MORNING SUNLIGHT POURED THROUGH the window of the hospital ward, falling on the chamber pots and sour sheets and faces of the sleepers. Slowly the patients awakened from their drugged dreams. Jesús Paez, his black hair still smelling faintly of kerosene and his skin raw from disinfectants, heard the birds outside the window, and for a moment his heart soared with a twelve-year-old’s exuberance. Then the terrible knowledge that nagged at him even in his deepest sleep rushed in: his left leg had been amputated, foot, ankle, calf, knee, and most of his thigh lopped off by a surgeon’s saw while he lay etherized on the operating table.
For nearly a week after the Columbus raid, Jesús had languished in the hospital tent with the other wounded Villistas. Two men taken on the battlefield had already died of their wounds. On the fifteenth and sixteenth of March, Jesús and four others were transported to the jail in the basement of the Deming courthouse. Jesús’s femur had been fractured by the impact of the bullet and his wound had become badly infected. He was taken to Ladies Hospital, where the leg was amputated. For days, before and after the operation, he had lingered in a feverish state of near death, but he was young and strong and the danger eventually passed. When word of his miraculous recovery got out, newspaper correspondents came to interview him. He propped himself up in bed and his obsidian eyes filled with tears as he talked about his father, Emilio. During the raid, Jesús said, he had remained with the rear guard, holding his father’s horse. When his father did not return with the others, Jesús had gone to look for him. A bullet struck him in the left thigh, shattering the bone, and he fell to the ground in excruciating pain. “Yo soy un buen muchacho”—“I am a good boy,” he screamed as a cavalryman approached him.
The correspondents soon dubbed Jesús the “buen muchacho” and the “baby bandit” and the people of Deming brought him crayons and notepads and coins, which went into a small piggy bank next to his bed. But Jesús, it seemed, was not the docile creature that the newspapers made him out to be. When his guests departed, he hounded Mrs. Emma Duff, the hospital matron. Wrote a Deming resident:
The Mexican boy who belongs to the bandits and who was taken prisoner and brought here to the hospital severely wounded, is proving a terror for poor Mrs. Duff to manage. The foolish people here insisted upon making a young hero of him and rushed to see him in perfect squads, carrying all sorts of delicacies to him and other gifts. He is only 12 years old, or so they say, but is a hardened young tough and has become dreadfully spoiled. He has been treated with the care and kindness of a valuable young prince and he has not the gratitude of a buzzard. Mrs. Duff says he would shoot her in the back if he only had the chance. In addition, a Mexican priest, who made his appearance here only after the raid, visits him seven or eight times a day and the boy has become more and more unmanageable under this man’s ministrations, who talks to him in Spanish. Mrs. Duff is convinced he is no priest but a spy, and thinks the authorities ought to take some steps about it, but it seems no one feels authorized to do anything. The boy calls constantly for cigarettes and a stiff drink of whiskey and Mrs. D. at any hour in the night must get up and answer his bell, give him the cigarette and then stay until he finishes it lest he burn something with it. If she refuses him, he raises a yell that lifts the roof and alarms every patient in the hospital. His leg had to be amputated at the hip and I suppose that and his apparent youth make people pity him. Poor Mrs. D. is almost crazy with the trouble of him.
Jesús’s story was filled with inconsistencies. In one interview, he said his father had been forced to join the column. In another, he boasted that his father was a Dorado and paymaster in Villa’s army. Yet Villa would hardly have made a forced conscript a member of his Dorados much less entrusted him with money for his troops. Years later, one of the Villistas who participated in the attack said Jesús was not a member of their band at all but lived on the east side of Columbus with other poor Mexican families and was accidentally shot by the Americans as he fled from his house. “De una de esas casas salió corriendo y gritando que no tiraran, un paisano y, luego, un chamaco lo siguió.”—“From one of these houses, a peasant and later, a kid, came running and screaming not to shoot.”
