Many of the Erath area atrocities that were committed were by John Baylor’s scoundrels disguised as Indians and the Patrick Murphy gang were among the worst. A letter was found that implicated Baylor and the Patrick Murphy boys in much of the frontier horse stealing and violence, that was blamed on the Natives. Sam Houston looked into the matter and wrote to a friend that the frontier chaos was originated through “the prejudices of evil and designing persons, who keep up the cry to enable them to better carry on their schemes of robbery and plunder,” In May, 1859, the charismatic Baylor and his core of desperadoes had convinced themselves and hundreds of others that the best policy regarding the Brazos Reservation Indians was not just removal from Texas, but extermination. Baylor and his second in command, Peter Garland, gathered hundreds of vigilantes from the area in Jacksboro under the banner presented by the local ladies: “Necessity knows no law,” and marched on the reservation on May 23, 1859.