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Tucker, Chick

Coroner of Hallelujah, New Mexico Territory in 1876.[1] (January 12, 1820 – April 2, 1894)[2]

Appointed Oliver Poole to the office of Coroner.[1]

In September of 1876, Tucker led a posse from Hallelujah to neighboring Elbow Bend on the trail of Cliff Sharp, who had just robbed the Hallelujah Wells Fargo office and killed its clerk. The posse arrived in Elbow Bend in the middle of the night, after Sharp had placed incriminating evidence of the crime in Bret Maverick's hotel room. Tucker and the posse found Bret asleep with the evidence, arrested him and brought him back to Hallelujah for trail. Sentenced to hang for Sharp's crime, Bret was appealed to by the town council to reveal the location of the stolen money before he was to be hanged. Once the council left, Tucker began to coerce Bret into revealing the money's whereabouts and devised a scheme with Poole to allow Bret to survive the hanging and set him free afterwards if he were to show Tucker and Poole where the money was hidden. Bret managed to escape, forcing Tucker and Poole to pretend to have buried Bret. When Molly Sharp arrived in town claiming to be Bret's widow, Tucker and Poole tried to convince her to leave the body buried in Hallelujah so their plan would not not be revealed. Molly convinced them that the name of Bret Maverick was merely an alias her husband, Cliff Sharp, had used, and it was he that they had actually hanged and buried. After Bret killed Sharp in self-defense in Santa Fe and returned the stolen money to Hallelujah, Tucker and Poole's subterfuge was exposed and they were jailed for scheming to keep the stolen money for themselves. Tucker lost his job as sheriff[1] and was sentenced to five years in Missouri State Prison.[2]

See: The Day They Hanged Bret Maverick