SOLDIER OF FORTUNE -- ADVENTURING IN LATIN AMERICA AND MEXICO WITH EMIL LEWIS HOLMDAHL

Chapter 14:  La Cabeza de Pancho Villa

Such a strange infamy
Would never have been conceived
If gold had not been valued
Higher than manly honor.
The Yankees were not able
To defeat him in a fair fight
So they cut off his  head
-- Corrido de la Decapitacion de Pancho Villa

In February 1926, Holmdahl was in the Durango mountains not
far from Parral, searching for gold bars with a cousin of Luz
Corral's, one of Pancho Villa's many wives. Probably he was
still looking for either Villa's purported buried treasure or for more
gold hidden by Thomas Urbina. He claimed that he and his com-
panion, Alberto Corral, found the hidden treasure in a cave on the
side of a cliff. With the help of two Indians, they lowered the gold
500 feet to level ground.

As they were loading the twelve-kilogram gold bars into their
automobile, they were accosted by bandits. After facing down the
bandits, who were apparently not very determined, or probably fig-
ured they might wind up suddenly very dead at the hands of this
hard-eyed gringo, Holmdahl said he and Alberto drove to Parral. As
they parked their car in front of their hotel, they were suddenly sur-
rounded by police with drawn guns who arrested them. Within min-
utes they were rudely flung into a cell in the Parral jail.

Soon, Holmdahl related, a crowd of more than 2,000 gathered
in front of the jail screaming for their blood. "I thought we were
going to be lynched," he recalled. After passing a fearful afternoon
and night, the "bewildered" pair were led out into the jail's courtyard
at daybreak and marched to a bullet-pocked wall.

As they stared at a firing squad, they were accused of mutilating
the body of Pancho Villa. They were told they must confess or be
shot on the spot. Holmdahl said, at the time, he thought the whole
episode was a plot to steal their gold, but he replied he didn't know
what they were talking about and stoutly maintained their innocence.
They were only poor prospectors, he maintained. Surprisingly, they
were led back to their cells, but only for the moment. [1] Their arrest
was the beginning of the mystery of the missing head of Pancho
Villa. [2]

Along the Mexican border, legends about Pancho Villa are as
prevalent as cactus in the desert. There are stories of gold buried in
the mountains, and bloody tales of murder, betrayal, and tragedy.
But the most mysterious of all are the tales which ask the question:
"Who cut off the head of Pancho Villa?"

It is not surprising that most of the prime suspects were
Americans. They were part of that wild bunch of adventurers who
served as mercenaries with one or another of the many warlords
who fought it out during the ten years of the Mexican revolution.
Many claim to know who did the horrendous deed, but all their sto-
ries name different culprits. Some versions are burdened with facts
while others are pure fancy.

For years the Mexican government had been fighting Villa in
bloody battles ranging from the American border to deep into the
interior of their battered country. In July 1920, a weary government
decided it would be cheaper in both gold and lives to buy off Villa.
They recognized that it was futile to attempt to track don and fight
the elusive guerrilla in his many hideouts in the mountains of north-
ern Mexico. They offered him an estate of 25,000 acres of good
land in the state of Durango, 500,000 pesos and a paid escort of
fifty men, in exchange for his solemn vow to never again take up
arms against the government. Villa, who was momentarily tired of
fighting, accepted, and for more than two years he kept his promise.

Villa took a new wife, although he had two other wives to whom
he was "legally" married, and he and his henchmen spent their time
raising cattle and improving the land on his huge estate. For recre-
ation they despoiled a few local women, cheated more than a few
local merchants, and raised hell in the bordellos of the nearby town
of Parral. But in early 1923, rumors began to circulate that Villa,
then a vigorous forty-six years of age, was thinking of making a
political comeback.

The government in Mexico City panicked. On the sly, they con-
tracted with men who hated Villa -- and there were many -- to assas-
sinate the guerrilla leader. On Saturday evening, July 19, 1923, Villa
loaded up his Dodge touring car with six of his pistoleros. Depending
on which version you choose, they either drove to their favorite
house of ill repute in Parral or to the christening of a friend's child.
There they spent the night carousing and whooping it up.

