Unsolved: New Mexico's American Valley Ranch Murders & Other Mysteries

UNSOLVED

New Mexico’s

American Valley Ranch Murders

& Other Mysteries

Don Bullis

Introduction by Anne Hillerman

Published by Rio Grande Books

Los Ranchos, New Mexico

© 2014, Don Bullis

All rights reserved.

Rio Grande Books

Los Ranchos, New Mexico

www.LPDPress.com

Printed in the U.S.A.

Book design by Paul Rhetts

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system, without the permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bullis, Don.

Unsolved : New Mexico’s American Valley Ranch murders & other mysteries / by Don Bullis.

page cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-936744-07-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-936744-94-7 (eBook)

1. Murder--New Mexico--History. I. Title.

HV6533.N4B85 2013

364.152’309791--dc23

2013023393

Contents

UNSOLVED

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

NEW MEXICO’S AMERICAN VALLEY RANCH MURDERS

JOSEPH A. ANCHETA

GOVERNOR MANUEL ARMIJO

KAITLYN CLAIRE ARQUETTE

FRANK BAKER & BUCK MORTON

SHERIFF WILLIAM BRADY & DEPUTY GEORGE HINDMAN

TARA LEIGH CALICO

JIM CARLYLE

CHRISTOPHER KIT CARSON

PHILIP H. CHACON, POLICE OFFICER

COLONEL J. FRANCISCO CHAVES

OVEDA CRICKET COOGLER

DEAGOSTINI, GIOVANNI MARIA

STEPHEN WALLACE DORSEY

SHERIFF LES DOW

SMOOTH STEVE ELKINS

JESSE EVANS, OUTLAW

ALBERT BACON FALL

ALBERT J. & HENRY FOUNTAIN

TORIBO GARCIA & EDWARD SEAMAN

PATRICK FLOYD GARRETT

GIRLY CHEW HOSSENCOFFT

THE HUMMER

GEORGE & LAURA LORIUS & ALBERT & TILLIE HEBERER

ARTHUR MANBY

MYSTERIOUS DAVE MATHER

MYSTERY STONE OF LOS LUNAS

MARTIN NELSON

MILTON DOC NOSS

ÁLVAR NÚÑEZ, CABEZA DE VACA

DEPUTY SHERIFF JUAN LEO ORTIZ

FRAY JUAN DE PADILLA

PERFECTO PADILLA

BUD RICE AND BLANCHE BROWN

ROSWELL INCIDENT

LAWMAN GEORGE ADOLPHUS SCARBOROUGH

MARSHAL LOUIS SILVA

SOCORRO INCIDENT

PROHIBITION AGENT RAY SUTTON

RUSSIAN BILL TETHENBORN & SANDY KING

FRANCISCO PANCHO VILLA

MARSHAL CHARLES WALKER

BRONCO BILL WALTERS: WHAT BECAME OF HIS LOOT?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PREFACE

Modern popular media would have us believe that most, if not all, murders and other major crimes are ultimately solved; the criminals punished. After all, Walker, Texas Ranger, always got his man; and the CSI investigators did too. And if the official players in the criminal justice system failed to solve such crimes, other television sleuths like Perry Mason, Dr. Mark Sloan and Jessica Fletcher—not to mention Sherlock Holmes in an earlier era—were able to do so. This book tells of cases in which none of those lofty goals were accomplished; of two dozen or so murdered New Mexicans whose cases went unsolved; the perpetrators unpunished.

Nowadays, television gives us investigators, federal, local and private, who are able to locate missing persons within a short time frame, and return them, usually safely, to family and friends. Tara Leigh Calico, Girly Chew Hossencofft, Ray Sutton, Albert J. Fountain, along with his young son, Henry, and tourists George and Laura Lorius and Albert and Tillie Heberer are all people who disappeared completely, presumably in New Mexico. Their cases are considered on these pages and while theories abound, none of them have ever been found.

And there are those, too, who tend to take it for granted that popular portrayals of historic figures are correct; who believe, for instance, that Kit Carson was a raging racist who murdered Indian people by the hundreds; that New Mexico’s last Mexican governor, Manuel Armijo, was illiterate as a child and a venal coward as an adult; that Sheriff Pat Garrett was murdered by Jesse Wayne Brazil, or in the alternative, a Texas killer named Jim Miller. But are any of these popular images accurate? This book offers historically supportable alternative views.

Other chapters involve what has come to be called the paranormal. What really happened on a cattle range northwest of Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947? Did little green men really crash their extraterrestrial vehicle and die there? Has the United States government covered up the facts in the case? Or what did Socorro policeman Lonnie Zamora see on a spring evening in 1964? Was it really a flying saucer or was it the product of a prank by college students with too much time on their hands? And in Cuba, New Mexico: was the Navajo man called The Hummer really a returned spirit; a man who survived death on several occasions? Or was he just a man? This book offers several versions of his story.

