Gen. Cook was among the first to view the body. Griswold and Patrick were the murderers. So much may be stated here. They early sought to cover up their crime and, like many more enlightened criminals, made the newspapers useful in their work. Coming into Denver that night, they went to the offices of the public journals and told how they had been sent out as special officers to arrest O'Neal on the charges above related, giving the same false names which they had given Justice Taylor, and stating that they had proceeded as far as Brown's bridge with their prisoner when they were set upon by a band of disguised men, who compelled them to deliver over the prisoner at the muzzles of a hundred revolvers. They told how they had pleaded in vain for the life of the prisoner, and how that individual, after quivering and quaking and making a faint denial, had at last confessed the crime. Their prisoner being taken, they had, they said, been compelled to drive on, and were then ignorant of his fate, though they supposed he had been lynched.
The newspapers which told this story the next morning bore a revelation to Gen. Cook. He had kept no track of Griswold and the O'Neal case, supposing that when the supposed detective should find that the charges were unfounded he would drop it and cease his efforts. Furthermore, he was sheriff of the county, and thought he would have known, or at least thought he ought to have known, if any arrest of as much importance as that of O'Neal had been made. But he was totally in the dark. The names of the officers given in the papers were not even recognized, Griswold and Patrick having used their false names in the story.
Mr. Cook began to investigate. His work was soon well under way. He obtained his first clue from Justice Taylor, who related the circumstances of the two men swearing out warrants for O'Neal's arrest and stating that Cook had refused to go and make the arrests. From the justice's description of the two "special deputies," Cook inferred that the two men were Griswold and Patrick.
"A clue and a big one," he soon afterwards told one of his men. "Griswold is the murderer of O'Neal. He gave his wrong name to the justice, and he lied about me. Here is where he began to cover up his tracks. Griswold is the man we want. This newspaper story is all bosh."