IndieGoGo page prompts donors to help solve Wickenburg mystery
Jan 18, 2015, 7:30 PM | Updated: 9:35 pm
Some call it “Arizona’s Greatest Mystery,” and now an IndiGoGo page is prompting Arizonans and beyond to help solve the case of the Wickenburg Massacre.
The story of the massacre is as follows:
On the morning of 5 November 1871, a Concord stage coach enroute from Wickenburg to La Paz, Arizona Territory, carrying seven passengers and the driver was ambushed about eight miles west of Wickenburg. The driver and five passengers were killed in the ambush, while two passengers barely escaped with their lives. Initial eyewitness accounts and physical evidence from the scene pointed to a war party of Apache-Mohave (Yavapai) Indians, but strange anomalies were found at the scene, the veracity of the witnesses was called into question, and conflicting stories of involvement by Whites and/or Mexicans began to spread.
A sizable treasure in the form of a military payroll was rumored to have been lost.
Finally, the bodies of the victims were reported to have been buried in town after a thorough inquest, but the burial site was “disturbed” in the mid-20th Century, and the graves vanished. Why, then, are there grave sites at the supposed massacre site, roughly situated where the victims fell? And why are there more graves than there were victims? Were the newspaper accounts, which included official inquest results, fabricated to placate victims’ relatives back East? Or were the graves clandestinely moved by 20th Century developers so as not to “impede progress?”
Retired U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command special agent Gary L. Griffiths is proposing to conduct the archaeological exploration of the site.
The four-phase project aims to locate the graves of the victims, verify the massacre site, conduct a forensic medicolegal examination of the victims and re-enter the victims in marked graves.
The project requires a financial backing of $5,000 to fund the first two phases. So far, just $50 has been raised — though there is still time, as the campaign doesn’t close until March 6.
Donors can pick ways in which to participate in the project including via site visits, based on their contribution amount.
