1903 Starr 2002

Kevin Starr Embattled Dreams California in War and Peace 1940-1950, Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2002, 386 pp., 2002, 1947, 1940, 1940s, 1930s, 1912,

     ". . . When Earl Warren was a boy, Bakersfield witnessed one of the last big shoot-outs in California history. The Bakersfield shootout, 19 April, 1903. Two deputy sheriffs lost their lives. A bandit by the name of James McKinney was alleged to have shotgunned to death City Marshal Jeff Packard and his deputy Will Tibbet. McKinney was in turn slain by Burt Tibbet, Will's brother. Just before he died, however, Marshal Packard declared that McKinney was innocent. According to Packard, one of his own deputies, Al Hultse, had fatally shot Packard and Tibbet. Convicted of second-degree murder, Hultse committed suicide in prison, slitting his throat form ear to ear with a razor blade . . . this affair was of great importance for Lawrence Tibbet, age six, the future opera star whose father had been murdered; but it left a profound impression on Earl Warren as well. . . . In his memoirs, Earl paid attention to this case . . . and on a number of the grand gignol murders he investigated and prosecuted in his years as district attorney.

(1903)

 Kelyn Roberts 2017