In the early 1860s, the territory of Colorado would have been the perfect setting for a classic western movie. Mexican farmers uneasily cohabited with recently arrived American settlers in gold prospectors.
The union cavalry and US marshals patrolled the canyons, woodlands and gulches searching for bandits skirmishing with the native nations or recruiting volunteers for the ongoing Civil War in the east. But from spring to autumn 1863, these lawmen would be confronted with a whole new breed of horror.
One we would normally associate with another genre altogether. The territory settlers faced three seasons of terror due to the murderous insanity of the axemen of Colorado Filipe Espinosa.
Described at the time as a Mexican bandit, he achieved infamy as one of the first if not, the first serial killer of the wild west. Filipe Nerio Espinosa was born in 1827 in what is today known as the EI Rito unincorporated community in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico.
He was the older of five siblings, one of them his brother Vivian, was born in 1831 and he'd become a trusted partner in crime. There's only sparse information about the early lives of Filipe and Vivian and what we know is that their parents were subsistence farmers of legal means.
Literacy was not a given amongst these rural communities ,yet at least Filipe and Vivian could read and write. Filip was known amongst his neighbors for his impulsive volatile and violent temper.
This worsened after the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. After the war, the United States acquired large swaths of territory from Mexico, including the lands where the Espinosa had settled.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo allowed Mexican residents to remain in the newly seeded lands but Washington also encouraged settlers to travel west and start farming the same territories. Inevitably simmering tension and open conflict manifested between the two communities, known as Hispanos and Anglos, as a proud hispano, Filipe resented the Anglo-newcomers.
He saw them as usurpers, oppressors and enemies of the true Catholic faith. Both Espinosa and his brothers were indeed devoutly religious and were members of the holy brotherhood of the blood of our lord, jesus, and christ.
Members of this paternity were also known as Penitents and provided philanthropic help to the less fortunate. However some of their number also indulge in extreme religious practices such as self-flagellation.