On the morning of May 27, 1896, the peaceful township of Campbell awoke to shocking news. Six people were brutally murdered at the home of Colonel Richard P. McGlincy, one of the town’s most respected citizens. The suspect, James Dunham—the colonel’s son-in-law—fled the scene and disappeared into the hills of Mount Hamilton overlooking Santa Clara County. This heinous crime triggered a massive, nationwide manhunt while investigators pieced together the details.
My guest is Tobin Gilman, author of “The McGlincy Killings in Campbell, California: An 1896 Unsolved Mystery”. He not only summarizes the case for us, but offers his theory on what might have happened to Dunham once he fled the bloody crime scene.
For more information on books by Tobin Gilman, visit https://www.facebook.com/19thCenturySanJoseInABottle
Erik: Welcome all to another episode of the Most Notorious podcast. I’m Erik Rivenes. As always, thank you so much for subscribing and listening to the show. It is with great pleasure that I introduced this week’s guest. Tobin Gilman. He has had a three decade career in marketing, and his hobbies include antique bottle collecting motorcycling and shooting sporting clays.
He is also the author of the McGlincy Killings in Campbell, California: An 1896 Unsolved Mystery. I appreciate you joining me today. Thank you so much.
Tobin: Thank you, Erik. It’s, it’s great to be, So you grew up in the area where the murders happened, right? You, you have been interested in this case for. Yeah, I, I spent most of my childhood in San Jose, California, and when I was a teenager and in my early twenties, my dad actually owned a, uh, a piece of industrial property in Campbell, the little township of Campbell.
And I would go down there periodically to help do building maintenance and landscaping work. And it happened to be located on a street called Linsey Avenue. And at the time, that was just another street in San Jose. And in the Campbell area, it really had no, no relevance or meaning to me. And it was only many years later after I had, uh, left California and then came back to California and I attended a presentation that was hosted by a historical group in Santa Clara County, and the subject was, What was called the McGlincy murders.
And, um, that was where I first learned about this story. This was, oh, I think 2013 or 2014. And that kind of got my curiosity, uh, going. And I ultimately decided to do more research and that led me ultimately to write a book.
Erik: So before we get into the details of the murders themselves and the manhunt that happened afterwards, I’d like to ask you about the McGlincy family. Who were they and, and how did they come to settle in the area of Campbell, California?
Tobin: Yeah. So, um, Colonel McGlincy, um, actually was born and spent most of his life in Illinois. He, uh, actually was a figure in the Civil War. He served under Stonewall Jackson and, um, sometime after his military service had ended and his work as a journalist and an agriculture professional in Illinois was underway, he decided to move out West. I think part of it might have been some personal reasons that wanted him to get a fresh start. And of course, the weather and beautiful, uh, area, area that Santa Clara Valley once was, certainly had its allure too. So it was there that he became established in Campbell, California as an orchardist. And shortly after arriving there, he met a woman named Ada Wells and they married.
And so the colonel and Mr. Uh, Mrs. McGlincy uh, moved into the Colonel’s property in Campbell. And um, in addition, she had two adult children, a daughter Hattie Wells, and a son, uh, Jimmy Wells. And so they all are on the estate. On the property. And at some point, the daughter, uh, the colonel’s stepdaughter, uh, met this gentleman named James Dunham. It was a whirlwind romance. They got married, they moved together onto the property and lived with the Colonel and his family, his wife, and uh, and of course that’s when the trouble started.
Erik: Yeah, and, and what was this area of California like in the late 1800s?
Tobin: Yeah. Um, it was, it was an agricultural community. The, the Santa Clara Valley was and, and remains, uh, to topographically, just an absolutely beautiful area. It, uh, it’s cradled between two mountain ranges to the west. You have the Santa Cruz mountains and to the east you have the Diablo mountain range and, uh, at the valley floor just sits an agricultural, uh, bread basket. Um, in fact, For many, many years, going all the way back to the early part of the, the 20th century, even the late 19th century, the area was known as the Valley of Heart’s Delight. Because of all of the, uh, produce that it produced, there were lots of orchards. They grew cherries, they grew figs, they grew prunes and apricots. So it was very fertile. And in Campbell there was a train depot, so that was where, um, it served as sort of a hub where this produce could get shipped to other parts of the country. And so it was a very small community at the time. You know, today Santa Clara County has 2 million people. Um, back at the turn of the century, the county – roughly 30 to 50,000 people. So it’s changed a lot, but it was a very peaceful agricultural community that lived in the shadows of the more well known and more glamorous, uh, little town of San Francisco to the north.