Sunday morning, his bodyguards were hung over and still grog-
gy from too many "cucarachas" (marijuana cigarettes), too many
drinks of fiery tequila, or too many ladies of the evening. Villa's
companions staggered out into the bright sunlight and piled into the
Dodge, while Villa, who was not a drinker, insisted he drive the car.

On the outskirts of Parral, Villa slowed the car for a sharp turn.
Suddenly, a blast of rifle fire ripped into the bodies of the bleary-
eyed men. Villa, shot twice in the head and eleven times in the body,
died instantly, as did most of his men. The bandit chief was buried
with little ceremony in a quiet cemetery in Parral, where he lay qui-
etly for two and a half years.

At six o'clock on the morning of February 6, 1926, Juan
Amparan, the caretaker of the Pantheon Cemetery, was making his
early morning rounds when suddenly he let out a strangled gasp. By
the opened grave of the mighty Pancho Villa, next to a shattered
casket, lay his decomposing body. It was missing its head.

Amparan raced to the Municipal Hall of Parral and screamed
for the mayor. Soon the gravesite was swarming with policemen and
city officials. By the open grave, there was a large tequila bottle that
gave off a sharp antiseptic odor and wads of cotton, one of which
was soaked in blood. Odd, a policeman noted, a decomposing
corpse, dead for almost three years, doesn't bleed.

A curious crowd gathered at the scene, and soon the police were
screaming curses and hitting those who were pulling at the tattered
clothes of the corpse to gain a souvenir of the famous general.
Pieces of decaying flesh that came off with the shreds of cloth torn
away by the crowd lent a touch of the macabre. Placing a guard
around the grave, the officials pondered, "Who would do such a
thing"?

The obvious suspect was Jesus Salas Barraza, a local politician
and the admitted leader of the band who assassinated Villa and his
bodyguards. It was said Barraza hated Villa because, he claimed,
"the Hyena" raped his little sister who later died in childbirth.

Following his confession of Villa's murder, Barraza served less
than a year in a local prison before an "understanding" governor of
Chihuahua pardoned him. He was in Parral on the night of the
beheading; however, he had an ironclad alibi.

Rumors were soon spreading like wildfire across the country.
One story related that Villa, while on the run from Pershing's troops,
buried vast amounts of silver and gold bars somewhere in the wilds
of Chihuahua. Taking a secret map of the location to a local tattoo
artist, Villa ordered the man to shave his head and tattoo the map
on his bald skull. Afterwards, he burned the map and shot the
unfortunate tattooer. Obviously, denizens of the local cantinas said,
treasure hunters had dug up the body, chopped off the head, shaved
it, and were now on their way to becoming millionaires when they
located the treasure.

It was a great story, but not taken seriously, when someone
recalled they read a similar tale in the works of the Greek historian
Herodotus from 500 B.C. In Book V of his Histories, Herodotus
relates how the Greek tyrant Histiaeus, wishing to send a secret
message calling for a revolt, shaved the head of a slave, inscribed the
message on his bald head, let the hair grow out, and sent the mes-
senger to his friend and cohort Aristagoras.

There was general agreement, however, that it took a man of
great boldness to tempt the gods with such a sacrilegious act.
Suspicion soon turned to the gringo adventurers who, fearing neither
God nor man, had roistered through Mexico during its bloody
decade of revolution.

Such a man was Tracy Richardson, who had fought on many
sides during the revolution, most bitterly against Villa during the
Orozco rebellion of 1912. Richardson was known to be in Mexico
and hated Villa. If the price was right, he was capable of anything.
He was not above hawking Villa's head in any bazaar in the United
States or Mexico. Richardson, however, was said to be conducting
a forest survey in the state of Chiapas more than a thousand miles
away.

Another name that immediately came to mind was that of Sam
Dreben. The police recalled that when the Mexican revolution
broke out, Dreben joined General Pascual Orozco and his
hell-raising rebel "Colorados" before being defeated by the govern
ment forces of President Francisco Madero. More significantly,
Dreben fought against Villa and scouted for General Pershing dur-
ing the American punitive expedition in 1916.

