As historian Kathy Leighton has recounted, Torre was shot twice through the window of her saloon during a game of poker in 1915. The killer, supposedly on horseback, escaped without incident as the Bar patrons rushed outside, only to find the long shooter missing. The mystery of the event eventually became tied to the town’s lore, centering on the site of Torre’s Saloon, which is now an unrelated Brentwood restaurant.

The truth, as the newspapers told it at the time, paints a much more complicated story.

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James “Jimmy” Torre was a much appreciated man. Or so people said.

He was considered “extremely popular,” one person reportedly said in the days following the murder. One newspaper went so far as to call him “one of the best-known citizens of the eastern part of the county”. As the owner of Torre’s Saloon and Ice House he was a pioneer of the saloon, and it’s fair to say that most locals either knew Torre personally or had met him on their own trips to his adopted hometown since then. over 25 years.

Given his popularity, it seemed odd that in the first days after Torre’s death on December 13, 1915, police began to speculate that the murder may have been due to a grudge.

But there was also the question of the letter from the Black Hand.

One of the first reports of Torre’s death revealed that a year before the shooting he had received a Black Hand letter. It was the calling card of the Society of the Black Hand, an organization that tried to extort business owners, especially those of Italian descent like Torre. The letters often threatened kidnapping, arson or murder.

The black hand theory was first rejected by the Daily Gazette, which declared that “black hands always avoid killing”.

But the factual evidence, as police presented the case to newspapers, was that Torre was alone in his living room when he was shot twice by an unknown assailant around 10 p.m. on a Monday.

Two neighbors who had been in the living room earlier that night ran towards the establishment and found a table overturned and Torre lying on his back on the floor in a pool of blood. He was unable to speak and died moments after being discovered.

Constable James Schafer determined that Torre was surprised by the gunman, noting that Torre’s glasses, a crumpled newspaper and a lighted pipe were found near the body. The first bullet, Schafer guessed, hit Torre first in the left arm, causing him to stand up – either to run for the door or to defend himself – before he was hit a second time in the chest, severing the arteries. Two empty cartridges from an automatic revolver were found on the ground, but no weapons were found.

Important proof was that nothing else in the living room had been disturbed; the shooter was gone pretty quickly without even opening a cash register. A wallet was missing, but investigators told reporters they expected it to be in a safe that had not yet been opened.

On December 15, however, the police changed their tone. The wallet they thought was in the safe instead disappeared, and they discovered during an investigation that Torre had withdrawn between $ 75 (according to the Daily Gazette) and $ 700, according to the San Francisco Chronicle (approximately $ 2,031 or $ 18,960, respectively, in today’s currency) to cash the paychecks of workers who worked on a nearby pipeline. A man reportedly went to the saloon to have his check cashed by Torre, who took out $ 48 from the wallet to pay.

It was only later that it was realized that the killer may have been in the saloon at the time and witnessed the transaction.

A description of the potential shooter was already starting to form three days after the murder. Various locals noted that a stranger was seen hanging out at Torre’s Saloon over the weekend as well as the night of the murder (on the same day, Torre cashed the check for $ 48). The man in question was described as being 35 years old, with a “dark complexion”, 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing about 150 pounds, with a mustache. He wore a canvas miner’s coat with a blanket lining and corduroy collar, a newspaper noted at the time.

This same description corresponded to a man a local saw after the shooting, noting that the stranger was seen on Oakley Road around 10:30 p.m. during a heavy storm. At first, the man was suspected of having boarded a train to Stockton from Knightsen at 11 p.m. immediately after the murder.

Still, rumors persisted that the murder was linked to the Black Hand Society, with some speculating that the suspect may have been part of the Mafia, according to a much more recent story from The Press. Other rumors circulated that Torre was worried about an untimely death, as he had made a will shortly before his assassination and was known to have assets totaling around $ 30,000 to 35. $ 000, or more than $ 812,000 assessed today. Its various properties were eventually left to relatives abroad in Italy and to those who live there. The saloon has changed hands several times over the years, with its latest transformation now known as Sweeney’s Bar and Grill, which is open to this day in the same corner of Brentwood.

Torre’s friendly ghost remains. But to this day, the case has not been resolved.