Erik: So you talked about James Dunham, uh, the villain in this story you mentioned he married the Colonel’s stepdaughter, Hattie. What do we know about Dunham, his early life and what do we know about his courtship with Hattie?
Tobin: Well, he came from a, a very strange family. He was, uh, raised. His father died while he was still a child. His mother lived in the community and she owned properties in the area. And at a very early age, James seemed a little bit off. Um, he seemed to have a violent streak that wasn’t seen every day, but when it surfaced, it surfaced in some grizzly ways. There’s a, a story that one of his childhood acquaintances shared with law enforcement when they were searching for him about when he was a child. One day he had asked his mom for some money to get some candy at the local store, and she told him no.
And so he promptly went out in the back backyard and snapped the necks of several chickens that she had back there. And, um, there were other instances later in his life as an adult when he was sort of, he became a drifter, by the way, a, a ranch hand. He never really stuck in one place. He tried various ways to earn a living, but…. never really had a lot of stability. And he also didn’t appear to have really any deep, close friendships. And there were instances where he had, uh, had some altercations with coworkers, uh, on ranches that he worked at. In, in one case, he, he came very, very close to killing someone. So he had this dual personality where he was known generally as a likable person, but he just didn’t have any real close relationships.
Um, he had a, a couple of siblings, he had a younger brother, Charles Dunham, who was, you know, more reasonable guy. He, uh, he attended San Jose State College and he had a younger sister and she was sort of a quiet person. I, I suppose, but what’s interesting is that before James met Hattie and the two of them got married, which as I mentioned earlier, happened in a very short period of time, a matter of weeks or perhaps just a few months.
Um, the younger brother Charles had been dating Hattie. Um, so that was just kind of an interesting little twist. And then when they did get married and they moved onto the ranch property and lived with the Colonel and Mrs. McGlincy, trouble began very early on. It was very clear that Mrs. McGlincy did not trust him at all, and he didn’t seem to get along well with the Colonel. It was more of the Colonel being willing to tolerate him, but didn’t particularly seem to like him and he didn’t really seem to fit in with the, the younger, the adult children of the Colonel and Mrs. McGlincy or the other people on the ranch. So trouble began at a tension, I should say, began at a very early stage in that family relationship.
Erik: In your book, you suggest that Dunham had a reputation as a, a corner cutter in life, uh, a petty thief. But in the weeks and months leading up to the murders, he did appear at, at least outwardly, To be trying to better himself. He enrolled in college, uh, correct. At at the age of 30.
Tobin: That, that’s right. I think that, uh, marriage and the, uh, the family environment that he was in, uh, put, gave him kind of the, the impetus, maybe the kick in the rear that he needed to, to get his act together.
And he had enrolled at Santa Clara College, now known as the University of Santa Clara. Um, he was a pre-law student. and his professors, you know, spoke fairly highly of him. He, he worked hard. He was a regular student and had aspirations of becoming a lawyer. So those were all real positive steps. Um, but at the same time, perhaps there might have also been a lot of additional pressure. The pressure of the, uh, the schoolwork, the academic load he was carrying, the pressure of being the father of an in infant son, a new father. Uh, a new husband and living in a, uh, in close quarters with in-laws, all of those things came together that perhaps put a lot of pressure that he hadn’t really felt in his life leading up to that.
Erik: Right. Uh, in, in the weeks leading up to the murders, uh, right there, there were arguments between he and Hattie, and it had been a tradition in the McGlincy household for Dunham to play cards with the Colonel, his father-in-law in the evenings, but that had stopped a few weeks before the murders happened.
Tobin: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. And, and he was also subject to some, uh, ridicule from fellow ranch hands. So, yeah. Um, he, it, it’s clear that he was simply not fitting in well with the family or the other people that worked on the ranch.
Erik: Right. Yeah. So if you don’t mind, walk us through the night of May 26th, 1896. Uh, what happened exactly to the best of your understanding?
