seventy
the missing head
Capt. José Elpidio Garcilazo recounted many years later that, in November 1925, Col. Francisco Durazo Ruiz, commander of Parral’s garrison, 11th Infantry Battalion, ordered him to get in his red car (he also had a blue one) and took him for a drive around the city. They traveled in silence until the colonel said that he had a delicate mission he wanted Garcilazo to carry out.
“Listen, Garcilazo,” Durazo Ruiz said after a while, “Gen. Obregón wants Villa’s head and I’m putting you on it.”
And when the captain, shocked, inquired as to what was behind such nonsense, he received the traditional reply.
“The order comes from above. You should choose a man you trust.”
Garcilazo was an ordinary captain—a few years earlier he had commanded Manuel Chao’s firing squad—but he clearly understood what it meant to mess with Villa’s memory. Thus, not yet over his shock, he called Corp. Silva, hinting about orders from above directing him to steal Pancho Villa’s head. He ordered Silva to select a group of men. Silva took it in stride and spoke with some of the garrison’s soldiers. Durazo called on Capt. Garcilazo soon after and asked how it was going, then suggesting he switch Silva out for another man. The task fell to Corp. Figueroa.
Finally, on February 2, 1926, Durazo told the captain that if the matter were not resolved, he would have to “erase the tracks,” that is, kill the two corporals involved in the operation and he sent two crowbars and a spade to the captain’s house. Garcilazo, realizing that things with his boss were getting dangerous—at the time, they said that Durazo had executed three deserters by his own hand—decided to put the plan into action. He passed over Corp. Silva and told Corp. Figueroa to find two or three more soldiers, went to the cemetery, and discretely studied the tomb.
On the afternoon of February 5, almost three years after Pancho Villa’s assassination, Capt. Garcilazo organized his group which, according to various versions, included four or five men: Corp. N. Figueroa and privates Anastacio Ochoa, José García, Nivardo Chávez, and José Martínez, who was also known as “Primero” because there was another soldier in the barracks with the same name. He told them to gather up the crowbars and spades, take a dark lantern, and a liter of alcohol. He ordered them to leave their guns behind.
Durazo, for his part, organized protection for the grave robbers, sending a Yaqui sergeant named Lino Pava to prevent milkmen and night owls from passing close by the cemetery. He gave the same order to Sgt. Cárdenas Aviña, “We were ordered to stand guard at the cemetery’s four corners.” Garcilazo was unaware of the backup operation.
That night, Durazo was not in the garrison, in order to distance himself from what would no doubt be a tremendous scandal. Instead, he was at his ranch, called El Cairo, in the vicinity of the village of Salaíces, a lucrative horse-breeding business in which soldiers from the 11th Battalion worked without pay.
Villa’s tomb raiders hopped the back of the Parral cemetery wall in an area called La Pila or La Noria, and made for tomb 632, in the graveyard’s ninth section. Capt. Garcilazo remained outside the cemetery. The men used the crowbars to break open one side of the tomb. The soldiers worked slowly and were very afraid. José García began drinking from the bottle of alcohol which they had brought as disinfectant; nobody had told them that the body had been embalmed and that there was no risk of infection as three years had passed since the burial. At long last, they managed to break through one side of the raised funeral tomb and pulled the coffin out. Filled with fear, they broke it open, lifted Villa’s head, and then Martínez Primero cut it off with a knife. As Sgt. Cárdenas recounted, because “they were very nervous,” private José García was accidentally injured.
It was three o’clock in the morning. Garcilazo had been turning in circles outside the cemetery during the entire operation and returned to the barracks to await the results. Soon after, the frightened soldiers came back and handed him Villa’s head wrapped in an old shirt. Garcilazo, in turn, delivered it to the chief of Durazo’s guard, who kept it in the colonel’s room in the barracks.
At dawn on February 6, 1926, Juanito Amparan, a clerk at the cemetery, discovered that a very simple tomb—standing about forty centimeters high with a white slab, free from a cross or any other identifying signs—had been violated. It was Pancho Villa’s. Responding to a call from his assistant, the chief of Parral’s gardeners arrived at the cemetery to find that “the coffin had not been taken, it was only scratched up and broken open near the head.” It had rained the previous night and the ground had turned to mud. Thus, they could see the graverobbers’ tracks and where they had hopped the wall. They found an open bottle of tequila near the grave containing an unidentified liquid, a cotton cloth spotted with blood, and footprints of huaraches and galoshes with studs that someone called “military.” It’s curious that the first investigation was conducted by gardeners and not the police, who were terrified of taking responsibility for it.