Civil authorities in Deming had been eager to try someone for the atrocities committed in Columbus, but by March 23, three more raiders had died, leaving only Jesús and Juan Sánchez, sixteen, still alive. Since they were mere boys, it would be difficult to hold them solely responsible for the brutal murders. Still, the desire for vengeance was strong and someone should have to pay. But who?
The answer came on April 11, when a second group of wounded Villistas was brought up from El Valle to Columbus. No formal extradition process was followed, nor was the de facto government consulted before the men were removed from Mexico. An army document simply states that six men were being transferred on orders of the chief of staff of the Punitive Expedition. All of them had been left behind as Villa retreated south and were suffering from badly infected gunshot wounds. The most severely injured were José Rangel, who had bullet wounds in both legs and couldn’t walk, and Francisco Álvarez, whose handsome features had been ruined by a bullet that had penetrated his cheek and mouth. They were dressed in filthy rags and a medical officer with the expedition had difficulty getting them to take the gasoline baths that were supposed to rid them of vermin. “The Mexicans knew enough of gasoline to fear it, and after the Columbus raid some bodies of Mexicans were burned in the vicinity. They wailed and begged and dragged back from the gasoline, in scarcely intelligible Spanish, imploring the army men not to burn them alive,” a correspondent wrote.
Upon arriving in Columbus, the six men were taken to a hospital tent where an army nurse named Lurid Fillmore watched over them. While they lay on their army cots, a parade of citizens and law-enforcement officials trooped in to question them. The prisoners answered the questions freely without having the benefit of an attorney or anyone else to represent them. A few days later, those same officials were called as witnesses before a Luna County grand jury. The men related what they had learned from the prisoners in the hospital tent and the information was sufficient for the grand jury to hand up a raft of criminal indictments. All six Mexicans were indicted on two counts of first-degree murder each in the deaths of James Dean, John Moore, Charles DeWitt Miller, and Corporal Paul Simon, the soldier who played clarinet in the band.
In a separate group of indictments, Juan Sánchez, Jesús Paez, and Pablo Sánchez, the man who was arrested on suspicion of being a spy, were charged with the same murders. Although the evidence was flimsy, Pablo Sánchez was also charged with being an accessory before the fact in the murder of Charles DeWitt Miller. Finally, the grand jury indicted Pancho Villa himself for the murders of James Dean, John Moore, and Charles DeWitt Miller. (He was not indicted for the murder of the soldier, possibly in an effort to avoid military complications.)
As soon as the indictments were handed up, arrest warrants were issued and the six wounded prisoners were taken into custody by the sheriff of Luna County and transported to jail. The trial was set to start four days later, on April 19, before Judge Edward Medler, a no-nonsense judge from Lincoln County who had been reassigned to the district court in Luna County that spring by the state supreme court.
The day before the trial, Medler got a call in his hotel room from the Luna County district attorney advising him that E. B. Stone of the Bureau of Investigation wanted to confer with him about the case. Stone was the federal agent who interviewed many of the prisoners and the two hostages, Maud Wright and Edwin Spencer, immediately after the raid. Medler seemed irritated by the request and two years later, in a letter to Senator Fall, he noted with some satisfaction that Stone was serving time in Leavenworth for soliciting a bribe from Leona Grace, a “boss madam” in El Paso. At the time, however, Stone was still a reputable agent and Medler agreed to hear what he had to say at eight o’clock that evening in the courtroom.
At the appointed time, Stone made his appearance and said he had a statement to make from the United States attorney general, Thomas Gregory. Stone produced three telegrams: one from Gregory, a second from General Funston, and a third from Newton Baker. “The substance of the telegrams,” recalled Medler, “was that these various departments protested against the trial of the Villa raiders, or the Columbus raiders, as we called them, on the ground that it would involve the United States in international complications with Mexico.”
