In no condition for physical labor, the pregnant young wife made a desperate attempt to improve their financial state. She put on overalls and started sinking a mining shaft. Other miners began referring to her as a "beautiful baby" and stories about Baby Doe spread through Colorado mining camps.

The sympathetic proprietor of a dry goods store became her benefactor and protector. Jacob Sandelowsky paid the medical bills when Baby Doe gave birth to a stillborn son in July 1879.

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 on Holliday Street in the City of Denver … I then pushed past the woman at the door and saw my husband in one of the rooms. … Mr. Newman, the policeman, accompanied me home. I had no knowledge or even consented to him going there and never thought he would go into such a place…

The actual date of their meeting is a moot point. Married to the somber Augusta, Horace was instantly captivated by the vivacious lady a newspaper extolled as "the handsomest woman in Colorado."

She was described as young and well-proportioned "with a complexion so clear it reminds one of rose blush mingling with the pure white lily; a great wealth of light blondish brown hair, large dreamy blue eyes, and a shoulder and bust that no other Colorado Venus can compare with."

The enthralled Tabor, Colorado’s lieutenant governor at the time, gave Baby Doe $5,000 to pay off her debts to her storeowner friend and buy whatever she needed. He installed her in a suite at Central City’s Clarendon Hotel where a convenient second story passageway led directly to his private upstairs office suite at the Tabor Opera House.

The discreet affair didn’t remain a secret for long.

Newpapers exposed the fraudulent divorce and subsequent St. Louis marriage during Tabor’s run for a Senate seat in late 1882. Intimidated by Tabor’s business partner Bill Bush, Augusta finally agreed to a divorce on January 2, 1883. She took her generous divorce settlement to Pasadena, California, where she died on February 1, 1895.

A Catholic priest performed a second wedding ceremony on March 1, 1883, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D. C., while Tabor was serving a 30-day term in Henry Teller’s vacated senate seat. Wedding guest President Chester A. Arthur said, "I have never seen a more beautiful bride." The radiant Baby Doe wore a $7,000 gown and a $90,000 diamond necklace, gifts from her enamoured groom.

The Tabors returned to Denver and had two daughters, Lillie and Rose Mary, known as Silver. As the wife of Colorado’s Silver King, Baby Doe lived extravagantly – for a few years at least. Horace built her an ornate Italian villa-styled mansion and provided all the accouterments of luxurious living -- elaborate wardrobe, priceless jewels and impressive carriages. He proudly commissioned five oil portraits of the beautiful wife 25 years his junior.

Their lavish lifestyle ended with the Silver Crash. Tabor’s mine holdings became worthless and his numerous other investments failed. Mansion and furnishings, jewelry and carriages were sold at auction and the family moved into a small hotel room.

Once one of the richest men in the nation, the 65-year-old Tabor was reduced to hauling slag from Leadville mines for $3 a day. He was appointed postmaster of Denver just a year before he died from appendicitis on April 10, 1899, leaving his wife and daughters destitute.

For a short time Baby Doe and her daughters lived with relatives in Chicago. Lillie remained in Chicago; Baby Doe and Silver returned to Leadville. Silver, unable to cope with her impoverished circumstances, sought solace in alcohol and drugs. She lived with an assortment of men in Leadville, Denver and Chicago where she was murdered in 1925.

The previously pampered Baby Doe spent her remaining years living in a dilapidated tool shed at the inoperative Matchless Mine. With no source of income, she was dependent on the generosity of creditors and friends for bare necessities. Unable to buy shoes, she wrapped her feet in gunnysacks tied with twine.

After a severe blizzard Leadville neighbors noticed there was no smoke coming from the small shack at the Matchless. On March 7, 1935, Baby Doe’s frozen body was found on the floor of the tiny cabin where she had lived in seclusion for 36 years, fighting to regain possession of the Matchless and the wealth she had once known.

Trunks and gunnysacks in storage in Denver and at St. Vincent's Hospital in Leadville contained all that was left of the magnificent Tabor fortune. Among the forlorn reminders of a sumptuous life were several bolts of ornate cloth, a few pieces of china, a tea service and some jewelry, including a diamond and sapphire ring and the famous watch fob and chain given Horace Tabor at the opening of the $700,000 Tabor Opera House.

There are still questions about the legality of the divorces and marriages of Horace Tabor and Elizabeth Doe, all of which occurred between 1880 and 1883.

Evaluated later by a judge and several attorneys, the legal consensus was that the second divorce of Horace and Augusta was also invalid. Researchers have discovered papers to finalize the divorce of Elizabeth and Harvey Doe were filed in 1886 – three years after Horace and Baby Doe exchanged wedding vows for the second time.

The Catholic priest who performed the Willard Hotel ceremony was outraged when newspapers exposed Horace and Augusta’s bogus first divorce, questionable 1883 Denver divorce, and the secret St. Louis marriage of Horace and Baby Doe. Two days after the wedding the priest returned the $200 Horace had given him and refused to enter the marriage in church records.

The question of whether Horace and Baby Doe were ever legally married may never be answered. But whatever her marital status, Baby Doe Tabor epitomized the tribute Horace paid to her. "You’re always so gay and laughing, and yet you’re so brave," he said.