LEYÉNDAS
Ghosts, legends and the unexplained
From spectral women to the chilling legacy of serial killer Charles Kennedy, Northern New Mexico brims with ghostly tales and eerie lore. In this year’s Leyendas, explore haunted hotels, dumb crimes gone wrong, and legends that blur the line between history and the supernatural.
Small-time crime, big-time bloopers
Hare-brained heists & felonious follies
BY ELLEN MILLER-GOINS
He met a grisly end
The Moreno Valley serial killer
Charles Kennedy BY
ELLEN MILLER-GOINS
Spirits of the Sangres Ghosts and the unexplained
BY ELLEN MILLER-GOINS
IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO, HISTORY AND LEGEND WALK SIDE BY SIDE — and sometimes, the line between them vanishes entirely.
In this year’s Tradiciones: leyéndas, we share tales that range from the eerie to the absurd, each rooted in the people and places that give our region its singular character. You’ll meet Charles Kennedy, the Moreno Valley innkeeper whose hospitality turned murderous; encounter the restless spirits who still roam Taos Plaza, Red River and Cimarron; and shake your head at the botched bank jobs, bungled arsons and other “felonious follies” that prove crime here can be as comical as it is cautionary.
These stories are more than curiosities. They are part of the cultural fabric — woven from frontier hardship, mountain mystery and a dash of the wild imagination that thrives in these high valleys. Whether fact, folklore or a bit of both, they remind us that in El Norté, the past is never truly past. We hope you enjoy this year’s journey into the strange and storied side of our home.
Ellen Miller-Goins, magazine editor
LEYÉNDAS
Spirits of the Sangre de Cristos
Ghosts, legends and the unexplained in Northern New Mexico
BY ELLEN MILLER-GOINS
Northern New Mexico is steeped in history — and haunted by it, if you believe the many locals and visitors who’ve encountered things that can’t quite be explained. From saloon girls searching for lost loves to spectral miners, ghostly governors and mysterious lights that drift across moonlit fields, this area brims with stories that blur the line between history and the supernatural.
Melody Elwell Romancito is an artist, writer and longtime chronicler of the town’s history and mysteries. After decades as an arts editor, columnist and broadcaster, she began leading ghost tours through the historic district, drawing on her knowledge of local lore and her
TAOS’ SPECTRAL CHARACTER
work with New Mexico Research and Investigation of the Paranormal. Her book, “Ghosts & Haunted Places of Taos,” captures both her investigative rigor and her storyteller’s gift. Romancito notes the Taos Plaza has been a crossroads of commerce and conflict since the late 1700s. But the events of the 1847 Taos Revolt, when Governor Charles Bent was
Agnes Cleveland
murdered and hundreds died in the ensuing battles and retributions, have left a lasting psychic imprint. Shopkeepers say that as the revolt’s January anniversary approaches, paranormal activity increases: unexplained noises, cold spots and the sound of ghostly hoofbeats on Bent Street. Bent’s daughter, Teresina, escaped the
Pictured:
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attack by crawling through a hole in the adobe wall, but her father — wounded by arrows — was scalped and killed. The alley that bears her name is now associated with feelings of being watched, ghostly card games and a rushing energy that startles passersby.
One of Romancito’s favorite tales involves a bobbing lantern seen from an upstairs window on Bent Street. A friend reported watching the light cross the empty lot and hearing the sound of digging — said to be John Dunn’s wife, searching or burying something in the earth.
At the old courthouse, workers report hearing footsteps in empty corridors and feeling the gaze of unseen eyes — possibly those of a homeless man wrongly lynched for arson, still pleading for his story to be heard.
RED RIVER: MINERS, HOOFBEATS & FLYING JARS
Sara Saint Hogan shared some tales about the old Red River Inn (now the Candy Crate). The Inn, she said, sits on land once home to a swamp — and, legend has it, a sunken stagecoach with illfated passengers. Former owner Alyce Densow saw a miner materialize in her office chair, tip his hat and vanish. Guests reported ghostly miners, children and women walking through bedrooms at night. More unsettling were phantom hoofbeats heard in the parking lot with no horses in sight, and jars “popping” off shelves, as if by unseen hands.
