Few men in the annals of the American Old West represent the phrase “frontier justice” as well as Judge Isaac C. Parker, the infamous “Hanging Judge” of Fort Smith, who ruled over the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas with an iron hand from 1874-1895.
During his 21-year tenure on the bench, Parker presided over 160 cases that resulted in the sentence of death and 79 of those men met their final fate at the end of a hemp rope attached to the wooden and mortar gallows that defined and justified the nickname “Hell on the Border” on the Arkansas-Indian Territory border.
In later life, Parker was quoted as saying, “I never hanged a man, the law did,” and it was the keen sense of adherence to the law that allowed the court to operate and clean up what had become a lawless civilization in the years after the Civil War.
This is the third in series of stories of men who met justice under the gavel of Issac C. Parker:
April 27, 1892 Sheppard Busby
A case of adultery led a former United States Deputy Marshal to kill an active one when Marshal Barney Connelly tried to serve a writ of arrest on a philandering Sheppard Busby at his home near modern Muldrow, Oklahoma.
A Kentuckian by birth, Busby had served in the in 56th Illinois Infantry and 50th Missouri in Civil War. Conneley knew Busby personally and chose to serve the court papers on a man he considered an old friend.
Busby, 57, lived in the home with a 22-year old woman that was the mother of two of his children and another 15 year-old female who was described as his “fiancé.”
Busby and his son, 23- year old William, fled after the shootout but William later turned himself in to authorities and was sentenced to 10 years in the Detroit Federal House of Corrections.
Sheppard Busby died for his crime on April 27, 1892. He was one of the few hangings that happened under Parker's court that was not performed by hangman George Maledon, as he had been a personal friend's of Busby and they had served together as deputy marshal's early in their careers. Maledon refused to "do the job".
It is the only time in the history of the US Marshal Service that a former U.S. Marshal was executed for the murder of an active U.S. Marshal.
Busby is buried in Fort Smith's historic Oak Cemetery.