The Colorado Fan Club

# COLORADO CRIME FILES — No. 9: The Walsenburg Lynching, 1895

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# SHOT AT THE BRIDGE, SHOT IN THE JAIL

## Three Italian Prisoners Killed, Two Maimed For Life — And No One Ever Punished

**WALSENBURG, March 12–13, 1895.** — It began on the evening of Tuesday, March 12, on the bridge over Bear Creek, about a mile from Walsenburg. A wagon carrying four Italian prisoners from the coal camp at Rouse was stopped by masked horsemen, who ordered the driver to halt and the prisoners out — and then fired on them with revolvers and Winchesters as they fled.

Stanislao Vittone was killed instantly. The wagon's American driver, Joseph Welsby, was killed too. Francesco Ronchietto was shot and carried on to the county jail, where he was placed in the same cell as the fifth prisoner, Lorenzo Danino.

At about 1 a.m. that night — Wednesday, March 13 — seven armed, masked men got into that jail by deceiving the guard, calling for Sheriff O'Malley. They shot Danino and the already-wounded Ronchietto to death in their cell.

The other two prisoners, Pietro Giacobini and Antonio Gobetto, had escaped into the night at the bridge. For days they were missing and presumed dead. They were not dead. They had survived — with frozen feet that would later be amputated.

Three Italian men were killed. Two more were maimed. The driver was killed alongside them. No one was ever punished.

You may have heard this story told as "five Italians lynched." That version is wrong — and correcting it is where this file has to start.

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## The Correction

The commonly repeated version — "five Italian prisoners lynched, March 13, 1895" — is not what the primary record supports.

The U.S. Secretary of State's final summary and the Italian consul's on-the-ground investigation agree: **three Italian prisoners were killed outright, two others were gravely injured, and the American wagon driver was also killed.**

Secretary of State Richard Olney stated it flatly on January 30, 1896: "Three persons were killed outright, while two others sustained injuries of a character the most disabling as well as painful."

Five Italians were *attacked*. Five Italians were victims. That is how "five" entered later retellings — helped along by early press reports written while Giacobini and Gobetto were still missing and presumed dead, which inflated the Italian death toll to five or six. The Huerfano County court clerk, writing to the governor on June 15, 1895, names "the three persons killed" as Francesco Ronchietto, Stanislao Vittoni, and Lorenzo Danenio — the name forms vary by source, but the count does not.

This file uses the corrected count throughout.

## The Killing at Rouse

The prisoners were in custody because of a killing the day before.

Abner J. Hixon was an American saloon keeper — described in contemporary reports as keeper of a temperance saloon at Rouse, a coal camp in Huerfano County about 7 miles from Walsenburg. He was not a deputy sheriff, despite some out-of-state papers calling him one; the deputies in this story are the men who later escorted his accused killers.

His body was found on the morning of Monday, March 11, 1895, in the Rouse coal field.

A coroner's inquest at Rouse — Coroner D. Mathews — found that Hixon "came to his death on the morning of the 11th instant … by being struck on the head by some blunt instrument … the injuries being inflicted by the hands of Lorenzo Danino and others … with felonious intent."

Contemporary Denver reporting, sourced to the inquest and admissions, adds that Antonio Gobetto held Hixon while Lorenzo Danino struck him twice on the side and back of the head with a table leg, and that the body was carried about thirty rods and left; John Leibel found him still breathing in the morning.

The prisoners' counter-account, recorded in a later local history, was that Hixon had shot at them first — authorities said no gun was found on the dead man. That self-defense claim is unverified, and it was never tested at trial. The accused were killed before any trial could happen.

## The Five Held for Trial

Nine Italian miners were arrested; four were soon set at liberty; five were held for trial after the inquest. The five held were:

1. **Lorenzo Danino** — the alleged principal, named in the inquest verdict. Born January 30, 1871, at Cantarana, province of Alessandria, per the consul; he told the inquest he was not a U.S. citizen and had taken no steps toward citizenship.

2. **Stanislao Vittone** — 28, born at Salto, district of Ivrea, province of Turin; first naturalization papers October 28, 1893, at Trinidad.