Local historian and raconteur Fritz Davis recalled waking to see a young girl at the foot of his bed — later recognizing her in a historical photo as Agnes Cleveland, accidentally shot by a childhood friend in 1897. Red River’s Black Mountain Playhouse has its own strange tales: golf balls flying unprovoked and a ghost thought to be the son of a former owner, his apparition marked by a partially missing jaw.
THE GHOST OF THE GUNEY: A HONEYMOON GONE WRONG
Thirty miles west, in Eagle Nest, the Laguna Vista Lodge — known locally as “The Guney” — has its own spectral lore. According to Legends of America, staff and guests have seen a woman in a dance-hall dress vanish toward a hidden staircase. Her story is tragic: She arrived on honeymoon, but her husband went hunting and never returned. Left destitute, she is said to have worked as a saloon girl, and her spirit may still be searching for him.
In 1999, cook Kristi Dukes and her mother, Jane, experienced poltergeist activity whenever they played music other than classic rock or country. Pots, pans and even a marble rolling pin flew through the kitchen. On one occasion, their stereo played on after being turned off and unplugged.
CIMARRON’S ST. JAMES HOTEL: BULLETS, PERFUME & POKER DEBT
In Cimarron, the St. James Hotel still wears its violent past in plain sight — 22 bullet holes in the dining room ceiling date from its Wild West heyday. Built in 1872 by Henry Lambert, the hotel hosted the likes of Buffalo Bill Cody, Billy the Kid and Jesse James. More than 26 murders are said to have occurred here, and some of the dead never left.
Room 17 is associated with Mary Lambert, Henry’s wife. Guests — and former owner Perry Champion — report the scent of her rose perfume drifting through the halls. Years ago, Champion said on three consecutive days at 3:30 p.m., he was mysteriously compelled to sit on the windowsill in Room 17 — and each time he was met with a wave of the unmistakable floral scent.
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Old Taos County courthouse and plaza
Alice & Ken Densow
Then there’s T.J. Wright, the gambler who supposedly won the hotel from Henry Lambert in a poker game before being shot dead. His spirit reportedly frowns on violence — on one occasion, a steak knife flew between Champion and a cook during a heated argument, sticking into the floor mat between them.
HAUNTED HOSPITALITY: TAOS INN & SAGEBRUSH INN
The Taos Inn, operating since 1934, is known for warm adobe charm — and an occasional supernatural spark. Bartender Clint Murphy told the Taos Ski Valley Chamber that a summer night once saw the atrium fireplace ignite on its own. He shrugged and went back to bed.
The Sagebrush Inn and Suites, founded in 1931, has its own underground lore: Catacombs once hid illegal gambling equipment for local legend Long John Dunn. While most of its stories are historical rather than ghostly, the building’s age and colorful past give it an aura that makes guests wonder what shadows linger.
SPIRITS BENEATH THE STREETS: TAOS TUNNELS
Beneath Taos’ historic district lies a rumored network of tunnels. Romancito describes basements with thick, stifling air, carved shelves and collapsed passageways. In one former restaurant basement, owners found a complete Native American skeleton they named “Snowflake,” whose presence announced itself with icy drafts and heavy footsteps.
Not all believe the tunnels are real — archaeologist and Taos native Jeff Boyer insists there’s no historical evidence for them — but paranormal investigators with New Mexico Research and Investigation of the Paranormal have recorded strange red glows and grid-distorting movements in tunnel spaces.
ELEMENTALS & THE TAOS HUM
Not all unexplained phenomena in Northern New Mexico are ghosts. Romancito once
Where
described seeing “Las Calabazas” — tall, pajamaclad figures with squash or beet heads — walking along the tree line during a lightning storm, feeding on the storm’s energy. And then there’s the Taos Hum, a persistent low-frequency sound heard by a small percentage of residents since at least the 1990s. Scientists haven’t explained it, but its mystery has inspired both research and hot sauce.
