Jack McCall
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Jack McCall (also known as "Crooked Nose" Jack) (born in the early 1850s in Jefferson County, Kentucky - died March 1, 1877 in Yankton, South Dakota) is the man who gained notoriety as a coward and a drunkard by shooting James "Wild Bill" Hickok in the back, to the point where among admirers of Hickok and students of Hickok's history the phrase "the coward Jack McCall" tends to be uttered as one word.
The details of McCall's life are lost; he was raised in Kentucky with three sisters, but drifted westwards and became a buffalo hunter. By 1876 he was living in a gold mining camp called Deadwood, South Dakota, under the alias of Bill Sutherland.
On August 2, 1876, in the Nutall & Mann's #10 Saloon in Deadwood, McCall shot Hickok in the back of the head with a double-action .45 caliber revolver, shouting "Take that!" Hickok, in contrast to his normal habit of sitting in a corner to protect his back, on that day had sat with his back to the door while engaged in a game of poker. Ironically, the killing was apparently over McCall's drunken resentment of an act of generosity by Hickok, Hickok having offered McCall money to buy breakfast after McCall had lost it all playing poker the previous day. McCall claimed, however, that the killing was retribution for Hickok having previously killed McCall's brother in Abilene, Kansas; he was found not guilty after two hours deliberation by an impromptu court in McDaniel's Theater, made up of local miners and businessmen, causing the Black Hills Pioneer to editorialize
- "Should it ever be our misfortune to kill a man ... we would simply ask that our trial may take place in some of the mining camps of these hills".
McCall then fled town to Wyoming, where he would habitually brag, at length, about the details of how he had killed Hickok in a fair gunfight. Unfortunately for McCall, however, the first trial was reversed on the grounds of Deadwood having been in Indian Territory at the time, and on August 29, 1876 in Laramie, Wyoming, he was once again arrested, brought to Yankton, South Dakota for trial, convicted, and hanged on March 1, 1877, buried with the noose still around his neck. After his death, it was determined that McCall had, in fact, never even had a brother.
McCall's killing of Hickok plays a part in the HBO television series Deadwood, set in the town.