In the rough-and-tumble mining town of Sunrise, Wyoming, in 1910, shots rang out one Easter Sunday, gunfire that would change the destinies of two families.
Gus Panos, a Greek immigrant who was working at the mines, was just 24 years old at the time. He was part of a wave of immigrants who came to America to work at the Sunrise Mine. He’d been told a man could make a decent wage there and build a future for himself.
Panos couldn’t speak English yet, or at least not very much. With it being a holiday, he was celebrating just a little bit. Sunrise was a dry town, but not far away was Hartville, where a man could easily partake of any vice he wished, as well as all the liquor anyone could want.
So, there was Panos, back from his Hartville binge, drunkenly celebrating away, guns literally a-blazing. The young man fired five or six wild gunshots into the ground, eyewitnesses Joe Rampo and Tom Economy would later tell police.
Not that either man paid it much mind. In those days, the explosive report of guns going off wasn’t uncommon. It was sport, nothing more.
Until, that is, one of Panos’ bullets missed the ground.
That Stray Bullet
The stray bullet crashed instead through the windowpane of a nearby boarding house where a group of men were playing an illicit game of poker. That was another activity not strictly legal in Wyoming at the time, but which was also largely ignored.
Among the poker players was Riccardo Severini, a well-respected Italian and an officer in the Dante Alighieri Society, a civic society named after an Italian poet.
When he unexpectedly slumped over the table, the cards in his hands scattering, Severini’s fellow poker players didn’t realize what had happened at first. Then reality sank in. Their friend had been shot in the head by someone outside.
Within an hour, their good friend Severini was dead, and by the end of the day Panos was in police custody, accused of no less than murder.
Shaped By Family Legends
Dave Walsh lives in Seattle but is the great-grandson of Severini with roots that run deep in Wyoming.
The Severini shooting shaped his family’s destiny, and he has grown up hearing stories about the tragedy.
While newspaper accounts at the time suggest Severini was at home eating Easter dinner with his family, Walsh has long known the shooting didn’t happen at the family’s home in Sunrise.
Walsh believes the story in the newspaper was probably related to the fact gambling in Wyoming was illegal at the time, making a game of poker a bit questionable for prominent citizens of what was then a company mining town.
But until recently, the whole idea of Sunrise as a real place was a rather abstract concept in his mind.
Then one spring he visited some distant cousins who’d just returned from visiting Sunrise, with photographs and memories galore.
Suddenly, it occurred to Walsh that this was a real place in the world, a real place where a defining moment in his family’s history happened that he could himself visit.
Sunrise has long since been abandoned, but while on a business trip to Denver, Walsh reached out to its owner, John Voight, to see if a visit was possible.
Not only did Voight offer to take Walsh on a private tour of Sunrise, he asked Walsh to come to nearby Hartville and talk about all the family legends surrounding the tragic accident that killed his great-grandfather, Riccardo Severini.
John Voight, right, listens as Dave Walsh talks about his research into the shooting death of Riccardo Severini. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
From left, Dave Walsh, John Voight and former Sunrise resident Ray Mansoldo pose in front of the water-filled glory hole at the abandoned mining town of Sunrise. Voight took Walsh on a tour of what remains of the town for research he's doing on his great grandfather Riccardo Severini's shooting death in 1910. (Courtesy Photo) 
The grave of Riccardo Severini in Hartville, Wyoming. The fence was made by a family member who had been a blacksmith in Italy. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Told And Retold
While the town of Sunrise is no more, the Severini shooting has long been part of the area’s history. It’s a stunning crime that has been told and retold by old-timers of the community.
Voight took Walsh around Sunrise for the day, telling him what’s known about the town’s history and showing him where his parents would have lived. He had a photocopied historical photo as a guide, where some of Walsh’s family members had drawn arrows marking both the Severini home and the place where Severini was shot.
“From that, it has always been pretty clear that he was not at home when he was shot,” Walsh said. “They’re in two very different places in Sunrise.”
The boarding house where Severini was shot is no longer standing, Walsh added, but for him to be able to stand where it used to be, and to stand where his great-grandfather was killed, was an emotional moment.
“And to visit the graveside of my great-grandfather, and then my grandmother, whose ashes are scattered above Sunrise,” he said. “That was, you know, pretty meaningful.”
A Real Community
Walsh has spent a lot of time lately going over spidery handwriting on dusty documents confirming and piecing together a dramatic tale that is his family’s own dance with destiny in the New World.
That has meant teasing apart a little bit of untold Wyoming history as well.
“One of the most surprising things was how quickly my relatives and the Italians there in Sunrise organized into a community,” Walsh said. “You know, it was very quickly after they arrived that they formed the Dante Alighieri Society.”
Dante Alighieri was a noted Italian poet, writer and philosopher whose countrymen considered him the equivalent of Shakespeare.
Severini served as the group’s secretary and took all the notes for the society.
The group’s over-arching purpose was to provide a form of self-insurance for its Italian members. The mining company provided no insurance policies at the time, and there was no such thing as sick pay. Thanks to the group, along with a similar Greek organization, Severini’s widow was given money to help her get herself and her four children through the tragedy, as well as help with funeral expenses.
The Ledger
Walsh has obtained copies of that ledger, which he’s been going over year by year and line by line.
“I don’t read Italian, but I can recognize words, and I can certainly type stuff into Google,” he told Cowboy State Daily.
One of the interesting lines he’s spotted there following the infamous 1914 Ludlow Massacre in Colorado, includes the English word “scabs.”
About 10,000 miners had been on strike since September 1913, protesting low pay and living conditions in Colorado coalfields.