An initial review of the coffin allowed the chief gardener to discern that the aim of the desecration had not been to snatch Pancho Villa’s body, but only his head, which had been cut from his torso.
Three years had not yet passed since the assassination. The front page of every daily broadcast the events. The scandal raised tensions across the country. The surviving Villista fighters threatened to march on Parral under arms.
The first investigation pointed to a short, fifty-something gringo who had asked about the grave, but that was not unusual as the tomb had become an object of exotic tourism. The cemetery clerk described the gringo and said that he had spent a long time exchanging anecdotes about Villa. The Parral police discovered a muddy automobile with El Paso plates on the outskirts of town. A US citizen named Emil Holmdahl and a Mexican named Alberto Corral were immediately detained; the latter turned out to be Luz Corral’s cousin. The crowd tried to lynch them. The investigators found a bottle with liquid in the car, but Holmdahl took a drink to demonstrate it was nothing out of the ordinary, just filtered water.
In his first comments, Holmdahl, who had fought with Villa a dozen years before and served as a guide for the Punitive Expedition, said it was all a misunderstanding. Years later, he related a version of events to US journalist Bill McGaw explaining why he had been in Parral. He recounted that he and Alberto Corral were looking for a small treasure of more than ten kilograms of small gold bars and had finally found it, then outwitted a group of bandits who had captured them. He paid his guides and then came with Alberto to Parral where he got a flat tire. The two were staying at the hotel and he was in the garage when Alberto called him to say that fifteen Federales had arrested him. They were taken to the jail where the crowd wanted to lynch them, but a Mexico City judge exonerated them. In the meantime, the gold had disappeared. Oddly, Emil Holmdahl returned to El Paso on February 12, just a week after the crime, free from any repercussions.
Over the following days, dozens of versions, often outlandish, were offered to explain the whereabouts of Villa’s head. Already on February 7, El Siglo from Torreón echoed rumors that a millionaire from New York had offered a fortune for Villa’s head. The Mexican consul in Chicago asked for instructions from the Foreign Secretary because serious rumors were circulating that a group of scientists in the city were awaiting the head’s arrival so they could study it. Charles Harris noted, mixing up the date, that rumors were plaguing El Paso around the same time, even claiming that Villa’s head had been buried in the Franklin Mountains.
Popular imagination overflowed all limits. Parral was filled with rumors. They said that a plane had landed in a field near Las Ánimas. There was, in fact, a small plane that came and went frequently, bringing materials and shuttling back samples for the San Rafael mining company. But this time, so the rumor went, Col. Durazo had met the plane with a guard, startling the onlookers, and handed over a small suitcase to the aviator. The story was not true. Durazo still had not returned to Parral and, despite the fact that he was supposedly in charge of the investigation, three days after the events in question, he remained in Salaíces.
Other rumors directed suspicions towards the Parral garrison, where it was said that Dr. Manuel F. Villaraoz had treated Capt. Garcilazo the following day for a cut and that he had lost a finger on his right hand. This story was not true either. The only injury had been suffered by the soldier with the amusing name Martínez Primero, whose hand was shut in the car door.
The national scandal intensified. Who had robbed Villa’s head? Who had ordered them to do it? What did they want it for? Where was the macabre trophy? How could the painful memories of confrontations during the revolution be overcome if the dead were insulted? In a country of outrageous stories, this was the most outrageous of all.
Dozens of explanations were offered over the ensuing years and almost all of them pointed to Col. Durazo. They said that President Plutarco Elías Calles had held a raffle among a group of officers and had picked his name out of the hat. They said that Durazo had read a bad translation of a pamphlet in English, falsely believing that there was a $50,000 reward for the head of Francisco Villa when in reality it was an old flyer from 1916 calling for him to be taken dead or alive. Francisco Piñón, Villa’s adoptive son, asserted that Gen. Arnulfo R. Gómez ordered Durazo to steal the skull in exchange for $50,000 pesos offered to him by some gringos.
