A local author is revisiting a 120-year-old cold case in his new book about the unsolved murders of six members of Campbell’s McGlincy family.
Tobin Gilman’s “The McGlincy Killings in Campbell, California: An 1896 Unsolved Mystery” is scheduled for release Jan. 15.
While the 60-year-old Almaden Valley resident didn’t grow up in Campbell, he does have a tie to what is now known as McGlincy Street.
“In the ’70s and early ’80s my dad actually owned a building on the corner of Union and McGlincy,” Gilman said. “I would go down there on weekends and do landscape maintenance. McGlincy was just another street name to me at that time.”
It wasn’t until 2013 that Gilman learned about the mass murders at a luncheon hosted by the California Pioneers of Santa Clara County. Paul Bernal, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge and historian, was the guest speaker and detailed what is believed to have happened on May 26, 1896.
According to the account, James Dunham is believed to have murdered his wife, Hattie Wells Dunham; his brother-in-law James Wells; his mother-in-law and her husband, Ada Wells McGlincy and Col. Richard Parran McGlincy; and servants Minnie Schlesser and Robert Briscoe. The lone survivors were Dunham’s weeks-old son Percy and a ranch hand.
“I guess it was right then and there, there was an idea for a book in the back of my mind,” Gilman said of the judge’s account.
During his research and first draft process, Gilman categorized newspaper articles and any information he found about the family, whose members were prominent residents of the Orchard City. He said the book is less about the murders and more about the build-up and fallout from the massacre.
“What I (wrote about) was less about every little detail that came out in the newspaper, but more about the things that happened before and after,” Gilman said. “I set out not just make it a good read and a fun read, but to really bring in what it was like in the Santa Clara County at the time this all happened.”
The book includes parts of Campbell’s history at the turn of the century, theories of what may have provoked the killings and the manhunt that never led to Dunham’s capture. Dunham’s family also faced repercussions, the book details.
Gilman is no stranger to nonfiction writing. He is the author of “19th Century San Jose in a Bottle,” a book about commerce and daily life in San Jose told through glass bottles used by pharmacies, breweries and purveyors of food and drink products. The inspiration came from his collection of antique glass bottles.
