For some time, the Earps, Doc Holliday, Tom Fitch and others who upheld and defended the Earps in their late trial have received, almost daily, anonymous letters, warning them to leave town or suffer death, supposed to have been written by friends of the Clanton and McLowry boys, three of whom the Earps and Holliday killed and little attention was paid to them as they were believed to be idle boasts but the shooting of Virgil Earp last night shows that the men were in earnest. The "Los Angeles Herald" reported on December 30 that "the "local authorities are doing nothing to capture the assassins so far as is known ... Judge Spicer, Marshal Williams, Wyatt Earp, Rickabaugh and other are in momentary danger of assassination."