The Klondike Cemetery is located on a ridge overlooking the expansive Aravaipa Valley, about 55 miles west of Safford. A prickly pear cactus and a few gravestones rise out of the tall tawny grass. The latter includes the Power family, who are based in the remote and rugged canyons of the Galiuro Mountains about 25 miles south of here.
Dozens of books and articles have been written about the Power Hut shootout, including a memoir by Tom Power. Tom’s younger brother John was in many ways the exact opposite of Tom and a man of few words. This cemetery is a beautiful and lonely place, but it is the only place where he recorded his own history. His father’s tombstone reads, “He was shot with his hand up at the door of his home.” His sister’s testimony states that he was “poisoned by a stranger.” These short words summarize everything John has said so far about what happened. and he carved them in stone.
More than 100 years later, the circumstances surrounding these deaths are still hotly debated. Indisputably, on February 10, 1918, a few months after the death of his daughter Ora May, Jeff Power died in a dawn shootout in his home and went there to obtain a warrant. Three lawyers are also said to have died.
The case led to the largest investigation in state history and helped restore the death penalty in Arizona. Tom and John Power served more than 40 years in prison until the 19 young children of the murdered congressman grew to middle age. What happened is still hotly debated by many. And those who knew for sure took the truth to the grave.
Restless and ambitious, Jeff Power was born in Texas during the Civil War. After her parents separated, his mother Jane moved to New Mexico with her 24-year-old son and their newborn family. Jane was five feet tall, but what she lacked in height she made up for in her spirit. Her family lore says she once kicked her husband out of a bar with a horse whip.
Jeff was working on the roof of his new house when it collapsed, injuring his mother and killing his wife. Widowed at the age of 28, Jeff drifted away doing odd jobs while Jane cared for her four young children. By the time the family arrived in the Klondike area around 1910, they were nearly all grown up.
John, who was 20 at the time, was quiet and serious, unlike his gregarious 18-year-old brother Tom. Ora, a dark-haired and beautiful 16-year-old, shared John’s shyness. Charlie, the oldest, was ambitious and entrepreneurial. The 22-year-old has been buying cattle since he was a teenager, buying a mining interest in a former goat ranch on Rattlesnake Creek.
A Klondike rancher recalled how the family rolled into town “in the most scabbed outfit I’ve ever seen”. “Old wobbly wagons and lean stocks and old plows.”
Wherever Jeff goes, the best lands have already been occupied, and Klondike proved to be no exception. Local ranchers harassed intruder cattle and did their best to make those in power feel unwelcome. With little choice, the family settled for Charlie’s insistence and moved to Galileuros.
Their “garden site”, while beautiful, was a tough place to raise cattle. Charlie soon gave up and returned to New Mexico. But with their closest neighbors being prospectors, Jeff got on the gold fever and started investing in mining rights in nearby canyons.
For the arduous task of building a road to the mine, he enlisted the help of U.S. Army veteran Tom Sisson. By 1915, when Jane died in a buggy accident, Sisson had effectively become part of his family. After her death, Jeff sold the cattle and property he owned in Rattlesnake Canyon, approached the mines, and threw everything he had into the mines.
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Congress initially passed the Selective Service Act, which required males between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for military service. Arizona Governor Thomas Campbell has declared June 5 a state holiday so that eligible men can register. Kane Wu-Tang, one of the prominent local ranchers, registered 32 men from the Klondike area that day, but John and Tom were not among them. The butcher’s owner later said Jeff told him, “We don’t want anything to do with your war.”
In December of that year, Jeff found his daughter lying in bed with convulsions and called the neighbors. She died before they arrived. Jeff claimed Ola said he was poisoned. He used a pocketknife borrowed from Wu-Tang, and an inconclusive autopsy performed at her neighbor’s table showed a dislocated vertebra at the base of her spine. Rumors flew, and Graham County Sheriff Frank McBride had his own suspicions. He and Jeff nearly got into a fistfight at the coroner’s autopsy.
A devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mr. McBride ran for sheriff on a campaign of good character and clean habits. “I can honestly say that I have never known a more completely honest and sincere person,” McBride’s son Darvill wrote in his book. Elected in 1916, McBride was an avid pursuer of bootleggers and draft evaders. After Ora May’s death, enraged by the “rogues” and their refusal to register, he pursued a federal warrant against the Power brothers with single-minded determination. Upon obtaining them, he also secured state warrants related to Ora Mae’s death for Jeff and Sisson.
Deputy U.S. Marshal Frank Haynes was dispatched to arrest the Power brothers. He took McBride with him, and the third member was told to follow McBride’s choice. McBride deputized for Wu Tang. A state warrant authorized an additional man, and McBride chose Deputy Sheriff Martin Kempton. An alfalfa farmer and LDS member, Kempton had no previous law enforcement experience. He held mostly managerial positions while recovering from an injury that left him unable to farm.
The party went to the Klondike on Saturday afternoon, ate dinner at Wu-Tang’s brother-in-law’s ranch, and set off for the Powers’ cottage long after dark. They arrived before dawn when it started to snow.