There are other historical curiosities found on these pages, too. Who, really, was an unusual man called El Ermitaño, and why was he murdered? What became of the loot stolen during a train robbery by Bronco Bill Walters in 1898? Did Navajo Indian people end up with most of it, or did the outlaw simply forget where he buried it? Was Albert Bacon Fall, the first New Mexican to hold a presidential cabinet position, really venal and corrupt; or was he a scapegoat for the crimes of others? Did Arthur Manby of Taos die of natural causes (his body partially eaten by his dog), or did he murder an unknown transient and use the body to stage his own disappearance? Did Álvar Núñez, Cabeza de Vaca, really reach New Mexico in the 1530s? Or was his route much further to the south?

And then there is the Mystery Stone of Los Lunas. Legends about it abound. Was it inscribed by an ancient Greek visitor to New Mexico before the time of Christ? Or did early Navajo Indians chisel the hieroglyphics on the rock? Or perhaps Spanish explorers? Or did noted University of New Mexico anthropologist Frank Hibben himself create the landmark in the early 1930s? Several of the many theories are considered.

This volume contains forty-five entries. Readers may have their own theories, and that is as it should be. It also confirms the point of the book.

And a footnote: For the convenience of readers who are interested in learning more about these important matters, bibliographies are provided at the conclusion of each entry. They are intended to provide a beginning point for further inquiry.

Don Bullis

Rio Rancho, New Mexico

September 2013

INTRODUCTION

by Anne Hillerman

When people who live elsewhere think of New Mexico, if they think of us at all, they might come up with an image of Indians—the state has 22 different tribes. Perhaps they visualize hundreds of huge balloons in a bright blue sky with the Albuquerque’s Sandia Mountains on the horizon, the city’s famous international hot air balloon fiesta. Some might envision the eerie stalagmites of Carlsbad Caverns or the steep white slopes of Taos Ski Valley. The scientifically minded may recall that Los Alamos helped create the atomic bomb. Art lovers might know that Taos has long been renowned as a place for painters and other creative types, or think about Santa Fe’s popular Indian Market or opera. News junkies may recall that former governor Bill Richardson was a U.S. presidential candidate.

Chances are however, that most people won’t think of a coffin that wouldn’t stay put, the disappearance of a famous New Mexico rancher and his young son, or a policeman’s tale of encountering a UFO. But author Don Bullis did.

As an avid reader and a curious New Mexican, I thought I knew a lot about my home state. But leave it to Bullis, respected writer and historian, to open my eyes to a whole new world of outlaws, crooked politicians, puzzling crimes and surreal occurrences.

The book in your hands shines the light of good storytelling onto some of New Mexico’s darker corners. Bullis tells it like it is—or was. With a reporter’s affection for the hard questions, a novelist’s approach to bringing characters to life, and an historian’s attention to details, he has assembled a stellar collection of New Mexico’s mysteries, famous and obscure.

Unsolved is a time and space machine powered by words and research. The book takes readers on a trip through a wide swath of New Mexico’s geography and to eras from the pre-Spanish days to the end of the 20th century. We touch down in the dry country near Socorro, the cool mountains outside Las Vegas, the once thriving village of White Oaks, and the vast desert of New Mexico’s bootheel on the Mexican border. We go to old Santa Fe and Billy the Kid’s Lincoln, to places that are long abandoned and to modern Albuquerque. Bullis steers us back in time, too. The roots of the oldest tale, the legend of the Mystery Stone of Los Lunas, date to 500 B.C. according to some sources. (Bullis is skeptical, to say the least.) The most contemporary stories are late 20th century and involve the unsolved murders of young women Kaitlyn Arquette and Girly Chew Hossencofft.

Despite their variety, many of the stories here have more in common than their unsolved component. For instance, Bullis shows us in several cases how easy it was in old New Mexico for a man to switch careers from outlaw to lawman to politician to elected official. Women in these tales tend to be bystanders, witnesses or victims.

The little m mysteries are fascinating stories most of us have never heard of: a rock with ancient script from a culture far removed from New Mexico, small town’s mysterious hermit, and a man who doesn’t speak but hums. Bullis also writes about young women who disappeared with foul play in the picture, law enforcement officers killed by unknown assailants in the line of duty and coffins holding the remains of ancient Padres that don’t stay put.

The Big M Mysteries include Sherriff Pat Garrett, a former governor, and book’s title story, an amazing and shameful tale of greed, political corruption and vicious murder in a place that time has forgotten, the American Valley Ranch.

