The exoticism that was projected upon the Mormon faithful only intensified after they settled in their Great Basin home. Labels of “Asiatic” and stories of bountiful Mormon harems living along the banks of an American Dead Sea abounded in the national press. Their offer of therapeutic hot springs baths, akin to those of Turkey and the Middle East, to those passing through only served to increase curiosity and embellishment. Ironically, these Biblical parallels were not out of line with the Restorationist faith practiced by Young and others. They sought to restore Biblical law, the law of Moses, to their theocracy in the desert. Along with it came the practices of patriarchy, polygamy as well as the notion of blood atonement, which calls for capital punishment for crimes that are too heinous to be atoned for by the blood of Christ, primary of which is murder.

Both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were advocates of blood atonement, though ideally it would not be practiced as a punishment but instead would be a voluntary act on the part of the sinner to atone for his own crimes. However, Young would come to embrace it as a form of punishment as well, a belief that would come to shape Utahans feelings towards, and practice of, capital punishment. According to both Smith and Young, it was important in cases of blood atonement that blood actually be spilt by the sinner and thus execution via guns or decapitation were often mentioned as preferred methods because, as opposed to methods such as hanging, they caused blood to be spilled. Utah was one of the last holdouts on the use of firing squads for executions, and a bill is currently before the 2015 general session of the legislature to reintroduce its use when lethal injection materials are unavailable. Likewise, decapitation remained in force as an execution method until 1888.

Though the term “blood atonement” makes no appearance in Mormon scripture, the term would appear repeatedly in early speeches given by church leaders, especially those of Young, who would come to advocate for its use in cases not only of murder, but also adultery, miscegenation, and even apostasy. In one 1857 speech, Young states in regards to apostates that, "if their blood had been spilled, it would have been better for them” (Young, 220). Likewise, Young believed that blood atonement should be used in instances of thievery. According to historian B.H. Roberts, Thomas Bullock’s journals record Young stating that "when a man is found to be a thief,...cut his throat & thro' him in the River” (Roberts).

Young’s increasing promotion of blood atonement for a wide spectrum of crimes or sins would lead one to believe that the practice was rampant throughout the territory. However, recorded cases of blood atonement remained rare. There were some widely reported cases, such as Porter Rockwell’s attempted assassination of Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs on May 6th, 1842 as revenge for Boggs’ issuing Executive Order 44, otherwise known as the “Extermination Order,” in 1838, which essentially legalized the killing of Mormons (the order was only rescinded in 1976). More often, his advocacy of its use was typically given lip service by the Council of Fifty, a kind of religious legislature created by Joseph Smith and maintained by Young after the move to Utah, but ultimately ignored in many cases with the Council allowing accused to keep their lives. However, a smaller group known as the Danites gained notoriety as cold-blooded killers who were less reticent to do Young’s bidding. The Danites, which included the “Destroying Angels” Porter Rockwell, Bill Hickman, and Lot Smith, were a Mormon fraternal order turned vigilante group particularly active during the Mormon War and the tensions that followed it. When it became clear that Young was comfortable with the use of deadly force against not only criminals and apostates, but also those deemed enemies of the church, the Danites were believed to be the individuals who took care of the dirty work. Though such accusations never rose above the level of rumor, and Young himself responded to such rumors by saying “Such is all nonsense and folly in the extreme…the wicked slay the wicked, and they will lay it on the Saints,” a unsettling number of murders went unsolved during the territorial period and more than a few were individuals who had recently inspired the ire of Brigham Young (Young, 30).

Among the myriad of petty crimes that took place around the geothermal area north of the city, there are two murders that stand out, both for their place within this legacy of blood atonement, though both are of the unofficial sort that were perpetrated informally and seemed to be largely accepted as just by residents, as well as for the way in which they bookend the heyday and imminent decline of that portion of the city. For all their differences, the murders of both Dr. J. K. Robinson in 1866 and that of Samuel Collins in 1902, both play well into a particular kind of fear of outsiders held by residents of the city and the Mormon faithful during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In  both cases, the murdered man committed crimes – in one case, these crimes were petty and in the  other they were heinous – but whether either was deserving of death is debatable, to say the least. In each case, the victim had infiltrated and/or subverted the dominant culture in some way and paid a heavy price for doing so. More importantly, in both cases, the stories largely disappeared shortly after the murders – one remaining unsolved to this day and the other quietly dismissed with only innuendo offered as explanation. They stand as prime examples of how this area of the city lured outsiders with opportunity but ultimately cost them everything when the tenets of the dominant culture came to bear on their activities.

