Johnny Ringo  John Peters Ringo (May 3, 1850 – July 13, 1882), better known as Johnny Ringo, was an American Old West outlaw loosely associated with the Cochise County Cowboys in frontier Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona Territory, United States. He took part in the Mason County War during which he committed his first murder. He was arrested and charged with murder, but escaped from jail shortly before his death. He was affiliated with Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, Ike Clanton, and Frank Stilwell during 1881–1882. He got into a confrontation in Tombstone with Doc Holliday and was suspected by Wyatt Earp of having taken part in the attempted murder of Virgil Earp and the ambush and death of Morgan Earp. Ringo was found dead with a bullet wound to his temple. Modern writers have advanced various theories attributing his death to Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Frank Leslie, and Michael O'Rourke. Johnny Ringo was born in Washington, Indiana, of distant Dutch ancestry. His family moved to Liberty, Missouri in 1856. He was a loosely related cousin to the Younger brothers through his aunt Augusta Peters Inskip, who married Coleman P. Younger, uncle of the outlaws. In 1858, his family moved to Gallatin, Missouri where they rented property from the father of John W. Sheets (who became the first "official" victim of the James-Younger gang when they robbed the Daviess County Savings & Loan Association in 1869). On July 30, 1864, when Johnny was 14, his family was in Wyoming en route to California. His father Martin Ringo was killed when he stepped off their wagon holding a shotgun which accidentally discharged. The buckshot entered the right side of Martin's face and exited the top of his head. The family buried Martin on a hillside alongside the trail. By the mid-1870s, Ringo had migrated from San Jose, California, to Mason County, Texas. Here he befriended an ex-Texas Ranger named Scott Cooley, who was the adopted son of a local rancher named Tim Williamson. Trouble started when two American rustlers, Elijah and Pete Backus, were dragged from the Mason jail and lynched by a predominantly German mob. Full-blown war began on May 13, 1875, when Tim Williamson was arrested by a hostile posse and murdered by a German farmer named Peter “bad man” Bader. Cooley and his friends, including Johnny Ringo, conducted a terror campaign against their rivals.