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Dennis W. Dilda (b. 1849 – d. 1886) was born on a farm near Rome, Georgia. In his twenties, he left home to avoid arrest after he purportedly stabbed a man to death for his money. He fled to Texas, where he was charged with another murder, for which he was tried and acquitted. He then met and in 1881 married his wife, Georgia Belle Ann Patterson, in Lamar County, Texas. They soon followed her family from Texas to the Salt River Valley in the Arizona Territory. In this photograph, Dennis is holding their daughter, Fern, and his wife, Georgia, is holding their son, John (or James).

In September 1885, Dilda secured a job helping to manage William Hamilton Williscraft’s farm, located in the Walnut Grove Precinct, forty miles west of Prescott, Arizona. He and his family moved into the farmhouse. Sometime later Williscraft found that the lock from his room had been pried off and that several items were missing from his locked trunk. Dilda accused the farm’s general caretaker of the theft, but Williscraft had a warrant sworn out charging Dilda with theft. Deputy Sheriff John W. Murphy rode out to the ranch to serve the warrant, was shot in the back, and bled to death. The next day, searchers were unable to find Dilda, but found the caretaker’s body and then Murphy’s body. Dilda was arrested, and hanged for the murders on February 5, 1886 at the Yavapai County Jail, Arizona Territory.  Georgia never faced any charges for her role in Deputy Sheriff Murphy’s death and returned to her family in Phoenix after the execution. She never bothered to send for her husband’s body.

On the back of the photograph is a handwritten note: “Wife was sister of Ramsey Patterson the old lion hunter.” By January, 1922, Ramsey’s record of lion kills was 186.

Sources:  https://www.executedtoday.com, More Frontier Justice in the Wild West: Bungled, Bizarre, and Fascinating Executions, R. Michael Wilson, www.genealogy.com, criminalgenealogy.blogspot, com, Arizona Sentinel, December 26, 1885.