At the behest of Judge Charles Silent, Dake deputized John Adams and Cornelius Finley. While traveling north to company headquarters in September 1878, less than two weeks after they were deputized, five Mexicans intercepted Adams and Finley, who they believed were carrying gold ore, and killed them, but didn't find any ore. One of the suspects in their killing was Florentino Saiz, who the "Arizona Weekly Star" identified as "the 1878 murderer of Deputy U.S. Marshals Cornelius Finley and John Hicks Adams on September 2, 1878". During the Coroner's Inquest into the death of Morgan Earp, Pete Spence's wife, Marietta Duarte, implicated her husband and four other men, including Florentino Cruz, in Morgan's murder. Saiz and Cruz may have been the same person. In 1879, the Mexican federal government refused to allow Dake to extradite two of the suspects. Unable to find justice in the courts for his brother's murder, Wyatt Earp began a vendetta, and killed Florentino Cruz on March 22, 1882 at a wood camp near South Pass of the Dragoon Mountains.