The Earth Shakes and Heads Roll
Joaquin met his match, or so it's said but not believed by all, when Captain Harry Love, a noted Los Angles gunfighter, decided to make a more celebrated name for himself. One day Love, with 20 men at his back, rode down on the Mexican bandits. Love surprised the Murrietta gang as they languished around their campfire near Lake Tulare.
The outcome of this 1854 confrontation was that Murrietta was not only captured but also got his head severed. After the bloody ruckus a man by the name of Billy Henderson presented the sheriff with a gunnysack containing some Mexican's head and claiming it to be Murrietta's. Now Murrietta actually had a price on his head when, in good old California mining camp style, the severed head was put up for auction. It went to the highest bidder for thirty-five dollars.
Joaquin Murrietta's head, confined to a large jar of alcohol, went on display in the old Gordon Museum on Market Street, in San Francisco. For the grand sum of twenty-five cents the curious could gaze to their heart's content. But even in death, and with a severed head or missing body, depending on how you look at it, Joaquin Murrietta made his great escape from the confines of the law.
The big glass jar jail break came in 1906 when Mother Earth decided to shake and tremble, bring that City by the Bay to its crumbling and burning earth-quaking knees. In the ruckus and disaster, Murrietta's head disappeared for all time.
Ride more of the Outlaw Trail with:
Butch Cassidy: The Outlaw That Got Away-Or Did He?
James Butler Hickok: in "Good-bye Bill: The Murder of Wild Bill.
Western Outlaws at the Suite:: A multi-part listing of Western Outlaw articles presented at Suite 101.
Source:
McCarty, Lea F. The Gunfighters. Mike Roberts Color Productions, Emeryville, California, 1959.