When the Mormons arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the federal land system did not extend that far west. With no legislation to dictate ownership and distribution of lands, Brigham Young and his fellow church leaders created their own system. On July 25th, 1847 Young decreed "no man should buy any land ... but every man should [have] his land measured off to him for city and farming purposes, what he could till. He might till it as he pleased, but he should be industrious and take care of it." Communal fields and lodgings were established until this allotment system could be determined. Ron Andersen explains the surveying and allotment system they developed as follows:

By August 20, [1847] the survey of Plat A was completed. It included 114 ten-acres blocks, each containing 8 lots. Lots were 10 by 20 rods or 165 by 330 feet (1 1/4 acres) in size. Each block alternated in the way the lots were divided and the houses faced. Only one house was permitted on each lot and had to be 20 feet off the street. Streets were 8 rods (132 feet) wide…Each applicant was assigned property by Heber C. Kimball and Thomas Bullock. Bullock maintained a record of the land distribution. A fee of $1.50 was paid for each lot acquired. Each person's receipt for the land became his deed for the purposes of maintaining his claim and the conveyance of the land in the future. Unmarried men were not given an allotment, but polygamists were entitled to receive one for each family.

Within days the lots in Plat A had been distributed. The desire for land not satisfied, Plat B containing 63 additional blocks east of Plat A was surveyed and readied for distribution during 1848. Plat C was soon added to Plats A and B. In February, 1849, the three were divided into 19 ecclesiastical wards, a bishop presiding over each ward. Under the supervision of each bishop, fences and irrigation ditches were constructed for the benefit of all ward members…

Any disputes which arose as a result of this system of land distribution were resolved by the ecclesiastical authority of the Church.

As noted earlier, the area due south and southeast of Warm Spring would have been part of Plat C as laid out in this system, with James Hendricks acting as both presiding bishop of the nineteenth ward and the caretaker of the bathhouse and the springs. In November, 1853 the federal government extended the land system to the territories of Utah and New Mexico and a surveying district was established in Utah within eighteen months. Not long after, recommendations were made to the General Land Office and the Interior Department that noted large parcel of land were available around the established portions of the city and that their distribution and control conform to federal law. As gentile presence grew in the city, be it from military operations or civilian relocation, so too did the federal government’s interest in the land within the territory. The Organic Act which had created Utah Territory did not recognize any claims to property made by Mormon settlers and lacked any provision for future recognition of these claims (Divett, 7). Territorial representatives used this information as threats to manipulate and frighten Mormons they felt were in opposition to the government or that they simply disliked.

Needless to say, such outright dismissal of the ecclesiastical system established by Young and Pratt did sit well with church leadership or its followers. These recommendations came in the midst of various attempts on the part of the federal government to seize control of the city and of Utah Territory from Brigham Young. The ensuing confrontation with the Buchanan administration, typically known as the Utah War, would result in little coming of these recommendations and the departure of the federally-appointed surveyor from the city (Andersen).

Despite the arrival of a new surveyor general, Col. Samuel C. Stambaugh, in 1859, little became of the prior surveys or their reevaluation by Stambaugh because the federal government was preoccupied with the Civil War. By 1866, a good deal of outsiders’ fear of Utah and its subversive governor turned ex-governor, turned governor again, Brigham Young, had subsided and non-Mormons were heading to Utah for a myriad of reasons. A series of claim-jumping incidents instigated by outsiders began in the fall of that year and a number of public spaces had to be fenced off in order to prevent squatters from gaining access to them. Tempers flared as settlers and squatters squared off around the valley. Brigham Young tried to ease tensions by announcing that, while no claim-jumping would be permitted in the city, newcomers were welcome to claim open land on the condition that they developed it and made it productive (Andersen).

