By 1872, William Vansteel had relocated his place of business from the rookery on Water Street where Virgil had bunked to the corner of Washington and Hamilton streets, only a few doors from Jane Haspel's brothel. Given Vansteel's relationship with Virgil, it is not unlikely the saloon owner would have been acquainted with Wyatt as well, or at the very least Wyatt would have looked him up when he blew into town in 1872, putting half a nation between himself and a federal arrest warrant current in Indian Territory. Virgil and Wyatt had been together for much of the year after Virgil left Peoria and returned to his father's Missouri homestead, and the brothers would surely have swapped tales about the characters and prospects in the Illinois River town dear to their hearts.

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Another connection between the Earps and William Vansteel is also possible. The city directory provides evidence that Virgil could be found in Peoria early in 1870. But by May 28 he was in Lamar, Mo., giving his hand in marriage to a teenager named Rosillia Draggoo. Where this young woman came from and what happened to her has proved an enduring mystery in the chronicles of the Earp brothers. It is known she was living in Lamar as Virgil's wife in September 1870, but thereafter she vanishes. By 1873, the year Virgil took up with Alvira Sullivan, the woman who would become his lifelong companion, he was a footloose, unattached stagecoach driver headquartered at Council Bluffs, Iowa. Between January and May 1870, there would have been scant opportunity for him to cull a prospective bride unless she was flowering under his nose all the while.

The maiden name of William Vansteel's wife was Mary Jane Girot. Her mother, Catharine, resided with her in rooms attached to Vansteel's Water Street saloon. Both Mary Jane and Catharine had emigrated from France, as had Rosillia Draggoo. It is possible Rosillia was associated with the Girot family or with Antoine Roehrig, another native of France, whose saloon stood around the corner, on Clay Street. If she were working or living in Vansteel's saloon or in the neighborhood, that would explain how Virgil came to meet her, woo her and spirit her away to Missouri. Whatever Rosillia's circumstances, a Peoria background is not out of the question for her, and the absence of a Draggoo family documented in and around Lamar at this period favors an argument for just such a background. So when Wyatt Earp began his Peoria adventure in 1872, he may have had what amounted to a family connection to William Vansteel and, through the saloonkeeper, secured entree to the house of Vansteel's neighbor and soul sister, Jane Haspel.

There is abundant circumstantial evidence that Sarah Earp, Sally Heckell, Sally Haskell and Sally Haspel are one and the same person. Such a conclusion adds a chapter of more than a little relevance to Wyatt Earp's biography. And it casts light on a shadowy figure who seemingly came into his life shortly after he left Peoria. By early 1874 Wyatt had turned up in the rip-roaring cattle town of Wichita, Kan. Municipal records show that a prostitute using the name Sally Earp operated a brothel with Wyatt Earp's sister-in-law Bessie in Wichita from January 1874 to April 1876. Up to now speculation as to Sally's identity has focused either on an unknown woman or Wyatt's consort-to-be, Celia Ann 'Mattie' Blaylock. However, by January 1874, a Sally Earp had already entered his life, the girl from Peoria he may have known for as long as four years and whose company he kept for most of one year lost to history — Sarah Haspel. As late as September 1872 — little more than a year before Sally Earp first appears on the police court docket of Wichita — she was claiming to be his wife, and the last word on where she and Wyatt were bound was westward, as gunboat skipper John Walton said, '[for] deep water on the Mississippi, where they don't fine decent people, sleeping in their beds at night.'

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