Ladies and gentlemen—in the language of Shakespeare: "All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players." And this is true. We are all actors in the drama of life. We all have our part to play and having played them (either ill or well) death points out our final exit and we vanish from life’s stage forever.
R. C. White, Evans and Sontag Combination1
The obituary in the local newspaper where Eva Evans, by then known as Evelyn Kinkela, had lived for nearly four decades was a scant two paragraphs—a half-dozen brief sentences, a mere seventy-two words.
Mrs. Evelyn E. Kinkela died January 10 at the Laguna Beach Rest Home. Burial took place at the Westminster Memorial Park.
Mrs. Kinkela was born in Tulare County, California, May 13, 1876. She has lived in Laguna Beach since 1930. She is survived by her widower, Andrew, at the home address 480 3rd St., and a brother Joseph Evans of Bend, Oregon. The late Ynez Jensen was a sister of Mrs. Kinkela.2
She had lived more than ninety-three years, the last four decades of which spent in the same small seaside community. And yet, when she made her exit from life’s stage, this was all that was written about her.
Did anyone reading her obituary, buried on the third page, have the slightest idea of the famous people Mrs. Kinkela had known during her long life? Or that Mrs. Kinkela herself had once been famous? Didn’t anyone know she had taken part in events once reenacted on stage in front of wildly enthusiastic audiences? That she actually starred on stage as herself? Did no one in her Laguna Beach neighborhood realize that Mrs. Kinkela had lived a life once splashed across the front pages of newspapers? Judging from the thundering lack of details in her obituary, apparently not. She died in quiet obscurity—her final exit barely noticed.
Most people die in quiet obscurity. Most obituaries are painfully brief. But the ominous silence of old age can be deceiving. If we only stopped to listen, we might discover that all those lonely old ladies in the neighborhood, all those cranky old men down the block, have life stories that could fill volumes. And every once in a while, one of those unheard stories is truly extraordinary—a valuable piece of history—a life that demands a thorough biography and not just the obligatory obituary. Such was the case of Mrs. Kinkela, better known as Miss Eva Evans, who was so much more than just a train robber’s daughter.
Eva Evans played a key rolein the sensational saga of Evans and Sontag, California’s most notorious outlaws. It is a classic tale of the Old West. As one historian pointed out, it has all the elements of epic drama: "the greedy railroad barons robbing the farmers of the San Joaquin with their high freight rates; familial love and devotion; farmers accused of train robbery and beset by bounty hunters after blood money; gunfights and ambushes and finally the showdown shootout between a posse and the two outlaws."3 And although Evans and Sontag didn’t retain the household-name status of other American outlaws like Jesse James, Billy the Kid, or Butch and Sundance, the media deluge generated by the train robberies, gun battles and extended manhunt was surpassed by none. Indeed, no two outlaws in California history more grasped the imagination of the public or more dramatically demonstrated the antagonism over big railroad’s privileged position than Evans and Sontag.
The circumstances surrounding Evans and Sontag’s crimes illustrate numerous themes of late nineteenth-century California history. The antagonism they so dramatically demonstrated—no company was more generously hated in California than the Southern Pacific Railroad, and this prevailing sentiment made their train robberies more palatable to much of the public—was emblematic of the growing rift between big corporations and the general population. The railroad’s domination in California also highlighted land issues key to the development of the state. Land issues and animosity clashed at Mussel Slough, and the violent conflict there between the railroad and displaced settlers is a necessary preface to Evans and Sontag and their place in California history.
The way Evans and Sontag seized the public’s imagination exemplified an evolving and burgeoning mass media led by William Randolph Hearst. How his newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, covered Evans and Sontag was a case of a young editor cementing a style of journalism that continues to influence society to this day. The newspaper coverage and the ensuing stage melodrama also demonstrated the public’s fascination with the cult of celebrity, a cult that seems to burn brighter with each successive generation. It was the media of the day that delineated the mythic profile of these outlaws, making them so much more than mere criminals in the public consciousness and, thus, creating in them archetypal figures—the popular outlaw whose crimes against an evil corporation are cheered by the common man.