At the same time that these incidents were coming to a head, the original Warm Springs bathhouse and the surrounding area had been abandoned and had fallen into disrepair as another facility had been constructed due south of the first. By this time, the springs had been incorporated into the boundaries of the city along with approximately 80 acres that surrounded it. Despite the prior claims of the city on the land, it was here that Dr. J. King Robinson chose to file a land claim. Robinson had worked as a surgeon with the California Volunteers and arrived in the valley with Patrick Connor’s army in 1861, which had been sent to both quell the Mormon uprising and help guard overland routes during the Civil War. Robinson was discharged in 1865 and viewed the springs area as an ideal space to build a hospital to treat his patients and to establish Utah’s first bowling alley (VanSoolen). In order to show the veracity of his claim, Robinson erected a small shack on the property. According to Louise Pearce, the improvements which the doctor erected were torn down and burned by the police, whereupon Robinson appealed to the federal court for redress” and “Chief Justice Titus decided in favor of the city”(4). Robinson’s affiliation with Connor’s army had won him no fans in the city, and his perceived claim- jumping only made matters worse. The Fort Douglas Museum Archivist details the tragic events that followed his evacuation from the Warm Springs site:

On the night of October 22, 1866, there was a knock at the door and a young man told the Doctor he was needed and to come right away. Grabbing his medical bag he left his home never to return alive. Within blocks of his house he was clubbed and shot to death. It has been said that the famous protector Porter Rockwell wanted that same piece of land but no connection has ever been found between the doctor's death and Mr. Rockwell. His tombstone can be found in the Fort Douglas Cemetery and it reads, "In Memory of Dr. J. King Robinson who was assassinated Oct. 22, 1866, Aged 50 years, Vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord.

The man who knocked on Robinson’s door had insisted that his brother, “John Jones,” was injured and needed immediate attention. No such person could, nor his brother, could ever be found. The crime took place on a typically busy corner of the city near Main Street and 300 South. It was reported that between four and seven men assaulted him, though no witnesses could relay any identifying information and there were no officers near the area at the time as most of the force were either working at or attending a nearby circus that night (Villet, 8). By the time he was discovered, Robinson was already unconscious. More time passed as bystanders tried to find policemen to aid them. Robinson succumbed to his wounds a couple hours later. As news of his murder spread, opinion was quickly split between the Mormon population, who believed it to be a crime of opportunity, while the gentile population pointed to his having not been robbed of valuables on his person as proof that he had been murdered for his offending church officials. Subsequently, Mormons feared that Robinson’s murder would “doubtless be used as argument for the necessity of a larger military force being stationed in or near this city” (“Murder of Dr. Robinson,” 1866). The case went cold almost as quickly as it was opened and remains unsolved. 

Though Robinson was the first homicide victim to be buried in the Fort Douglas cemetery, his case was neither the first, nor the last such incident in the city, nor was it the only time that Porter Rockwell, the notorious bodyguard and “Destroying Angel” for Brigham Young, would be tied to such an event. Rockwell and his fellow Danites, reportedly carried out numerous such crimes, though none ever faced any charges as a result.

                                                                                                                                                                     Dr. Robinson's Grave, Ft. Douglas Cemetery

That Robinson’s headstone should use the word “assassinated” rather than “murdered” highlights the depths of the animosity between Mormons and federal entities. It is all the more telling that the headstone should conclude with the quotation of Romans 12:19, the same verse that was used on the monument built by federal agents for the 147 migrants slaughtered by Mormon settlers in 1857 in what is known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The monument was subsequently torn down on orders from Young. While he stood nearby and watched the deconstruction, he reportedly muttered “It should read ‘Vengeance is mine, and I have taken a little.’” Ironically, a short time after Robinson’s murder/assassination, construction on a new St. Mark’s Hospital would begin only yards away from the property which Robinson had tried to claim.

While Robinson’s murder acts as a high water mark for theocratic response to interference from outsiders in Young’s “Kingdom of Deseret,” another murder that occurred in the Beck Street environs illustrates a final remnant of that theocracy that, like institutionalized polygamy, had started fading from view as the city moved from the 1890 polygamy manifesto delivered by Wilford Woodruff that paved the way for statehood and moved into the early years of the twentieth century.