Jeff, who had just gotten out of bed, started setting fire to the cabin as the police surrounded it. As Jeff was out to investigate the noise, Wu-Tang and Kempton had just arrived at the northern positions ahead of more experienced police officers approaching from the south. Haynes heard Wu-Tang shout “Hands up!” As I turned the corner of the hut, I saw an unrecognizable man holding a rifle to his chest. Then John appeared at the door.
The first shootout knocks Jeff down and Haynes retreats to the side of the house. “Shooting was common by this time,” he later testified. Unable to find a safe vantage point, he drove off to seek help.
When Tom, John and Sisson show up, they find three police officers dead and Jeff mortally wounded. A bullet had grazed John’s nose, shards had splattered his left eye, and shards of glass had pierced Tom’s face and one eye. The men took the police’s weapons and horses and rode off, stopping at a neighboring camp and asking them to go to the hut.
The next morning, friends and relatives of the legislator gathered at the hut to investigate and retrieve the body. They looted the place before leaving. The doctor who conducted the autopsy jury didn’t examine the officer’s body until after the long trip, and he never examined Jeff’s.
The town’s largest hall was packed with 2,500 mourners, and Safford’s shops were closed for the officer’s funeral. Meanwhile, Jeff’s body lay at the entrance to the mine for several days before being buried nearby without a ritual.
The search lasted nearly a month. Neighborhood sheriffs, Apache scouts, bloodhounds, cavalrymen, and hundreds of civilians pursued the fugitives while newspapers carried rumors and innuendos. Even Haynes declined to give his interview, saying his own words were “incredibly distorted.”
The soldiers eventually surrendered to a small cavalry detachment a few miles south of the Mexican border, suffering from hunger, dehydration, and ragged clothing. John’s eye was infected. Back in Safford, the guards put the men on display and people stood in line for hours to mock them.
Until his death, the Powers maintained that they only fought back after their father was shot. Sisson said he did not participate. Haines confirmed the officers had not identified him, but insisted the first shot was fired from the cabin.
At trial, it took 30 minutes for a jury to convict all three of them for first-degree murder, based largely on Mr. Haynes’ testimony and that of a neighbor who had previously been convicted of perjury for false testimony. I figured it out. All three were sentenced to life in prison because Arizona had only recently abolished the death penalty. The death penalty was reinstated in December of the same year due to public outcry over this incident.
In 1952, the Arizona Board of Amnesty and Parole granted the men their first hearing. Relatives and friends of MPs flooded bulletin boards with letters, filling the room with protests signed by 104 Safford residents.
Darvill McBride wrote that the aging of the prisoners aroused sympathy. But as they continued to maintain their innocence, any sympathy vanished. The men lost their bid and Sison died before he got his next chance. And in 1958, Arizona Republic Columnist Don Dedera — later editor Arizona Highway — addressed the Powers cause.
“After 41 years, the truth may be out of reach,” he conceded, adding that in Arizona, life sentences are usually commuted after 10 or 12 years. Mr. and Mrs. Powers served more than 40 people. “Why?” asked Dedera. “Were their crimes so ugly, so premeditated, so vicious that society could never over-punish them?”
Other columnists also participated. The report fueled Safford’s passion, but also shook public opinion. The Powers were granted a second hearing in 1960, and Ms. Dedera said nothing in her life had been more dramatic. The hearing culminated in an impassioned testimony from LDS Stake President Lorenzo Wright. He rebuked his fellow church members and said: [God] i won’t forgive you ”
Then he advised the authorities. “If you guys are not good enough to ask and forgive, I will withdraw my support,” he bellowed.
“Don Dedera reports that I said, ‘We forgive and we want to forgive,'” Tom later wrote. “I accept Dedera’s report. … I am sorry. I am sorry for the death of our father. My heart goes out to the widows and families of the three police officers who were murdered. I am sorry for our wasted lives.” I do, and I am sorry for Mr Sisson’s life and death in prison.”
The board commuted Powers’ sentence. Ten years later, the brothers received a full amnesty.
At the ages of 70 and 67, John and Tom Power were last released from prison. By that time they were both pretty “hot” and John could always smell the citronella and mentholatum he was using to ease the pain.
For a time John lived in the mines and the Klondike with the Lachners. After that, he was unable to go to the mines and lived in an old Chevrolet pickup truck behind the Klondike shop.
Like his father, Tom was restless and wandered around doing odd jobs. He told his friends that he wanted to live long enough to vote, but that was not possible until his pardon came through. In 1970, the brothers voted for the first time. Tom died three days later on John’s 79th birthday.
John buried his brother near his sister and grandmother in Klondike Cemetery. He moved his father’s remains there and bought everyone’s tombstones. He chose “Rest in Peace” for his own epitaph, perhaps because he wanted something he had never felt in his life.
Power Cabin is now part of a designated nature reserve, where nature is reclaiming the path her family hard-won. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this place has become a backpacking destination for fit hikers willing to take on the rigors of trekking.
Some descendants of lawmakers still feel resentment. Some have found peace while bringing tragedy to all involved. Last year, descendants of lawmakers joined friends in power to dedicate a memorial at a Klondike school. A stone replica of the Power Cabin, designed and built by Klondike residents Wayne and Sheral Curtis, pays tribute to all those who died.
