A 1910 quarrel over a dog reached President Wilson's desk

The Dog Bite Murders was made in 2025 by two filmmakers in the Arizona town where its story happened, and it retells a 1910 killing that began with a quarrel over a dog and ended with a reprieve from President Woodrow Wilson. The case turned on a legal question: whether the crime took place on Indian reservation land. The answer moved it from a territorial court to a federal one and turned two life sentences into death sentences.

The film is a Western drama about two former soldiers accused of murdering two hunters in Arizona Territory, and the defense lawyer who takes their case. It was written, directed and produced by Clint Clarkson, a cinematographer and audio engineer, and Gregory Shoemaker, a resident of Globe, Arizona, who is also a history enthusiast. The filmmakers say they worked from court records and newspaper archives of the period.

What happened at the stage station in 1910?

In September 1910, two Globe men, Fred Kibbe and Alfred Hillpot, went deer hunting and camped at an abandoned stage station about 45 miles from Globe, near Fort Apache. Two former cavalrymen, William Stewart and John Goodwin, who went by the name James Steele, were staying there. The hunters were found dead the next morning.

The accused claimed self-defense in a quarrel that, in the accounts that survive, began when Stewart's dog bit Hillpot and Hillpot kicked it. Evidence at trial pointed instead to robbery: the men took the hunters' horses and belongings and fled.

Why does a car appear in a 1910 manhunt?

Sheriff J.H. Thompson of Gila County chased the pair for six days. The Arizona Daily Star reported at the time that a car belonging to a man named M.L. Naquin played a major role, and that the killers would likely have stayed at large without it. They were caught near Adamana, a railroad stop in northern Arizona. The sheriff then brought them back to Globe by automobile, to avoid a mob that was threatening a lynching.

The film restages the chase. The crew says it found an old Model T Ford to stand in for the real car, and it shot at the real sites in Globe, including the 1910 jail and a train depot.

How did a quarrel over a dog reach the president?

A territorial court tried the two men separately in 1910 and sentenced each to life in prison. Then it was argued that the killings happened on reservation land, which put them under federal jurisdiction. Thomas Flannigan, the men's defense lawyer, is a character in the film. The men were retried in federal court and sentenced to death.

Wilson granted a 60-day stay of execution to Goodwin. By one account the telegram reached Globe minutes before the scheduled hanging, and the stay expired without further action. Goodwin was hanged in Globe on May 13, 1913, and Stewart on May 29, 1914. A newspaper account at the time called Goodwin the first man hanged in Arizona under federal authority.

A fight over a dog is a small thing. Where it happened decided which court heard the case, and what the sentence was.

How did the film get made?

It began as a plan for a short film before growing into a feature. It has won Best Feature at the Show Low Film Festival, Best Cinematography at the Zions Independent Film Fest and Best Score at the IFS Film Festival. It is a local project about local history, made where the events took place.

It is one of more than 500 Westerns on Relay, and it streams in 249 countries. It suits viewers who like Westerns grounded in documented events, and anyone curious about how frontier justice worked in the last years of Arizona Territory.

Western