Wyatt Earp

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848 – January 13, 1929) was an American lawman and an assistant marshal to his brother, Virgil Earp. Earp was involved in the 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which he and other lawmen killed three outlaws. While Earp is usually depicted as the key figure in the shootout, his brother Virgil was both the U.S. Marshal and the Tombstone city marshal and had decided to enforce a city ordinance prohibiting carrying weapons in public in an attempt to neutralize the loosely organized group of outlaws known as the Cochise County Cowboys. In 1874, Earp arrived in the boomtown of Wichita, Kansas, where his alleged wife opened a brothel. At this brothel, Earp was arrested more than once; he may have been a pimp. He was appointed to the Wichita police force and developed a good reputation as a lawman but was "not rehired as a police officer" after a physical altercation with a political opponent of his boss. Earp left Wichita, following his brother James to Dodge City, Kansas, where his brother's wife Bessie and Earp's common-law wife Sally operated a brothel. In this city, he became an assistant city marshal. In 1878, he went to Texas to track down an outlaw, Dave Rudabaugh, and met John "Doc" Holliday, whom Wyatt credited with saving his life. Earp moved between boom towns. He left Dodge in 1879 and moved with brothers James and Virgil, later joined by his younger brother Morgan, to Tombstone, Arizona, where a silver boom was underway. The Earps held law enforcement positions that put them in conflict with an outlaw group known as the "Cowboys", who threatened to kill the Earps on several occasions. The conflict escalated, culminating in the shootout at the O.K. Corral in 1881, where the...