On July 20, 1889, a range detective from the Association named George Henderson accused Ella Watson, a local rancher, of stealing cattle from a fellow rancher by the name of Albert John Bothwell. The cattlemen sent riders to seize Ella before capturing her husband Jim Averell as well. Both of them were subsequently hanged from a tree. This gruesome act was one of the rare cases in the Old West in which a woman was lynched, an event that appalled many of the local residents and paved the way for future conflicts in the war. County Sheriff Frank Hadsell arrested six men for the lynching and a trial date was set. However, before the trial, threats were sent to the witnesses who would testify against the aggressors. One of those witnesses was young Gene Crowder, who mysteriously disappeared under unknown circumstances before the trial. Another, Jim's nephew and foreman Frank Buchanan, disappeared from the county as well after a shoot-out with unknown suspects, and was presumed to be hiding or murdered. Ralph Cole, another nephew of Averell's, died on the day of the trial from poisoning.