The American Valley Ranch murders involves the vicious slaying of two homesteaders who evidently made the fatal mistake of underestimating a wealthy neighbor’s voracious greed. Evidently, because no one was ever convicted of the murders. Bullis calls the incident, which happened in what was then Socorro County in May of 1883, one of the most disgraceful chapters in New Mexico’s history.

The story unfolds within the framework of the tumultuous 1870s and 1880s—the same period as the more famous Lincoln Country War featuring New Mexico’s most notorious outlaw, Billy the Kid.

As often seems to happen in New Mexico, the trouble in American Valley was caused by newcomers. Many of these stories feature newcomers behaving badly including slick scoundrels who came to New Mexico with the idea of making a fortune no matter what the means. Of course, unless you are lucky enough to be affiliated with one of New Mexico’s Pueblo Indian communities, we’re all newcomers.

The saga of American Valley Ranch began with the arrival of John P. Casey who established the ranch with headquarters near the site of the present town of Quemado. One of Casey’s partners was William C. Outlaw Bill Moore, a cattle thief from Texas who, one source suggested, killed his brother-in-law and a second man before coming to New Mexico to partner with Casey and contribute his herd of 900 stolen livestock to the ranch. Another of his investors was the New Mexico territorial surveyor general, a man widely accused of land fraud.

The ranch was huge—perhaps 40 miles on a side and between two and three million acres. Casey acquired the land using methods long popular with the ethically challenged: frightening people by exerting political influence and buying up water rights so his neighbors were forced to sell or watch their crops and livestock die.

While Casey and company were amassing their land and livestock empire, two young men established a ranch and farm immediately south of Casey’s holdings at a long-forgotten place called Gallo Spring. The two men, who were friends, brought their families down from Colorado to claim the land using the same provisions of the Preemption Act of 1841 that Casey himself had used for some of his land claims. Casey accused them of squatting, but the men were able to demonstrate their rights. Then he offered to buy them out. But, unfortunately as it turned out, the men and their families liked the land and wanted to stay and make their homes at Gallo Spring.

When Casey and partners were ready to sell the American Valley Ranch, they went to Washington D.C. to pitch their holdings to U.S. Senator John A. Logan from Illinois. Some stories say that Logan made an offer to buy the place, but only if the Gallo Springs property was included.

The following year, Casey persuaded the territorial governor that he was losing livestock left and right to rustlers and persuaded him to appoint Casey to command a New Mexico militia unit to protect his ranch. Outlaw Bill Moore was named lieutenant and the troops, most of whom worked for Casey as cowboys, went searching for rustlers. In May of that year, the two young ranchers disappeared. A few days later, their families found their dead bodies with multiple gunshot wounds, one man shot to the back and the second in the head at close range.

Senator Logan, aware of the murders, lost interest in the American Valley spread. A year later, he became a candidate for vice president of the United States. He lost in that race, too. The huge ranch became a sheep operation and, by 1900, was virtually abandoned—just like Casey’s dreams of making a fortune. Eventually murder charges were filed against John Casey and others, but there were no convictions and no other suspects were ever even tried for the murders.

Although the murders at the American Valley Ranch may be unfamiliar, Bullis’ collection includes many stories of unsolved murders and mysteries starring players we’ve heard of. The cast includes Doc Holiday and Bat Masterson, Pancho Villa, Tom Catron and the Santa Fe Ring, Christopher Kit Carson, New Mexico Governor Manuel Armijo, Albert Bacon Fall and Albert J. Fountain. The book’s colorful sampling also includes the notorious Smooth Steve Elkins, New Mexico’s territorial representative to Congress, and his questionable behavior which is said to have irritated Southern congressmen so much that they postponed New Mexico’s rise to statehood for decades.

Bullis knows his way around a good story. In cases where the historical record is inconclusive, he gives all sides their due. Readers get to see the characters involved in the incidents he selects as flesh and blood people, not dusty personages with dates in brackets behind their names. In re-telling some these tales, Bullis acknowledges their long, slow drift from truth to myth and alerts to the reader to alternative sources and differing viewpoints and theories about what may or may not have happened. He includes footnotes for the scholars among us at the end of each chapter so those with strong interest can do their own research and draw their own conclusions.

The history of New Mexico has shaped the interaction among native people and the continual waves of new comers: explorers, educators, entrepreneurs, people of God, misfits, miners, scallywags, scientists, settlers and more. Most of them, like most of the state’ s two million plus residents today, were decent men and women with dreams, determination, and families to support. As is true in the 21st century, New Mexico’s history also included people of ruthless ambition, unlimited arrogance and a faulty moral compass. Bullis presents these true stories in jam-packed episodic chapters that can be read in less time than it takes to enjoy a cup of coffee. If you’re like me, you’ll be entertained and you’ll learn something, too! Bullis brings history to life and makes it fun.

