While San Francisco prepared to pay its last respects to James King, the Committee of Vigilance was busy. The executive committee met at six o’clock that morning to reconsider the vote of the day before to execute both James Casey and Charles Cora on Friday and determined to move the hanging to between twelve and two that afternoon while the funeral procession moved through the streets. Both men would be hanged together from the front windows of the committee’s headquarters. Casey and Cora were informed of their fate and the necessary work begun.
Vigilante headquarters
Immediately after the conviction spiritual advisers had been brought in and Father Alemany had spent a good deal of time with both men. At the request of Charles Cora, Abigail Ryan, or Belle Cora as she was usually known, was sent for and a little after eleven that morning she and Cora were married by Father Accoulti in the vigilance committee rooms. It was said the good father had refused Cora absolution until he married her, but it is likely that Belle, who was devoted to the man, wished to wed him as much as he did her. James Casey requested that Charles Gallagher take care of his private papers and had a Daguerreotype of him and city marshal Hampton North taken and given to the marshal. Casey wrote his mother and then John Nugent, editor of the Herald, and pled that he was not guilty of murder or even attempted murder and asked Nugent to clear his name for the sake of his poor mother.
John Putnam is the author of Hangtown Creek, a thrilling saga of the early California gold rush available online from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
