The headline: "Search for Bandit in Mine is Abandoned by the Sheriff," Deseret News, Jan. 5, 1914.
What ever happened to Rafael Lopez?Lopez, a Bingham miner, staged a murder spree in late November and early December 1913 that left six people dead in three separate incidents. Eluding law officers in two counties, he holed up in the Apex mine in Bingham.
Efforts to smoke him out, starve him out or shoot him down failed, and in the first week of 1914, law officials carefully entered the mine to find - nothing. No trace of the man was found, and his whereabouts became a Utah mystery.
The Lopez saga began Nov. 20, 1913, when he went to call on Inez Ocaro, carrying a box of candy for his "querida." He found his lady-love entertaining Juan Valdez. Incensed, the "devil-may-care young dandy of the Latin community" returned to his cabin, where he loaded rounds of ammunition into his powerful army rifle and two automatic pistols.
Then, the Deseret News said in a recap of the adventure, he "coolly took his stand outside Ocaro's home and waited for Valdez." At 1 a.m., as Valdez bid Inez "hasta manana," Lopez pulled the trigger of his rifle, left Valdez bleeding his life away and took off.
Deputy Sheriff Julius Sorensen was notified and the chase began. Lopez apparently made an arc over the mountain above Highland Boy, a small Bingham Canyon community, and headed south into Utah County. Otto Witbeck and Nephi Jensen, Salt Lake County deputies stationed at Bingham, were assigned to trail the murderer. They followed Lopez's footprints in new-fallen snow, occasionally losing the trail on rocky ground.
Meanwhile, Sorensen had dropped in at the office of J.W. Grant, Bingham's police chief. In a fatal decision, Grant decided to go along "for the ride" to help Sorensen and the other deputies in their search for the Mexican. They caught up with Witbeck and Jensen the following morning.
On horseback, the four continued to track the fugitive, who apparently had spent the night in a vacant house. The trail led south and west into the sage and greasewood flats of the Jones Ranch near Saratoga Springs.
While Sorensen and Witbeck rode to the ranch house to inquire if the Joneses had seen anything of Lopez, Grant and Jensen rode toward the shore of Utah Lake to investigate a "movement in the brush."
Mrs. Jones said a man answering Lopez's description had just left the house after asking for something to eat. While the two lawmen talked with Mrs. Jones, two shots were heard. Wheeling their horses, Sorenson and Witbeck "rode at full tilt toward the circling, riderless horses of their companions."
Jensen lay in a clump of brush mortally wounded. Grant also was down. Soon Witbeck was screaming and clutching his side. The sole survivor, Sorensen fled back to the Jones home to ask the ranch wife to phone Lehi for a doctor. When the doctor arrived, Jensen, too, was dead.
Within an hour, the countryside had been alerted to the additional murders, and catching Lopez became the focus of every law enforcement officer in Utah and Salt Lake counties.
Catching Lopez, however, was no simple task. The Jones house became a center for dispatching posses, and groups fanned out to search the west shore of the lake and nearby Utah County communities. The expectation was that the murderer would be in custody by nightfall.
"But the fugitive Mexican was too wily for the disorganized posses," and he made his way to a haven in the "Hell's Kitchen" area, the News story said. Apparently hiding behind a tree that commanded a view of all possible approaches, Lopez rested for a while.
Then, suffering from frozen and bleeding feet, he left a confusing trail heading back toward Bingham. As the trail got cold, many of the searchers gave up and went home.
Acting on false tips, lawmen decided the fugitive had somehow got around them and high-tailed it to southern Utah. Precious time was wasted following unproductive leads. News that miners had spotted Lopez in the Minnie shaft of the Apex mine refocused the search on Bingham.
On Thanksgiving Day, Mike Stefano, a mine contractor, belatedly reported he had been held up by Lopez and forced under threat of death to himself and family to accompany the murderer into the mine with a supply of food and bedding. Fear kept him from reporting the event sooner, he said.
By Friday, more than a week after Valdez had been killed, law officers began planning how they could flush the killer out of the mine.
