Murder of María Magdalena Baca, 1741 (Part 1 of 2)

While researching the Ojo de Borrego land grant, I came across the story of the murder of the grantee’s mother, María Magdalena Baca. Prior to her death, her husband had been accused of having an illicit affair with Manuela Abeyta. The case is a fascinating glimpse into the justice system of early 18th century New Mexico.

Rosalind Rock described the case, among several others, for an article in the New Mexico Historical Review, “Pido y Suplico: Women and the Law in Spanish New Mexico, 1697-1763.”  Rock’s presentation of the case is only somewhat accurate, in terms of key facts. Several of her assertions are erroneous and not supported by the original Spanish manuscripts, leading to a completely different understanding of the way the case played out.

For example, she mistakenly states that the ecclesiastical judge Santiago Roybal was the brother-in-law of the accused woman, Manuela Abeyta. The original document is clear that Antonio de Armenta is the woman’s brother-in-law (and there is no familial connection between Father Roybal and Manuela Abeyta).

Secondly, she states that the governor respected Magdalena’s wishes and referred her complaint against the accuser, Juan Joseph Moreno, to Juan Paez Hurtado to investigate it. This makes it appear as though Magdalena’s accusation prompted Paez Hurtado’s investigation. In fact, Paez Hurtado was authorized by the governor to launch an investigation into the matter because Magdalena’s husband was in prison under his orders, having been denounced for adultery by Father Roybal.

During the course of the investigation, Rock claims that, “no one could prove Márquez’s alleged relationship with Manuela Abeyta.” On the contrary, the testimony of Juan Joseph Moreno painted a clear, first-hand account of the affair in sordid detail, which was corroborated by another witness, Francisco Valdez. Bernardo de Bustamante also acknowledged that he had heard an affair was taking place, and for that reason had sent spies to try to gather proof.

Later, Rock makes another genealogical mistake when she says that one of the servants questioned, Antonia, had “grown up in the house of Captain Diego Montoya, María Magdalena’s first husband.” Magdalena’s husband Diego Montoya had died too young to achieve the rank of captain. And it would be very unlikely for Antonia, at twenty-five years old, to have grown up in the household of someone who was only fourteen years older than her. More likely, the Captain Diego Montoya referred to was the elder Diego Montoya, the father of Magdalena’s deceased husband.

Rock also inexplicably states that Márquez assisted “Manuela Abeyta in a move closer to his wife’s before the murder.” I found no such evidence anywhere among the documents. Juan and Magdalena did move twice from their first house in the Barrio Analco in Santa Fe, but no mention is made of Manuela changing her residence.

The last mystery surrounding the case is the identity of Manuela Abeyta. It is clear from the statement of Antonio de Armenta that she was his sister-in-law, and therefore a daughter of Diego Abeyta and Catarina Leal. However, she was not the Manuela Rosalia Abeyta (b. 1714) who married Juan Antonio Luján at San Juan Pueblo on February 8, 1727. That Manuela Abeyta and her husband had three children baptized at the San Juan Pueblo, 30 miles north of Santa Fe, from 1738 to 1741, so it’s highly unlikely she could have been the same woman who was having an affair in Santa Fe.

Read on for the full story of the illicit affair and subsequent murder. For reference, I have added links to the Hispanic Genealogy Research Center’s database for each person who appears in the story whose identity can be confirmed.

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María Magdalena Baca married Diego Antonio Montoya III at the age of 15 on June 27, 1717 in Bernalillo. We don’t know much about her life in Bernalillo, only that she and Diego had at least two children, Cristóbal Manuel Montoya and Nerio Antonio Montoya before her husband’s untimely death sometime before 1735. As a young widow, Magdalena would have felt the need to remarry in order to provide for herself and her children. On January 16, 1735, she married Juan Márquez, a 27-year-old soldier at the presidio in Santa Fe, and moved there with her two sons. Juan’s lineage is unclear, but it’s possible that Magdalena’s family helped to arrange the marriage, as her brother, Cristóbal Baca, was married to Manuela Márquez, and a woman with that name was one of the witnesses to their marriage.