WHY SO MANY GHOSTS ?
Romancito believes Taos has an “ecstatic field” that supports ghostly presences, fed by centuries of dramatic events — from Indigenous resistance to frontier violence, romantic tragedy and cultural collision. Whether or not the spirits are real, the stories endure, told in hotel lobbies, at family gatherings and on late-night walks through the plaza.
Perhaps that’s because in these mountain towns, the past is never far away. The adobe walls and wooden vigas have soaked in too much laughter, blood, music and sorrow to ever be entirely still. And on certain nights — especially in the quiet, just before dawn — visitors swear they can feel the old stories breathing all around them.
SOURCES
Melody Elwell Romancito, “Ghosts & Haunted Places of Taos;” Sara Saint Hogan, Fritz Davis and Mary Miller; Legends of America, “The Ghost of the Guney in Eagle Nest”; The Taos News; Sangre de Cristo Chronicle; Taos Ski Valley Chamber of Commerce, “Local Legends and Tall Tales”; and New Mexico True.
Old Taos County jail
small-town crime
big-time bloopers
A look at Northern New Mexico’s most harebrained heists and felonious follies
BY ELLEN MILLER-GOINS
Crime doesn’t always pay — but in Northern New Mexico, it often leaves a great story behind. From bank robbers in high heels to arsonists with bad timing, our corner of the world proves you don’t need a Hollywood budget to stage a comedy of errors — just a little nerve, a lot of poor planning, and maybe a zebra-print makeup bag.
“In Taos, a certain amount of eccentricity is required for conformity— and apparently, also for armed robbery.”
TONY HILLERMA N, THE GREAT TAOS BANK ROBBERY
THE GREAT TAOS BANK ROBBERY (1957)
Tony Hillerman’s classic account from “The Great Taos Bank Robbery and Other True Stories” reads like a Coen brothers script set at 7,000 feet. It began with Mrs. Ruth Fish, the Taos Chamber of Commerce’s manager, calling The Santa Fe New Mexican to report the bank was about to be robbed.
How did she know? Simple. Two men — one dressed as a woman, stubble and all — were standing in line at the bank, one holding a pistol under his purse. Taos being Taos, nobody panicked. Some giggled. The robbers, apparently overcome by stage fright, bolted without a dime, ran a stop sign, sideswiped a minister, and led him on a low-speed chase around the plaza.
The robbers borrowed their getaway truck (from a friend, no less) and spent the next two days trying to borrow more money from local bartenders. Law enforcement, meanwhile, searched everywhere except the abandoned house where the pair was napping. When captured, they were armed, broke and forever enshrined in Taos lore.
RED RIVER’S “INSIDE JOB” (2016)
Fast-forward nearly 60 years to Red River’s Peoples Bank (now Hillcrest Bank), where the bank’s morning opening was promptly followed by an armed robbery. A man in a hoodie approached a teller and handed her a zebraprint makeup bag with a note threatening that he had a gun and demanding cash. Surveillance footage later showed the teller — who was in on the scheme — didn’t even take the time to read the note before complying, an oddity not lost on investigators. Even stranger, the “robber” bypassed closer tellers to head straight to her desk.
Her co-conspirators included her cousin and an acquaintance who later blackmailed her for a cut of the loot. The $12,229 haul (including bait bills) was hidden under a tree in her yard. In text messages, the hapless teller referred to the money as “candy” and warned the “candyman” to avoid the “blue wrappers.” The blackmailing coconspirator, meanwhile, was found with a zebra print bag in the back seat of his vehicle
When Red River’s former Marshal David Smith, then Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe and the FBI cracked the case five days later, one suspect had already spent his share on truck repairs, food, gas and marijuana.
