New Mexico has had its fair share of serial killers over the years. But one of the first documented serial killers soiling our beautiful state was Charles Kennedy. Kennedy was the owner of an inn in Elizabethtown, near Cimarron. The guests who checked in there never left.
By 1870, New Mexico was in the midst of the Gold Rush. The discovery of gold ore deposits near Mount Baldy led to the founding of Elizabethtown, named after the daughter of the Las Vegas Fort Union commander, Captain William H. Moore. The town had over 7,000 residents as of 1870. But the gold turned out to be scarce, and the town quickly busted and had only 100 residents by 1872. The railway breathed some life back to the town, but after a fire in 1903 and a total bust in the mines by 1917, it became a true ghost town.
But back to the 1800s. During the last half of the Nineteenth Century, many people traversed the road between Elizabethtown and Taos. Charles Kennedy was a bizarre character who decided to settle in the Moreno Valley with his Ute wife and toddler son in 1865. He capitalized on the high traffic between the two towns by establishing a small bed and breakfast.
For five years, Kennedy ran this inn with the help of his wife. Of the many travelers who stopped here, some were never seen or heard from again. In a time when communication was infuriatingly slow and transients following the gold were common, no one realized that disappearances centered around this inn. As far as anyone knew, these missing travelers had simply moved on to another mine.
That all changed one night in the winter of 1871. A hysterical Native American woman, covered in blood, burst into the saloon in Cimarron. She was out of breath and sobbing. Some men helped her to a chair and gave her something to drink to calm her down.
When she was finally coherent, she said that her husband had tried to kill her after killing their little boy. With tears streaming down her face, she confessed that she had assisted her husband in murdering at least fourteen of the guests at their inn. He liked to murder them in their sleep and steal their possessions, after which he would incinerate their bodies in the hearth or bury them around the property.
There are a few versions of what had happened that particular night. The most popular one is: An unsuspecting traveler stopped for supper. Over the meal, he asked his host if any Native Americans were in the area. Kennedy’s young son cracked, “Can’t you smell the one Papa put under the floor?”
Charles Kennedy became enraged and shot his guest, then bashed his son’s head against the stone hearth until he was dead. He locked his wife up and drank himself into a coma. Once he was passed out, his poor wife escaped through the chimney.
Clay Allison heard this story and became furious. Allison was a local rancher and gunslinger with a penchant for violence. He always toted a gun, and had killed at least 15 people between Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico. He had also fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War. At the time, he was a regular at the Cimarron saloon. With a few other men, he went off in search of Kennedy.
Kennedy was not hard to find. He was still passed out at his inn. While some of the men hauled him into Cimarron for trial, other men searched the Elizabethtown property and found many human remains.
As Kennedy languished in jail, a trial was arranged. A witness came forward, attesting that he had seen Kennedy shoot someone in cold blood. Just in time for the trail, Kennedy arranged for an attorney, who avowed to purchase his freedom from jail. At that time, people had little faith in the courts and the judges who could easily be purchased, so they decided to take matters into their own hands.
Clay Allison, who had already broken into jails and committed lynchings before, paid the Colfax County Jail a visit and pulled Kennedy out of his cell by a rope around his neck. He then tied Kennedy to his horse and drug Kennedy up and down the main street of Cimarron until he was dead. A crowd gathered, cheering on the lynching. They even helped Allison remove Kennedy’s head and place it on a stake in front of the Elizabethtown saloon. The rest of his body was interred outside of the Catholic cemetery boundaries.
The remnants of Elizabethtown are now on private property. A few stone structures and gravestones mark what was once a bustling, thriving town. Though the area is now eerily quiet, you can practically hear the echo of horses passing down the long-faded street and the bawdy laughter of drunken men in the long-fallen saloon.
Though I have not been on the land myself, I have seen others post photos of it on Abandoned New Mexico, on Facebook. Many say that the area definitely possesses an eerie vibe. While it is enchantingly beautiful in photos, I get a sense of austere sadness from the images. As if the many victims who died so awfully and so suddenly in their sleep over a hundred years ago are still trapped in this place, waiting for the ability to continue to whatever destination they had in mind when they stopped at Charles Kennedy’s. I imagine Kennedy’s nine-year-old son also wanders here, grieving the life that his own father stole from him.
New Mexico wasn’t an easy place to live in back then. People were pretty much out for themselves. Either kill or be killed. However, I would say that things haven’t improved much, they have just changed shape and style over the years. We still get ignored and passed over by the federal government in a lot of things, so we have to do things our way. Our government and law enforcement are shady. Our streets aren’t very safe and our proximity to Mexico makes us an unfortunate thoroughfare for drug and human trafficking. New Mexicans have to be prepared to defend themselves by whatever means necessary.
For more reading:
Elizabethtown
https://newmexiconomad.com/charleskennedy/
Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway, New Mexico
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Allison