Four deputies who determined to go in after the feisty Mexican were greeted with gunshots "fired with uncomfortable accuracy" and were happy to get out of the mine in one piece.
With Lopez holed up in a tunnel at the 300-foot level, a plan was devised to smoke him out by burning hay laced with sulfur and formaldehyde. Six men, including Deputy J. Douglas Hulsey and mine worker Thomas Manderich, ventured into the tunnel to prepare the fire. A short time later, two of the six scrambled out, two crouched behind rocks frantically signaling for help and Hulsey and Manderich lay mortally wounded in the tunnel.
The two surviving members of the party still in the tunnel eventually were able to crawl to safety. For two days, lawmen attempting to recover the bodies were repulsed by more gunfire. Two of the rescue parties, one advancing into the tunnel behind a steel shield, were fired upon and forced to retreat.
Sheriff Andrew Smith Jr., who had taken charge, attempted negotiations with Lopez. Inez Ocaro herself went into the tunnel to see if she could persuade Lopez to surrender. She returned to say she had talked with Lopez and that he had agreed to give up the following morning. Smith suspected her story was made up and he was proved right.
A shift boss said he had run into the gunman, who told him he would never surrender. "I know they've got me cornered. This is my grave, I've made up my mind to that," the mine boss reported Lopez as saying. A Greek miner also claimed he had been held up by Lopez and robbed of candles, pipe and tobacco, but that tale, too, was deemed questionable.
Eventually the "smoke-him-out" plan resurfaced. Every known exit from the mine was bulkheaded to keep the fumes inside, and 20 kegs of black gunpowder, and sulfur, fueled by soft coal, were set afire at the 700-foot level. The expectation was that fumes would permeate the entire cobweb of shafts and tunnels and disable or kill Lopez, preferably the latter.
Despite "choking, blinding, suffocating smoke and gases" that drove everyone else out of the vicinity, the only noticeable result was that four miners going into the mine to plug holes a short time later were overcome by fumes, with three narrowly escaping with their lives.
For the next two weeks, while the Christmas holidays came and went, the search became a waiting game. As fumes dispersed, groups cautiously went into the mine. They found no sign of Lopez himself, although there were clues that he had been there - leftovers of the food Stefano had provided and bits of clothing. Knocking sounds emanating from pipes in the mine were attributed to the fugitive, but might have been miners.
Not everyone was interested in finding Lopez alive, and some wanted him alive only for their own purposes. Mutterings of lynching if Lopez was caught still breathing came from the camps of his victims' friends.
Rumors ran rampant. Tales of poisoned food being left in the tunnel convinced some that Lopez must be dead. But reports that Lopez had been sighted, alive and well, came from all over the West. Several taunting letters, purportedly signed by the outlaw, arrived at the sheriff's office from various locations.
Medical authorities opined that the man could not possibly still be alive under the circumstances. Some conjectured that Lopez knew of old, long-abandoned exits from the mine or that he had found his way to a working area and slipped out with miners ending their shift, but others pooh-poohed that theory, saying miners would have recognized a stranger in their midst, given the situation.
The truth was that no one knew the truth about Lopez's where-a-bouts.
The offer of a $1,000 reward for finding the murderer compounded the sheriff's troubles. Would-be searchers turned up determined to brave possible confrontation with Lopez to collect the reward. Smith refused to let them in the mine.
Mine officials and idled miners were becoming testy as the costs of having major portions of the mine out of production mounted. The owners began to talk lawsuit. Bills totaling $21,074, all related to the search, were presented to Salt Lake County commissioners by Bingham Livery and Transfer Co. Law enforcement costs soared as officials concentrated on one case. At one time, 80 men were assigned full time.
The first few days of the new year were devoted to careful searches of all the mine's tunnels. Elaborate signals had been worked out to help the parties communicate their findings, if any. There were none. On Jan. 5, the News reported, the search was over. One of the most extensive and costly manhunts in the history of the state had ended with nothing to show for it.