[4][5] When he was grown, Crockett went to New Mexico Territory with a friend named Peter Burleson and established a ranch near Cimarron, which at the time was a small, but wild, cowtown.
[1] Local folklore says that Crockett was a member of a lynch mob headed by Clay Allison who killed the Elizabethtown serial killer, Charles Kennedy, in 1870.
[6] Crockett's ongoing stint as an outlaw reached its peak in 1876, after he murdered three Buffalo Soldiers from the United States Army's 9th Cavalry inside the bar of the St. James Hotel.
[1][4][7] According to the generally accepted version, on the night of March 24, 1876, Crockett, Heffron, and a friend named Henry Goodman were touring Cimarron's saloons and gambling halls when they decided to go home to their ranch.
According to author Leon Claire Metz, Crockett and Heffron "terrorized Cimarron's peaceful population with sporadic gunshots, rambunctious behavior, and brazen threats."
Often, Crockett would ride his horse inside a building and fire into the ceiling or force people at gunpoint to perform services for him, such as shining boots.
According to the account given by the three members of the ambush/posse, at about 9:00 PM, Crockett and Heffron approached the barn on horseback, ignored a call to put their hands up, and were shot without returning fire.
The posse asserted they had found his dead body on the other side of the Cimarron River, about a quarter of a mile away from town, yet still on his horse with his hands locked in a "death grip" on the saddle horn.