After fighting with the U.S. Army in France during World War I,
Dreben went into business in the border town of El Paso. He had
recently intervened in a revolutionary outbreak in neighboring
Juarez. There were rumors, however, that his business interests in
El Paso were failing.

The Mexican police wondered if the intrepid Dreben attempted
to recoup his fortune by stealing and selling the head of "The
Centaur of the North?" Unfortunately, authorities learned that the
previous March, tough Sam Dreben died in a Hollywood, California
hospital, a victim of medical malpractice.

Another version of the story had it that when the police were
speculating who had the courage to pull off such an atrocity, one
police officer suggested, 'Es posible, el Colonel Holmdahl?" The name
brought a gasp from the assembled officials. Even in the years after
the end of the revolution, Holmdahl was a name to conjure with.
Police officers reported that he had been seen making the rounds of
Parral bars the previous night.

Acting on a tip, the police rushed to the Hotel Casa Fuentes in
Parral and arrested Holmdahl and Alberto Corral. Searching their
automobile, they found a mysterious bottle, which, the police said,
smelled like embalming fluid. They also confiscated a bloodstained
ax, a large machete-like knife, and a shovel. There was never any 
mention of finding the gold bars in the trunk compartment; if
indeed, they ever existed.

At the police station, Holmdahl was asked what he was doing in
Parral and, more pointedly, where he had been the previous night.
Smoothly, the American replied he was prospecting for copper
deposits in the nearby mountains for his employer, the American
Smelting and Refining Company. Maybe. That company, when
queried by the author, stated that they held no employment records
that far back in time. On the night in question, Holmdahl said he
and his friends were relaxing by driving around and drinking at a
number of Parral cantinas.

When a police officer held up the bottle, stated it was embalm-
ing fluid, and accused Holmdahl of using the stuff to preserve the
severed head, Holmdahl was indignant. The bottle contained only
mineral water, he explained. He told the officers that he had a seri-
ous kidney condition from drinking too much tequila. He said he
constantly drank the water to ease his stomach pains. The police
snorted at this and led Holmdahl and his two companions to cells in
the Parral calabozo pending a hearing before a local judge. The bot-
tle, a key bit of evidence, was put into custody at the police station.

Hours later, an American mining engineer, Bryan Brown, who
knew Holmdahl, visited his cell and anxiously inquired if he could
be of help. Holmdahl, rather smugly, told him, "Don't worry. I
don't have the head and I'm fully protected."

The next morning, Holmdahl and Corral were hauled into court.
When the police prosecutor testified that the bloody ax was proba-
bly used to chop off Villa's head, Holmdahl replied that since Villa
had been dead for more than three years there would not be any
blood. Besides, he said, when he and his friends were prospecting
in the mountains they shot a deer, chopped it up, cooked it, and ate
it. The same explanation held for the knife.

Confronted with the shovel, Holmdahl said it had been used to
dig their car out of a ditch. He later told a newspaper reporter, "I
had a hard time explaining how the fresh mud came to be on the
shovel." [3] Then he was told their automobile was seen near the
graveyard at 9:00 p.m. the night the grave was looted. "That had me
stumped. We sure had driven near the graveyard but I explained our
route from the mining deposits had taken me by the cemetery," he
responded.

Throughout the interrogation, the presiding judge seemed disin-
terested in the proceedings until, with a flourish, the police official
held up the bottle taken from Holmdahl's car. Placing the bottle on
the evidence table, the prosecutor demanded to know why he was
carrying embalming fluid in his car.

Holmdahl appealed to the judge, "Your honor it is only mineral
water. I must drink it because I have a bad liver from drinking too
much tequila." Striding to the evidence table, he picked up the bot-
tle, saying, "If this is embalming fluid, drinking it will kill me."
Before an astonished court, he lifted the bottle to his lips and in half
a dozen large gulps drained it. "Es verdad, I am innocent," he
announced. Perhaps.

The judge, impressed with this bravado performance, slammed
down his gavel and pronounced, "Case dismissed. Release these
men." Those who were cynical about the Mexican justice system,
and there were many, later maintained it was not impossible that a
police custodian, in receipt of a sizable gratuity, emptied the bottle
of its poisonous contents and refilled it with water. And a judge
who was muy simpatico for unknown political reasons, might have
eagerly found a reason to dismiss the case.