On March 30th, 1902 the body of a man was found by a group of boys inside a small cave known as Hell Hollow, just north of Ensign Peak overlooking Warm Springs. The man had been stripped naked and his throat had been slit. Blood was everywhere in the cave and rope was found nearby that matched marks on his hands and feet, suggesting that he had been bound at some point during his ordeal. A butcher knife was discovered near the mouth of the cave and small boulders had been piled in its entrance in an attempt to hide the body. With no witnesses nor the man’s clothes or identification, police were baffled by the crime and by the man’s identity. In a bit of sleuthing that can’t help but boggle the mind of a contemporary observer and many of those following the case at the time, the death was initially believed to be a suicide.

                                                     Crime scene photos and headline in Salt Lake Herald. 

It didn’t take long for police to identify the deceased as Samuel Collins, a 65-year old man who lived alone in a small apartment attached to the Wasatka Bottling Works, John Beck’s mineral water company that was attached to his bathing resort. Collins worked as a night watchman there in exchange for board and sold the mineral water on his own to make extra money. He was single and had no family or much in the way of a social life and was perceived as being odd and lonely by those who came forward to the police after his death. In addition, reports quickly surfaced of Collins being entrusted with mining stock owned by others, the profits of which he promptly “lost…on the races between the time he got the stock and the time of his death” (“Sympathy”, 1902). These losses, compounded with other gambling and speculation losses were held up by police as the catalyst for his suicide.

The Salt Lake City police continued to put forward the suicide theory, though few others in the city were buying this notion. Just the day after Collins was identified, the Salt Lake Herald ran a detailed account of the crime scene and its aftermath with a clear undercutting of the suicide theory, stating “the throat was cut evenly by a sharp knife, as if done by some person other than Collins…the mouth of the cavern was completely walled up with stones in such a way that it was practically impossible for this to have been done from the inside…no knife or other weapon was found inside the cave” (“Hell’s Hollow Yields…,” 1902). Other stories quickly appeared detailing that the height of the cave, the speed with which Collins would have lost consciousness, and other details were clearly in opposition to any possibility of a suicide. Other employees of the Warm Springs area insisted that Collins was subject to foul play, noting that he was “reputed to be a miser and to have money concealed somewhere and, second because he appeared cheerful and gave no signs of derangement in conversation” (“Mystery,” 1902). While this reasoning seems a bit suspect by today’s standards, this incident caused uproar in the community and there was a rush by anyone with even a remote connection to Collins to get in on the media attention. A wide array of stories featuring purported meeting with a “strange man and a mysterious woman in a gray suit and a Gainsborough hat” and of a “mysterious couple” breaking into Collins’ home the day after he was murdered started to flood newspaper reports. A Mr. and Mrs. Page, who lived next door to Collins and were the last to see him alive, reported they had seen this couple while Mr. Page also reported he had seen Collins accompany a young man into the foothills above Warm Springs on the day of his death and had also seen him alive the following day while hid corpse was to have been lying lifeless in Hell Hollow (“New Man,” 1902).

While Page’s latter account was clearly nonsense to most, the former account caught a lot of people’s attention. More level-headed observers quickly turned their attention back to the boys who  had discovered both Collins’ body, as well as the butcher knife police believe he used to cut this own throat, which they claim they found either adjacent to the cave mouth or about thirty feet from the cave. However, so many of them had handled it and disturbed the scene, that it was impossible to verify any  of their accounts. On April 3, Collins’ bloody clothes were found buried beneath a boulder about 200  feet from the cave in an area that had already been well searched by police. They believed that  someone had come back in the last couple days to bury the evidence. At this point, there were few believers in the suicide theory remaining. Within about a week of the murder, all attention quickly turned to 14-year old Clyde Felt after the aforementioned Mr. Page was able to identify him as the boy who had gone with Collins into the foothills.

