. . . “Klingensmith,” Salt Lake Daily
Tribune, Aug. 4, 1881; “A Far-Fetched Assumption,” Salt lake City
Deseret Evening News, Aug. 16, 1881. The Tribune offered some skepticism
to a report that Mormons were involved in Klingensmith’s death and wondered why
they had not done it at a more convenient time. The Deseret News reacted
to a similar report from the Philadelphia News and claimed that no
evidence had been brought forward that proved the body found was Klingensmith’s,
nor was there evidence linking anyone, particularly The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints, to the murder, Juanita Brooks received a letter from
Freda Schofield, a descendant of Philip Klingensmith, Hiko, Nevada, in 1963,
suggesting that Klingensmith may have died of natural causes while living with
Indians in northern Arizona. Brooks,
Journal of the Southern Indian Mission, 161. Also, author Josiah
Gibbs concluded in his writings that Klingensmith may have lived out the rest
of his life with a band of Indians on the Colorado River near Eldorado Canyon.
J. F. Gibbs, Lights and Shadows of Mormonism (Salt Lake City: Salt Lake
Tribune, 1909), 235; Josiah F. Gibbs, The Mountain Meadows Massacre (Salt
Lake City: Salt Lake Tribune, 1910), 40; Backus, Mountain Meadows Witness,
231-35. (Mountain Meadows Massacre: Collected Legal Papers, ed. Richard E.
Turley, Jr., Janice L. Johnson, and LaJean Purcell Carruth, 2 vols. [Norman,
Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017], 2:944 n. 321)