Bullis was selected as Centennial author in honor of New Mexico’s first hundred years of statehood in 2012 and was the recipient of the Eric Hoffer Award for his reference book, New Mexico Historical Biographies, in 2013. He has received several awards for his work from the Historical Society of New Mexico and the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards. He received the coveted Rounders Award from the New Mexico Department of Agriculture in 2013 and was named Outstanding Alumni from Eastern New Mexico University the same year.

(Anne Hillerman is the author of several non-fiction books including Tony Hillerman’s Landscape: On the Road with Chee and Leaphorn and a mystery novel, Spider Woman’s Daughter. She lives in Santa Fe.)

NEW MEXICO’S AMERICAN VALLEY RANCH MURDERS

Two homesteaders murdered in western Socorro County:

Five cattlemen/gunmen charged.

No convictions.

(May 6, 1883)

(The American Valley is not found on modern maps of New Mexico. Historian Bob Julyan reported that there was briefly an American Valley post office in 1887; that mail was forwarded to Socorro when it closed the same year. The American Valley Cattle Company was created in 1880, or so, and more about that is what follows.)

The 1870s and 1880s were tumultuous times in New Mexico. Many of the violent events of those years are well known to history: Texan John Hittson’s raid into eastern New Mexico in 1872; the invasion of Lincoln County by the murderous Texan Horrell brothers in 1873; the so-called Colfax County war which featured the deadly efficient gunman Clay Allison in 1875-76; the Lincoln County war in which Billy the Kid gained fame in 1878-81; The Victorio Apache war of 1879-1880; The San Juan County disorder at the hands of the Stockton brothers in 1880-81; Major Albert Fountain’s war against rustlers led by John Kinney in 1883; and others.

Not so well known is the American Valley Cattle Company’s war against rustlers in 1883. While it was not much of a war—the shooting didn’t last long—it was one of the most disgraceful chapters in New Mexico’s territorial history. The New Mexicans who happened to be in the way of events became victims in a disorder in which the actual combatants were outsiders who arrived on the scene with but one purpose in mind: acquiring land by any means possible; legal, quasi-legal or illegal.

The story began with the arrival of John P. Casey. One source identified him as A tall, aggressive man from Albuquerque who moved into western Socorro County in March 1881. Another source identified Casey as a Texan who established a ranch in western Socorro County in the early 1880s. Yet another reported that he was born in Ireland and arrived in Albuquerque in 1880 via Canada and Texas, and established his Socorro County ranch in 1881. An Albuquerque newspaper referred to Casey as a Valencia County cattleman in 1882.

(Note: what was western Socorro County in the 1880s became Catron County in 1921; what was then western Valencia County became Cibola County in 1981.)

Casey established the vast American Valley Ranch, or Cattle Company, with headquarters at or near the present day village of Quemado, then known as Rito Quemado. (Rito, which may mean ritual in Spanish, in New Mexico means small river.) His operation was also called the Casey and Moore Ranch or the Moore and Casey Ranch, depending on the newspaper source.

One of Casey’s partners was William C. Outlaw Bill Moore who arrived from Texas in 1882. He earned the sobriquet Outlaw Bill as a cattle thief in Texas and one source suggested that he’d killed his brother-in-law in California and another man in Wyoming before he joined Casey in western New Mexico. He reportedly bought a one-third share of the American Valley Ranch for $25,000 and is said to have contributed nearly 900 head of stolen livestock—cattle and horses—to Casey’s fledgling operation. (As it turned out, the $25,000 may have been promised, but never paid.)

The American Valley ranch was large. One source described it as 40 miles on a side. Another described the range as 66 miles north to south and 72 miles east to west. Yet a third source stated that … The American Valley is in the triangle formed by the towns of Salt Lake [New Mexico], Trechado and Quemado…. (The location of Trechado is uncertain.) It should not be supposed that Casey and company owned that much land. One observer wrote: The American Valley Company, as incorporated, was comprised of 12,000 acres of patented land controlling the water and range to the extent of between two and three million acres of land. ‘The ranch company controlled most of the water in several townships, the idea being by absolutely controlling the water right thus to command the range adjoining….’

One reason Casey was able to do his magic in acquiring all that land was political influence. The events described here took place toward the end of the era of Republican occupation of the White House in Washington following the United States Civil War; beginning with Ulysses S. Grant in 1869 and ending with Chester A. Arthur in 1885. James A. Garfield was president when John Casey began his ascent to fame and fortune, but Garfield was assassinated and died in September 1881. He was succeeded by President Chester A. Arthur.