Yeah, so what had happened was, um, That evening, uh, sometime around seven or eight o’clock, uh, at night. Um, the Colonel, Colonel McGlincy, his son-in-law, Jimmy Wells and a ranch hand, George Schaebel um, went into town for some sort of a community meeting. Alone in the home were James’s wife, his mother-in-law, Mrs. McGlincy and um, their little one year old infant son and Dunham was not present on the property at that time. He had actually left the home a day earlier, but sometime around 10 o’clock, um, while the men were still gone, Dunham returned to the home and he went upstairs, to where Hattie’s room was, and he brutally murdered her. He literally snapped her neck and then shoved a piece of clothing in her mouth. Um, next door in the room, next door was the nanny. Her name was Minnie Schettler. She was sort of a domestic that helped out with the baby, and she heard the commotion. She came into the room and Dunham brutally murdered her with a hatchet. He then went downstairs where his mother-in-law, Mrs. Dunham, excuse me, Mrs. McGlincy was sleeping and brutally murdered her with a blunt edge of a hatchet. After killing the, the women, uh, Dunham waited in the home for the men to come home. Uh, a little bit later, the Colonel and his son-in-law, Jimmy Wells and George Schaebel arrived home, Schaebel went and put the horses in the barn, and the Colonel and Jimmy Wells entered the house. The Colonel was the first to enter the house, and Dunham was waiting there at the door, and as the Colonel came in, Dunham hit him over the head with a hatchet. and miraculously, uh, it didn’t, it didn’t kill the Colonel, and the Colonel was able to run through the house, and in the meantime, Jimmy Wells was right behind him. And Jimmy and Dunham then got into a very violent fight. Furniture was broken. There was a guitar that got broken and eventually, uh, Dunham shot Jimmy Wells in cold blood, and then he went after the Colonel. By this time, the Colonel had, uh, gone through the kitchen, out the kitchen door and was somewhere in the, on the property and Dunham came out on the property and chased the Colonel into a shed and eventually shot the Colonel through a door in the shed.
And while all this was happening, Schaebel was in the barn. And of course, by this time he had heard the gunshot and was well aware of the, uh, commotion and the exchanges of words that had taken. Outside the home, and so they’re shabel and he’s sitting there in the barn watching all of this transpire, and into the barn goes Dunham and Dunham calls out Schaebel’s name.
George, are you there?
Schaebel obviously was as being as as quiet as a mouse, and Dunham actually climbed up the ladder, looked around, didn’t see Schaebel and left. And uh, so Schaebel actually survived this. And in the meantime, another ranch hand who had been sleeping in a bunk, had heard all of the commotion, and he tried to escape the premises. Dunham saw him running off and shot him in cold blood with two, with two rounds, and then continued looking for Schaebel and then eventually gave up and left on horseback. And that was when he started heading into town and was spotted by people on the street. And so, At that point, uh, Dunham was now a fugitive. He had committed the murders. Things did not go as he probably originally planned, and he was a fugitive.
Erik: Yeah, it, it’s a really chilling account. In another interesting aspect of this is, is that Dunham murdered in multiple ways in, in a short period of time. He, he snaps his wife’s neck, which seems to be a very intimate way to kill someone. Then he uses a hatchet and then finally a gun. I mean, he was well, well prepared.
Tobin: Yeah. The, the, the pistol was the weapon of last resort. But the method of murder was extremely violent and extremely grizzly. And typically when, uh, if you watch the crime shows like I do. You know, the first thing you learn is that the, the way in which a subject might have been murdered often tells you a bit about the motive of the killer. And in this case, it was pretty clear that there was definitely personal emotions that went into this. It wasn’t just, you know, a random hit he had. He had rage inside of him. The other thing, by the way, Erik, that really interested me about this is the way it was covered in the newspapers, in the book I actually had taken several stabs at describing the events that occurred that night when it finally occurred to me that a better way of presenting that was to actually just share the way it was presented in one of the major local papers, the San Francisco Call, which at the time this was one of the, the Hearst papers, and they were sort of known for their sensationalist journalism and the headlines were all about blood and death and destruction and, you know, it is just very violent. And the way that reporter told that story, it was almost like he was writing a, a screenplay for some sort of a, of a horror film. He just took the reader through it in, in a very detailed way. It was almost horrifying for me to, to read it and transcribe. But that was the way journalism was in those days. And um, I actually included in the books and headlines from other papers across the country and that style of sensationalist journalism was, I guess, predominant nationwide because that was the way it was governed across the country.
