Biography:Polly Bartlett

Short description: First known serial killer in Wyoming

Polly Bartlett
Born	Polly Bartlett
Died	October 7, 1868 South Pass City, Wyoming, U.S.
Cause of death	Homicide by gunshots
Other names	The Murderess of Slaughterhouse Gulch
Occupation	Innkeeper
Years active	1868
Parent(s)	Jim Bartlett
Relatives	Hattie Bartlett
Motive	Robbery
Reward amount	$3000 (Oregon Territorial Legislature) $10000 (Bernard Fountain)
Wanted since	August 1868
Time at large	Approximately 2 months
Details
Victims	22
State(s)	Wyoming
Weapons	Arsenic
Date apprehended	October 7, 1868

Polly Bartlett, also known as The Murderess of Slaughterhouse Gulch, is purported to have been a 19th-century murderer from the Wyoming Territory. She is said to have been the first serial killer in Wyoming, before it was even incorporated as a state. While the story has been repeated in several publications, Wyoming historians such as Phil Roberts and Jon Lane say that there is no proof that the story is true.

According to stories, Bartlett killed men who entered her family lodge with the complicity of her father Jim (whose name is otherwise given as John and Stephen in other accounts) in 1868, amounting to a total of 22 murders, every victim found buried on her property.

A 1963 article by Dean W. Ballinger and published in the popular Real West magazine is one of the earliest and most detailed accounts of the Bartlett family murders. Today, South Pass City is a ghost town in arrested decay, and Bartlett's Inn is regarded as a folk tale by the local citizens.

Case history

As the accounts go, Bartlett lured businessmen and other wealthy travelers into her lodge with extremely valuable belongings on their person, typically gold. Every time she gave them meals and whiskey, they would always be laced with arsenic to poison them. Jim helped bury the men's bodies, and if anyone asked about their disappearances, the daughter and father would lie, saying that indigenous Americans and outlaws took them.

Polly and Jim had early beginnings in their career crimes, where they ran a saloon in Ohio, Polly isolating men for sex before Jim robbed them. Polly's first victim, Lewis Nichols, left her and Jim with a quick $4000, leading to her and Jim constructing the lodge for their murder scams east of South Pass City, where much traffic came during American gold rushes. When they killed Theodore Fountain in August, the son of mine owner Bernard Fountain, Barnard hired investigators from Pinkerton to track his son's whereabouts.

Polly and Jim absconded in August once realizing they were found out, leading to the police unearthing the remains of the men they killed once combing through their property. When a price was put on the heads of the duo, Ed Ford, who evaded being murdered by the Barletts', only for his brother Sam to end up a victim, set out to capture them. On October 7, Ed shot Jim dead and turned Polly in for trial and execution. That evening, Polly was shot dead through the window of her jail cell by Otto Kalkhorst, a German-born man assigned to one of Fountain's mines, who wasn't charged by Esther Morris, the first American female justice of the peace, so the country could put the case to rest.

See also

• List of serial killers before 1900
• List of serial killers in the United States

Further reading

• Sherlock, James L. (1978). South Pass and Its Tales. Vantage Press. ISBN 9780533032969. 

category:Murder in Wyoming