Archetypal could be called a "two-dollar word" for cliché, but there was never a story of outlaws and the Old West quite like this one. It involved an otherwise respected member of the community—a family man with seven children. And although the oldest child—his teenage daughter, Eva—was not directly involved in any actual train robberies (as far as we know), she was present at gun battles, served as messenger to her fugitive father, took the witness stand at a famous trial, was a co-conspirator in more than one jailbreak, and finally became a celebrated actress, portraying much of this on stage in San Francisco and throughout the West.
Beyond the outlaw saga of Eva’s youth, there was the long adulthood of a woman who had come of age during tumultuous events. How did the headline-grabbing experiences of a teenage girl affect Eva as she navigated through later life? How did her adolescent jaunt through the Old West and the Gilded Age transform the woman of the twentieth century?
Eva’s struggle with drug addiction and attempted suicide, her early failed marriages, her brief career as a photographer, her interest in social reform and friendships with famous anarchists and progressive thinkers, her attempt to right her father’s story, and her final role as the childless matriarch to the family she survived were all shaded by a turbulent childhood and adolescence. Eva’s later life is thus pertinent to the marquee history of Evans and Sontag. It is her entire life, examined in whole, which ultimately completes one of California history’s most sensational sagas. Such a rare life demands a biography.
Biographies can only be written, however, when adequate sources exist. On this subject a wealth of source material has long been available. Numerous books and articles have already been written about Evans and Sontag, and the contemporary newspaper coverage of their exploits was almost endless. And when considering Eva’s story, there is perhaps no better starting point than her autobiographical memoir of nearly 300 pages. Written in the 1930s, she donated it to the Huntington Library in the 1960s. While some historians have questioned the veracity of her narrative4 (she does alter the facts at times to keep the story in line with previous alibis and elements of her father’s defense), a careful reading of the memoir shows that she was, for the most part, quite accurate. This was because, as she once explained, she did not entirely trust her memory, "but went to the State Library in Sacramento and checked [her] story carefully with the daily papers of this period."5 For the biographer, what this memoir provides are Eva’s opinions, feelings and impressions, far more valuable than mere facts, which can always be twisted and disputed.Two new major sources, however, have recently come to light, illuminating the biographer’s path as never before possible. One of these sources surfaced in dramatic fashion. As one newspaper reported:
History buff Terry Ommen was doing research at the Tulare County Museum…when a couple walked in. As they spoke to the museum curator, Ommen overheard his name.
"The person you need to talk to is right over there," said museum curator Kathy McGowan, pointing to Ommen.
Bob Lilley, who had arrived at the museum from the [California] Central Coast, addressed Ommen: "I have the original copy of the Evans and Sontag play. Are you interested?"
"
My mouth dropped open," Ommen said. "[Lilley] said, ‘Is that a big deal?’ I said ‘Yes! It’s a huge deal.’"6Terry Ommen, a retired police officer and one of Visalia’s leading historians, knew of the Evans and Sontag melodrama. Historians had long considered the script for the play, which Eva herself had starred in, lost to history. What Bob Lilley, the great-great-grandson of the playwright R. C. White, had wasn’t just the handwritten original—it was the only known copy. In addition, Lilley had a trunk full of memorabilia that included drafts of a curtain speech, photos, playbills, and handwritten arrangements of the musical underscoring, complete with scribbled margin notes commenting on the nature of audiences in various towns.