3. **Francesco Ronchietto** — born at Salto, province of Turin; first papers in July 1894 at Walsenburg.

4. **Pietro Giacobini**

5. **Antonio Gobetto**

No two sources spell these men's names the same way. The forms above follow the brief's FRUS / court-clerk usage; the variants are listed in the Editor's Note.

Danino had already been taken to the Huerfano County jail at Walsenburg about noon on March 12. The other four were being conveyed from Rouse to Walsenburg that evening — in the wagon driven by Joseph Welsby, escorted by two deputy sheriffs, named in press as Earl Danford and Charles Harriman.

## The Bridge

Within about a mile of Walsenburg, on the bridge over Bear Creek, masked horsemen stopped the wagon. The consul, on the deputies' statement, says a lead rider plus four or five others; the press says six. They ordered the driver to stop and the prisoners out, and fired on them with revolvers and Winchesters as they fled and were pursued.

Vittone was killed instantly; his body was found the next morning near the bridge. The coroner's verdict annexed to the consul's report says he died March 12 by gunshot wounds "inflicted by the hands of unknown persons."

Welsby, the driver — American, 23, unmarried — was also killed. The press called it an accidental shot.

Ronchietto was shot — the consul reports the ball entered the subcutaneous tissue in the region of the heart — found that night, taken to the Walsenburg jail, and placed in the same cell as Danino.

Giacobini and Gobetto escaped into the night and were missing. That disappearance is the factual seed of every later "five dead" and "six dead" report.

## The Jail

At about 1 a.m. on Wednesday, March 13, seven armed, masked men — the press says seven or eight — gained entry to the Huerfano County jail by deceiving the guard, calling for Sheriff O'Malley. They shot to death the two Italians confined there — Danino and the already-wounded Ronchietto — sparing another prisoner of German nationality in the same cell.

The consul's March 27 note to Secretary of State Walter Gresham stresses that "neither in the attack … at the Bear Creek Bridge … nor in the breaking into the Huerfano County jail, did the public force make any resistance whatever," a point he said the governor's telegrams never contradicted. Survivor Giacobini, under oath to the consul, likewise said the deputies made no resistance at the bridge.

Whether that non-resistance was cowardice, being outnumbered, or sympathy was never established in any source found. The documented facts are stated here; collusion is not asserted as fact.

## The Two Who Lived

Giacobini was found days later by Mexicans about 10 miles from Cuchara, having wandered the mountains four days and four nights without food or drink, "with his lower limbs frozen … almost lifeless." The sheriff advised him to say he was a Frenchman for his own protection. The consul had him taken to the hospital at Pueblo, where amputation was at first thought necessary.

By summer, State Department correspondence describes "the two other Italians whose frozen feet were amputated at the hospital" — Giacobini and Gobetto both. They survived the attacks. They did not survive them whole.

Total dead that night, on the primary record: four — Vittone at the bridge, Welsby the driver at the bridge, and Danino and Ronchietto in the jail. Italian dead: three.

## No One Punished

Governor Albert W. McIntire issued a proclamation offering a $1,000 reward — the consul notes it was the largest sum Colorado law allowed — for detection of the Walsenburg murderers, and directed the district attorney to act.

The consul reported on March 21: "Thus far no arrest has been made at either Walsenburg or at Rouse."

In June 1895 the district attorney of the Third Judicial District promised a grand jury would be empaneled at the October term of the Huerfano County district court to investigate; the court had not sat in the county since the lynching. Italy's ambassador, Baron Saverio Fava, was still pressing Washington on November 27, 1895, about the delay.

No document in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) file found in this research records an arrest, indictment, or conviction of any lyncher.

*[A secondary source states a convened grand jury failed to indict anyone. That detail is secondary-only in the brief and must be confirmed in CHNC / court reporting before it is published as fact. See the Editor's Note.]*

## Rome Protests, Washington Pays

Baron Fava protested immediately — notes of March 13–14, 18, and 27, 1895 — at first on press reports of four, then six, Italians killed, demanding the guilty be brought before the courts and calling out the absence of resistance by the public force.

