The incidents grew more frequent and more violent. The Silver City Enterprise, reported on June 8, 1883: ‘Warren Earp, one of the most quarrelsome of the Earp brothers, recently got into a shooting scrape at Colton, California — with a Mexican named Belarde. The Mexican was arrested.’ The San Bernardino Index later reported that Warren attacked a waiter in a restaurant and cut him with a broken bottle. That time he was arrested and fined $25.00. On February 27th, 1885 the Enterprise said that Warren was arrested for’shooting his partner’ but did not give details or what came of it.

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After that incident, Warren seemed to have stayed out of trouble for a while. No doubt he was encouraged to keep his nose clean by his father and his brother Virgil, who was now a lawman again. Warren tended bar at his father’s saloon and drove a coach. He was not mentioned in any newspaper reports until August 26, 1893. The Weekly Chronicle reports that ‘during Virgil’s absence,’ Warren Earp stabbed a man named Steele in the back. The man survived and Warren was acquitted.

The stabbing may have been too much for Judge Nicholas Earp. He apparently sent Warren packing. The wayward son took an unnamed woman with him. They were in Yuma, Arizona Territory, late in 1893, even though there was apparently a warrant for his arrest for murder and there were still people who wanted the Earps dead. Soon after their arrival in Yuma, the woman left Warren. Warren blamed their separation on a professor Bahrens. On November 9, 1893 Warren at first threatened to kill the professor and throw him off a bridge. But then Warren said that if Bahrens paid him, he would spare his life and leave town. Bahrens paid up, so Warren let him go. Warren was soon arrested for attempted murder, extortion and disturbing the peace. Unable to make bail, he was jailed. On November 25, he was tried. The attempted murder charge was dropped due to a technicality; he was fined on the other charges and made to promise that he would leave town.

Warren drifted for a while until he arrived in Willcox, Arizona Territory on August 3, 1894. He registered at the Willcox House and went looking for an old friend of the family, Colonel Henry Clay Hooker; the president of the Cattlemen’s Association. Hooker owned a huge ranch called Sierra Bonita in the Sulphur Spring Valley, not far from Willcox, as well as a smaller place, called Hooker’s Hot Springs in another part of the state. Hooker put Warren to work as a detective for the association and provided him a place to live.

Warren’s only noted brush with the law during that period came in 1896, when he took a $20 bill from a Monte table and was jailed for eighteen days for petty larceny. He was still working for Hooker in 1900, the year of his death. The true reason for his death may never be known. There are two accounts of events leading to it, both by supposed eyewitness.

One account was recorded by a reporter named E. F. Schaff on July 31, 1971, and was based on an interviewed with 94-year-old Bill Whelan, Sr., who claimed to have been a Hooker cowhand and a friend of Warren’s. Whelan, whose father had been a foreman at the Sierra Bonita, said that he, Warren and several ranch hands came into Willcox on July 4, 1900 to celebrate the holiday. They were joined by workers from Hot Springs, including Johnny Boyett and a lady friend, Mary Sweeney. Warren asked her to ‘quit’ Johnny and join him. She refused, and Warren and Johnny argued. Warren challenged the other man to a duel, but Boyett seemed willing to let it pass, blaming the ‘fuss’ on all of them being drunk.

On July 6, Warren Earp, Bill Whelan and others had gathered for a drink before going back to the ranch. When Johnny Boyett came in, Warren jumped up and said ‘Johnny, get ready, we’ll fight it out.’ Being unarmed, Boyett went to the Willcox House, got the owner’s gun and returned to the saloon. Warren wasn’t there. Boyett went to the bar and propped his elbow on it with the gun pointed up. When Warren entered, he lunged for Boyett, but Boyett shot him dead. It was judged self-defense. Warren, according to Whelan’s recollection, was buried on the day he died. Whelan added that Boyett soon disappeared.

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