86 Years Ago
The January 4, 1940 Colorado Transcript included an article about an ongoing legal dispute. The previous September, three high school boys had been hunting rabbits on North Table Mountain. They encountered Calvin Phillips, a local “hermit” (as the Transcript termed him), who shot twice at them and attempted a third shot. One of the boys was shot through the wrist and one received a bullet in the base of his spine. Phillips aimed at the third boy, but his gun failed to fire. He collected the boys’ hunting rifles and left.
Calvin Phillips was a local figure of dread. It was well-known that he had been found guilty of murdering his father-in-law in 1908 and had served time in the penitentiary. Settling afterwards on North Table Mountain, he was famous for threatening to shoot picnickers and rock-hunting geology students.
The boy with the wrist wound ran to 44th Street to flag down help. The unwounded boy carried his unconscious companion down the mountain. A passing motorist drove them to Golden, where a doctor rendered first aid and sent them to St. Anthony’s Hospital.
The Sheriff was called. He determined that the boys had not, and had never been, on Phillips’ property. Phillips was arrested and charged with assault for shooting the boy with the wrist wound. A jury found him guilty and the judge sentenced him to six months in the county jail.
The Sheriff’s Department delayed making charges regarding the boy shot near his spine. The severity of the charges would depend on whether he was permanently injured.
Investigators determined that the same bullet had injured both boys–first passing through a wrist, then lodging in the other boy’s hip. Phillips’ lawyer filed a motion that he could not be charged for the second wound. Since both were caused by the same bullet, and he had already been tried for that shot, he claimed that would be double jeopardy. The court agreed, so Phillips escaped punishment for the more severe crime.
The Transcript had particular interest in this case, because the boy who was shot through the wrist was Fleet Parsons, Jr.–the son of the Editor and step-son of the Publisher/Owner.
Doctors were never able to remove the other boy’s bullet because it was lodged too near his spine. He suffered continual pain. Three years later, while visiting at the Parsons’ house, he killed himself with a bullet through the head. He was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery. Calvin Phillips, the man who shot him, lived until 1960 and is buried in the Golden Cemetery.