Medler viewed Stone’s remarks as a reflection on his court and responded testily that the Mexican prisoners had been indicted by a properly impaneled grand jury and were in the legal custody of the sheriff of Luna County. He also explained that the county was not in a position to cope with a postponement because a previous grand jury had found that the Luna County jail “was unsanitary and not a proper place to confine prisoners.” Furthermore, he added, “I saw no reason why the court could not proceed to try this case on the following morning; that General Pershing was in Mexico with his expedition trying to arrest Francisco Villa, a co-defendant named in this indictment; and that if the trial of these raiders would involve the United States in international complications, to my mind it would seem that the United States was already involved. In other words, I practically told him there would be no ‘watchful waiting’ around my court.”
When Medler had finished, agent Stone asked the judge if he would be willing to talk with Summers Burkhart, the U.S. attorney in Albuquerque. The judge agreed and they reached him by telephone. “I had known Mr. Burkhart for quite a number of years and easily recognized his voice. Mr. Burkhart, when he found I was on the telephone, advised me he had received instructions from the Attorney General to go to Deming and protest against the trial of these Villistas.”
“Upon what grounds?” barked Medler.
“Upon the ground that you will not give them a fair trial.”
Medler considered the remark to be in contempt of court and informed Burkhart he had until ten o’clock the following morning to repeat his statement in open court. “He [Burkhart] then apologized, stating he did not intend to make any reflections upon the court, but stated that the public feeling was such that he did not feel the defendants would get a fair trial. I assured him that as far as I had anything to do with it as judge of the court that they would have a fair trial.”
The following morning, April 19, the six Villistas filed into a courtroom on the second floor of the Luna County courthouse. The room was large and spacious, with an embossed-tin ceiling and tall arching windows. The judge sat behind a wooden bench, which still had the old territorial seal of New Mexico carved upon it. To the left of him were the jury box and witness stand, made from the same wood. The Villistas were clad in jeans and blue shirts that were buttoned up to their necks. Their heads had been shaved, making them appear very young. The county physician reported to Medler that the six men could handle the rigors of a trial, but in fact, only two of the raiders could stand when the indictments were read aloud.
E. B. Stone took a seat in the audience, which was crowded with female spectators. J. S. Vaught, the assistant district attorney for Luna County, was the lead prosecutor. Buel Wood, an attorney from Carrizozo, New Mexico, represented the Villistas. He would have had a hard time mounting a vigorous defense; he had been appointed to the case only the day before the trial began.
Twelve potential jurors, all men with Anglo-sounding names, filed into the jury box. Prosecutor Vaught asked them a brief series of questions about their ages and occupations, where they lived, how much they knew about the case, and their feelings toward the death penalty. One was excused when he said he would not sentence anyone to death.
Defense attorney Wood asked the group collectively to withdraw from the case if they had any prejudices. “Now, if any of you gentlemen bear any malice against the Mexican race or if any of you gentlemen suffered in a property sense or had any of your relatives or close friends hurt, wounded, or killed at Columbus during the raid, or if you know of any other fact connected with the raid on Columbus that would naturally create in your mind an impression . . . I will ask you gentlemen as a matter of your own personal conscience that you will voluntarily withdraw from the jury box when your name is called as juror.” None of the men volunteered.
Eventually twelve jurors were seated. The panel reflected small-town America at the beginning of the twentieth century and included a cigar dealer, a stock handler, seven farmers, a livery-stable operator, a machinist, and a man who operated an “automobile livery” business.
J. S. Vaught delivered his opening statement, which lasted perhaps thirty seconds. The state, he told the jurors, decided to try all six defendants for the murder of Charles De Witt Miller. Each indictment contained two counts: the first charged that one or all of the defendants had actually fired the weapon that killed Mr. Miller, and the second alleged only that the defendants had “aided and abetted” in the killing. Conviction on either count carried the death penalty and it was clear from his statement that he intended to prove only the second count.
“Call your first witness,” snapped Medler.
The prosecution then proceeded to put on the witness stand the same law-enforcement officials and civilians who had tramped into the hospital tent and questioned the wounded Villistas. Only one of those witnesses—Constable T. A. Hulsey—said he actually saw Charles DeWitt Miller being murdered, but admitted that he had witnessed the killing from the ignominious vantage point of a tree hole in his backyard. The other prosecution witnesses did not see any of the actual killings, nor were they able to positively identify the defendants as being among the raiders. Curiously, none of the actual eyewitnesses to the raid—including Maud Wright, Bunk Spencer, Arthur Ravel, Rachel Walker, Laura Ritchie, or Laura’s three daughters—testified.