Erik: Absolutely. So the sheriff and, and others arrived and as they examined the crime scene, one bit of evidence seemed pretty intriguing. It was a note allegedly left behind by Hattie.
Tobin: Yeah. And we’ll, we’ll never know. You know, there’s a question of did Hattie actually write that note or did Dunham forge that note to throw crime scene investigators off? Um, I tend to think that maybe she anticipated something bad happening, but hadn’t foreseen exactly what was going to happen or when it was going to happen, and she had probably just written that note in sort of a forecasting way.
Erik: It, it was basically a, a, a farewell note.
Tobin: Right. Exactly. Um, you know, the other thing that, uh, that is interesting is that every photograph, every picture of him was removed from the house. So Dunham, I imagine Dunham probably did this. After he had killed the women, but before he, uh, had his encounter with the Colonel and the other two men, and, um, he removed every, every image of himself, presumably so that when investigators came to search for him, , if they came to search for him, wouldn’t have anything to go on, and he overlooked one tiny little tin type photograph of himself. That was probably an oversight on his part rather than deliberate. And so that was all they had to go by. It’s also my assumption that that was a last resort strategy that his plot, when he conceived this days or weeks in, was that his intent was that all the witnesses would be killed and he would be able to show up at the scene and pretend to be as horrified as everyone else. And of course, the resistance that he, he met with the Colonel and with Jimmy Wells kind of foiled that plan. But if it had all gone according to his plan, he would’ve never been a suspect.
Erik: And an important part of that, correct, was that there was one person in that house that he purposely did not kill his infant child, Percy.
Tobin: Yes. And, and as to sort of support the theory that Dunham premeditated this, uh, well in advance. There was actually one anecdotal story told by a, uh, a colleague, somebody that Dunham knew with a legal background, um, that this individual recalled that several weeks before this, this all happened. Dunham had asked him a question about a state law and what would happen , if, uh, if the, uh, trustees and the estate were all killed and the heirs were killed, and all that was left was a, a grandchild who would, who would get control of the, the estate. And it at the time, Dunham asking this, this question, Dunham had framed it, uh, in the context of he intended to. State law, and this was just an interesting question. He was interested in learning, and so the relevance of that question to the individual who answered it to Dunham really didn’t sink in until after the murders occurred then. Then it became apparent there was a different reason for Dunham ask, asking that question.
Erik: Right, exactly. Right. Uh, there were, as you’ve said, um, there were clues that suggested that this was premeditated. Coldly and calculatedly planned. He, he did some suspicious things in the days and hours leading up to the murders, including withdrawing a large amount of money from the bank.
Tobin: Yeah. Yeah. He went through a lot of money in the bank. Um, he, uh, uh, normally would, would leave his books at the university, uh, at the end of the day or at night if they weren’t needed. And the day before he, he brought all of his. Books home. Um, he, uh, he hit a bicycle near the estate or near the ranch. Uh, that was perhaps, uh, something he thought if he needed to escape quickly, he would have that bicycle.
As it turned out, he, the course escaped on horseback, but, um, there were just things like that that. Clearly indicate that he, he had planned this in advance and had taken some preparatory steps to, uh, to get ready for this. It also appears that he. Was getting nervous. Uh, the day of the event, um, he was seen at a, a saloon where they typically would serve breakfast in these places back in the day, and somebody had run into him and he appeared somewhat distraught, a little bit disheveled.
So in, in addition to all of the calculations and planning, there was also a bit of nervousness that was building up in him in the hours before the murders.
Erik: Right. Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned, uh, the bicycle. Bicycling was a, was a huge fad. A, a, a a craze during this time in American history.
