END OF THE ESPINOSAS

10/15/1863 - Mostly unnoticed at the time in a nation awash in the blood of the American Civil War, legendary Indian fighter, scout, and occasional bounty hunter, Thomas Tate "Tom" Tobin, puts an end to a summer of carnage in Colorado that has cost the lives of between 30-40 "gringos," when while leading a small posse through the wilderness surrounding La Veta Pass, he puts killing bullets into members of his own family, 35-year-old outlaw and murderer Felipe Nerio Espinosa, and Espinosa's 14-year-old bandit nephew, Jose Vincente Espinosa, then chops off the heads of the pair to gain the "dead or alive" reward on the men while physically documenting his good deed.   

Tobin

Roots of the confrontation in the Colorado (still a territory at the time) can be traced back to the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 and the huge land transfer that takes place with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  Members of the family of Pedro Ignasio Espinosa, and his wife, Maria Gertrudes Chaves, Felipe and his younger brother, Jose (the family will be comprised of five siblings, two daughters and three brothers) grow up in the small village of El Rito, about 35 miles to the west of the town of Taos.  Patriotic and intensely religious (Felipe will become a Catholic member of the flagellant fraternity, the Holy Brotherhood of the Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ), trouble begins when the family suddenly ceases being Mexicans and instead become often put upon second class American citizens.  Madness already whispering in his head, when Felipe is 26, he goes courting in an unusual way.  Breaks into the nearby home of the Hurtado Family, he kidnaps 17-year-old Maria Secundina Hurtado, and her 11-year-old sister, Eugenia, and as ransom from the girls' father, releases Eugenia when the man agrees to the marriage of Maria to Felipe (despite evidence that Felipe likes to practice his whipping on his young bride).  In 1858, trying to make ends meet, members of both the Espinosa and Hurtado families move north and put down roots in the San Luis Valley, outside the village of San Rafael (near present-day Conejos, Colorado).  Eking out a minimal existence herding sheep and harvesting beans, while supplementing their meager lifestyle by occasionally rusting cattle and horses.  Finding themselves citizens of the new territory of Colorado, with new laws to obey and new taxes to pay, in 1861/1862 something goes terribly wrong and the brothers soon are in the Rocky Mountains seeking to assuage their wrath with wrath upon those they believe have wronged them ... there is talk of both brothers losing in court the land they think they own to white squatters, another tale has the men going bad after Felipe has his wife and two daughters raped by American soldiers (Maria is said to have died four days later), followed shortly thereafter by Jose killing a soldier raping his sister, fleeing into the hills, and then dealing with the turmoil in his heart when the soldiers return and kill his wife and family and take possession of his land and property, and there is talk that Felipe has had a vision of the Virgin Mary in which she tells him to slaughter 100 "Anglos" for every Espinosa lost in the Mexican-American war (600 killings to balance out the books on the six Espinosa relatives killed in Vera Cruz, Mexico by a warship's shell during General Winfield Scott's invasion of the port).  Or it is quite possible that Felipe is simply a psychopath, using racism as an excuse, that involves family in his crimes to the point where they see no way out other than to become murderers themselves.  Whatever the case, first operating out of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains of southwest Colorado, Felipe and Jose 

manifest the violence in their souls in the early spring of 1863.

The Land The United States Acquires

San Rafael

Felipe

The first hint of what is to come takes place when the brothers waylay a cargo of freight in New Mexico as it is hauled between Sante Fe and Galisteo, bound for a lonely trading post run by a priest.  After choosing the supplies they wish to loot, the freighter, Juan Flugencio Gonzales, is tied to the bottom of his wagon's tongue and the horse team hauling the load is whipped off down the road, dragging the man along with it over dirt and rocks until the damaged teamster (he will be disfigured and blinded for life) is spotted and set free by the priest the goods were meant for.  Vanishing back into the wilderness of the Sangre De Christo Mountains, the brothers are next heard from when they kill the owner/operator of a sawmill near Canon City, 58-year-old Francis William Bruce, with a bullet to the man's chest and then cutting the man's heart out with a knife.  On March 19, 1863, the Espinosas find Henry "Uncle" Harkens, known as one of the friendliest people in the region, alone in a small cabin where he is cooking dinner for his two partners in a sawmill the men run in a small canyon about 10 miles west of the town of Fountain (henceforth known as the haunted "Dead Man's Canyon").  Shot in the head, cabin trashed looking for loot, the brothers again vanish, but not before smashing a hatchet repeatedly into Harkens' skull.  Then the pair are off again for more mayhem ... mayhem they instigate by adding South Park rancher, J. D. Addleman, to their body count near Wilkerson Pass (about 50 miles west of Colorado Springs) with a shot to the man's head.  A few days later, around the Red Hill area of South Park, five more men are murdered ... near the Kenosha House way station outside the fledgling mining camp of Fairplay, a miner named Jacob Binkley and Abram Nelson Shoup are found shot and bludgeoned, prospector Bill Carter is found dead on his claim, robbed of gun, money, and clothing, and two California Gulch miners named Frederick Lehman and Sol Seyga are found, one with his head crushed in by a rock, and the other with a crucifix carved into his chest.