But the majority of the versions leaned towards the theory that Durazo was dealing with the intermediary of a US millionaire who, out of vengeance, offered $50,000 for Villa’s head and that Emil Holmdahl’s presence in Parral was no accident.
They said Ernesto Weisel, Durazo’s driver, brought Villa’s head to Jiménez where he turned it over to Holmdahl in the Chow Hotel, but the gringo only gave him half of the promised $10,000—in other versions, which set the meeting at the Jiménez train station, the amounts were adjusted downward to $25,000 pesos or only $10,000 pesos—so Durazo kept the head in his possession. Holmdahl, whom the story followed for the rest of his life, was interviewed by McGaw when he was an old man and attributed the matter of $50,000 to a US reporter’s imagination.
Stories surrounding Durazo kept on growing, leading Gen. Santiago Piña Soria, commandant of the 5th military zone, to meet with him. Rumor had it that the general had seen the head and ordered Durazo to get rid of it or he would have him shot. Durazo, very frightened, tried to unload the head, once again calling Capt. Garcilazo a few days after it was stolen. The head was still under the colonel’s bed, wrapped in a shirt, now tucked into a wicker basket. Since his return from El Cairo, Durazo had been sleeping over Villa’s head!
Durazo turned pale and told Garcilazo, “Take it away!” The captain turned it over to Figueroa who placed it in a box of 7mm ammunition (others would say .30-30) and locked it for safekeeping. Accompanied by Durazo’s chauffeur, the above-named Weisel, they headed for El Cairo on the highway between Parral and Jiménez. They singled out a soldier who worked in the stables and, under orders from the colonel, told him to bury the box. “He went down the old road that led towards Huérfano, walking for maybe 100 meters, and dug beside the old road, barely scratching the surface.”
Over the years, popular opinion settled on this version, and it was backed up by Capt. Garcilazo. José Raya Rivera claimed, “Villa’s head is known to be here in El Cairo.” In October 2003, at La Chispita lunch counter in Salaíces, Chihuahua, this narrator spoke with some residents of the town, the oldest of which still recounted that the head was buried “by the mountain,” near the ejido which had previously been called El Cairo. Others further specified that it was buried, “underneath the Gen. Francisco Villa high school,” which would be a marvelous instance of accidental justice.
A few days after the theft, Lt. Col. Ignacio Sánchez Anaya, who was the sub-commander of the garrison, hearing rumors swirl on all sides, and in light of the national scandal, initiated a clandestine investigation about which he later informed the Secretary of War in Mexico City. In his report, he said that Villa’s head was in Col. Durazo’s hands and that he had just requested leave. Marcelo Caraveo, who was an Orozquista not very sympathetic to Villismo but was nonetheless an honorable man and the military commander of Chihuahua, relieved Durazo of his post soon after.
The group of soldiers who robbed Villa’s grave ended badly. José García died a few days later from gangrene. Corporal Figueroa asked for an advance on his salary, deserted, and then disappeared. Fidel Martínez, a former lieutenant, el Shunco (Squirt) as he was known, testified sometime later that Durazo ordered the killing of two more of the soldiers for fear they would talk. Whether or not this was true, the fact is that another of the soldiers died in a fight after a game of cards, stabbed by a compañero. Corp. Silva died from alcoholism and Pvt. Martínez Primero expired under strange circumstances. Martínez went around the barracks talking about the nighttime expedition. Garcilazo acknowledged slapping him a couple times and having him arrested, but “didn’t know anything else after that [. . .] maybe they executed him.” On February 8, he turned up dead and was buried on February 14, one week after the robbery. It was said that Garcilazo died in Monterrey soon after, but the truth is that he deserted the garrison, went into hiding, and ended up working in Mexico City where, many years later, Víctor Ceja Reyes tracked him down for an interview.