Felt quickly broke down and admitted he had gone with Collins, claiming that he had “been employed to carry a satchel containing [Collins’] personal effects” and that Collins had given him a watch and Masonic charm as payment. Felt said that Collins then departed, claiming he was going to run away to New York and wanted Felt to keep the gifts as “remembrances of him” (“Murder”, 1902). Over the subsequent week, Felt’s story would evolve and change rapidly, implicating a variety of people and motives in the events that took place on March 24th. By April 4th, Felt made a confession that:

Collins told me he was going to kill himself and asked me to pile some rocks in front of the cave where he did it and hide anything that was left outside. I finally consented. I stayed down the hollow half an hour. Then I went back. Took his clothes and hid them behind a rock. I found the razor and a towel in the front of the cave. I wiped the blood from the blade with my fingers, closed it and threw it up a ledge of the cliff. I put the towel with the clothes. After walling up the mouth of the cave I found the collar, necktie and suspenders and shoved them under a rock at the south side of the ravine. I overlooked the shoes entirely. Then I went down the hill and washed the blood off my hands in the ditch beside the road.” (“Told How Collins Died, 1)

Felt was adamant that Collins wanted to die and, though he didn’t feel good about being involved, admitted that the man had “been good to him” and he didn’t want to not be of help either. He admitted that he had encountered some of his friends at the stream behind Warm Springs while he was trying to wash the blood from his hands and arms. When questioned by them about the stains, he told them he had killed a hawk. However, after officers took Felt to the crime scene shortly thereafter – where he was able to corroborate parts of his story by leading them to additional evidence – and he was taken into custody for intense questioning by the sheriff and other officers. Reports of the interrogations note that Felt exhibited “remarkable nerve” during questioning and stuck to his story wholesale, this is until one of the boys in his group, Henry Potts, admitted to officers that Felt had let him in on his secret and that he had been alone in his actions in the hollow.

Felt reciprocated by implicating Potts in the events of that day, which Potts adamantly denied. Under continued pressure from the police, Felt finally gave in and said that while Collins wanted to die, he had not died by his own hand. Instead, he had begged the boys, and then paid them, to take his life and cover up any trace of his disappearance. Felt insisted that, while he had been present, Potts had been the one to cut Collins’ throat. “He took off his clothes and laid down begged us to kill him,” Felt said, “we did not want to, but finally Henry picked up the razor and cut his throat…we pushed him back into the cave and partly walled it up” (“Told How Collins Died,” 1902). Again, Potts refuted all these claims. After a tense encounter where police allowed the two boys to be face to face, Potts presented an alibi for that day that were soon corroborated. At that point, Felt relented and admitted that it was he who had killed Collins, but insisted that he had done so on the man’s pleas that he wanted to end his life.

Clyde Felt portrait in Salt Lake Herald.

On April 8th, 1902 was arraigned in Salt Lake County on charges of murder and detained in city jail. The complaint charges that Felt committed the crime “upon one Samuel Collins, unlawfully, willfully, feloniously and of his malice aforethought” (State of Utah, 1).The population was immediately divided  by these proceedings, with many anticipating the boy going on trial as an adult for what would likely be second-degree murder and others insisting that the charges in and of themselves were miscarriage of justice.

It goes without saying that Felt’s parents were devastated by their son being charged and by news of the events that led up to it. When questioned, they were adamant about the strong character of their son, but went on to attribute his behavior to the somewhat nebulous “great influence that Collins held over the boy” and, in what has to be one of the earliest pin-it-on-the-media defenses, to his “reading of dime novels” (“Cut A Man’s Throat,” 1902). In spite of their concern for Clyde, his parents  did not respond immediately to the outpouring of sympathy the boy’s plight garnered him. Numerous people offered to take care of his bail and to defend him in court. Countless others believed him to be nothing more than an impressionable youth placed in a terrible situation by an adult. For his part,  Clyde’s father asked that sympathetic visitors not express such feelings to Clyde or visit him in jail at all. “I want my son to realize the enormity of his crime and to suffer some punishment for it…a good many men have expressed a willingness to go on his bond, but my idea is to keep him in jail awhile” (“Felt Tells…,” 1902).