Henry Harkens Marker

Fairplay

The murders soon have much of the territory in a panic with newspapers calling the yet to be identified brothers, "The Axemen of Colorado."  Killers unknown (are they crazy outlaws, Confederates seeking to create chaos within the territory, renegade Indians, or something else), with law enforcement and the military widely scattered about Colorado, people men stop traveling on the roads at night and male strangers in the region are instantly suspected of being involved in the deaths.  At California Gulch, a man in the area no one knows is forced to save himself by running from Red Hill to Fairplay to avoid being lynched (there he is finally identified and saved by the legendary Methodist minister,"Father" John Dyer, who will gain fame for repeatedly walking over the mountains, even in the winter, to bring religious comfort to lonely mining camps and deliver the United States mail), and near Fairplay, a family is beset by a mob of friends of two of the deceased (sixteen men lead by Captain John McCannon) for taking in a man named Baxter for the evening (after shots are fired, Baxter is removed from the home, taken to Fairplay, and without the courtesy of a trial, given a necktie party).  The murders however do not cease with Baxter's death (most historians put the death count at between 30 to 60 unlucky individuals), and grow more depraved as the summer passes with bodies losing their heads, being disemboweled, having stakes driven through their hearts (those bodies that still have them) and having little twig crosses placed in some of the bullet holes.

Another Espinosa Murder

Dyer

The culprits are finally identified when the two men attempt yet another murder, ambushing a lumber freighter named Edward Metcalf on the road between the small mining community of Alma and the Fairplay diggings.  Driving his wagon, about three miles outside of Fairplay, Metcalf is hit in the chest by a rifle bullet fired by Felipe Espinosa ... a failed fatal shot that instead of killing the man, knocks the freighter down, saved by the bullet hitting a small book and a packet of papers Metcalf has stuffed into the breast pocket of his jacket that includes a copy of President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.  Righting himself, the freighter rides into Fairplay and describes to McCannon's recently arrived posse that his assailants were a pair of Mexican cowboys that match the wanted posters of Felipe and Jose Espinosa.  It is a description that is validated two days later when the vigilante posse finds and follows the trail of the killers and follows it to the mountain camp of the Espinosa's.  Quietly surrounding the area, the posse fires on Jose as he comes out of a thicket and begins taking the hobble off his horse.  Slammed into a tree with a shot that breaks the second rib on his right side (fired by Joseph M. Lamb) as his horse is killed by a shotgun blast, Jose is reaching for the pistol on his hip when a killing round hits the outlaw between the eyes (fired by Charles Carter) just as his brother steps out of the trees (afterwards, Jose's body will be dumped in a quickly dug grave and his head will be cut off and returned to Fairplay for identification, where before disappearing, it will spend many years in the office of a prominent Denver doctor).  Weapons pivot on Felipe, but when McCannon mistakes the killer for a member of his posse and calls for his men to hold their fire (luckily for Felipe, he is wearing the expensive coat of a recent victim that looks similar to one also being sported by a posse member named Billy Youngh), the bandit uses the few seconds he is gifted with to vanish into a nearby stand of trees.  

Alma

With two more killings added to his tally as Felipe escapes south through the Canon City region, for awhile, with no new deaths to report it seems the menace of Espinosa murder has passed (though little mail or commerce passes through the region out of fear over summer's mayhem), but big brother is simply biding his time.  In hiding, the killer contemplates more killings, sneaks into San Rafael to secretly visit family, writes in his journal about the many wrongs done to his family and justifies his actions, writes a letter to Colorado Territorial Governor John Evans, telling the politician that the deaths will cease if Espinosa and his followers are granted full pardoned for past criminal acts and Felipe is rewarded with a five thousand acre tract of land on the Conejos River and that if Evans doesn't agree, six hundred "gringos" will be killed, including the governor himself (Evans of course does not agree to Felipe's "terms," and instead, ups the bounty on the outlaw's head to a dead-or-alive reward of $2,5000, authorizes Conejos County Sheriff Emmett Harding to take out the killer, and moves members of the Colorado Volunteer militia into the area ... the governor will live to the ripe old age of 87), whips himself bloody for his many religious failings, and recruits his fourteen-year-old nephew, Jose Vincente, into helping him with the family vendetta by promising the youth, money, women, and lots of tequila (which Felipe has now gained an addiction to).  For reasons known only to himself, Felipe also secretly returns to the site of his brother's death, digs up the headless corpse, buries the remains in an unmarked grave, and rides off with a souvenir of his sibling's demise, Jose's dried, chopped off foot.  With the murder of a fisherman named William Smith, Espinosa begins another chapter of terror in the territory, but it does not last long. 

