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The Facts & Mysteries Behind “Baby’s” Divorce From Harvey
The Known Facts:
Baby Doe eventually divorced Harvey Doe claiming adultery, and then later married the love of her life, Horace Tabor, but even her divorce leaves us with unanswered speculations. In her divorce affidavit, Baby wrote:
“I saw my husband the defendant out on the second day of March in the evening go into the house of ill fame of Lizzie Preston’s on Holliday Street in the City of Denver. I went to the door and the woman who came to the door asked me what I wanted. I told her that I had just seen my husband going in and I wanted to follow him. The woman told me that if I came in I would be in a house of ill fame too. I then pushed past the woman at the door and saw my husband in one of the rooms. I then turned around and came right out and went home. Mr. Newman, the policeman accompanied me home. I had no knowledge or even consented to him going there and never thought he would go in such a place...”
Copy of the Court Summons
for the
Baby Doe vs. Harvey Doe
Divorce
The Mysteries:
Horace & Augusta Tabor had relatives and business associates living in Central City at the same time Baby Doe was living there and frequenting the Shoo-Fly Saloon with Jake Sands. It seems unlikely, particularly as visible and well known as Baby Doe had become in Central City, that she had not crossed paths with Horace Tabor long before she moved to Leadville. Horace Tabor was an investor and part owner of the Windsor Hotel in Denver when Baby Doe was also staying there. And coincidentally, that was where she was staying on the same night she caught her husband Harvey Doe, in Lizzie Preston’s house of ill fame in Denver’s red light district just down the street.
Horace Tabor was well known for his associations with known prostitutes like Willie DeVille and Alice Morgan in Chicago, Denver and Leadville. One can only wonder what would have prompted Baby to leave the Windsor Hotel that special night, walk down to the red light district of Denver, conveniently accompanied by a Denver police officer, then stop directly across the street from Lizzie Preston’s at precisely the same time her husband was going in.
Harvey claimed in a letter later to his parents that he had been told by an acquaintance that another man “might be found” inside Lizzie Preston’s who might want to buy one of his mines, which was why he was there in the first place. And was Baby laying the groundwork in her affidavit to deny she knew in advance he’d be there?
Was this all a set-up with Horace and Baby to get rid of Harvey once and for all?