Monday, April 27, 2009

Former NM state historian dispels hanging myths

New Mexico abounds with macabre tales about "hanging trees" where Wild West miscreants were strung up in the days of frontier justice — but as former state historian Robert Torrez discovered, there's more myth than truth in many of the stories. It provided the title of his book, "Myth of the Hanging Tree," published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2008. As state historian from 1987 to 2000, Torrez was often asked by researchers about hangings and mob lynchings before New Mexico became a state in 1912 and later, in the early days of statehood. When he looked into their queries, "they'd find out that things often were not as we imagined them," Torrez said in a recent interview at his Albuquerque home. But he did glean some hard facts amid the myths. From 1849-1923, 71 people, including one woman, were legally hanged in what is now New Mexico. The practice ended when the Legislature changed the method to electrocution in 1929. Torrez's book also lists 125 lynchings in New Mexico from 1852-1928, but he acknowledges the list is likely not complete. He turned up references to at least a dozen more he could not confirm. The last known lynching took place in Farmington in 1928. Rafael Benavides, a sheepherder, was kidnapped from a local hospital after being shot by a sheriff's posse that arrested him for assaulting the wife of a rancher who owed him money.There was the botched hanging of William Wilson, who was placed in his coffin still alive, in Lincoln in 1875. "They decided they had to string him up again to make sure that he was dead before they could bury him," Torrez said...AP

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