Felipe

Evans

Three sheets to the wind blasted on a major tequila bender, on October 5, 1863, Felipe and Jose ambush an Anglo man named Leander Philbrook and a Mexican woman named Dolores Sanchez in a buggy traveling over La Veta Pass, in the Sangre De Christo mountains of Colorado.  Aim skewed by the booze they have consumed, the Espinosas fire on the couple, but miss, killing the buggy's mules.  Gifted with life instead of assassinated, Philbrook runs up into the stony mountainside, while Sanchez runs down the road where she is soon picked up and hidden in the back of a wagon driven by a man named Pedro Garcia.  Giving up on finding Philbrook (the man will eventually make it down to Fort Garland where he reports the crime), the Espinosas return to the pass, where they see Garcia, and threaten the man with death if he doesn't tell them where Sanchez has escaped to.  Location refused to be divulged, Felipe is ready to shoot Garcia when Sanchez reveals her hiding place and asks the outlaws not to molest Garcia.  Letting the Mexican drive away, the Espinosas tie up the woman, rape her repeatedly, and then leave her by the side of the road as they once again vanish into the wilderness (she will be found and rescued by a small military force that rides up the pass after Philbrook makes it to the fort).  Ire raised at the rape of a defenseless woman, the commanding officer at Fort Garland, thirty-two-year-old Lt. Colonel Samuel Forster Tappan (the following year, Tappan will head the military commission that investigates the role Colonel John Chivington will play in the infamous Sand Creek Massacre of members of the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes), summons local mountain man, Thomas Tate "Tom" Tobin, to his headquarters to give the man an assignment ... kill or capture Felipe Espinosa and his nephew, Jose. 

Modern Road Over La Veta Pass

Ft. Garland

Tappan

Born on March 15, 1823 near St. Louis, Missouri, to an Irish immigrant and a widowed Indian bride already taking care of seven children, the scruffy, 140 pound, black haired, blue-eyed, ill-tempered 5'7" forty-year-old mountain man that shows up at Fort Garland carrying a huge Bowie knife, two 1851 Navy Colts in a homemade holster made from a buffalo's hair and rump, and a 16 pound, .53 Hawken rifle in answer to Tappan's summons has a Wild West resume that is peppered with adventures beside legendary characters that includes Kit Carson, Ceran St. Vrain, John C. Fremont, Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, Charley Bent, and Uncle Dick Wootton.  Off for the high country while still a youngster, Tobin travels to Taos, New Mexico when he is only 14, where he hunts beaver in the nearby mountains with his brother, works out of Bent's Fort, Colorado as a scout & trapper, and supplements that income by working as a whiskey distiller, store clerk, and miller for Simeon Turley out of Arroyo Hondo, venturing into the mountains to trade whiskey and other supplies for furs that can then be sold in St. Louis.  He also rides dispatches to Fort Leavenworth for Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny (who will march his command from New Mexico to California in 1846).  In 1847, he manages to survive (he is one of only two men to escape the distillery when a mob shows up to burn the place to the ground) the rebellion of Hispano and Pueblo people over their recent citizenship as "Americans" that will become known as the Taos Revolt.  Surviving, Tobin spends the rest of the "Revolt" scouting for his partner and friend, Captain Ceran St. Vrain.  "Revolt" settled, in 1847, Tobin starts farming a plot of land southeast of El Pueblo, on the San Carlos River, and selling the produce to Lt. Colonel William Gilpin's command near the Bent's Fort trading post ... a job which soon expands into scouting and becoming a dispatch rider (an admirer will state that Tobin could "track a cricket through sagebrush).  In turn, those occupations lead to Tobin becoming a scout guiding an Army expedition responsible for finding a railroad route to California.  Unaware that Tobin is a distant cousin of the Espinosas by way of marriage when he offers the killing hunt to the mountain man, Tappan will insist that Tobin goes into the mountains at the head of a small group of men consisting of Lt. Horace Baldwin, fifteen enlisted men of Company C of the First Colorado Cavalry, a civilian named Loring Jinks, and a Mexican youth named Juan Montoya (to take care of Tobin's horse),  Scretly, Tobin is told to kill both men "for humanity's sake.").

