Baby Doe, the opera, the film, the book

Poster from the Utah opera company's production of Baby Doe, the opera.
In 1932, three years before her death, a film and a book came out about Baby Doe's life. She did not attend the film. After she died in 1935, townspeople in Leadville completely dismantled her cabin looking for hidden treasure. They found only scraps of paper she had written her dreams on: no silver, no cash, no treasure. They pulled up the floorboards and tore the cabin apart. The cabin was later reconstructed to become a tourist stop. After her death interest in her life was renewed. The citizens of Denver claimed her body for their own. Once she was buried, Horace's body was moved to be buried alongside her. Her surviving daughter Lily denied Baby Doe was her mother. She claimed to be the child of Baby Doe's brother. When Silver had died ten years earlier, Baby Doe denied that the scalded body that lay in the morgue for three days unclaimed was her daughter. She read the newspaper reports but never admitted that Silver was dead. She maintained that Silver was living in a convent. Although she stopped writing letters to Silver. So somewhere in her heart, she must have known.
In the Colorado State Historical Society there are over 12,000 letters, diary entries and scribblings by Baby Doe and Silver. Although some of the most damaging diary entries were sold for a dollar apiece just after Baby Doe died. Shortly after her death, all of her records, diaries, letters, everything was sealed for thirty years. Subsequently, all the books and pamphlets written about her and Silver could not have been based on their own writing, but on wild speculation and rumor alone.
For more see Baby Doe Tabor: Madwoman in the Cabin by Judy Nolte Temple.