Tobin: Right. It was a huge sport. And, uh, there, there was a, uh, I forgot what the name of what, what you call a bicycle track. I, I know there are bicycle enthusiasts in your audience who know, who know the word I’m reaching for. But there was a bicycle track in the city of San Jose, which is the major city which sort of surrounds the little community of Campbell. Um, there were bicycle teams and bicycle clubs. There were women’s bicycle teams as well as men’s bicycle teams. So it was a big deal, and Dunham was known as not only a very avid cyclist, but also a very skilled cyclist.
Erik: So, so just to clarify it, it appears that Dunham’s plan was to murder everyone at the farm except his son, and then, uh, slither off into the night and then return. Uh, likely with a, with a concocted alibi and feiging shock and grief over the loss of his family, and the family fortune would then fall into the lap of his surviving son. Percy and Dunham would of course, control the Linsey estate, but then when George Schaebel got away, that plan went out the window for Dunham and he in a panic, decided that his only option was, flee.
Tobin: That’s the theory. Yes. If, if he has succeeded as planned, little Percy would’ve been the sole heir to this estate, and as little Percy’s, father Dunham would’ve been the custodian. So he would’ve had full control over that estate and. , all of that, of course, blew up when Schaebel saw what happened and Schaebel survived.
And then it was known that Dunham was the killer and he was now a wanted, wanted man. So instead of being the rich custodian of a very lucrative estate, he was a killer on the run. And pretty much everybody in the state of California was looking for him within about 24 hours.
Erik: Yeah. So who managed, uh, the investigation, the searches? Who, who was in control?
Tobin: Yeah. The, the individual that really carried thee sole responsibility for finding Dunham was the county sheriff. And he very quickly, uh, organized a posse. And one of the, uh, a couple of things happened. Uh, you know, it was, it was known by this time that Dunham was on the run. Um, it was known that, uh, Dunham had headed in the direction of the East Hills, the, uh, the, the what’s known as the Diablo Mountain range, which is where uh, for, if you’re familiar with California, it’s where the, uh, lick Observatory is. And so he was known to be up in those hills, but they, they obviously didn’t know exactly where. In terms of organizing a posse, first of all, you can just imagine the shock and horror that this little town experienced.
Nothing like this had ever happened, so there was. Just a lot of emotional, uh, desire among probably a lot of people to want to catch him and, and bring him to justice. But that was augmented with a lot of reward money that, uh, came together very, very quickly. The very next day, the governor of California offered $11,000 of state money, which. in 1896 was a lot of money. And then a number of local friends, uh, and community leaders and businesses in the city of Campbell and the broader Santa Clara county put up a lot of money of their own as well. So all of that, uh, enabled a, a posse or a search party, if you will, to very quickly mobilize. and they, the point of origin to begin the manhunt was at a hotel in the low foothills of that mountain range.
I mentioned earlier, the Diablo, Mount Hamilton Mountains. And so that was kind of ground zero in the, uh, beginning of the search. Right. And as the search is happening, people are coming forward with reports of having seen Dunham offering clues about the direction he was heading. Yeah. The one thing I should mention here is that if you have ever been to Santa Clara County, when you look up at these hills from the valley floor, they look like very kind, gentle, rolling hills. But when you actually go up on the mountain road that that Dunham himself took up off, took off on, you quickly realized this is extremely rugged terrain. There are steep cliffs and rocky valleys and. Thick underbrush and Manzanita, and it is very difficult to traverse all of that in the hours after the, uh, the murder happened.
He was spot, he was spotted in those foothills and I mentioned he was spotted at a local hotel. He was, uh, walking down the road near the hotel. A couple of, uh, people that, that worked on the property at that hotel saw him. One of them actually recognized him as James Dunham. . And at the time of that encounter, um, Dunham didn’t know if they were aware of what he’d done and they weren’t a hundred percent aware sure that, uh, Dunham was the guy. They did it as well, but they did try to have a conversation with him and stall him, and they were unsuccessful in doing that. But Dunham had asked, had asked them, uh, if they had any, uh, suggestions for the easiest route to get over that mountain range and into the Central Valley of California, which would’ve given him a better opportunity to escape and get lost. They purposely told him to stay off the main road. They, they made up a little fib that, uh, the sheriff was looking for cattle wrestlers and that he might wanna stay away from that. And, uh, they were hoping to kind of send him in in a direction where he’d be easier to find.
