" Deadman's Bar Murders" by Lily Steinberg

In late spring of 1886, a dramatic event that haunts our town unfolded. Four men, drawn by the call of gold, established a camp on a broad gravel bar along the northern edge of the Snake River. Three of them had traveled together, partners in pursuit of Montana riches that had so far eluded them. They were German immigrants named Henry Welter, T.H. Tiggerman, and August Kellenberger. The fourth, another German named John Tonnar, joined their hopeful enterprise later.

Their partnership was full of desperate hope and hard labor, but the summer proved disappointing. Sometime after, Tonnar abandoned the steady work for a job at a nearby ranch, and the river revealed his secrets. A passing group of rafters made the gruesome discovery. They found the bodies of Welter, Tiggerman, and Kellenberger, barely concealed under the shallow flow of the Snake River.

The scene suggested a frantic struggle, not an accident. Though weighted down with heavy stones, the men's bodies had been partially exposed as the river's volume dropped. The evidence of violence was horrific and telling. Kellenberger bore two gunshot wounds to the back, indicating he was running when he fell. Welter and Tiggerman suffered gruesome blunt trauma that had crushed their skulls, suggesting hits from an axe.

The prime suspect was obvious, and when law enforcement officers tracked him down, John Tonnar did not deny the confrontation. He confessed to the killings, but he defended his crime, claiming self-defense. Tonnar claimed his partners had turned on him first, intending to drive him away and cheat him out of his share of gold that, ironically, was never found. He asserted he had been forced to draw his gun. He said the horrific head injuries on the other two were inflicted postmortem, suggesting they were the result of him rolling the corpses down to the river for a hurried "burial."

Yet the facts raised suspicion about Tonnar's testimony. As historian Caden noted, Tonnar's account "reads as a murder." The jury was asked to believe Tonnar's story even though he never sought help or reported the attack, and was later found in possession of money and a watch belonging to the dead men. The brutality of the deaths, especially the ax wounds and the shot in Kellenberger's back, suggested a calculated kill rather than a frantic struggle for survival.

Many locals and historians still speculate that Tonnar may have murdered the three men in their sleep, perhaps driven by the realization that their gold strike was a failure, or by the escalating "strain in their relationships." The bullet wounds on Kellenberger, the only one shot, hint that he may have been awakened by the initial violence and tried desperately to escape.

The lack of eyewitnesses and the difficulty of the long journey to the trial location in Evanston proved decisive. Despite the compelling evidence of premeditation, the jury ultimately found Tonnar innocent the following spring.

The verdict did not bring peace to the valley; instead, it ignited a sense of injustice. The residents of Jackson Hole were so convinced of Tonnar’s guilt and so dissatisfied with the legal system that the acquittal made people so angry that locals started taking the law into their own hands. This pervasive "distrust of the law" became Tonnar's lasting legacy. Today, the spot where three lives ended over the lure of unmined gold, now preserved within Grand Teton National Park, is forever etched in history as Deadman's Bar.