A prolonged argument followed over nationality: Vittone and Ronchietto held only first papers — a declaration of intention, not final naturalization — and Danino held none. The State Department and Colorado at first suggested the victims might be American citizens. Rome and, ultimately, Washington treated them as Italian subjects for indemnity purposes.

Olney urged Congress on January 30, 1896, to act as a matter of grace / gratuity, noting many states capped wrongful-death recovery at $5,000. Per the Secretary of State's annual report for 1896, the case was "closed by the payment to Italy of the indemnity graciously voted … by Congress in the deficiencies appropriation act approved June 8, 1896," described there as for "the lynching and injuring of five Italian subjects in the State of Colorado" — a phrasing that is accurate: five subjects, lynched *and* injured, not five killed.

The amount was $10,000 — agreed by multiple secondary tabulations cited in the brief. That figure was not stated in the FRUS texts opened for the brief, and the act text itself still needs to be pulled before the figure is printed without attribution.

President Grover Cleveland mentioned the "deplorable lynching" at Walsenburg and the international representations that followed in his 1895 State of the Union address, per the scholarly source below.

In the academic literature, Walsenburg is treated as one of the three heavily reported mass lynchings of Italians that drove early U.S. anti-lynching politics, alongside New Orleans (March 14, 1891) and Tallulah, Louisiana (1899).

## The Photographs

No photograph for this file is cleared for publication. Every lead below is documented with its status — none may be published until cleared:

1. **"Old County Jail, Walsenburg, Colo." — Denver Public Library, X-14000, photograph May 10, 1893.** View of the Huerfano County Jail northwest of Walsenburg, a rock building with a low curved roof, built December 25, 1873, built by P. Chappel, with a noted deep rock-walled cellar / trap-door arrangement. Dated two years before the lynching, this is the only period image found of a Walsenburg jail that could be the building in use in March 1895. **Reuse status: NOT CLEARED.** DPL sells high-resolution files / prints and its digital-collection terms control; do not call it public domain. Confirm with DPL before any use, and confirm — against CHNC / county history — that the 1873 jail was still the county jail in 1895. The brief notes a local-history description of the 1895 jail as "little more than a shack with bars," which fits this building better than the 1896 stone jail, but that identification is not yet proven.

2. **Panorama of Walsenburg, 1895 — Denver Public Library, X-14008 (left) / X-14010 (center) / X-14009 (right), creator I. L. Townsend.** Three-plate panorama of Walsenburg in the exact year: residences, Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad trains, St. Mary's Catholic Church, businesses, Spanish Peaks. A scene-setter if the jail image cannot be cleared. **Reuse status: NOT CLEARED.** Usage to verify with DPL.

3. **The 1896 Huerfano County Jail (now the Walsenburg Mining Museum), 112 West 5th St. — Carol M. Highsmith photograph, Library of Congress, item 2015632564 (May 26, 2015). DO NOT USE AS "THE JAIL."** This stone jail was erected in 1896, *after* the lynching, so Danino and Ronchietto were not killed in it. Usable only with a caption that says exactly that. **Reuse status: NOT CLEARED for this use.** Highsmith Archive images at LOC are generally donated for public use, but the item's rights advisory must be checked — do not assume clearance from the archive name alone.

4. **History Colorado — William Henry Jackson, "Tourist City (Walsenburg) and Spanish Peaks," c. 1882 (86.200.847), and "Tipple of Turner Mine (Independent) 9 mi North of Walsenburg, Colo.," c. 1890–1910 (96.69.237).** Town / mining context, not the crime scene. **Reuse status: NOT CLEARED.** Usage to verify with History Colorado.

5. **Victim images — unverified lead, no image located.** A local-history page (Genealogical Society of Hispanic America, Rouse Mine page) states the Italian consul's investigation "included a local lady, Mrs. Bunker, who had photographed the dead as they lay near the bridge." If that photograph survives — the Huerfano County Heritage Center, Walsenburg Mining Museum, History Colorado, or Italian consular archives are the plausible homes named in the brief — it would be the only known image of the victims. **Reuse status: NOT CLEARED — existence, location, and reuse are all unverified.** No copy was found online in this research. No portrait of any victim, of Hixon, or of the bridge / jail attack was found in LOC or DPL searches. Do not promise a victim photo.

