From 1887 until July 1888, John Myers Cross was the sheriff of Woodsdale, Kansas, which was founded by Samuel Newitt Wood.

On July 25, 1888, Sheriff Cross and three of his deputies—Cyrus W. "Ted" Eaton, Robert Hubbard, and Rolland Timothy "Rolly" Wilcox—were killed at Wild Horse Lake, in No Man's Land, which is now the Oklahoma Panhandle. The incident became known as the "Hay Meadow Massacre," and several websites now provide the details of what happened there.

One of Cross' deputies, Herbert Tonney, Herbert Tonney, survived and then testified at the resultant murder trial. It was held in June-July 1890, in the United States District Court in Paris, Texas.

Unfortunately, the man who killed Sheriff Cross, Hugoton's Sheriff Samuel R. Robinson, was not among them. In mid-1889, before the indictments were issued, a man lured him to Colorado, by promising to help him rob a freight/mail station. Reportedly, the facility often handled shipments of $15,000–$25,000. Things did not go as planned, and Robinson was sentenced to twelve years in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Therefore, as the Texas trial's start date neared, a requisition for Robinson's extradition was sent to Colorado's governor. He refused to grant it, so the trial began without him.

On 9 July 1890, the trial's jurymen returned their verdicts. Of the forty original defendants, they found six of them guilty. Hence, the judge then sentenced them to hang. They were:

— Jerome B. Chamberlain;

— Charles E. Cook;

— Orrin J. Cook;

— Cyrus Frease;

— John H. Jackson; and

— F. John "Jack "Lawrence.


That did not end things. The defendants had wealthy supporters, so their case was then appealed to the United States Supreme Court. In January 1891, it ordered a new trial for them.

In 1891, several of the witnesses—along with the government's lead prosecuting attorney, Samuel Newitt Wood—were murdered. Therefore, with nearly no one left to testify against the defendants, the government's replacement prosecutor decided that they could not be retried. Hence, he had the charges against them dropped and then ordered them released.

In the 1930s, Cross' grave was moved from the Woodsdale Cemetery to the Moscow Cemetery. Its new location can be determined from the information given for the Woodsdale Cemetery.

John Myers Cross was married to Miriam Rabold Stickler Cross. The couple had eight children. The 1870 and 1880 US Censuses provided the names and birth years of six of their offspring. On 30 June 1880, they had six living children:

— Mabel, born in 1869;

— Edward, born in 1870;

— Lillian, born in 1872;

— Martha Ella, born in 1873;

— Rena, born in 1876; and

— John Earl, born in 1877.

The subsequent ones were:

— Leroy C., born in 1885; and

— Guy, born in 1888.

The June 1900 Census for Miriam Strickler Cross Berkshire reported that she was the mother of eight children, all of whom were then alive.