Leading up to the 1998 execution of ax murderer Karla Faye Tucker, there were repeated references to the fact that a woman had not been put to death in Texas since Nov. 13, 1863. Her name was Chipita Rodriguez and this is her sad but true story.
For more years than most folks could remember, Chipita had lived alone in a wood cabin near the banks of the Aransas River. Weary riders caught out after dark on the trail between Refugio and San Patricio could always find cheap lodging at her place.
On an August evening in 1863, John Savage knocked on Chipita’s door. His saddlebags bulged with six hundred dollars in gold, a fortune for those hard times. During the night someone took an ax to the sleeping guest, stuffed his body in a gunnysack and dumped the deceased in the nearby river.
Two days later, the mutilated remains were found floating in the Aransas, and a search of Chipita’s cabin reportedly turned up the missing gold. The aged innkeeper and Juan Silvera, an acquaintance who turned state’s evidence, were charged with the grisly crime.
When Judge Benjamin Franklin Neal, the circuit-riding magistrate for the Fourteenth Judicial District, arrived in San Patricio on his regular rounds, the defendants were not legally ready for trial. The sheriff hurriedly put together a grand jury, which returned the required indictments after hearing his sketchy account of the investigation and subsequent arrests.
The selection of the dozen men good and true to sit in judgment raised serious questions about the fairness of the process. Three had served on the grand jury, while four others were accused felons whose charges were conveniently dropped so they could do their civic duty. Local officeholders and courthouse loafers completed the clearly compromised panel.
Before the trial began the next day, the prosecutor cut a deal with Chipita’s codefendant. In exchange for pleading guilty to the reduced charge of second-degree murder and testifying against his alleged accomplice, Juan Silvera was promised a token prison term of five years.
More concerned with getting home in time for dinner than reaching a just verdict, the jurors deliberated no longer than half an hour before convicting the frail figure of murder in the first degree. In view of her age and the lack of eyewitnesses other than Silvera, they recommended mercy.
Sticking to the letter of the law, which specified the maximum penalty for that particular crime, Judge Neal ignored the humane suggestion. He condemned Chipita to die on Friday the 13th of the following month.
As the stern sentence was read, not a soul in the courtroom or in all of San Patricio County believed for a moment the old woman would actually hang. Offenders of the opposite sex simply did not pay with their lives for their misdeeds no matter how depraved or diabolical.
Neither the appeals court nor the governor would permit the sentence to be carried out. But for the judicial referees to invalidate the verdict and to order a new trial, Chipita’s lawyer had to file an appeal. He never got around to it. For Gov. Pendleton Murrah to grant an outright pardon or at least to commute the sentence, someone had to ask him to intervene. Nobody did.
Seemingly with a life and mad momentum of its own, the travesty raced to a conclusion on Nov. 13, 1863. Chipita shuffled with shackled ankles to a borrowed oxcart for the one-way trip to the Nueces River bottom outside the Irish settlement of San Patricio. Riding atop her own crude coffin, she calmly puffed on a cornshuck cigarette oblivious to the dumbfounded stares of the townspeople.
The noose dangled from the sturdiest branch of a gnarled mesquite tree. The executioner climbed onto the back of the cart, tightened the rope around the pathetically thin neck of the passive victim and hopped back to the ground. He had forgotten to bring along the customary hood, so the crowd of spectators was not spared the gruesome spectacle that followed.
A flick of a heavy switch spurred the oxen causing the cart to lurch forward. Because Chipita weighed less than a hundred pounds, the fall failed to break her neck. Denied a merciful end, she slowly strangled to death.
Is it any wonder the State of Texas waited 134 years before executing another female? However, other than their fate and gender, Chipita Rodriguez and Karla Faye Tucker had nothing else in common.
The former went to the gallows because she was poor, old and Mexican and fell through the cracks of a system that should have saved her. The other was a confessed killer whose death row religious experience only clouded the issue and diverted attention from her heinous crime.
Visit barteehaile.com for Bartee’s books, including his latest “Murder Most Texan,” and bound collections of his Texas history columns from the past 31 years.