As people awaited the announcement of a trial date and further details in the case, the quote from Felt’s parents indicating Collins “held great influence” over Clyde began to garner more attention from the public and law enforcement. Attention to this “influence” was furthered by a moment from Felt’s interrogation where he admitted that “Yes, I believe Mr. Collins had some kind of influence over me…whenever he said for me to do anything, and coaxed me to do it I would obey him. It seemed like I just couldn’t help myself…I hated to meet him because I knew he would want me to do things I didn’t want to do” (Tribune, 4/5/1902). This admission of a long-running relationship with Collins was confirmed by friends of Felt’s, some of whom admitted similar circumstances in their interactions with Collins. While many in city whispered rumors about the dead man, sympathy for Felt increased substantially. Felt’s attorney pushed for dismissal of the trial based on evidence that would be “extremely degrading and disgusting” should his client be subjected to a trial. The papers were less covert in their further treatment of Collins, with words such as “vile” and “repulsive” common. One report that “several boys confessed that Collins was a sexual pervert and had demoralized many of the youngsters in the neighborhood of his home after living there hardly a month” (“Told How Collins Died,” 1902). Reflecting the sentiments of a great many of his fellow Salt Lakers and readers around the country, the county physician stated “that explains everything…the victims, under such circumstances, realize their bondage and it becomes hateful to them…the horror of the deed would not seem so great compared with the horror of the slavery of sin.”

In light of the mounting evidence against Collins, Felt was quickly released on a $4,000 bond and a few days later Judge Morse dismissed the case on the request of the district attorney noting that  public would be best served by “letting the matter drop, rather than airing in court all the revolting details, which would…have an unsalutory effect on the public” (“Felt Case Dropped,” 1902). Clyde Felt was a free boy once again and the officials got their wish as the matter, and Clyde Felt, largely dropped from the public eye.

However, the swiftness with which the case disappeared from view, and the ease with which Felt escaped punishment of any kind, is indicative not only of nineteenth social mores, and the hideous nature of Collins’ actions, but also a nod to the blood atonement history inherent to the Mormon population so dominant in the city. Though never clearly delineated under Brigham Young’s standards, the offense of sexual abuse against a child, combined in this case with homosexual acts, would certainly have qualified as a blood atonement offense. Other details of the account, such as the brutal bloodletting, the notion that Collins subjected himself to the act, and ever Felt’s cleansing in the Warm Springs – ostensibly a practical act, though the baptismal history of the springs were well-established by that point – all suggest a far more ritual quality to Collins’ death. LDS historian Michael documents that the phrase blood atonement was applied overtly to Felt’s case in at least one source, which states “5 Apr., 'Clyde Felt has confessed to cutting the throat of old man Collins, at his request. The old man was a moral degenerate. The boy is a son of David P. Felt.' Grandson of former general authority, Clyde Felt is fourteen. Despite this blood atonement murder, LDS leaders allow [the] young man to be endowed and married in temple eight years later” (804).

However, it is an apocryphal version of the events that occurred that day, which has survived into the present, which most firmly suggests that Collins intended it to be a blood atonement act of sorts, though for his part things went horribly wrong. Descendants of those involved in the case have claimed for years that Collins did indeed request Felt and other boys in his group follow him to Hell Hollow that day. Collins was well aware of the social, legal, and religious implications of his pedophilia and recruited the boys help in putting an end to it. His plan was to have the boys tie him down in the cave and, when his “urges” came to him, they were to castrate him to prevent any further offenses. This would serve the dual purpose of recompense to both his victims and a higher authority, both legal and heavenly. Needless to say, when presented with a vulnerable version of the monster that had tormented them, Felt (and perhaps Potts, as well) took a different course of action, one that would be entirely understandable to both his peers and his community at large. There were vague references to this story, including newspaper reports that Collins asked Clyde "to perform an operation calculated to cure him of his abnormal desires” though castration is never differentiated from death in these reports.

It is unlikely we will ever have confirmation of the actual events surrounding the deaths of either Dr. Robinson or Samuel Collins. The cases have long since closed and the principals involved are long dead. However, both cases remain important instances of the land around Beck Street, much like its waters, acting to undo or overwrite the histories of both its residents and those of the people who they are purported to have offended or violated. Such a critical theological component of the surrounding population bearing itself out in reaction to day-to-day events should come as little surprise. For the Mormons, the “Kingdom of Deseret” was far more than just another chapter in American manifest destiny. It was located on sacred ground and the fact that the cultural history that transpired on that ground is every bit as violent and disruptive as the economic uses of the land or the geologic forces that shape it only served to reinforce the travails that would be necessary to reach a theological ideal.