NITROGLYCERIN OVERKILL (TAOS, 1950)
If your loot is worth $800, perhaps don’t use $1,000 worth of damage to get it. That’s exactly what happened at the Mariposa Super Market at the Taos Plaza in 1950, when burglars jimmied open a back door, located the strongbox, and blew it up with explosives. The boom was apparently so loud it should have awakened half of Taos — yet nobody noticed until the next morning. The FBI was called in, more out of bewilderment than leads. The crime prompted a wry editorial in El Crepúsculo, warning that Taos was no longer a “naive village of unlocked doors.” Indeed, it had entered a new era — one in which you could still blow up a safe and get away … with less than a grand.
THE NOT-SO-HOT ARSON PLOT (RED RIVER, 2002)
A Texas man with property in Red River apparently decided arson was the answer to his financial woes. According to Jerry Hogrefe, then a deputy at the Red River Marshal’s Office, the trouble started Feb. 23, 2002, when a fire broke out in the historic Simion house next door to Bull O’ The Woods Saloon. Hogrefe and Red River Fire Chief Ron Burnham found multiple points of ignition and traces of petroleum-based fuel — telltale signs this was no accident.
Four days later, another blaze — this time in the detached guest cabin — lit up the same property. A black sport utility vehicle was spotted leaving the scene and the man was later detained by state police outside Springer. (When police
“If somebody wants to burn a place down Red River is not the place to do it. The fire department is pretty top notch there.”
DAN
WRIGHT, INVESTIGATOR, STATE FIRE MARSHAL
knocked on his SUV’s window the startled man, who was napping, reportedly blurted, “I didn’t do it!”) The fleeing arsonist was found driving with fuel cans and pump sprayers in the back.
The twist? Walker had allegedly returned from Texas just to start the second fire.
“Well, I guess he saved us the trouble of having to extradite him from Texas,” quipped Bill Hubbard, then chief investigator for the district attorney.
Investigators later learned the man had his furnishings spirited away in the middle of the night just before the first fire, using hired help who were told to finish before sunrise. The items were safely in storage, destined for Houston.
As State Fire Marshal Investigator Dan Wright drily noted, “If somebody wants to burn a place down, Red River is not the place to do it. The fire department is pretty top notch there.”
Burnham noted out that a few more minutes’ delay on either fire and the historic house — just 3 feet from its neighbor — would have been reduced to a pile of rubble.
THE PLASTIC SPOON PRISON BREAK (TAOS, 1960 s)
As Tony Hillerman also recounted in “The Great Taos Bank Robbery and Other True Stories,” one Taoseño demonstrated the adobe walls of the Taos jail were no match for a determined inmate armed with … a plastic spoon. Working patiently, the prisoner tunneled through the wall — only to make his first mistake: choosing the wrong direction. Instead of daylight and freedom, he emerged into the adjoining county treasurer’s office. His second blunder was underestimating his own size. Attempting to squeeze through his improvised escape hatch, the man became wedged tight, his body stuck halfway, “like a cork in a bottle,” as Hillerman put it, with his head still in custody. He spent the night there, undoubtedly rethinking both his tunneling skills and his career path.
A WIG, A BLANKET & A MYSTERY (RED RIVER, 2002)
Some crimes are so strange they teeter on the edge of comedy, even when the subject matter is grim. A Texas visitor told police his grandmother died while they were staying in a Red River hotel — so he buried her near the wastewater treatment plant. Discovered thanks to a local who found a wig and blanket, the scene baffled investigators. The man’s explanation, his possession of her Jeep and checkbook, and past legal disputes over her house made the case even murkier. Although the man also reportedly cashed of his grandmother’s social security checks, charges were eventually dropped for lack of a “foundation crime,” leaving only the odd tableau of personal effects in the woods.
In the end, these capers prove that our quiet hamlets may not produce the most successful criminals, but it certainly produces the most entertaining ones.