When it was Buel Wood’s turn to put on his defense, he didn’t call any of these eyewitnesses either. Instead, he put on only the defendants themselves, a strategy that turned out to be a colossal error. The first was José Rodríguez, a Carrancista soldier from the state of Nuevo León who had been taken prisoner by Villa in mid-February following a fight at one of the lovely haciendas in the Hearst empire. Rodríguez was only twenty, but seemed prematurely aged, lacking in all frivolity.
“Now, what did you do the morning of the ninth?” asked Wood.
“I didn’t do anything. They left me where the horses was, and when they started to run I started to run ahead of them. When we was on our retreat, that is when they wounded me.”
Prosecutor Vaught cross-examined Rodríguez closely, hoping that he would reveal himself to be a more willing and knowledgeable participant in the raid, but Rodríguez stuck to his story. He testified that he had no idea that the troops were attacking Columbus until he heard the shooting and saw the fires.
But you knew, Vaught persisted, that Villa did nothing else “except fight, didn’t you?”
“I just knew that he fought against Mexico; I didn’t know that he was fighting the Americans.”
The second defendant, Eusevio Rentería, twenty-four, had thick, taciturn features and a scowling, embittered profile. Rentería talked of his long military career, beginning with his forced service under Porfirio Díaz, his imprisonment by the Yaqui Indians, and his capture by the Villistas at the Cabrado mining camp. Villa “was very cruel to us,” he said. “If we would not obey what he ordered us to do, he would have killed us.”
“And that is why, is it not, that you boys and the rest of Villa’s command was kept in ignorance of the true movements and the real design that Villa and his officers had in mind?” asked defense attorney Wood.
“We were always ignorant as to what he intended to do. We just marched along when he told us to.”
José Rangel, twenty-three, suffering from gunshot wounds in both legs, was moved to the front of the courtroom on his cot so that jurors could hear his testimony. Rangel testified that Villa and his men captured him as he was coming out of a store in Chihuahua City about two and a half months prior to the raid. He was given a Mauser and some cartridges and served as an orderly. He insisted that he did not come into town during the attack.
The fourth defendant, Juan Castillo, twenty-six, was another Carrancista soldier who had been captured by Villa. “When they ordered us to do anything we would have to do it; if we would not, they would beat us up,” he testified.
Judge Medler then interrupted Wood’s questioning to ask Castillo if he was paid anything.
Nada, Castillo responded.
Taurino García, a twenty-one-year-old bricklayer with big, round eyes and a wispy, tentative mustache, told jurors that he was kidnapped by Villa’s men on a dusty road in Chihuahua. “He stood me up there in a ring. He formed a ring of some men and had a fellow beat me up,” he testified. Five days before the raid, he continued, Villa gave him a gun and fifteen cartridges. He said he knew it would probably be used in a battle but he could not resist taking it. García was wounded as he advanced into Columbus. He lay on the ground until one of his fellow soldiers picked him up and carried him to the rear.
After García’s testimony, the judge halted the trial and the manacled prisoners were taken downstairs to the filthy jail where three of their countrymen had died just a few weeks earlier. The next morning they were returned to the courtroom. Francisco Álvarez, twenty-two, took a seat on the witness stand. His face was still swollen and wrapped in bandages. Álvarez denied being in Columbus during the raid and denied knowing Villa. Apparently frustrated with his answers, defense attorney Wood turned to the prosecutor and said, “Take him.”
During the cross-examination, Álvarez grew more voluble and reversed several of his earlier statements. He admitted that he was, in fact, in Columbus and that he was given a gun and ammunition and had gone with the main troops into town.