As tensions built, violence escalated. On April 19, 1914, the National Guard encircled the Ludlow camp, deploying a machine gun on a bluff overlooking the strikers. Later the night, the troops soaked tents in kerosene, setting them ablaze.
In all, 25 people were killed, including 11 children and three National guardsmen. Eventually, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sent federal troops in to restore order.
The entry in the Dante Alighieri records, in his great-grandfather’s own handwriting, with the word “scabs” suggests the entries could shed light on that period in history, with further translation.
“There was definitely some sort of labor disruption, you know, in Sunrise itself,” Walsh said. “So, I’m going to try to unravel that, but the register itself is probably a good source of information about, you know, what daily life was like and how things were going.”
The Ludlow Riot is part of what inspired John D. Rockefeller, who was a part owner in Sunrise, to build what is Wyoming’s first YMCA, and to make a number of other improvements at the company mining town.
Another trip that Walsh is planning as part of his effort is to Sassoferrato, Italy, which is about 110 miles north of Rome. That was the Severini hometown.
“It wasn’t a wealthy area of Italy, and it’s pretty off the beaten path,” Walsh said. “But so, the ship manifest shows he came over with other folks from Sassoferrato, and they were joining their cousins and brothers who were already there.”
Gus Panos, a Greek immigrant, left, who was convicted of shooting Riccardo Severini while drunk. Right, officers of the Dante Alighieri Society. Riccardo Severini is in the upper left corner. (Courtesy Dave Walsh) 
A 1922 photograph of Teresa Severini a dozen years after Riccardo's death. She had become a leading midwife in Denver's Italian community. (Courtesy Dave Walsh) 
Potocopy of a historical photo annotated by family members showing the Severini home and the location of Riccardo Severini's shooting. (Courtesy Dave Walsh)
Lamplighter Scandal
One of the family legends Walsh will try to sort out is the story of why Severini came to the United States.
Sasso (which means rock) and ferro (which means iron) seems like it might be a clue as to why Severini might have ended up in an American town mining iron ore.
Online tourist descriptions of the Italian town of Sassofferrato located near the Appennine Mountains, however, don’t mention any particular mining history.
Family stories, meanwhile, offer a different rationale than mining history for the Severini family coming to America.
Severini had gotten one of his friends a job as a lamplighter. This was a time period when streetlamps were oil, requiring someone to manually fill and light them each day.
Evidently, Severini’s friend was cutting the oil with water to skim money from the city. This was discovered when some of the lamps sputtered and went out.
The friend was fired and, in the scandal that followed, mortal violence was even threatened.
“My gut tells me I don’t have the full story on that,” Walsh told Cowboy State Daily. “From family relatives, I’ve been told he (Walsh’s great-grandfather) was in the Italian Army as, like, an aide de camp. And after his friend was fired, there was bad blood between him and his former friend, and you know, there was violence threatened. So maybe Riccardo just said it’s time to have a new chapter.”
On the other hand, the way the family stories have been told, it seemed like there could have been some urgency to the journey to America.
“His (Severini’s) eldest daughter had severe pneumonia, and she stayed behind and came over a year later,” Walsh said. “So I don’t know, if I had a kid who had pneumonia, I probably wouldn’t, I’d probably wait until she got better. So does that bespeak some sort of urgency?”
A Chance Encounter Of The Strange Kind
Another of the mysteries Walsh is trying to unravel is a family legend he’s heard many times of a chance meeting his great-aunt believes she had with Gus Panos later on, in either Denver or California.
After the shooting, Panos was delivered to Wyoming’s state penitentiary in Rawlins. He was paroled May 24, 1913, and spent some time working in Rock Springs. He was finally discharged Nov. 2, 1918.
“She said he showed up as the milkman in front of her house,” Walsh said. “And you know, she was horrified. She was incensed and horrified, and she chased him down the street, yelling, ‘You killed my father!’”
Walsh has verified through court and prison records in Wyoming that Panos had indeed been released during that time frame, so the story is possible.
But he’s also discovered there are a lot of men named Gus Panos in Denver, California and Wyoming — so many it has been impossible to nail down exactly where Panos ended up after his release from prison in Wyoming.
One thing that Walsh is glad about is that Wyoming commuted the sentence of Panos to a minimum of three years instead of 10.
“I don’t think this was premeditated at all,” Walsh said. “It was a completely tragic criminal act of negligence. He was like 24, and he ruined his life in the short term. I’m not happy that my great-grandfather was killed, of course, but it’s not right to not give someone due process, and he couldn’t speak English.”
A Happy Ending
Ultimately, Walsh feels that his family’s story in America arrived at a happy ending despite the tragic circumstances the early years that could have crushed the family and sent them back to Italy.
Severini’s wife, Teresa, had studied medicine at an early age in Bologna, and that proved beneficial as there was a great need for midwives in Denver. She quickly found a respected place there, and helped deliver many babies in America, bringing life into the world after what had been a horrible tragedy.
“At some point, I’ll see if I can get her license from the Colorado Department of Health, to see if that sheds light on anything,” Walsh said. “Colorado is pretty strict in terms of accessing records. You have to prove you have a mature direct relative, and you have to have a lot of documentation to prove why you have a reason for it.”
It could be difficult, but it’s just another step Walsh feels compelled to take, because sometimes it’s not enough to just know the history. One wants to feel it as well.
“My parents have both passed, my one sister has passed,” Walsh told Cowboy State Daily. “I have just one sister left. And I don’t know whether it’s all of that, or you know, you get to a point where you just want to know more about your origins.”
And that one single moment, when destiny changes all in the blink of an eye, for better or worse.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
