Murder & Mob Law in the Big Horn Basin Part 1: Love, obsession and murder at the Thermopolis Hot Springs

In the winter of 1901, John and Agnes Hoover were finally building the life they wanted. Otto, then a settlement of several hundred people, felt full of possibility as homesteaders, Mormon families, ranchers and railroad crews carved out homes on the high sagebrush plain.

John Hoover, born in 1859 in Putnam County, Missouri, moved west as a young man and found work in the Black Hills of South Dakota. There he met Agnes Cassels, a single mother with a 4-year-old daughter, Stella.

Agnes had spent her childhood on the move as her father chased work across the West, leaving her well acquainted with hardship and change.

John and Agnes married in 1886 and spent more than a decade in the noisy, uncertain mining towns of Lead, Hot Springs and Deadwood. They worked hard and tried to build a family, but tragedy followed them. Agnes gave birth to 10 children and only three survived: Stella, and two sons, Frederick and Alfred. Seven small graves remained in the earth, reminders of their pain.

When it became clear the Black Hills offered more sorrow than opportunity, they looked west for something better, a fresh start and a chance to heal.

New hope in Wyoming

By 1899, the Hoovers left the mining camps and moved to the Big Horn Basin. After a brief period of ranching in the Shell Creek Valley, they settled in Otto. They built a home and opened The Hoover Store, a general merchandise shop. Agnes also became the postmistress, a trusted figure in the community.

For the first time in years, the family felt settled. Stella was 18 and noticing local young men, while Fred, 11, and Alfred, 7, were thriving in school and making friends.

Then, in January 1901, everything changed. Forty-one-year-old John Hoover caught a cold that quickly turned into pneumonia. In a letter to John’s family in Missouri, Agnes described the struggle to keep him alive. These words show the agony of those final days:

“I called the doctor, Dr. Hale, who was at Basin. He came up to Otto at once and began to treat him. The doctor said he had pneumonia. I closed the store and stayed right with him night and day. He was out of his head all the time from about 11 o’clock Wednesday morning. He knew me and Stella and Fred and Alfred, but that was as far as he was conscious. He talked about everything, but nothing had any meaning. I worked so hard to save him … He died easy after suffering so for seven days. He is buried in the graveyard near Otto. My heart is so heavy that I can’t write any more, so good-by for this time. Write again. With best wishes for you and your family, I remain …”

Despite everything Agnes and Dr. Hale could do, John Hoover died at 3:50 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 30, 1901, and was buried in the Otto Cemetery.

A difficult normalcy

Grief-stricken but determined to keep the family afloat, Agnes continued running the store and post office with Stella’s help. John had taken out life insurance, unusual for this part of Wyoming at the time. Weeks after his burial, Agnes also received money from her father’s estate.

Local newspapers, eager to promote life insurance, published the amounts: 

“Mrs. A. L. Hoover … will receive $3,000 insurance money from the Modern Woodmen of America, and $2,000 from the New York Mutual Insurance Company … In addition … she received $1,000 within the last 30 days from the estate of her father.” (Cody Enterprise, Feb. 14, 1901)

Another account claimed she had received a total of $51,000, which would be nearly $2 million today. That figure drew public attention, including from one man who should never have known about it. As winter gave way to spring, Agnes, still in mourning, had begun to regain a fragile sense of normalcy.

But stories move fast, especially those about widows on the frontier. Not long after the newspaper article ran, a man named J.P. Walters arrived in Otto. He carried a history of legal trouble, arrests for public intoxication, abuse of his wife and frequenting prostitutes, though no one in Otto knew it. He introduced himself as a traveling clothing salesman, but others later described him as a drifter.

He took an immediate and unwelcome interest in Agnes. Walters lingered in her store for long stretches, offering sympathy she hadn’t asked for. He offered to walk her home and seemed to watch her children too closely. More than anything, he tried to charm her with words, praising her beauty, strength and faith.

Agnes, still stunned by her husband’s death, found his presence intrusive and unsettling.

Warnings from community

In 1901, as today, Otto was a tight-knit town, and more than one person grew suspicious of Walters. Friends warned Agnes about him. And then came the moment that changed everything.

Mrs. Allie Massey, who worked at the Otto Hotel and was one of Agnes’s closest friends, told her that Walters had begun keeping a gun under his pillow in his room. That was enough. The Hoovers and the Masseys agreed something had to be done.

In the middle of the night, fearing what Walters might do next, Agnes gathered her three children and quietly left Otto. They traveled by private wagon east to Basin, then went south by railroad as far as the line was completed. From there, they finished the journey to Thermopolis by stagecoach, where Agnes hoped the warm mineral springs would offer peace and safety until Walters moved on.

Friends back home promised to keep her secret, watch for his departure and send word when it was safe to return.

After several days at the Hot Springs in Thermopolis, Agnes began to feel calmer. Her 7-year-old son, Alfred, stayed close to her side everywhere she went, the way children do when the world has felt frightening.

Across the early spring landscape, steam rising from the mineral waters made the place feel peaceful, even healing.

One morning, not long after friends in Otto had sent word that Walters was finally gone, Agnes and Alfred walked along the path on the east side of the Big Horn River. Then, without warning, a familiar figure stepped into their way: J.P. Walters. He blocked the path. Agnes squeezed her son’s hand.

Walters asked her to marry him. She refused. He asked again, more desperately. She refused again, firm and unmistakable.

What followed would shock the Big Horn Basin. But that moment lies just ahead. For now, we leave Agnes on that quiet Thermopolis path, her young son gripping her hand and a dangerous man standing too close.

No tragedy.

Not yet.

Only danger rising around her.

Part two of this series will appear in next week’s issue.

(John Bernhisel is a retired high school teacher and librarian who enjoys Wyoming history, bridges, and long runs that spark reflection. A father and grandfather, he is beginning a second career as a writer, sharing stories that celebrate the people and places of Wyoming.)

Quick history lesson behind the headlines

The detail of Agnes walking on the east side of the Big Horn River is significant. In 1901, the east bank belonged to Big Horn County, which then included what are now Big Horn, Washakie, Hot Springs and Park Counties. The county was vast — as large as several East Coast states — and so remote that many maps still labeled parts of it “unexplored territory.” It was sparsely settled and lacked law enforcement structures. The county seat in Basin was several days away by horseback, telephone lines were unreliable, and automobiles would not appear in the Basin until around 1907.

By contrast, the west side of the river belonged to Fremont County, administered from Lander. Fremont County was older, more established and better resourced. Thermopolis straddled this dividing line, meaning residents on opposite banks dealt with different county governments. Depending on where one stood, legal jurisdiction fell either to Basin or to Lander.

Sadly for our story, Mrs. Hoover and Walters stood facing each other on the east side.