The melodrama, which was such a watershed event in young Eva’s life, could now be examined in full. Historians before could only imagine what the "blood and thunder" drama was like from Eva’s comments in her memoir and newspaper reviews that described the production. For the biographer, this material brought the play and its tour to life, making a key phase in Eva’s life now accessible.7
Another recent discovery of material involved not only an additional copy of Eva’s memoir, but a wealth of manuscripts, correspondence, photographs and scrapbooks that she had kept for posterity. It was that all-too-rare "box in the attic" that all historians dream about; and it was saved by a woman who is herself deserving of a biography. Lillian Kinkela Keil, a former World War II and Korean War flight nurse, was the most decorated woman in U.S. military history. She was also the daughter of Andrew Kinkela, Eva’s last husband. When I first contacted Lillian—imagine how thrilled I was to find the actual stepdaughter of Eva—she was swamped with requests for interviews about her own life story and busy attending speaking engagements and memorial dedications. An incredibly active eighty-something-year-old woman, she promised she would get together some of Evelyn’s (as she knew Eva) materials for me. She knew she had some letters and stories Eva had written, and maybe even a few photographs, but she wanted to organize them before she showed them to me. Lillian had fond memories of Eva, whom she visited often in the final years before Eva’s death, and though she recounted those to me over the phone, I never got the chance to speak to Lillian in person.
Lillian’s obituary in the Los Angeles Times featured a large headline: "Lillian Kinkela Keil, 88, ‘an Airborne Florence Nightingale.’" It included two photos and a couple dozen column inches of copy.8 It was in striking contrast to her stepmother Evelyn (Eva) Kinkela’s tiny obituary thirty-five years earlier. Lillian never got the chance to gather and organize Eva’s papers for the biographer who had pestered her, but Lillian’s daughter, Adrianne Whitmore, eventually did. Furthermore, she agreed to donate the archive to the Tulare County Museum, where it is now available to historians and scholars.
With all that considered, the idea to tell Eva’s story was irresistible. But still I felt the need to zero in on what this book was really about—its thematic heart and soul. I realized that what made Eva’s story so compelling to me was that it was, above all else and at every turn, a love story. Not the love story the media hyped and Eva herself propagated—a dime novel romance between her and John Sontag. That was the stuff of pulp and greasepaint and while perhaps partly based in reality, it was not the great love story of her life. No, Eva’s real story is of the great love and devotion she had for her father. The love they had for each other epitomizes the goodness of humanity. And the good they saw in each other overshadowed the sin and blot that others might condemn.To more fully understand that love, I still had to answer one key question in my mind: Was Chris Evans really a train robber? He had always denied robbing any trains. And many of those who cultivated his legend were quick to point out that he was never convicted of train robbery. (He was convicted only of murder.) I didn’t buy into the media-created Robin Hood myth, nor could I believe the melodrama’s portrayal of Evans and Sontag as framed by a villainous spurned lover. I had always felt, like most serious scholars of California outlawry, that Chris was guilty of train robbery. He was a bona fide criminal. To believe otherwise was naïve.
Still, maybe it is more interesting to harbor some doubt—to leave the question open-ended. But how does the answer to that question—or more precisely, Eva’s answer to that question—shade her character? What doubt, if any, did she have? Did she alibi for her father—one of the primary goals her memoir seems to have had—out of naïve innocence? Or was it the conscious act of a co-conspirator motivated by a loyal love for her father?
Lillian Keil erased all doubt when she related to me something Eva once told her. In explaining to her that I thought Eva’s memoir was a carefully constructed alibi and that Eva, like her father, never admitted he had committed any train robberies, Lillian chimed in, "Oh, yes, she did."
"I’m sorry, what did you say?" I replied, a little dumbfounded.
"She admitted it. She told me her father had robbed trains. That was how they got their money."9
Here was Eva’s blunt admission, in her nineties, of her father’s guilt. It was a moment that made Eva Evans suddenly more real—more real because now she was believable. And her acknowledgment of guilt made the undying love for her father all the more real as well. She loved him despite his guilt, and because of that love she protected his image while knowing of and even sharing his sins. She was, until the end, a dutiful daughter.
Perhaps Eva herself provided the best curtain speech when she wrote in the forward of her memoir, "An Outlaw and His Family":
How does it feel to be the daughter of a man branded as "Outlaw," "Bandit," "Jail-Bird"? I have had people stare at me curiously, the question vivid in their eyes, the more intense because of my own eminently "respectable" exterior. I never answer the unspoken question because the answer would be too startling, entailing the long explanation I purpose to set down in this book. For the answer is:
"I am gloriously proud of my father!"10