On December 14, Justice Spicer received a threatening letter from "a miner" who threatened to kill him and told him to leave Tombstone. The Earps were freed from jail, but the blood feud between the lawmen and their friends and the Cowboys and their allies escalated. He described Frank McLaury's insistence that he would not give up his weapons unless the marshal and his deputies also gave up their arms as a "proposition both monstrous and startling!" He said the evidence indicated that the Earps and Holliday acted within the law and that Holliday and Wyatt had been properly deputized by Virgil. Although he criticized Virgil Earp's use of Wyatt and Holliday as deputies, he concluded that no laws were broken by the lawmen. In a lengthy ruling, Spicer concluded there was no basis for a trial. (Virgil and Morgan were recuperating from their wounds.) Friends of the lawman and several key neutral witnesses then testified that the Cowboys had drawn their guns and that Virgil Earp had called out, "Hold, I don't want that!" or words to that effect.
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Initially persuasive, his testimony motivated Spicer to jail Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday who had been free on bond. Friends of the Cowboys, most notably Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, testified that the Cowboys had thrown up their hands or opened their coats and been shot in cold blood. In an unusual preliminary hearing, Justice of the Peace Wells Spicer heard testimony from a large number of witnesses during the next 30 days.
As permitted by territory law, he filed murder charges against the Earps and Doc Holliday on October 30. Billy's brother Ike, who had repeatedly threatened to kill the Earps for some time, had been present at the gunfight but was unarmed and fled. Marshal and Tombstone Town Marshal Virgil Earp, Assistant Town Marshal Morgan Earp, and temporary deputy marshals Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday shot and killed Billy Clanton, and Tom and Frank McLaury. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, on October 26, 1881. Corral hearing and aftermath was the direct result of the 30-second Gunfight at the O.K.
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