Holmdahl later told historian Bill McGaw that the judge said
that he was worried about their safety, as the streets were full of out-
raged Villa supporters. When he offered a squad of local soldiers as
an escort, Holmdahl, as an old Mexico hand, declined, saying,
"Thanks but no thanks. The escort would just shoot us in the back."
He added, "Just give us our guns back and we'll walk out of here."
It was done and Holmdahl and Corral, with pistols conspicuously
thrust in their belts, strode out of the courthouse.

With tight smiles, their hands hovering near their weapons, they
stepped into the crowd and swaggered down the street to their
hotel. No one made a threatening move, at least not then. The pair
went to their hotel room, packed their bags, got into their auto, and
headed out on the road to Juarez, where they would cross the bor-
der into El Paso and safety.

A few miles out of town, they stopped and opened the trunk
compartment where they had stashed the gold bars. As expected,
they had been stolen. Well, at least, they figured, they hadn't lost
their lives. Villa supporters, however, according to Holmdahl, tried
to ambush them on the road, but the old soldier snorted, "Though
we were attacked several times between Parral and Juarez we got
through. I'm still a pretty good shot."

Holmdahl later advanced the rather bizarre theory that the
decapitation was planned by Plutarco Elias Calles, who had suc-
ceeded Alvaro Obregon as president of Mexico in 1924. A revolu-
tion was being planned by old Villa supporters, Holmdahl claimed,
and the theft was designed to lure the plotters to Parral, where Calles
would "disappear them." His theory convinced no one.

But if the culprits remained unknown, what could be the motive
for purloining the head of the great man? Aside from the map on
the head theory, many motives began to surface. One reputable
Mexican historian, Elias L. Torres, in his book La Cabeza de Villa,
reported that on the night of the desecration, an airplane landed on
the small airstrip at Parral, located near the cemetery. Shadowy fig-
ures approached the plane, something was exchanged, and the air-
craft took off, disappearing into the darkness. Torres claimed that
an unnamed Mexican general who hated Villa's guts ordered the
head cut off and delivered to him.

Today, Torres believes Villa's head, drilled out and used as a pen
holder, sits on the general's desk. If so, it serves as a fitting rebuke
for the semi-literate Pancho Villa. Another bolder Mexican histori-
an, Oscar A. Martinez, named the man responsible as Brigadier
General Francisco R. Durango, commanding officer of the garrison
at Parral.

Soon a Mexico City newspaper, El Grafico, printed a sensational
story claiming the theft of the head was financed by an "eccentric
Chicago millionaire," who planned to donate it to a scientific insti-
tution. Chicago and New York newspapers subsequently quoted
Dr. Orlando F. Scott, a well-known Chicago brain specialist, who
said he expected the head to arrive, "in a few days." Dr. Scott said
the head would be examined from a pathological standpoint by
experts from universities and hospitals. Dr. James Whitney Hall, an
alienist and criminologist in Chicago, was quoted in the New York
Times as expressing interest in studying the head.

The statements created an uproar among Mexican officials, who
demanded the return of the head. The uproar prompted the
American Medical Association to issue a press release stating the
skull would be worthless from a scientific standpoint, In any event,
the head never arrived in Chicago; or, if it did, no one admitted it.

Another rumor charged that the Ringling Brothers had pur-
chased the head for $5,000 and planned to exhibit it in their circus
freak show. The charge brought a scathing denial from John
Ringling North. An old Yaqui Indian woman living in Los Angeles
told a reporter that many of her tribe believed that Villa had made
a pact with the devil. "If you will protect me in battle," Villa
promised Lucifer, "I will give you my head after death." The devil
finally got around to collecting his trophy, the woman said.

One story had it that the citizens of Columbus, New Mexico,
had offered a reward of $50,000 for the head of Villa, dead or alive.
It was discounted, however, when authorities realized that the entire
population of the town couldn't raise even a tenth of that amount.