That didn’t happen, but it did at least verify for law enforcement that he was in the area. And then it became a matter of – where the area is he, where might he be going, and what is the best way to cover these mountains, um, and keep him confined to a narrow range before it becomes impossible to find him.
Erik: And despite all of their efforts, all of the leads coming in the giant turnout to look for him. By June, it was assumed by many that he was long gone from the area.
Tobin: Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, uh, actually just within 48 hours, perhaps it might have been 72 hours, I’m, I’m not sure my memory is a little foggy on this, but a gunshot had been heard in the, uh, the immediate vicinity.
and keep in mind, Dunham was armed and then hours after that, they actually found the horse that Dunham had been on. So at that point, They knew that he no longer had a horse, and that really raised a question. Had he, um, somehow gotten out of that mountain range area and into an area where he could have, uh, used other modes of transportation to, to get bu. Or did he die in those mountains? And that remains a question that remains unanswered to this day. Although, and maybe we can talk about this a little bit later, but, um, I, I have theories of of my own on that, right?
Erik: Yeah, I, I definitely want to ask you about those. But, uh, you, you bring up in your book, Someone named Paul Mueller, uh, who was accused of murdering his wife and, and stepdaughter in Brookfield, Massachusetts.
Um, I don’t know if you’ve read the book, the Man From the Train by Bill and Rachel James. I interviewed Rachel here on the show a few years back, but as I’m sure you’re well aware from, from doing research in this time period, That in the late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds there, there were a lot of murders by axe happening across the country. And the Jameses believe that Paul Mueller was the serial killer who committed many of these murders. But it’s, it’s interesting that for a period of time, immediately after the McGlincy murders, that some believed that Paul Mueller and James Dunham were one and the same person.
Tobin: There was, there was that, uh, that situation where some people thought they were one and the same.
It was, I think, quickly dismissed. But as the months, the weeks, the months, and the years went by, all kinds of theories, uh, began to surface. There were. Lots of Dunham sightings throughout the United States where people swore they saw him. Uh, somebody thought they saw him in Mexico. Uh uh, others thought they saw him in Massachusetts and in in other states.
There was a situation where some poor fellow in Texas was believed to be Dunham. Apparently there was a very close resemblance to Dunham and his story about he had been arrested for something else, some petty crime in, in some little town in Texas. And his story for why he was in that town didn’t add up.
And that all kind of fueled the speculation that they had their, their guy and the Texas authorities in this little town. They wanted the reward money. So they were adamant that they had found him. And the sheriff of Santa Clara County traveled to Texas to meet this prisoner. And accompanying him was a deputy, uh, who had known Dunham since childhood to sort of help validate, um, whether or not this was in fact Dunham. And they interviewed him and they thought, yeah, he probably is. He probably is the guy. And then, then there was a period where there was a fight over extradition. The Texas authorities wanted the reward money first.
Eventually they got ’em to Santa Clara County and, uh, Uh, lots of people went to the, the county jail to look at him, and half the people that looked at him swore that was James Dunham, the other half who looked at him, people that had known him over the years swore that he wasn’t . And ultimately, um, it was determined that in fact he was not Dunham.
And he, uh, by this time, by the way, this, this, this went on over a period of weeks. This poor guy was sitting in the county jail and he was probably the most hated man in the county until it was in fact determined that he was not James Dunham. And even the district attorney acknowledged he was not James Dunham, and it was the district attorney of Santa Clara County that actually, uh, explained all of this to the judge and urged the judge to release the man, which he did. And by this time the county had, uh, accepted that a mistake had been made, and this guy went from being the most hated man to the, in the county, to a local celebrity . And it turned out, uh, he, he went to the restaurants and people were buying him drinks and giving him cigars, paying his dinner tab. And he was an aspiring vaudeville performer, and they, he even got a job in one of the local vaudeville houses. So it turned out to be a happy ending for that poor guy.
Erik: Right, right. Uh, there were two men correct. That, that had to deal with cases of mistaken identity. Uh, William Hatfield and Charles Krill.
Tobin: That’s correct. Yeah. Yeah. The Hatfield one was the, I found that to be the more amusing, uh, one of the two, but, uh, yeah, that’s right.
Erik: So this was a sensational enough case during its time that even by the 1930s people were still talking about Dunham, right?
