William C. Clifton, a cowpuncher on the Diamond L Ranch known as "Diamond L Slim," shot and killed John W. and Luella Foster Church in the Churches' homestead cabin on Porcupine Creek on March 15, 1903, during a quarrel over money he was supposed to have invested in a joint cattle venture. He tied their bodies together with rope and carried them two-and-a-half miles on a horse to Big Draw Gulch, where he buried them. After the couple's disappearance alarmed local herders, Slim, known to be the last person to see them, was arrested in Gillette on April 7 on suspicion of murder and was quickly sent to the jail in Newcastle to prevent a lynch mob from forming in Gillette. He confessed in the Newcastle jail on April 18. During President Teddy Roosevelt's visit to Newcastle amid the tension over the murders, authorities, fearing a lynching, temporarily moved Slim to a jail in Custer, South Dakota, until the president left. Around midnight on May 27, armed vigilantes stormed the Newcastle jail, seized Slim at gunpoint, took him to the bridge on the main railroad track to the Cambria Mining Company, and hanged him with such a long rope that he was decapitated instantly. According to legend, the town undertaker reattached Slim's head backwards, and his body was displayed in the window of a local hardware store before burial.