Yet the bullet hole is the last vestige of a
minor Laramie legend. It is also part of the saga of a troubled man.
On a Friday night in August
1971 Charlie Phillips walked into the Buckhorn armed with a hunting rifle. Accounts differ
on some of the events that followed.
Some say Phillips pointed
the gun at one of the bar's patrons. The customer, they say, had intervened in an argument
Phillips had with another man earlier in the evening.
Others say Charlie Phillips
threatened anyone in the bar who cared to listen. The criminal complaint later filed
against Phillips quoted him as saying, "I didn't want to hurt anyone in particular,
but I did want to kill someone."
Buckhorn owner Jonny
Hopkins recalled that Phillips fired one shot into the bar's ceiling then walked across
the street. Hopkins was not present that night, but he knows the story well.
"He went out the door
and went over to the alley, and he shot again," Hopkins said. "By this time
everybody was four-deep behind the bar," he said, describing the panic that ensued.
Phillips fired a third shot
through the window of the Buckhorn—right through the "C" in the Coors
sign—and into the mirror, Hopkins said.
By this time police had
arrived and surrounded Charlie with shotguns. They disarmed the man and booked him into
county jail on a charge of Aggravated Assault with Dangerous Weapon.
No one is sure what Charlie
Phillips had in mind that night. He didn't hurt anyone, but did he even want to? If he did
want to do harm, then to whom?
Although it is nowhere on
the official record, Charlie may have been motivated by his feelings for Nelda, a Buckhorn
employee at the time.
"He had a crush on
her, but she didn't want to date him," Hopkins said. "He was a big nice-looking
guy, about six-foot-two," he said.
Phillips was married at the
time, and Nelda had many children of her own. But Phillips frequented the Buckhorn in
those days before the shooting, apparently with the intention of winning Nelda's heart.
Hopkins met Phillips on one
occasion. "I played pool with him in here," Hopkins said, pointing to the three
pool tables in the bar. "He seemed like a really nice guy," he said.
Perhaps not every man would
shoot up a bar after being rejected, but Phillips was a troubled man.
He had lost his father
early, and his mother died when he was still a teenager. He eventually developed an
alcohol and drug dependency, which some say plagued him the night of the shooting.
Phillips was somewhat of a
drifter, a she repairman by trade, and he called Cheyenne his home for a while.
As early as 1909 Phillips
was receiving drug rehabilitation at a Cheyenne mental health center.
Following his arrest for
the Buckhorn shooting, Phillips' arraignment was postponed while he was admitted to the
state hospital in Evanston for psychiatric evaluation. While at the hospital he apparently
became attracted to a female patient and fled with her from the hospital.
The two remained at large
for the first half of 1972, having fled to Albuquerque, N.M. Phillips found employment
there at a warehouse. His employer would later communicate to the judge at Phillips' trial
that Phillips was an excellent worker and had even been promoted.
Phillips left Albuquerque
by himself, traveling first to Pocatello, Idaho, then back to his wife in Cheyenne. He
spent several days there before turning himself in to Albany County authorities in June of
1972.
After another stay in the
state hospital Phillips' 13-month prison sentence was suspended in September 1972. He
received instead a 30-day jail sentence for the Buckhorn shooting, followed by two years
of probation.
Jonny Hopkins said he
doesn't know what happened to Phillips after he served his sentence.
Ironically, Hopkins had
just replaced the bar's mirror a few weeks before the shooting. "Some woman threw a
shot glass at it," he explained.
Hopkins' decision not to
replace the mirror a second time is understandable. For one thing, the mirror is
expensive, he explained.
Besides,
there's a legend in that bullet hole. |
