Mexican-American
serial killer (???-1863). He may have actually been the first serial killer in America, though record-keeping on such matters was spotty, at best.
Espinoza was a native of
Mexico. As a child, he lived in
Vera Cruz with his family. During the
Mexican-American War, Vera Cruz was shelled from its harbor by American warships commanded by Admiral
Whitfield Scott. His entire family died in the attacks.
Orphaned, he had to move to
Conejos County, Colorado in the
San Luis Valley to live with his only relatives.
Espinoza grew to adulthood on the
Colorado-
New Mexico border. One night in 1863, he had a vision of the
Virgin Mary. She told him it was time for him to
avenge the deaths of his six family members. She wanted a hundred
gringos for every one of his family. Six hundred people had to die. And Felipe was a good Catholic. When the Virgin Mary tells you to do something, you do it.
Espinoza convinced some members of his family to join his
holy quest -- his uncle, his cousins, no one's really sure who agreed to help out. For about three or four months, they went out and killed people. They blackened their faces with paint or soot,
ambushed cowboys, miners, settlers, any white people they could find, and killed them. Once they were dead, Espinoza would open their chests with an
ax and tear their
hearts out.
No one knows why he did this. Maybe the Holy Virgin wanted it that way. No one knows what he did with the hearts. Maybe he burned them. Maybe he threw them away. Maybe he fed them to dogs.
Colorado was the home state of
Alfred Packer. Maybe
cannibalism was contagious.
Maybe the Virgin took them off his hands.
Espinoza and his crew killed between 35 and 40 people that way. Colorado's
territorial governor sent out
posses to find the killers, but they had no luck, though they managed to hang several
innocent people because they thought they might be the Espinozas.
At last, the governor called on a
mountain man named
Thomas Tobin. Most of us haven't heard of Tobin, but at the time, he was probably almost as famous as
Kit Carson or
Jim Bridger. Tobin managed to track the Espinozas down and kill them. He cut off their heads as
proof, since he couldn't lug all those bodies around the countryside. He was carrying the
heads back so he could collect the $500 reward when he got swept away by a wild river current and lost a couple of the heads. He didn't get any reward either -- Colorado didn't have enough money to pay him.
It's said that Espinoza's head was
pickled in a jar and exhibited in a
circus sideshow. The head eventually disappeared. Maybe the Virgin -- or
whoever was posing as her -- took it back.
Research:
Christopher O'Brian, Enter the Valley, St. Martin's Press, 1999
http://www.seancasteel.com/creatures.htm
fearquest