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## EDITOR'S NOTE — What the Record Shows

This account rests principally on the U.S. Department of State's *Foreign Relations of the United States* 1895, Part II — the Italian consul's on-the-ground investigation, both coroners' verdicts, the governor's telegrams, and the indemnity correspondence — with contemporary wire press and scholarly secondary sources as noted. The verified facts:

- **The precipitating victim:** Abner J. Hixon (also spelled Hixson in press), American saloon keeper — keeper of a temperance saloon at Rouse, a Huerfano County coal camp about 7 miles from Walsenburg. Body found the morning of Monday, March 11, 1895, in the Rouse coal field.

- **How Hixon died:** Coroner's inquest at Rouse (Coroner D. Mathews): death on the morning of March 11 by being struck on the head by a blunt instrument, injuries inflicted by Lorenzo Danino and others with felonious intent. Contemporary Denver reporting adds: Gobetto held Hixon while Danino struck him twice on the side and back of the head with a table leg; body carried about thirty rods and left; John Leibel found him still breathing.

- **Arrests:** Nine Italian miners arrested; four soon set at liberty; five held for trial — Lorenzo Danino, Stanislao Vittone, Francesco Ronchietto, Pietro Giacobini, and Antonio Gobetto (name forms per FRUS / court clerk; see Uncertainty — names).

- **First attack:** Bear Creek Bridge, evening of Tuesday, March 12, 1895 (~6–7 p.m.). Danino was already in the Huerfano County jail (taken there about noon). The other four were in a wagon driven by Joseph Welsby, escorted by Deputy Sheriffs Earl Danford and Charles Harriman (names per press). Masked horsemen stopped the wagon within about a mile of Walsenburg and fired with revolvers and Winchesters. Vittone killed instantly. Welsby also killed. Ronchietto shot, taken to the jail, placed in the same cell as Danino. Giacobini and Gobetto escaped and were missing.

- **Second attack:** Huerfano County jail, ~1 a.m., Wednesday, March 13, 1895. Seven armed, masked men (consul) gained entry by deceiving the guard, calling for Sheriff O'Malley, and shot Danino and the already-wounded Ronchietto to death, sparing a prisoner of German nationality in the same cell.

- **The survivors:** Giacobini found days later about 10 miles from Cuchara, after wandering the mountains four days and four nights without food or drink, lower limbs frozen, almost lifeless; sheriff advised him to say he was a Frenchman; consul had him taken to the hospital at Pueblo. By summer, State Department correspondence describes Giacobini and Gobetto as "the two other Italians whose frozen feet were amputated at the hospital."

- **The corrected total:** Italian dead: **3** (Vittone, Danino, Ronchietto). Italians injured / maimed: **2** (Giacobini, Gobetto). American driver killed: **1** (Welsby). Total dead that night: **4**. Secretary Olney, January 30, 1896: "Three persons were killed outright, while two others sustained injuries of a character the most disabling as well as painful."

- **Official response:** Governor Albert W. McIntire offered a $1,000 reward (the largest Colorado law allowed, per the consul) and directed the district attorney to act. Consul, March 21, 1895: "Thus far no arrest has been made at either Walsenburg or at Rouse." In June 1895 the district attorney promised a grand jury at the October term; the court had not sat in the county since the lynching. No FRUS document found records an arrest, indictment, or conviction of any lyncher.

- **Diplomacy and indemnity:** Ambassador Baron Saverio Fava protested March 13–14, 18, and 27, 1895. Nationality was disputed (Vittone and Ronchietto held first papers only; Danino none) and ultimately the victims were treated as Italian subjects for indemnity purposes. The case closed with payment to Italy under the deficiencies appropriation act approved June 8, 1896, per FRUS 1896. President Cleveland mentioned the "deplorable lynching" in his 1895 State of the Union address (per Seguin & Nardin).

