Jose Chavez y Chavez, Nov. 23, 1897
Jose Chavez y Chavez was born in 1851 in Valencia County, New Mexico. He was eighteen when he came to Lincoln County. He became a resident of the small Hispanic village of San Patricio (which would later serve as a Regulator haunt) and married Maria Lucero at Lincoln on January 10, 1871. He was elected constable of San Patricio Precinct in September of 1874. A year later, he became a justice of the peace. He was reelected constable of San Patricio Precinct on February 14, 1877 and was still constable when he became a founding member of the Regulators in March of 1878. He fought in several of the battles of the Lincoln County War. During the Five-Day Battle, he was inside the McSween house and escaped with Billy the Kid and others on the last day of the battle when the house burned to the ground. He soon after quit the Regulators and joined the short lived Lincoln County Militia, which was organized by Gov. Lew Wallace and was supposed to keep peace in Lincoln County. He ran for Lincoln constable in 1880, but lost because he killed a prisoner in jail in Lincoln shortly before. He moved to Las Vegas, New Mexico where he became a deputy. In 1885, he met Bob Ford, the killer of Jesse James, in Las Vegas. Ford owned a saloon in Vegas and also worked as a police man. The locals disliked him and hired Chavez to humiliate him. Chavez and Ford participated in a shooting match in which they both fired at a quarter which was a long distance away. Ford took a while to aim, and fired first, missing by a mile. Chavez then instantly jerked his pistol out of his holster, fired without aiming, and hit the quarter. After this, Chavez challenged Ford to a real duel and Ford, being the coward he was, fled Las Vegas, never to return. In the early 1890s, Chavez joined the Society of Bandits, headed by Vicente Silva in Vegas. Chavez was quite a cold-blooded killer and on Oct. 22, 1892, he and three other gang members lynched one Patricio Maes. In Feb. of 1893, Chavez and others shot and killed a bartender named Gabriel Sandoval. The gang's existance came to an end in April of the same year, when Chavez and two others killed Silva, their own leader. Although he fled the area immediately afterwards, he was arrested in June in Socorro County living under the alias of Joe Gonzales. He went to trial for the murder of Silva in June of 1895, was found guilty, and sentenced to hang, but the sentence was eventually converted to life imprisonment. On November 23, 1897, Chavez was put into the Santa Fe Penitentiary. The above photo is his mug shot, taken that day. On February 1, 1909, Chavez was paroled by Gov. Miguel Otero (who had been a friend of Billy the Kid as well). Chavez was paroled because he had recently helped save a prison guard in a prison riot. The photo below was taken on the day he was paroled. He later claimed to have been with the six Regulators (Billy the Kid, Fred Waite, Henry Brown, John Middleton, Big Jim French, and Frank MacNab) that assassinated Sheriff William Brady and Deputy George Hindman on April 1, 1878. He also claimed to have been the one that murdered Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain and his young son in the White Sands, but this seems unlikely. Chavez died at Milagro, New Mexico on July 17, 1923.
Jose Chavez y Chavez, Feb. 1, 1909