At first, the couple lived in the Barrio Analco with Magdalena’s two sons from her first marriage. It was there that the first signs of marital discord arose, although it’s unclear why Juan began to mistreat his wife. He abused Magdalena emotionally and physically, and rumors begin to circulate that he was having an illicit affair with another woman in town named Manuela Beitia (or Abeyta). The family moved to the house of Juan Apodaca, and then to another house on the outskirts of town in a relatively unpopulated area. Not content to suffer in silence, Magdalena sought assistance from her brother-in-law Captain Antonio Montoya, alcalde mayor of Santa Fe, informing him that one of his officials, Pasqual, helped to facilitate her husband’s amorous trysts. However, when Antonio summoned Pasqual to discipline him, he denied Magdalena’s accusations.

Juan’s escapades became so notorious that his commanding officer, Bernardo de Bustamante, stayed up some nights and set spies on him trying to catch him in the act. But Juan always managed to evade detection. Bernardo appeared to finally lose his patience with the soldier, sending him away to Galisteo on escort duty for almost a year for the relatively innocuous misconduct of having flirted with a maidservant. Magdalena interceded with Bernardo, imploring him to allow her husband to return. It’s unclear if she did so out of economic hardship or sympathy for her husband’s plight. The very next day, Bernardo ordered him released from escort duty.

If Magdalena hoped that her husband’s return would improve her situation, she was quickly dispossessed of such optimism. Her circumstances became so unbearable that one day she decided to leave her husband. Taking her two sons by the hand, she made her way on foot to the house of her brother Antonio Baca, perhaps seeking his help. His wife María de Aragon, who was watering her cornfields, called out to her as she approached, “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to the Rio Abajo, to the house of my sister Juana, because my husband doesn’t live with me anymore,” Magdalena replied, showing her the bruises she had on her arms and back from the whippings Juan gave her. “He doesn’t give me any of the rations he receives as a soldier, either.” While María was trying to convince her to return home, Juan showed up, looking for his wife. María finally managed to convince her to return home with her husband.

If there was any reconciliation, it was short-lived. Out of desperation, Magdalena tried to gather proof of her husband’s transgressions by enlisting the aid of an officer at the presidio, Juan Joseph Moreno. She confided in María Domínguez, “La Sacristana,” asking her to go on her behalf on two occasions to request that Moreno apprehend her husband. In November 1739, Moreno acted on this request, stealthily approaching Manuela Abeyta’s home one evening. He crept up to a window and opened it a little, observing Juan and Manuela inside, seated next to each other. He overhead their flirtatious conversation:

“I’ll give you a cinnamon-colored horse to use,” said Juan.

“Children, go to the kitchen,” instructed Manuela. Turning back to her lover, she added, “It’s not good to say anything in front of the children, as they are the devil’s little witnesses. Come, let’s go to the living room before my brother Juan comes home for dinner.”

Moreno saw that they took a pillow with them into the living room, which he dryly noted was certainly not going to be used for saying their prayers. Seeing that he needed reinforcements, he proceeded to the house of Francisco Valdez and asked him for some rope and a candle, and for his help guarding the back door of Manuela’s house. But before the items he asked for had arrived, Manuela opened the front door and threw Juan out of the house. Moreno followed Juan but, unable to overtake him, went to the guardhouse, where he told the squad commander Cristóbal Martín to go with another one of the guards to call upon Juan at his house, sending Cristóbal Luján with the order.

When they finally arrived back at the guardhouse, Moreno reprimanded Juan, “How is it that you have so quickly forgotten my order and admonition not to enter Manuela Abeyta’s house, even during the day, not even under the pretext of needing to drink water?”

 “I didn’t go. You must have seen the devil, who looked like me.”

Incensed at this insolent and clearly false declaration, Moreno had him thrown in the stocks. Recounting everything he had seen and heard at Manuela’s house, Moreno asked him again, “Is all of this a lie?”

“Well sir, what do you want me to say, seeing as how you’re my commanding officer?”

