My great-grandmother knew the bandit and killer Joaquin Murrieta whose adventures actually led to the fictional story of Zorro. While many regarded Joaquin as a killer or bandit, others thought of him as a Robin Hood type person who helped the poor. My great-grandmother let him stay in a shed on our family ranch and got to know him. She thought he was a good person who had only sought revenge for those who killed his family and who was helping others.
In 1853, the rangers who were hired to find Joaquin and his gang are said to have found the gang and killed three of them including Joaquin. To prove this, they cut off his head and preserved it in a jar of alcohol. They then displayed his head around California.
Nevertheless, stories soon emerged that the head was not of Joaquin. My great-grandmother was an exceptional women for those times. Not only was she six feet tall; she also ran a ranch. She had heard stories that the head was not of that Joaquin. So, she actually got on a horse and rode 60 miles from the ranch near San Jose to San Francisco (a very unusual feat then for a woman to do). When she got to San Francisco and looked into the jar, she said that it was not Joaquin Murrieta. She was not alone in this belief as his sister said the same thing. Plus, others said they saw him in later years.
Many books were written about Joaquin Murrieta calling him a bandit and killer as well as some describing him as an activist who wanted to retrieve the parts of Mexico lost to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. A writer by the name of Johnston McCulley saw these stories and created the fictional hero Zorro based on Joaquin Murrieta in a five-part serial story
My family believes that the rangers did not kill the real Joaquin Murrieta. This story was told to my mother who heard the story from my great-grandmother. In addition, while doing genealogy research, a woman recently contacted me and told me that her family had relatives who also had seen the head and said that it did not belong to Joaquin Murrieta.
Share whether you think the head was of Joaquin Murietta or not?
aginggratefully 