That is almost my whole premise. That said, I would hesitate to suggest "that there is no use in discussing Ringo's death." Discuss away, especially after quaffing a pint or two, if that's your druthers, although I would add that such discussions have a long history, that I am aware of many if not most of them, that they tend to repeat themselves while going nowhere save around in the same endless circles (because the facts, so far anyway, haven't changed over time), and that, I won't say the only, but by far the likeliest conclusion to be drawn from them is the one I have, after some study of the matter, drawn.

That said, as I've mentioned, while anything is possible, some things are more possible, even conclusively likely than are others.

I simply am of the opinion that what you characterize as "so many unanswered questions about the death scene," do not strike me as unanswered at all when the available evidence is weighed and placed in proper historical, biographical and psychological context. That context, in my opinion, answers for what might otherwise seem slightly more problematic were one to obsess over such details as the scalp, the wrapped feet, the watch chain, the upside down belt, the tree, and so on, including Boyer's "compression of time" theory, which isn't really a theory, but an agenda-driven pretext.

Were there what some might characterize as an oddity or peculiarity or two about the death scene? Perhaps, at first blush. But there is nothing about them that is unanswerable. There is, for me, no mystery to be solved here, save the mystery of why certain people insist upon rendering mysterious that which is either logically explained or entirely self-apparent.

But all this is rather beside the point, isn't it? The real unanswered question is the one I posed at the outset. Why did Wyatt B.S. Earp claim to have killed John Peters Ringo? Surely you do not, cannot, like Boyer, believe that that is the case, can you?

You remark that "Ringo had so many enemies." I don't disagree, though it would be helpful if you named them so we might know who you have in mind. A lot of folks in that place at that time had "so many enemies."

So if Wyatt didn't kill Ringo, and if you don't believe that Ringo killed himself, then where does that leave us? With O'Rourke? Zero evidence there. Leslie? I am aware of no one who took his claim seriously. Nameless others? Or do we content ourselves with dismissing or equivocating about the overwhelming weight of the evidence, throw up our hands, and perform what back in the day was called a cop-out: "We'll never know the truth."

Well, I for one believe that we do know the truth: Ringo offed himself. Why? Because everything we know about his life, and death, renders that truth not only plausible or most plausible, but inescapably inevitable. It's not quantum physics.

But perhaps the good researcher Gatto will have disinterred some new primary info that will prompt me to reconsider, which I am perfectly willing to do should he succeed in doing so. Until then, however....

By the way, I couldn't read that newspaper article you so kindly provided. Print's too small for my aged eyes and when I tried to enlarge it, it became unreadably blurry. Could you summarize the salient points? Thanks.