Josephine “Sadie” Earp: Secrets & Lies Revealed

When Josephine “Sadie” Earp (nee Marcus) decided it was time to tell the story of her life in 1937, she had a big problem. Her early life and that of her family were far from ideal, and the way she dealt with such potential embarrassments was to simply wipe them from her story, or invent a more acceptable fictional story to compensate.

- BY PETER BRAND

Sexy Sadie and her shady past have haunted historians for the better part of the last century.Her love triangle between two of Western history's biggest rivals, John Behan and Wyatt Earp, might be the secret Sadie was trying to blot out. Or was she hiding her past as a soiled dove? Compelling new evidence points the way.

Illustration by Bob Boze Bell

She had already tried this method with some success, in helping with the biography of her common-law husband and lifelong partner, Wyatt Earp. The biography was written by Stuart Lake and was published in 1931.

Josephine was a strong-willed and determined woman who managed to have her own name and that of Wyatt’s “wife,” former prostitute Mattie Blaylock, kept out of Lake’s book. This was no small feat, since both women were present in Tombstone at the same time, and they had much in common. The fact that Blaylock ended up committing suicide, accidentally or otherwise, in Arizona after Wyatt had deserted her in favor of the younger and more appealing Josephine, would not have reflected well. Having erased both herself and Blaylock from the pages of Earp’s story, she then tried to use similar tactics in her own memoir.