who were equally convinced of the prisoner’s innocence.

There were two women who came forward with marriage certificates saying that if Charles Krill was guilty of anything, it was bigamy and not mass murder.

It wasn’t until a priest from Pueblo, Colorado, interviewed the suspect that he was finally cleared.

Released from the San Jose jail after a 21-day ordeal, Krill cashed in on his experience by selling tickets to anyone who wanted to hear about his brush with the gallows.

Sightings of James Dunham would continue in the years to come, but like all the others, they were just chasing ghosts.

Eventually, as the Orchard City massacre faded from memory, they would stop entirely, and all that anyone could say for sure was that on May 26th, 1896, after murdering six innocent people, the killer went into the mountains and didn’t come out.

Whether he fell by his own hand or was claimed by time or the elements, anyone still thirsting for justice could only hope that in the end vengeance was handed down by the one perfect being who created all.

While the manhunt for James Dunham was in progress, the public’s attention turned to the house at 729 Turk Street in San Francisco.

It was the home of Michael and Hattie Brewer, who was the older sister of the late Ada McGlinsy and the namesake of her daughter, and it was the new home of Percy Osborne Dunham, the sole survivor of the night of terror.

Three weeks after the murders, a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner came there to conduct an exclusive interview with Mrs. Brewer.

At the time, the house was still under heavy police guard in case the baby’s father decided to pay an unannounced visit.

The journalist found the one-month-old cradled in the arms of his grandmother, appearing as bright and happy as any normal child.

He noted that his cherubic countenance bore no sign of trauma from the horrific acts of which he was a helpless witness.

Mrs. Brewer said that Percy was the only bright spot in the world blackened by the tragedy.

She vowed to do everything within her power to shield him from knowing anything about his real father, including changing his surname from Dunham to Brewer.

But the gray-haired woman lamented that it was inevitable that a well-meaning friend or spiteful stranger would one day come along and reveal to him the dreadful truth of his past.

Only then, she added, would it be known if it left any invisible marks upon him.

Mrs. Brewer raised Percy until her death in 1906, at which time guardianship passed to his adopted sister, Lucy.

Percy Brewer attended school at Berkeley before joining the Army during World War I.

Afterward, he remained in the military and became a pioneering aviator in the fledgling Army Air Corps.

He would go on to train other pilots and served his country through World War II.

Eventually, he rose to the rank of colonel just like his step-grandfather.

He married three times, having one son with his first wife.

He traveled extensively before retiring to Daytona Beach, Florida, where on the 25th of April, 1969, he died at the age of 72.

He is interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

By all outward appearances, Percy Brewer lived an ordinary, if not exciting, life.

There is no record of when or whether his existential awakening ever came.

If indeed it did, he seems to have borne well the weight of the six brutal murders committed by his father on that stifling May night as he lay in innocent slumber.

If there was any mark upon him at all, perhaps it can be found in the distant, almost haunted look in his eyes.

There is a quality to memory that over time sponges away unpleasantness until it seems as far removed from reality as an old nightmare.

Perhaps it is part of our survival instinct to process and file away trauma so that we can move on.

Although time does not heal all wounds, it does advance until all that’s left are the graves.