(Is there a Mexican Yakov Smirnoff?)
A fragment of the old, Wild West, when justice often came self-served or not at all. As the years march, it fades further from memory, outside of its most famous occurrences, O.K. Corral, et al. So many other stories, particularly those with inconvenient, contentious, or even revisionist outcomes, fade even faster, or are almost entirely erased. Such is the kidnapping, rape and murder case of Mary Cunningham. I cannot provide a link to further reading here because, well of course I couldn’t locate one. As far as the internet is concerned, this story doesn’t exist. More on that after the column.
Published Tuesday, October 11, 1988 in the Gainesville Georgia Times, Crime Prof. Alex Taylor details the harrowing account of righteous Wild West vengeance.
Non-existent story? Almost. There are just a handful of books mentioning the crime and its aftermath. Try Googling it for yourself. Famous? Not sure that’s an accurate label any longer. Nonetheless, here’s some additional trivia:
According to author Robert (Bob) Turpin’s book, Famous Old West Murder Mysteries, Adrian Cunningham, with a cork leg, became a scout for the U.S. Army during the Apache war. He was killed in 1961 near Tubac, Arizona, some 30 miles south of Tuscon, not far from the Mexican border. John became a captain for the Union army during the Civil War. He later settled in Tuscon Arizona as a land surveyor and died in 1912 at the age of 82.
The Burt Lancaster movie Prof. Taylor references is likely The Professionals (1966). Although the plot loosely resembles the Cunningham-Navarro story, the movie was actually based on the 1964 novel, A Mule for the Marquesa by Frank O’Rourke.
And yes, gringos is not spelled with an e.
