A MURDER RUNS THROUGH IT
Alma Violet Root
Born: February 8, 1965; Last seen: January 1, 1980
Placer County, California, in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, straddles two worlds: that of the largely agricultural Sacramento Valley and that of the mountainous Sierra Tahoe region.
It is of both worlds and of neither.
In 1849, Placer County — one of the eleven counties that would come to be known as “Gold Country” — drew a number of immigrants to mine for gold.
Among those immigrants was a Canadian by the name of Richard H. Barter, aka “Rattlesnake Dick.” Unable to make an honest living, he turned to horse rustling. He was convicted and sentenced to a year in San Quentin for his thieving. When he left prison, he vowed to never go back and joined an outlaw gang where he refined his criminal ways. His crime spree continued unabated for more than half a decade.
Finally, in July of 1859, his life of crime came to an abrupt end. He had escaped, wounded, from a gun fight, but must have realized he was going to be captured. He shot himself in the head, thus evading both justice and prison.
To this day, Placer County retains the air of its wild west “gold fever” past, and this was the world into which Violet, as she became known…