Arson scene at the historic Smion home in Red river SANGRE DE CRISTO CHRONICLE
HE MET A GRISLY END
...
Charles Kennedy, the Moreno Valley’s infamous serial killer
BY ELLEN MILLER-GOINS
CLAY ALLISON
By the late 1860s, Northern New Mexico’s Moreno Valley was booming. Gold had been discovered on the western slopes of Mount Baldy, and Elizabethtown — “E-Town” to locals — was the first incorporated town in the New Mexico Territory in 1866. Miners, merchants and fortune-seekers flooded the rugged mountain passes, traveling the Taos Trail through Palo Flechado Pass.
It was here, in this narrow bottleneck between Taos and the gold camps, that a Tennessee-born man named Charles Kennedy set up a traveler’s rest stop with his teenage wife, Gregoria Cortes. Kennedy promised a warm bed and a hot meal. What many travelers got instead was a shallow grave — or worse.
A HOST WITH MURDER IN MIND
Kennedy arrived in the valley around 1865 with Gregoria — whom he had married at Taos’ Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe Catholic Church in 1867. They lived with their son Samuel in a cabin at the base of Palo Flechado Pass. Rumors soon swirled of travelers vanishing along this stretch. In the transient, often lawless mining territory, such disappearances were easy to overlook. But later testimony and lore suggest Kennedy had a method: invite a guest to dine, then kill them — often in their sleep — steal their valuables, and burn or bury the remains.
Authorities suspected him more than once. In 1868, a Santa Fe Weekly Gazette correspondent stopped at Kennedy’s home and later reported that a fellow traveler was found murdered two miles away. Kennedy was not charged. Over the next few years, he was in and out of Colfax County’s fledgling court system for liquor violations, assault, and embezzlement — but murder charges never stuck.
THE NIGHT OF TERROR
The killings came to light in the fall of 1870. According to multiple period accounts, a lone traveler stopped for supper and asked if there were many Indians in the area. Young Samuel Kennedy allegedly replied, “Can’t you smell the one Papa put under the floor?” The boy’s remark reportedly enraged his father. In most retellings, Kennedy shot the guest and then killed his son — some say by striking him with a fireplace poker, others by bashing his head on the hearth. He locked Gregoria in the cabin, drank himself insensible and passed out.
Gregoria escaped — whether through the door or up the chimney depends on the version — and walked barefoot through a cold mountain storm to Elizabethtown, some 12–15 miles away. Bleeding and half-frozen, she burst into a saloon where notorious gunman Clay Allison and others were drinking. She told a horrifying story: Kennedy had murdered many travelers, possibly as many as 20, for their possessions, burning or burying the bodies on their property.
ARREST, TRIALS & VIGILANTE JUSTICE
A posse rode immediately to Kennedy’s cabin, arresting him without a fight. The search yielded grisly evidence — charred human bones in the fireplace, skeletons beneath the floorboards, and freshly killed bodies, including Samuel, in the cellar.
Kennedy’s pretrial hearing on October 3, 1870, included testimony from Gregoria’s father, José Cortes, who claimed he had witnessed Kennedy shoot a traveler the previous Christmas Eve. Yet despite the evidence, the justice system stalled. Rumors spread that Kennedy’s lawyer might buy his release.
Elizabethtown’s citizens weren’t willing to take that risk. A masked mob seized Kennedy from custody late on the night of October 4, 1870. The historical record says he was hanged near town. The legend, however, is bloodier: Allison allegedly dragged him behind a horse until his head came off, then displayed the head on a pike — sometimes said to be in Cimarron in front of what would later become the
A notorious gunman who lead a posse to seize Charles Kennedy from police custody. One rumor has it he dragged Kennedy behind a horse until his head came off.
COURTESY QUESTA DEL RIO NEWS
St. James Hotel. (Loretta Miles Tollefson’s research for “The Pain and the Sor row” suggests some of these more cinematic flourishes were added embel lishments.)
