130 YEARS LATER

Slain Kentucky Marshal Honored Over A Century Later In Texas

LAPPL News Watch
July 30, 2019

A federal officer gunned down while transporting prisoners through eastern Kentucky was honored at a small ceremony Friday in Texas, more than a century after his death.

Senior officials with the U.S. Marshals Service and judges gathered at a courthouse in Plano, a suburb northeast of Dallas, to present a flag to Russell Wireman's great-great-great grandson, Gary Hulsey.

Wireman, a marshal, was shot in the chest in 1889 during the so-called Moonshine War, but his death until recently has been a lost part of history. The presentation of the folded flag was part of an effort by America's oldest federal law-enforcement agency to recognize officers whose deaths during a particularly deadly period of its history had been obscured by the passing decades.

"We have a saying in the law enforcement community that we never forget," said Richard Taylor, U.S. marshal for the Northern District of Texas. "One hundred and 30 years later, we never forget."