Cold-Blooded Conman

Greedy Louis Eytinge made Arizona Territory shudder over his psychopathic crimes.

- Leo W. Banks

Perhaps the most cold-blooded conman early Arizona ever knew, Louis Eytinge suffered from tuberculosis and had two months to live.

He should’ve died unknown, another bankrupt soul in a rugged land struggling to emerge from its frontier past.

Yet upon entering Yuma Territorial Prison in 1907, a place where, Ohio papers claimed, “weaklings died and the strong men went mad,” prisoner No. 2608 made a remarkable comeback. 

By 1922, he was celebrated nationwide. 

He ended up in prison after a picnic with boarding house roommate John Leicht resulted in the barber’s decomposing body being found in the desert, along with chloral hydrate, chloroform and an “E”-embroidered handkerchief. Louis reportedly laced Leicht’s whiskey with chloral hydrate (knockout drops) and held a chloroform-soaked hanky over his face to steal his money.