Moreno decided to inform the governor about Juan’s imprisonment the next morning, but didn’t do so because very early in the morning he received a paper from the lieutenant of the presidio, Bernardo de Bustamante, asking for Juan to be released because someone had come to intercede on his behalf. Bernardo acknowledged that although Juan was very deserving of the punishment, it was best to have someone else deal with him in the future. Moreno went to see Bernardo in protest, but acquiesced to his request. He later learned that it had been Manuela Abeyta who had petitioned for Juan’s release. Moreno ordered Juan released, putting him on duty from the morning until the afternoon, and then ordered the head of the guards to discharge him from service as a soldier. Moreno claimed that the following day, Juan came to him apologetically, thanking him for having discharged him from military service, for not having reported him to the governor and acknowledging that he deserved such punishment for his transgressions.

“You’ll never hear again that I entered Manuela’s house,” Juan promised.

“For your own good, it would be best if you didn’t.”

It soon became apparent that Juan had no intention of mending his ways. On the night of July 27, 1740, Father Santiago Roybal, the ecclesiastical judge of New Mexico, reported to Governor Gaspar Domingo de Mendoza that Juan was having an illicit affair with Manuela Abeyta and could be found at that moment in her home. Acting on this intelligence, the governor ordered his arrest, sending Sergeant Juan Felipe de Rivera to execute it. The governor gave explicit instructions that the soldiers were not to take Antonio de Armenta with them, as he was Manuela’s brother-in-law. Nevertheless, Antonio joined Juan Felipe and Jacinto Perea to execute the arrest warrant. Juan Felipe later claimed that he had no choice but to take Antonio along as there were no other soldiers available.

When the soldiers arrived at the home, Jacinto stood guard at the back door of the house while Juan Felipe and Antonio approached the front door. Antonio entered the house first, warning Juan and Manuela. They hid Juan in the chimney before Juan Felipe entered the home. When Juan Felipe stepped into the living room, he observed Manuela’s servant María lying down with Manuela’s children, who were sleeping. They searched the home with lanterns but found only a leather jacket hung in the living room.

“Whose jacket is this?” asked Juan Felipe.

“It belongs to Dionisio Rodríguez,” Manuela replied.

Not seeing any other sign of Juan, the soldiers, now joined by Ayudante Joseph Terrus, went in search of him at his house. When they arrived, Magdalena informed them that he was not there, and she didn’t know if he was at a friend’s house or at the guardhouse. Meanwhile, Juan endeavored to sneak out of the house, but his clothes were dirty from having hidden in the chimney. Manuela sent her servant María to get fresh clothes for him, but only managed to find a pair of trousers. Juan changed and then taking a blanket to cover himself as a disguise, he exited the house. “Don’t worry, we’re good, as la Cíbola hasn’t seen you,” assured Manuela, using her nickname for Tomasa de Benavides, the wife of her neighbor Francisco Valdez. “María, go fetch a jar of water from the river to wash Juan’s dirty clothes,” she instructed her servant. Juan left the house, thinking he hadn’t been seen.

However, Tomasa was seated outside her house while her husband ate dinner inside, and saw Juan leaving Manuela’s house covered in a blanket. Rather than go to the river for water, María came to Francisco and Tomasa asking for some water, and rather indiscreetly related everything that had just happened, including how they had hidden Juan in the chimney before the soldiers had searched the house.

Juan, still evading the search party, made his way to the house of a friend, Francisco Padilla. When he arrived, not wearing a shirt or a hat, he told him that he had escaped “like a mouse from the cat’s mouth,” and asked to borrow a shirt. Francisco, perhaps not wanting to be accused of complicity, declined to give him one. Juan had no other choice but to proceed home.

His luck ran out when he approached the Rio Chiquito, as the search party overtook him there. The soldiers asked where he had been, and Juan lied, saying he had been at the house of Diego González.[1] They took him into custody and after giving their report to the governor, he ordered Juan imprisoned and placed in the stocks. The next day, the governor learned of Antonio de Armenta’s duplicity in helping Juan evade detection and Juan Felipe de Rivera’s failure to heed his orders not to let Antonio participate in the arrest. He ordered them both jailed, placing Antonio in the stocks along with Juan.