In later years, the Los Angeles Times quoted a Mrs. Gene Ernest
as stating that in 1926 she was operating a store located in the
Sheldon Hotel in El Paso. She recounted, "I became acquainted
with Holmdahl at that time. I do not know whether he had Villa's
head but he had something of great value, which he kept in his
room. His Yaqui Indian guide slept in the room and guarded it at
all times when Holmdahl was absent." [4]

Ben F. Williams, an El Paso cattleman and merchant, in his
memoirs, Let the Tail Go With the Hide, published in 1984, wrote that
he and Holmdahl were good friends who often dined together at El
Paso's Central Cafe. Williams wrote that in March 1926, he and
Holmdahl were having a number of drinks together when the mer-
cenary said he had taken the head and was paid $25,000, plus
expenses, for doing "the job." [5]

Years later, Williams was in Phoenix visiting a friend named
Frank Brophy, a graduate of Yale University and a member of the
university's Skull and Bones Club. Brophy told him that he and four
other friends each put up $5,000 and hired Holmdahl to get the
head. Holmdahl delivered it, and Pancho Villa's battered skull,
according to Brophy, is now lodged in the trophy room at the club's
headquarters at Yale. [6]

With no real clues, speculation finally died down, until a friend
of Holmdahl, L.M. Shadbolt, revealed that in 1928 he met the sol-
dier of fortune in El Paso. Shadbolt said Holmdahl entered his
room in the Sheldon Hotel, unwrapped a bundle of newspapers and
out rolled Villa's head. "I'm going to get $5,000 for it," Holmdahl
said.

In 1932, however, a local El Paso historian, Larry A. Harris, said
a reliable friend telephoned him saying Tracy Richardson, dodging
Mexican police, had crossed the Rio Grande and brought the head
to El Paso. Waiting to collect $10,000 for the trophy, Richardson,
the man said, buried it in the nearby Franklin Mountains for safe-
keeping. At this news, a wave of curious diggers churned up Mount
Franklin during the ensuing weeks, but to no avail.

Little was heard about the head until 1952, when the United
States Secret Service located Emil Holmdahl living in retirement in
Van Nuys, California. They questioned him about a horde of gold
bars reputedly dug up in Mexico and illegally brought to the United
States. The gold, the Secret Service said, was rumored to have been
found buried in Mexico as a result of a map found on the skull of
Pancho Villa. Nothing came of the investigation.

Nothing more was heard about the skull until it became an issue
in the presidential election year of 1988 when Vice President
George Bush, running for president of the United States, was
accused of knowing its whereabouts. Bush, a Yale alumnus, was a
member of that university's Skull and Bones club which, it was said,
had a collection of skulls of both the famous and infamous on dis-
play in their clubhouse.

Also, Bush was not the first member of his family to be involved
with purloined skulls. His father, Prescott Bush, a former senator
from Connecticut, reputedly was involved in digging up the body of
the murderous Apache raider, Geronimo, cutting off his head, and
ensconcing it in the Skull and Bones club. In between pronounce-
ments on the economy and American foreign policy, Bush denied
any knowledge of knowing the whereabouts of Villa's skull.

Historian Friedrich Katz adds a few more suspects to the list. In
addition to Holmdahl's suspicious presence in Parral, he reports the
rumor that a Colonel Durazo gave the order to some of his men to
cut off the head and give it to Mexican President Obregon "who
wanted Villa's skull for himself." Another general was said to want
the head examined by scientists "to determine why he [Villa] was
such a military genius." Katz concludes, however, there is really no
hard evidence to substantiate any of these stories. [7]

Holmdahl, for the rest of his life, continued to deny he was
guilty. But for all the denials, the most plausible scenario of the
deed is that he cut off the head and delivered it to the pilot of the
airplane landing at Parral the night of the decapitation. Carried to
Mexico City, an ancient enemy of Villa probably spent his declining
years looking at the skull with two bullet holes in it and chuckling.
Where truth ends and fantasy begins is anybody's guess. As they say
on the border, Quien sabe? Who knows?

Today, along the Rio Grande, some old ones believe that on dark
nights a ghostly figure with a headless body, wearing the tattered
uniform of a Revolutionary General, can be seen roaming up and
down the banks of the river. It is Villa, they say, blindly searching
for his stolen head.

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