Tobin

Bent's Fort

Leaving Fort Garland at around midnight on October 12, 1863, the party makes its way to La Veta Pass and it takes Tobin less than a day to find the trail the Espinosas have left leaving the scene of their most recent crime.  Dividing the group in two, part of Tobin's company hides along the pass, while the other portion follows the scout into the mountains.  Unaware they are being tracked, twice Tobin comes within view of the bandits before they get away ... campsite to campsite, Tobin tracks the killers from on foot (the brush and fallen trees make riding impossible), looking for a good spot to ambush the two men.  Finding the tracks of two oxen being driven down La Veta Creek, Tobin guesses that the hungry outlaws are driving the beasts back to their camp.  After three days of tracking the men through the wilderness, on the morning of 10/15, Tobin sees a group of crows flying about a small column of smoke and surmises it is the Espinosas slaughtering their breakfast as the birds await cleaning up afterwards.  Leaving all but two soldiers and Montoya behind, slowly, crawling at times, the five members of the party creep up on the outlaw's camp ... until the snap of a twig underfoot alerts Felipe that his camp has been located.  Jumping up from where he is cooking a recently butchered steak, Felipe goes for his gun, but before he can use it, a round from Tobin's gun (the soldiers will also fire on the Espinosas during the confrontation, but miss, leaving all the killing up to Tobin) slams into the killer's side and sends him face first into the fire.  Screaming, "Jesus favor me.  Escape, I'm killed," Jose jumps up and sets off down the hill, but can't avoid the speed and accuracy with a rifle that Tobin can bring to shooting down located prey.  Powderhorn, gunpowder, patch, ball down the barrel and round tamped home, Tobin is reloaded in seconds and firing again.  Spine severed by the shot, Jose goes down in a heap and is dead almost instantly, falling just short of the trees he'd been headed towards.  Rolling at of the fire, Felipe fires blindly towards the sound of the soldiers, but fails to hit anything but air.  Not wanting to risk Felipe getting off a lucky shot that might hurt any of the party, Tobin walks up, knocks Felipe's pistol away, and then grabs the killer by the hair, drapes him over a fallen log and then cuts off his head with two huge blows from his Bowie knife.  The serial killings which have petrified the territory for months are finally over.

Where The Espinosas End

Tobin Portrait

But of course there is gruesome coda to Espinosa killings.  Returning to Fort Garland, Tobin goes to report in to Colonel Tappan, and finds the man in a large room where a number of his officers and their ladies are relaxing after returning from an earlier horse ride in the area.  Spotting the tracker approaching him, Tappan calls out, "Any luck, Tom?"  Tobin answers the inquiry with the words "So, so," and a laugh, while dumping the contents of a burlap flour sack he has been carrying over his back onto the floor ... sending two bloody heads bouncing across the floor, and causing the room to immediately empty out (the heads are sent to the Colorado capitol as proof that the bandits are dead, stored briefly in the treasurer's office, and then stored in a basement of the building, before eventually disposed of in a furnace).  Though it will take years to collect because the coffers of the territory are light at the moment from fighting Confederates and Indians, for killing Felipe and his nephew, though promised a sum of $2,500, Tobin will eventually receive $500 from the Colorado territorial government and $1,000 from the Colorado State government (the other $1,000 is never paid out as far as anyone can tell).  Additionally, the mountain man receives from the governor a large buckskin coat lined with a red blanket (similar to one gifted to adventurer Kit Carson by the governor) and gets a silver inlaid Henry rifle from the Army as thanks, along with many free drinks in a host of saloons over the years.  And making up for the lost reward money, Governor Shoup of Idaho gives Tobin $1,000 for killing the man that murdered his brother and in 1893, Colorado Senator Smith, an old friend of Tobin's, gets the state to pay the mountain man another $1,000.

Felipe's Pistols

Felipe's Journal

And even in death, the Espinosas and their deeds continue to haunt Colorado (they are still the most prolific serial killers in the history of Colorado) ... literally.  Restless, the ghosts of the men and women the family slaughtered are said to still walk a lonely stretch of La Veta Pass, shadow the streets of Fairplay, and wander the mining ruins outside of Leadville.  Felipe and Jose themselves are said to ride their horses up and down the Capitol's grand staircase, trying to find their heads ... and no matter how tired you are if out backpacking in the state's Sangre De Christo mountains ... DO NOT MAKE CAMP ANYWHERE NEAR WHERE TOM TOBIN ENDED THE CRIME SPREE OF THE ESPINOSAS! 

Artist Rendering Of Felipe