Tobin: That is correct. And uh, Erik, I’ll tell you, um, to this day, uh, while all of the players, the people that were alive at the time, of course, are, are long gone, it is still widely remembered.
Um, in fact, When I first, when I finally finished the book and the final manuscript had been approved by the, uh, history press, and I was just waiting for the book to be published, I gave a talk on the book at the Campbell Historical Society, and I gave the, uh, I, I kind of gave the overall contours of the story, told them what happened, and, uh, just to kind of have a little fun with it, um, I said that, That, uh, I, I sort of made a joke.
I said, you know, to this day, Every night, every on May 26th at midnight to this day, the Campbell police gets reports of the sound of gunfire coming from the, uh, McGlincy area of Campbell. There was this pregnant pause and the people in the room were kind of like, ah, gasping and everything.
And I was about to tell ’em, I was just kidding. When this older gentleman sitting in the front row said, oh, those are just kids lighting firecrackers. Well, it, it turned out that this gentleman who, uh, who told me that had lived in Santa Clara County in that immediate vicinity since the 1930s, he had moved, uh, moved from the Midwest as a, as a young man, and he had a best friend that actually lived in the McGlincy home, the McGlincy home was still standing, and he told me of sleepovers where the kids would be afraid to go into the room where, where Hattie slept, and the room where, um, the mother-in-law slept and, and all of that. So those memories, uh, carried forward into the thirties, and that house wasn’t destroyed until sometime in the 1970s.
So as long as that house stood, a lot of the old timers were very aware of its history, what had happened there and the the story around it.
Erik: Have you visited the site of the murders?
Tobin: Yes. In fact, uh, the, the gentleman I’m, I’m speaking to, his name was Howard Kaeding and he’s kind of a legend in his own right. He, uh, was a, uh, a very famous race car driver in Santa Clara County. He raced for, in several decades. He won all kinds of, uh, of awards and, uh, he was kind enough to, uh, invite me to his home and from his house, we walked around. The area where the old McGlincy house had once stood and she, he showed me exactly where the house stood.
He showed me exactly where, uh, Dunham would’ve the, the road that Dunham would’ve taken off on, uh, when he went off on on horseback. So it really helped me visualize what happened that night, um, after the, Right.
Erik: So after reading your book, you know, I kind of came to the conclusion that he, he probably just died while out in, in the elements somewhere, uh, not long after he had started running, maybe suicide. Maybe he died from, you know, hunger and thirst.
Tobin: Yeah, so there are several prevailing theories out there. Uh, there are a lot of people who feel strongly that he made it into, into Mexico, that he somehow slipped out of the hills and, uh, went along the coast and into Mexico. There are other people that think he might have made it to the coast and stowed away on a ship.
Wound up somewhere overseas. There’s another school of thought that believed he made it over the mountain range and into the California Central Valley, where he could have hopped on a freight train or foiund some other mode to move into a more populous part of the county, perhaps the Midwest, and blend in.
My theory is, is what you just stated, and I’ll tell you. You know, the fact that a gunshot was heard and that hours after that they had found his horse, tells us that whether he killed himself or not, he didn’t have a horse. And I have ridden my motorcycle over that mountain range. Dozens of times, and I will tell you, there’s just no way in my mind a human being could possibly make it over those hills. By the way, Dunham didn’t have any shoes. One of the things he had done, he had abandoned his shoes and wrapped his feet in cloth to avoid footprints and tho throw off the hound dogs. So here’s a guy who is an emotional wreck, who is lacking food, who is lacking proper clothing – footwear. I just don’t think it’s possible. He could have made it over the hills and there have been a number of extensive searches for his body and his bones. They’ve never found them. There have been situations where skulls have been found in the area, and various bones, but the fact that there have been extensive searches doesn’t really prove anything in my mind because that terrain is so rugged, so vast, so diverse. It would be impossible to search ever corner of it. So I’m with you. I think that he died up in those hills and that’s the most likely scenario.
Erik: I have been speaking to Tobin Gilman. His book is called The McGlincy Killings in Campbell, California: An 1896 Unsolved Mystery. This has been another episode of the Most Notorious podcast, broadcasting to every dark and cobweb corner of the world.
I am Erik Rivenes and have a safe tomorrow.