On July 31, 1740, Father Santiago Roybal certified the facts underpinning Governor Mendoza’s arrest of Juan Márquez as true and the governor ordered his lieutenant and alcalde mayor of Santa Fe, Juan Paez Hurtado, to open judicial proceedings against him. The governor also acknowledge the receipt of a petition from Magdalena Baca in which she made a number of claims, including that: 1) her husband had been with her on the night of July 27th; 2) Juan Joseph Moreno had encouraged Magdalena to make a complaint against her husband when it was none of his business; and 3) her husband had been falsely accused of misconduct by Moreno because of his animosity toward him and suggested that Moreno himself was guilty of the crime for which he made accusations. She asked for Moreno to provide proof or for her husband to be released. The governor authorized her to argue her husband’s case on his behalf.

Magdalena’s petition seems out of character, given her earlier attempts to engage presidio officials in curtailing her husband’s escapades. Did her husband induce her to defend him? Was she doing it to show publicly that she was acting as a dutiful wife? Or was she suffering from Stockholm syndrome like so many other victims of domestic violence?

Throughout the rest of the month of August, Magdalena and Juan Joseph Moreno exchanged accusations. He claimed he had nothing to do with her husband’s arrest, that it had been Manuela’s servant who had reported him to Father Roybal. He had never asked Magdalena to make a complaint against her husband and she had come to him, begging him not to say anything about how her husband had mistreated her. He challenged her to provide proof regarding her counter-accusation that he had committed adultery. She responded by saying the order from Father Roybal clearly stated Moreno had been the denouncer and that Manuela’s servant, who was Indian, could easily be induced to lie. Moreno urged the authorities to question all the relevant witnesses, providing names of those who could reveal the truth about the matter.

From August 23rd through September 24th, Juan Paez Hurtado questioned a number of witnesses under oath, including Juan Felipe de Rivera (46), Antonio de Armenta (38), Jacinto Perea (43), Diego González (45), Captain Antonio Montoya (50), Lieutenant Bernardo de Bustamante (33), Francisco Padilla (26), Francisco Valdez (44), María Domínguez “La Sacristana” (34), María de Aragon (50), and Cristóbal Martín (34). Diego González corroborated Juan Márquez’s alibi, saying that on the night of July 27th he had been at his home until about 8 o’clock, which we know to be false. Antonio Baca, Magdalena’s brother, had been called to testify but was unable to do so because of an illness. His wife María de Aragon testified on his behalf, relating how Antonio had gone to see his sister after Juan’s arrest. Magdalena had begged him not to say that she had complained to him about her husband. He reminded her of her earlier recriminations against him and their brother Cristóbal for not standing up for her and, perhaps frustrated with her capriciousness, unsympathetically told her, “you decided to get married, now suffer through it.”

Juan Márquez petitioned the governor from prison, denying any relationship with Manuela Abeyta, and claiming again to have been in the home of Diego González on the night of the arrest. He asked the governor to find out why he was being punished since he had not been arrested at Manuela’s house, pursuant to the governor’s order.

On October 5th, Paez Hurtado sent a summary of all the findings in the case to the governor for his judgment. There are no more records in the Spanish Archives related to the case, so we don’t know the details of the governor’s determination. From later events, we know that Márquez was released. Perhaps González’s testimony that Márquez was at his home on the evening of his arrest provided enough reasonable doubt regarding other witness statements placing him at Manuela’s home that night. Regardless, the case took a tragic turn when, at 6 o’clock in the morning on February 22, 1741, Bernardo de Bustamante informed Paez Hurtado that Magdalena Baca had been discovered strangled in her bed.

Continued in Part 2. Subscribe to the blog to receive email updates.

Note: All the information in this story can be found in New Mexico, U.S., Civil Records of New Spain, 1621-1821, 1735-1740: Twitchell 404-434 (Serial 10110), No. 433, available at Ancestry.com

[1] We know it is this Diego González, as he is referred to as Diego Gamboa (his mother’s maiden name) in one part of the testimony.