Through the years, differing versions as to the whereabouts of Pancho Villa’s head have been published. In 1929, reports circulated in the press claiming that Villa’s skull was on exhibit at the Ringling Brothers Circus in the United States where it could be viewed for twenty-five cents. The circus denied the story and no witness was ever produced who had seen it. It was said that the head was on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York over a sign that said it had been acquired for $60,000, but the museum retired the exhibit after a couple years. If it’s true, there is no photographic record of the ghoulish prize, and no one remembers having seen it. It was also said that a Mexican detective followed the trail to the region between Tamaulipas and the state of Mexico, where it was buried. Villa’s adopted son Piñón insisted it was transported to the United States in a double-sized gasoline tank. An antiques dealer in the United States stated (in 1967) claimed that he had Villa’s head in Nichols, Iowa, and that an artist named Ivanhoe Whitted (identified as Ivance Whitte in another article) had left it to him, having purchased it from an adventurer who had discovered it on a farm in Columbus. This narrator has seen photographs of the supposed skull in the antiques dealer’s possession and the bullet holes do not appear to coincide with Villa’s wounds compared to photos of his cadaver during the wake at the Hidalgo hotel in 1923.
In the 1960s, then Gen. Durazo, hounded by the press, was obligated to fabricate yet another version. In it, an officer by the name of el Chololo (Buddy), who was chief of Gen. Arnulfo R. Gómez’s general staff—both died two years after the theft in the uprising against Obregón—had passed through Chihuahua on a visit and was in Parral the night before the robbery. According to Durazo, el Chololo perpetrated the crime. He added that Gómez had it stolen because, despite having fought him, he admired Villa and wanted a scientist to study his head. Durazo had remained silent so as to not compromise a friend, stoically bearing the brunt of the accusations. He closed his remarks stating that “a patriot” had the head in his possession.
In an interview with journalist Juan Ibarrola, Durazo recounted that a sergeant under his command had stolen it from him to give to some gringos from the Smithsonian who wanted to study it, but the deal fell through, and the sergeant disappeared. Ibarrola said that while he was talking with the general, he saw a box on the fireplace mantel and, when the general was distracted looking for a map, he opened it and found a skull with bullet holes. When he asked Durazo about it, the general got nervous and ended the interview.
And if that wasn’t enough, Durazo revealed to Col. López Salazar that he would leave a sealed envelope in his safe to be opened after his death in which he would tell the truth, admitting that he had not yet done so. The news leaked out to the press. In his final days, Francisco Durazo suffered constant nightmares in the hospital room where he died, saying that (Pancho) “had come to find him.” After his death, family members informed the press that no such envelope existed, no matter how hard they searched.
Durazo was not the only one pursued by the ghost of Villa’s head. During Emil Holmdahl’s last years, a pair of stories were published that seemed to suggest that he had finally ended up with the head. His friend Aurora Steinhauer remembered many years after the fact that when he lived in the Sheldon Hotel in El Paso, he kept something of great value in his room. Whenever he went out, he had a Yaqui guard who traveled with him watch over it. L. M. Shadbolt reported that, in 1926 or 1927, Emil was put up in the Sheldon for free, but that his food and drink were not paid for. Emil was “thirsty and low on funds” so he and Shadbolt went on a five-day bender in Ciudad Juárez. Holmdahl was carrying a bottle of Cuervo tequila in one hand and a package wrapped in paper in the other. All of a sudden, he said that he had something to show him, so he unwrapped the package and revealed Villa’s head.
The tale might have ended there. However, in recent years, a series of investigations into Yale’s Skull and Bones have suggested that Pancho Villa’s head may be among a collection of skulls kept by this secret student society. If so, Emil L. Holmdahl sold it to Frank Brophy, a Yale graduate and friend of Prescott Bush—the grandfather of George W. Bush, who was also a member of the society just like his father—for $25,000. Had Holmdahl sold them a fake head, taking advantage of the affair’s popularity? During the presidency of George W. Bush rose more demands that he return Pancho Villa’s head to Mexico; there’s even a map circulating that shows the head’s supposed location: Skull and Bones headquarters, a place called The Tomb, across from the Yale University Art Gallery.
This narrator firmly believes that Villa’s skull was deposited in the vicinity of Salaíces, buried in a Mauser 7mm ammunition box. But he also believes that this story will never come to an end and that it will go on reproducing itself through new versions. In any case, all citizens of Parral know, because they were told so as kids to scare them, that a hearse full of ghosts sometimes descends in the night to loot and plunder their city’s cemetery.
