Corpus Christi History
By Murphy Givens

Wednesday, Apr. 21, 1999

Hanging Times -- Part 4

One woman, two men are executed

   The most controversial hanging in South Texas was that of Chipita Rodriquez. She was hanged on Friday, Nov. 13, 1863.
   Chipita (which probably should be styled "Chepita") operated a way-side stopping place for travelers on the Aransas River. Horse-trader John Savage stayed there the night of Aug. 23, 1863. He disappeared and his body was found in the river two days later, his head split open.
   Sheriff "Pole" Means found blood on Chipita's porch and arrested her and her hired man. The trial was iregular: some jurors were felons and others were friends of the sheriff. The jury recommended leniency because of the circumstantial evidence, but the trial judge ignored the jury and sentenced Chipita to be hanged.
   On Nov. 13, 1863, they took her from the jail in San Patricio in a wagon pulled by oxen to a mesquite by the Nueces River. Onlookers watched as the wagon moved forward and Chipita dropped. The oxen moved so slowly, and her body was so frail, that the fall didn't break her neck. It took a long time for her to strangle. A woman fainted, a boy cried, and a man turned away, saying -- "I've had enough of this." They buried her under the hanging tree.
   Ed Singleton and John Dwyer spent the morning drinking and then rode rode out of Beeville for Rockport. The plan was to buy a load of whisky and haul it to Dog Town and set themselves up in the saloon business. It was all Dwyer's money.
   Dwyer never made it to Rockport. His body was found outside the town and an immediate search began for Singleton. He was found boarding a ship at Indianola with Dwyer's money in his pocket.
   Singleton was tried and sentenced to be hanged. Since his friends vowed to free him, the sheriff let it be known he was going to move Singleton to Galveston. But instead of putting him on a train, the sheriff and his deputies took Singleton into a thicket and chained him to a tree, where they kept him for two weeks.
   He was brought to Beeville for the hanging. He wrote his mother, swearing he would never be hanged in public "before a gaping multitude of fools, especially Bee County fools." But as the time drew near, he wrote his will. He directed that his body be skinned and that the skin be given to the prosecuting attorney, that it be stretched over a drumhead, and that the drum be beaten to the tune of "Old Mollie Hare" each year on the anniversary of his hanging. He was hanged on April 27, 1877. His last wishes were ignored.
   The body of Eunice Hatch, who lived on a farm a few miles west of Corpus Christi, was found in her home on April 21, 1902. Her head had been split open with an axe. Suspicion focused on Andres Olivares, who worked on the nearby McCampbell place. He had been a guest in the house, but Eunice had told her husband, Jim Hatch, not to bring him back because she didn't like the way he looked at her.
   Splatters of blood were found on Olivares' clothes and his shoes matched the prints at the murder scene. Although he pleaded guilty at the arraignment, the judge ordered a not-guilty plea to be entered. The trial lasted one morning and the jury deliberated that afternoon, finding him guilty and assessing the death penalty. The judge ordered Olivares to be hanged on June 3, 1902.
   The day of the hanging, Olivares spent the morning with Father Claude Jaillet, Corpus Christi's "saddle-bag" circuit-riding priest. (Jaillet comforted Andres Davila and Hypolita Tapia when they were hanged for the Peascal murders and he was probably the priest who cut down the Nuecestown bandit after he was lynched.)
   Olivares was taken to a scaffold platform built at the old (old) county courthouse. He yelled "Adios amigos!" seconds before the sheriff sprang the trap. He dropped to a quick death of a broken neck. The Caller wrote that, "Everything was in perfect readiness and the program was carried out to perfection, like clock-work."
   That was the last hanging -- legal or otherwise -- in Corpus Christi. The new county courthouse (now the old courthouse) was built with a proper gallows, but they were never used. The state took over that grisly business from the county sheriffs and from the lynch mobs.
   (This is the last of four parts. Sources include Caller-Times archives; "Perilous Trails of Texas" by J.B. "Red John" Dunn; articles in Frontier Times, Nov., 1970, by Jim Davis, and July, 1946, by Ruth Dodson; the Texas Historical Association Quarterly, Vol. 4; and "A Vaquero of the Brush Country" by John D. Young and J. Frank Dobie.