FACT, FICTION & THE KENNEDY LEGEND
Separating truth from frontier myth in Kennedy’s case is difficult. Newspa per reports from 1870 confirm his arrest, two trials (one formal, one a vigilan te “public meeting”), and lynching. They also establish that Gregoria was not a Ute woman named Rosa, as many retellings say, but a 14-year-old Nuevo Mexicana from Ranchos de Taos at the time of their marriage.
The number of Kennedy’s victims is also uncertain. Period witnesses spoke of bones from “twenty men,” but modern criminologists estimate five to 15, based on his time at Palo Flechado and his suspected methods.
Gregoria remarried in 1871, and her later life vanished into the historical shadows. Kennedy’s property inventory listed a large garden and livestock, but no buried treasure — though local lore still claims gold from his victims may be hidden in the mountains.
THE ENDURING TALE
More than 150 years later, Charles Kennedy remains one of New Mexico’s most notorious frontier killers. His story endures because it is as much a part of Moreno Valley folklore as it is of its history — a mix of documented crime, courtroom drama and brutal “frontier justice.”
Whether the real Kennedy was a calculating serial killer or a man whose crimes have been magnified by time, the outcome was the same: a violent end on a cold autumn night, and a legacy as grim as the pass where so many travelers met their fate.
SOURCES
Edward H. Camp, “Charles Kennedy, Elizabethtown Serial Killer: What Do We Really Know?” Questa del Rio News; Kathy Weiser-Alexander, “Charles Kennedy – Old West Serial Killer,” Legends of America; Stephen Zimmer, “Malicious Murders” from For Good or Bad; “Charles Kennedy | Serial Killer on the Taos Trail,” New Mexico Nomad; Loretta Miles Tollefson, “The Pain and the Sorrow.”
TIMELINE: CHARLES KENNEDY –THE MORENO VALLEY SERIAL KILLER
c. 1839 – Charles Kennedy (also recorded as “Charles Canady”) born in Tennessee.
1865 – Arrives in the Moreno Valley area with wife (later identified as Maria Gregoria Cortes of Ranchos de Taos) and sets up a rest stop at the base of Palo Flechado Pass.
Feb. 28, 1867 – Marries Gregoria at Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe Church, Taos.
July 4, 1868 – Santa Fe Weekly Gazette article mentions Kennedy’s home as a stage stop; a traveler is found murdered nearby, but blame falls on Apaches.
June 1869 – Son Samuel Kennedy born; baptized that September in Taos.
1868–70 – Kennedy faces multiple court cases for liquor violations, assault and embezzlement; none result in prison time.
Sept. 1870 – Gregoria flees to Elizabethtown after witnessing Ken nedy murder a traveler and their son Samuel, revealing suspicions of many more killings.
Oct. 3, 1870 – Pretrial hearing in Elizabethtown includes testimony from Gregoria’s father and other witnesses; Kennedy bound over for grand jury.
Oct. 4, 1870 – Colfax County Probate Court records Kennedy’s death shortly before this date, indicating lynching occurred in late September or very early October.
Oct. 1870 – Kennedy seized from custody by masked mob and lynched near Elizabethtown. Some versions claim Clay Allison dragged him to death or beheaded him, with his head displayed on a pike.
Dec. 20, 1871 – Gregoria remarries Antonio Chavez in Taos; her later life disappears from the historical record.
“A new day begins not only for the American Indian, but for all Americans in this country.”
— Cacique Romero, 1970 Upon the Return of Blue Lake
In December of 1970, former President Nixon and congress authorized the return of Blue Lake and 48,000 acres of sacred land to Taos Pueblo. The decades long effort of Taos Pueblo representatives helped restore pueblo lands and the continuation of millenniums-old traditions.
Perhaps equally as important, it set a precedent for self-determination for Native Americans.
From left, 2025 War Chief Secretary Waylon Brown, War Chief Robert Evan Trujillo, and Lieutenant War Chief Benito M. Concha.
Photo: Rick Romancito for the Taos News