- **Scholarly context:** Seguin & Nardin (2022) treat Walsenburg with New Orleans (1891) and Tallulah (1899) as the three heavily reported mass lynchings of Italians that drove early U.S. anti-lynching politics. History Colorado's *Lost Highways* (June 27, 2024) experts likewise count three Walsenburg victims.

**Uncertainty — the death count (the central correction):** The primary diplomatic record (consul on site + court clerk + Secretary of State final summary) says 3 Italians killed, 2 injured / maimed, 1 American driver killed. Contemporary press (March 13–15, while two men were missing) said 5–6 Italians killed, 6 total dead. Later secondary works split: History Colorado podcast experts say 3; Intermountain Histories and the GSHA page say 5 Italians (+ driver); Iorizzo & Mondello's table says 6 murdered; other lynching tallies say "five Italians." The explanation that fits all sources: five Italians were victims of the attacks; newspapers presumed the two missing escapees dead; "five lynched" then hardened into the standard line — including in Fava's own later shorthand ("killing of five Italian subjects," November 27, 1895), while the FRUS 1896 phrasing "lynching and injuring of five Italian subjects" is accurate. This file follows the primary record, and any mention of "five lynched" elsewhere should be read as the error this file corrects.

**Uncertainty — the exact date and hour:** The attacks were the night of **March 12–13, 1895** (bridge ~7 p.m. March 12; jail ~1 a.m. March 13; one press version puts the jail attack at ~3 a.m.). Diplomatic shorthand variously dates "the lynching" to March 13 (Fava, March 27, 1895), March 14 (Fava, December 31, 1896 — appears to be an error / report-date slip), and March 12 (Iorizzo & Mondello table). Do not print a single bare date without the night-of framing.

**Uncertainty — names:** No two sources spell the names the same; this file uses the FRUS / court-clerk forms and notes the variants here. Principal: Lorenzo **Danino** (inquest verdict) = **Andinino** (consul) = **Danenio / Danino** (clerk / Olney) = "Antonio Lorenzo / Lorenzo Antonio" (modern secondary). Bridge victim: Stanislao **Vittone / Vittoni** (FRUS / clerk) = Vittani / Bittone (secondary). Jail victim: Francesco **Ronchietto** (FRUS / clerk) = Ronchetto / Rochetto / Roccetto. Survivors: Pietro **Giacobini / Giacobino**; Antonio **Gobetto / Gobette / Gobotto** — rendered "Zapetto / Sefetto" in some secondary / garbled press OCR, which is why some lists appear to name a sixth, different man. Driver: Joseph **Welsby / Wellsby**. Precipitating victim: Abner J. **Hixon / Hixson**.

**Uncertainty — Hixon's role and the fight:** Saloon keeper (temperance saloon, Rouse) is the consistent primary description; "deputy sheriff Hixon" in some out-of-state papers is unsupported and conflicts with Danford / Harriman being the deputies. Whether Hixon fired first (the prisoners' account, via a later local history) or was beaten unprovoked with a table leg (inquest / press) was never adjudicated — the accused were killed before any trial. Both accounts are presented above, attributed.

**Uncertainty — numbers arrested:** The consul and most press say 9 arrested, 4 released, 5 held. One fuller newspaper account says 11 were in the wagon / under arrest at the inquest stage. This file uses 9 / 5 with the consul as authority; the 11 variant should be flagged if CHNC local reporting confirms a different arrest sweep.

**Uncertainty — mob size and jail entry:** Bridge mob: 5–6 (consul, on the deputies' account; Giacobini under oath said the attack began with a single horseman) vs. 6–8 (press / secondary). Jail mob: 7 (consul) vs. 7–8 (press). Entry ruse: the consul says the men deceived the guard "by calling for Sheriff O'Malley"; the press expands it to claiming O'Malley wanted to enter / "it was the sheriff." This file uses the consul's narrower version.

