When Strong returned, Neville and Crumley were arguing. ‘Don’t curse that man,’ Strong told Crumley, ‘He’s my father-in-law.’ Crumley took a swing at Strong, who instinctively reached into his back pocket for his gun. After a short struggle, Sam returned the gun to his coat pocket. The men went to the bar and shared a bottle of wine. The arguing continued, though, and the gun reappeared in Sam’s hand. Sam’s friends convinced him to put it away again.

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Crumley headed to the cigar case as the group made their plans to leave. In the nearby front window stood a desk and a safe. Beside the safe was a 10-gauge shotgun. Strong, Neville, Prentiss and Fitch finished their drinks and walked toward the front door. They rounded a large cedar post and found themselves facing Crumley. A shotgun rested against the gambler’s shoulder, and the barrel was pointed squarely at Strong. Crumley pulled the trigger. There was no saving Sam, who died two hours later at Neville’s house.

Following an inquest and brief trial, Grant Crumley was acquitted of murder. The jury believed his claim of self-defense. Reports that Strong’s gun had fallen to the floor and that his father-in-law had scooped it up were too difficult for the jury to ignore. The question of whether it had fallen from his coat pocket or his hand was asked but never answered. The jury agreed that his earlier behavior indicated his intent to harm Crumley. But unanswered questions still cast shadows around what happened in the Newport Saloon that fateful August morning nearly 100 years ago.

Following Sam Strong’s death, Regina Neville Strong remained in Denver. His bride received half the estate, while the other half was split between his two children. His first wife, Rebecca, sued the estate but was not successful. Sam’s brother William became the children’s guardian and oversaw their finances until they were of age. Strong’s suit against Nellie Lewis was waiting on appeal at the time of his death. Regina approved the payment of $50,000 to Lewis after Sam had been buried. During the next few years, Regina traveled to Siberia, Mexico and Hawaii. It wasn’t until she was 39 that she remarried, nearly 20 years after Sam’s death. The press that had hounded her when her husband died continued to do so, and she refused to speak to anyone about him.

Nellie Lewis married a streetcar conductor five years after Sam Strong died. They left Colorado Springs a few years later, their whereabouts unknown. Attorney J. Reid Crowell died in Colorado Springs in 1904 from alcoholism. Grant Crumley stayed in Cripple Creek for another couple of years but headed to the Nevada mining camps when the next union war threatened in 1903.

An old photograph used to hang in the gift shop at the Mollie Kathleen mine in Cripple Creek. The caption beneath the picture said it was Sam Strong, lying dead on the floor of the Newport Saloon. The picture has appeared in several publications with a similar caption. The alleged dead man does look like Sam Strong, with his thick black mustache and dark hair. But the man doesn’t have any head wounds or facial wounds, and Sam didn’t actually die in the saloon. At some point in the 1970s, the picture disappeared, but it is now part of the Pikes Peak Library District’s Special Collections. The prosecuting attorneys at Grant Crumley’s trial in 1901 produced that picture and perhaps two others, but the photos were never allowed into evidence. The Strong look-alike lying ‘dead’ in the one photo is seen standing in another.

Many millionaires of the Gilded Age left legacies throughout Colorado. Foundations and buildings are named after them. Not Sam Strong. The shack he once lived in is now a pile of rotted boards. His mine is all that remains. It stands above Victor, Colo., looking down on the town like a silent sentinel forever on guard.

This article was written by Angel Strong Smits and originally appeared in the August 2001 issue of Wild West. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Wild West magazine today!

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