By Parker Anderson
The mountain town of Jerome, today a quiet, tourist-oriented hamlet, was a wild and wooly mining camp in the late 19th century. A vast array of respectable and not so respectable characters congregated there. Among them a barber named Richard Cross. Very little is known of his background, except that he hailed from Illinois. Why he ended up in Jerome is also unknown. What is known is that, while he was there, he became infatuated and/or obsessed with a woman who did not return his love.
The woman in question is identified in surviving court papers as Effie Folds, but aside from that, nothing is known about her, except that she was apparently involved romantically with Bryon Jones, a bartender at the St. Elmo Saloon in Jerome. This was too much for Richard Cross. On March 13, 1897. Richard Cross murdered Byron Jones in a fit of jealous rage. He waited most of the night for Jones to leave Effie's room, and gunned him down in the doorway around 3 a.m. After his deed was done, he fled into the mountains.
Yavapai County Sheriff George C. Ruffner issued a reward proclamation for Cross, and instantly struck a trail in pursuit of the Jerome murderer. Cross managed to elude Ruffner, and made it to the south side of Prescott, where he had the misfortune of being overpowered by a miner who recognized the murderer's description from a dispatch in the Courier. The miner was able to hold Cross until Deputy Johnny Munds could be summoned, and Cross was lodged in the Yavapai County Jail.
The slaying case of Byron Jones was mostly open and shut, and it seemed certain that Richard Cross would be on his way to the gallows, except for fate. Yavapai County's representative in the Territorial Legislature, John W. Norton, pushed a bill through apparently at the behest of special interests that legally redefined the act of murder. Exactly why it was felt this was needed is unknown, but the passage of the Norton Act left open a gaping loophole.
The Norton Act was poorly worded, and as a result, it had the following effect: Any murderer arrested before the passage of the Act, but not yet convicted, could not be charged with murder! The most such killers could be charged with was manslaughter. Reportedly as many as sixty murderers benefited from the Norton Act in Arizona, including Richard Cross, and outrage over this legal gaffe was widespread throughout the Territory.
Murder charges had to be withdrawn against Richard Cross, and in accordance with the loophole in the Norton Act, he was charged with manslaughter, which carried a much lighter sentence. Deciding not to press his luck, Cross pleaded guilty to the lesser charge, and was sentenced to ten years in Yuma Territorial Prison, the maximum sentence for manslaughter.
A note of bitter irony to this story: By happenstance, Cross was in the Yavapai County Jail at the time when outlaw James Parker, Louis C. Miller, and Cornelia Sarata made their legendary jailbreak, in which Parker gunned down Deputy District Attorney Lee Norris. This incident happened only about a month after the passage of the Norton Act, so Parker did not benefit from its loophole, and he went to the gallows in June of 1898. Richard Cross had committed his murder of Byron Jones before the Act's passage, saving him. Literally a few weeks meant the difference between life and death for the two murderers who were in jail together.
When Louis C. Miller was brought to trial, Richard Cross was called to testify about any advance knowledge he may have had of the jailbreak. On the stand, he claimed that Parker and Miller had offered to let him go with them, but that he had declined.
During his unusually brief stay at Yuma Territorial Prison, Cross became the prison barber, the warden apparently deciding to take advance of the killer's knowledge of the tonsorial profession. In 1903, after serving 6 1/2 years of his sentence, Richard Cross became eligible to petition the Territorial Governor for a pardon, which he received. Contrary to the image of frontier justice, pardons and paroles were surprisingly easy to obtain during this period.
On Christmas Eve, 1903, Richard Cross walked out of Yuma prison a free man. He had served 6 years for a murder that was, if anything, far more premeditated that the one that Parker was hanged for. Today, the average person believes that legal technicalities that free criminals are a fairly recent phenomenon. A story like this shows that this is not the case.
After his release from Yuma Territorial Prison, Richard Cross moved to Los Angeles, where he reportedly married. He lived quietly for several years, but he resurfaced in 1907, when he was arrested for attempted murder in the shooting of his wife. He was sentenced to two years in the California State Prison in Folsom. His whereabouts after his release from that facility are unknown.
Parker Anderson is a Playwright and Actor with the Blue Rose Theater.
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (h104pc). Reuse only by permission.
Richard Cross escaped the fate that Jim Parker met here on the gallows in 1898, because of a loop hole in the law. The Norton Act basically reduced his sentence from death for murder to 10 years for manslaughter. His story has been written into a play that will be at the Sharlot Hall Museum over the next couple of weekends.