**Uncertainty — no resistance / collusion:** The consul and Giacobini both say the deputies / guards made no resistance; the consul also said he had "no cause for complaint" about authorities cooperating with his investigation, and Governor McIntire offered the reward, troops on standby, and prosecution directions. Whether non-resistance was cowardice, being outnumbered, or sympathy was never established in any source found. Do not assert collusion as fact.

**Uncertainty — the grand-jury outcome (NOT primary-verified):** "Grand jury failed to indict anyone" rests, in the brief, on Intermountain Histories (a student project, no source shown for that line) plus the absence of any arrest / prosecution in FRUS through late 1895 and a local-history summary. It is highly likely correct in substance — no lyncher is recorded as punished in any source found — but a CHNC fall-1895 / October-term source is needed before the grand jury's action is stated as a documented fact. That pull is still outstanding.

**Uncertainty — the indemnity amount:** $10,000 is multiply attested in secondary / period-list sources (Iorizzo & Mondello table, reproduced in full; a JSTOR Daily excerpt of a period indemnity list: "Paid Italy for lynchings at Walsenburg, Col. $10,000.00"; GSHA Rouse page), and the fact and mechanism of payment (deficiencies appropriation act, June 8, 1896) are in FRUS 1896 — but the dollar figure itself was not in the FRUS pages opened for the brief. Pull the act text / House Doc. No. 195 appropriation language before printing the figure without attribution.

**Uncertainty — names of officials to get right:** The Italian ambassador in 1895 was **Baron Saverio Fava**. "Marquis Imperiali," used by Intermountain Histories, belongs to a later era — do not copy it. Fava's later December 31, 1896 citation of Walsenburg (in the Hahnville, Louisiana case) — that the U.S. "immediately recognized the Italian nationality of the four victims, and a suitable indemnity … was granted" — uses a "four" that appears to conflate victims / claimants and does not override Olney's 3-killed / 2-injured accounting. The Denver consul who investigated on site was **Dr. Cuneo** (spelled Cunea in one FRUS OCR rendering).

**Uncertainty — the CHNC gap (explicit):** No Colorado newspaper was read directly for the brief — Walsenburg, Pueblo, and Denver March 1895 coverage, and October–November 1895 court coverage, remain the one major primary layer still to pull. Everything in this file that depends on wire copies of Denver dispatches should be re-checked against the local papers before publication.

**Sources:** U.S. Department of State, *Foreign Relations of the United States* 1895, Part II (consul Dr. Cuneo's report to Baron Fava, March 21, 1895, and Fava to Gresham, March 27, 1895, doc. 122; sheriff's account via Gov. McIntire, March 13–14, 1895, doc. 113; Huerfano court clerk Fred O. Roof, June 15, 1895, doc. 127; families / amputations summary, July 1895, doc. 131; Fava on grand-jury delay, November 27, 1895, doc. 132; Fava on indemnity demand, fall 1895, doc. 133; Secretary Olney's final report, January 30, 1896, doc. 109; House Doc. No. 195, 54th Congress); FRUS 1896, Secretary of State's annual report and Fava's December 31, 1896 Hahnville letter (doc. 333); contemporary press, March 13–15, 1895 (Savannah *Morning News*, March 15, 1895; Denver special to the *Times*, March 13, 1895, via Oregon Historic Newspapers; South Carolina historic newspaper, March 27, 1895; Ann Arbor District Library newspaper OCR, March 11 dispatch; *The Literary Digest*, March 30, 1895); Seguin & Nardin, "The Lynching of Italians and the Rise of Antilynching Politics in the United States," *Social Science History* 46 (2022): 65–91; History Colorado, *Lost Highways*, June 27, 2024; Iorizzo & Mondello, *The Italian-Americans* (1971), p. 223 table; Intermountain Histories, "The Walsenburg Massacre" (secondary — color and leads only, contains errors noted above); Genealogical Society of Hispanic America, "Rouse Mine" (local history — color and leads only).

**The question the case leaves behind:** Three men were killed in custody, two more lost their feet to the cold after escaping, and a young American driver died beside his prisoners — and the only money that ever moved was an indemnity paid to a foreign government. Was that justice settled, or justice bought off because Colorado would not settle it itself?