The state called only one rebuttal witness—Jesús Paez, who resembled a Charles Dickens character as he hobbled to the front of the courtroom on his crutches. Jesús’s testimony was brief, possibly an indication that Vaught already knew the boy’s story was problematic. Nevertheless, hoping to inflame the all-male jury, the prosecutor prodded Jesús into saying that Villa had promised each of the raiders an “American wife” when the attack was over.
Afterward, both sides rested and the judge and lawyers retired to prepare their instructions to the jury. Although Buel Wood maintained that the defendants were simply soldiers following orders, Medler went out of his way to demolish this defense in the instructions to the jury. Jurors were told that threats of duress and imprisonment or even “an assault to the peril of life” did not constitute “legal excuse or justification” for murder. No state of war existed at the time between Mexico and the United States, he added, “and unless a state of war did exist, there was no justification in law for a military expedition.”
The jury retired to deliberate at 11:29 a.m. Thirty minutes later, the panel filed back into the courtroom. The foreman handed a piece of paper to the judge. Medler read it and then turned to the defendants: the jury, he intoned, finds you guilty of murder in the first degree.
AT 2:00 P.M. on the same day, Juan Sánchez, the sixteen-year-old boy who was picked up on the battlefield, went on trial. (The charges against Jesús Paez appear to have been dismissed in exchange for his testimony, and the trial of Pablo Sánchez, the alleged spy who was named in the same indictment, was postponed “on account of lack of sufficient evidence.”) Although no transcript of the second trial has been found, newspaper reporters observed that Sánchez’s trial proceeded even more quickly than the first: “The state developed such a weight of evidence in the trial ending in the conviction of the first raiders placed on trial that it did not place all of its witnesses on the stand.” After just two hours of testimony, a jury retired to deliberate his fate. Thirty minutes later, they returned, grim faced. Juan Sánchez was also found guilty of murder in the first degree.
ON MONDAY, APRIL 24, the seven Villistas returned to the courtroom for sentencing. Before passing sentence, Judge Medler noted that the convicted prisoners had been provided with competent counsel and a fair trial. But just how competent the defense was and how fair those trials had actually been is a matter of debate. Defense attorney Buel Wood would later tell reporters that the admissions the defendants made on the witness stand “supported the verdict” and Judge Medler himself later called their testimony “practically a confession.” Another tactical error made by Wood was trying all six defendants at once, which even reporters at the time described as highly unusual.
Nevertheless, a trial had been held and a verdict delivered. Medler gaveled the courtroom into silence. The defendants, Medler instructed, were remanded to the custody of the Luna County sheriff until May 19, 1916. On that day, in an enclosure to be erected by the sheriff, “you Eusevio Rente ría, Taurino García, José Rodríguez, Francisco Álvarez, José Rangel and Juan Castillo be then and there by the said sheriff of the said county of Luna, hanged by the neck until you are dead, and may God have mercy on your soul.” Juan Sánchez, looking almost as small and wan as Jesús Paez, was also sentenced to be hanged.
With the judge’s pronouncement of the death sentence, a sigh of relief went up from the spectators and they hurried out into the wide breezy hallway. Wrote one reporter, “The attention of many was arrested however, by the quivering form of José Rangel who could no longer stand the ordeal. He buried his face in the varied hue quilt that covered his rickety cot and wept hot salty tears. As the folding doors bounded open and the sheriff’s assistants hurried past bearing the crippled foreigner, many paused and turned away when they beheld him concealing his tear-stained face in his handkerchief.”
Instead of returning the condemned men to the local jail, Judge Medler ordered the sheriff to take them to the penitentiary in Santa Fe for safekeeping. He also ordered Luna County officials to clean up the jail at once: “The present state of affairs, which has been characterized by your grand jury as a disgrace to the county must be remedied,” he told the Luna County commissioners.
The seven prisoners were taken to the penitentiary by a train provided by the Santa Fe Railroad. The railroad car was old and rickety and prisoners and their guards had to ride for miles in darkness. “It is true that a faint and evil smelling light was obtained at each end of the car after about six attempts had been made to ignite the lamps, but in the middle of the car, where the prisoners were herded, it was black as the inside of a cow,” the Deming Headlight reported.