At first, the management at Castle Hot Springs kept the crime a secret for over a week, even denying that it happened. What’s more, the victim’s family completely shunned any surrounding publicity. But when the trail for the abductor began to grow cold, and the search needed to expand, the secret came out.
It was a beautiful day, February 26, 1907, early spring at that elevation, and the desert wildflowers were blooming at the Castle Hot Springs resort.
A group of several ladies went out picking the beautiful blooms on what was known as the “Forty Minute Trail”. A quarter-mile from the hotel, one Miss Burr, age 20, and by all accounts attractive, spied some more beautiful flowers and separated from the rest of the group onto a side mountain.
Completely out of sight of the others, she became aware of a rough-looking man standing in front of her. “Don’t move,” he said, “There is a rattlesnake behind you, but I’ll kill it.” As she turned her head to look, the man grabbed her, covered her mouth with his hand, placed the barrel of a gun to the back of her head, and commanded her not to scream, or he would shoot.
He then forced her to walk ahead of him for about a mile and a half, when they halted in a little basin, between two peaks of the mountains. He then told her to remove her shoes and stockings. He allowed her to put her shoes back on and used the stockings to tie her up. She was told to cross her arms beneath her legs. One stocking was used to tie her hands, and the other to gag her mouth.
He then left her for around 15 minutes, and when he returned, he told her not to move or try to escape. He would return that night with two burros to take her away.
Miss Burr waited until she thought he was far enough away, and started to inch herself toward the hotel the best way she could.
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Meanwhile, the father of the young lady, later identified as A.S. Burr, approached Joe Roberts, the former sheriff of Yavapai County, who was vacationing there at the same time. Mr. Burr was concerned that his youngest daughter had not returned for lunch. He also told Roberts that she was prone to fainting spells and feared she might be lying unconscious somewhere in the nearby hills.
Originally, the Burr family was said to be from Philadelphia, but later reports identified them as being farmers from Illinois, and at that time, there existed a famous 8-square-mile farm in Ford County called the Burr Oak(s) Farm. The father of the young lady was most likely Alson S., or Ashbel S. Burr.
Roberts got a few other men who were intimate with the area and immediately began searching for the young lady. After visiting all the nearby trails and springs without finding a trace of her, the alarm grew and spread among the guests, with several joining in the search. They split into a handful of groups and searched until 5:30 PM when one of the hotel’s guests, a Mr. Whitson, a placer miner from the Walnut Grove district and a guest at the resort, found her.
Miss Barr had advanced only about 50 yards when Whitson found her, and he immediately untied her wrists, which were swollen and blue, and placed her on his horse and started down from the mountain to the hotel. When they arrived there, she promptly fainted. Despite this proclivity, she made a careful and thorough note of what her abductor looked like and was able to give a full description upon reviving.
He was about 50 years old, 5’ 10”, comparatively broad-shouldered, with a sandy complexion and hair with a touch of gray, blue eyes with one drooping, very heavy eyebrows, a scraggly mustache slightly mixed with gray, and a cloven nail on one of his thumbs. “I had plenty of time to study my captor’s appearance,” she said, “and would know him again anywhere I should ever meet him.” After hearing the description, several guests stated that they witnessed such a man hanging “around the hotel for several days, learning the lay of the land and [probably] awaiting the opportunity.” Since the pretty young lady was not assaulted, nor was her jewelry taken, it was thought that the motive was to gain a ransom.
Several more male guests joined the search, and Roberts, along with four other men, staged an all-night stake-out where Miss Burr was left, hoping the abductor would return as he promised. He did not.
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The resort was horrified and offered a $250 reward for the abductor’s capture (about $8600 today). “All the cattlemen and miners of that section of the county [were] notified,” the Journal-Miner reported, “and a description of her abductor [was] furnished them.” Unfortunately, nighttime brought heavy rains, obliterating all traces of the man’s escape. This forced the searchers to spread out, and several days passed without any sign being found.
The search continued several more days, with the only find being two burros thought to be the property of the would-be abductor. Perhaps he got cold feet, or perhaps he saw something that tipped him off to her being found, but as they might say in these parts, he skedaddled.
A few weeks after the abduction, “a man answering the description given by Miss Burr…was arrested by Wilbur White in Thompson Valley [near Kirkland Junction],” the Bisbee Daily Review reported. Either White locked him in his house while he went to get the sheriff, or the suspect was told to chop wood outside the house. Whatever the case, while White was absent, the man escaped, taking White’s coat and “a good supply of provisions,” which included flour, beans, bacon, and a dozen eggs.
White joined Deputy Sheriff John Merritt, “who stayed with White and two others in the mountains for four days, in which time they covered a circuit of 200 miles, losing the trail of the fugitive after a four-day hunt due to [the] heavy rainfall,” the Journal-Miner chronicled. However, “the officers do not seriously consider that White’s temporary prisoner had any connection with the attempted abduction of Miss Burr,” (he had no cloven thumbnail, for example) “but are of the opinion that he is wanted for perhaps some more serious crime. He has been noticed stealing through the ranges from one camp to another for the past few months and is known to have committed many petty thefts of food and tobacco from stockmen in Skull and Thompson Valleys and the Sycamore Creek district, which are isolated from the ranch settlements.”
“A sharp lookout is being kept for him by the stockmen of the district, and his apprehension is thought to be only a matter of days,” the Journal-Miner hoped.
“Gaunt and emaciated, worn out from having tramped aimlessly over the mountains and valleys in the northwestern part of the county for the past month, during which time he is asserted to have walked over 1000 miles,” the Journal-Miner explained, “and nearly dead from hunger and exposure, the supposed maniac who was arrested by Wilbur White” but escaped, “was arrested yesterday morning by Deputies Merritt and Bowdre, in the Granite Mountain schoolhouse, and brought to this city last evening and lodged in the county jail.” He was asleep inside the school, “and upon being aroused by the officers, he immediately began a maniacal dance, begging piteously the while for food.”
He gave his name as Murphy, “but his foreign accent, together with his appearance, brands him as a native of some south[ern] European country, rather than Irish. It is apparent that the man is a maniac, and he will be tried on an insanity charge first,” the same paper thought. However, the paper noted that this man looked nothing like the description given by Miss Burr, and the Burrs refused to come back and testify no matter who was caught, so whoever it was who abducted the pretty young heiress suffered no penalty for his crime.
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SOURCES:
Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner, 3/6/1907, Pg. 2, Col. 1-2.
Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner, 3/13/1907, Pg. 8, Col. 1-3.
Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner, 3/6/1907, Pg. 7, Col. 1 & 2.
Bisbee Daily Review, 3/12/1907, Pg. 2, Col. 1.
Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner, 3/20/1907, Pg. 2, Col. 2.
Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner, 4/10/1907, Pg. 3, Col. 3.
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