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by Steve Renzi

n the early afternoon of August 8th, in the year 1873, where the Pima County Courthouse and El Presidio Park are now located, four men, each wearing a black hood over his head, and a rope around his neck, stood on a horse-drawn wagon, before a crowd of nearly two thousand people. They were there because of an unlocked door on a hot summer night, blood-stained money, and a couple found brutally murdered. Two murders that shocked and outraged this desert town—a place well-accustomed to murder and death—like never before.

Nearly two-thirds of Tucson’s entire population was there, with three notable exceptions. The sheriff, chief judge and county district attorney were nowhere to be found. The crowd was quiet, solemn, determined. Most had been to a funeral that morning, they were ready and well-prepared for four more.

Tucson in the 1870’s was a town in the midst of change. Only twenty years before, it had belonged to Mexico. Now, it was the capital of the Arizona Territory, a military center, a transportation hub, and the distribution point for the whole territory, making it an economic powerhouse. Main Street was almost constantly lined with wagon trains, coming and going, filled with supplies.

More and more Anglos, especially men, began moving to Tucson. Many married Hispanic women. The town attracted hard-working entrepreneurs, as well as criminals and gamblers. It had six attorneys and ten saloons. In the 1870’s, Tucson was introduced to the telegraph, a circulating public library, ice, and the planting of the first grass lawn. There was one public school and plenty of brothels and gambling houses. Just outside the city limits, danger always lurked from bandits who could easily flee across the border. The decade began with the Camp Grant Massacre and ended with preparations for the coming of the railroad. For the people who lived here, frontier justice was still a way of life.

Especially in a small town, character counts. Vincente and Librada Hernandez, came to Tucson in the fall of 1872 and opened a small pawnbroker shop and general store on south Meyer street, in the neighborhood now called Barrio Viejo or Historico. They called their place, “las Piedras Negros,” meaning “the Black Stones.” Although relatively new in town, they soon became almost universally well-liked and respected. Good people. Kind and fair to the highest and lowest among us. Also, Librada Hernandez was said to be very pretty and rumored to be pregnant with the couples’ first child.

They lived in the back of their store. The night of August 6th, 1873 was a hot one. Vincente, decided to leave the front door open that night to encourage a cooling breeze. The couple slept near the door on a mat placed on the floor, both were covered only by a thin sheet.

The next morning, a young Indian girl, who helped in the store, noticed the front door and walkway splattered with blood. Peering inside, she saw two bodies crumpled onto the floor. She ran for help. Vincente and Librada had been brutally clubbed to death, the club a thick piece of mesquite wood, matted with human hair and caked with blood, casually left beside them. Both had been stabbed repeatedly, and their throats deeply slashed. The store had been robbed. Blood was everywhere.

The news spread through this town like an out-of-control wildfire. A tidal wave of shock, grief and rage. Who could have done such a thing to such good people? Men armed themselves, a thirty-man posse was formed and headed towards Mexico, a reward was immediately offered and six strangers in town were quickly arrested.

Isolated, on the outskirts of town, not everyone had heard the news. That afternoon, an elderly woman who lived down by the Santa Cruz River, came into town to buy some groceries. Her neighbor had sent her. When paying for the groceries, the clerk noticed tiny bloodstains on the money. Discreetly, the woman was asked about the money and where she had gotten it. She said her neighbor, a man named Jesus, had given it to her. She also recalled how he had come home late that evening and she could hear him bathing in the river water.

In all, three men were arrested for the murder of Vincente and Librada Hernandez. A newspaper account of the day told how bloody palm prints and boot marks at the scene of the crime were matched to the accused. It also told how one of the men confessed when shown the couples’ mutilated bodies. No methods of persuasion were discussed. When the stolen loot was dug up and recovered, the watch of Vincente Hernandez was still ticking.

The Committee for Public Safety, a vigilante group made up of Tucson’s leading citizens, and the same group that financed and supplied participants in the Camp Grant Massacre, proclaimed that these men must die. If there was any dissent that day, it remained silent and went unrecorded. Besides the murder victims, the most unfortunate individual was a man named John Willis, who was in custody on a previous homicide charge, and it was decided he should join the three condemned men.

The horses were pulled, the wagon moved, the four men hung until they were dead. Hanging was the universal method of execution in America, up to the 1890’s, and was the only form of execution allowed under the original constitution. If the condemned is lucky, death comes quickly, because pressure on the carotid artery can cause rapid unconsciousness and cardiac arrest. If not, death comes through slow strangulation.

As the men hung in the desert sun, the crowd slowly dispersed. The bodies hung throughout the afternoon until 4:00 p.m., then they were lowered.

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