Rodriguez was for many years known to be the only woman legally hanged in Texas. People think to be the daughter of Pedro Rodriguez, she moved with her father to San Patricio de Hibernia, Texas, and for several years after Rodriguez’s death furnished travelers with meals on the porch of her lean-to shack on the Aransas River. When Cotton Road traveler John Savage was killed with an ax, because he had $600 in gold which he had been carrying, Chipita was accused of robbery and murder.
Recovery of the gold from the Aransas River north of San Patricio, where the body was found in a burlap bag, raised substantial doubt about the motive for the crime, but Josefa Rodriguez and Juan Silvera were indicted on circumstantial evidence. After Chipita pleaded not guilty, but Neal wanted her executed on November 13, 1863. For some time she was held at sheriff William Means’s home in Meansville, where two attempts by a lynching mob wanted to kill her. According to legend, Chipita was kept in leg irons and chained to a wall in the courthouse. There, local children brought her candy and shucks to make cigarettes.
At the time she was described as “really old” or “about ninety,” but was probably in her sixties. They came for her in a two-wheeled cart. She sat on a plank box made to be her coffin. The cart was pulled by yoked oxen and people of the town walked behind. They went down to the river, a thousand yards from the courthouse, and the cart stopped under one of two spreading mesquite trees in a clearing by the river. She wore a new white dress with blue trim. A woman in town had fixed her hair. She was smoking a corn-shuck cigarette. When a new hemp rope was placed around her neck, she showed no emotion, no fear. The people watched her.
It was Friday, November 13, 1863, the day of execution for Chipita in old San Patricio. She had been tried, and the sentence was about to be carried out. Chipita was a nickname believed derived from Josefa. She lived in a cabin on the road that went from San Patricio to Refugio near the Aransas River. Her cabin was like a pit stop place, a way station for travelers, a place where they could get food and sleep on the porch. John Savage a big man with a dark beard, was on his way to the border, people think to buy horses for the Confederacy. He was believed to have stayed at Chipita’s on Sunday night around August. 3, 1863. He disappeared. Two house servants from the Welder ranch getting some firewood by the river found his body in a burlap bag. His head had been split open with an ax. San Patricio Sheriff William Means, investigating the murder, found traces of blood on Chipita’s porch. She said it was chicken blood. Chipita and her hired man Juan Silvera were arrested; there was no jail so they were chained to a wall in a small shed near the courthouse. Chipita would say nothing. Silvera told the sheriff he helped Chipita dump the body in the river. Not many people believed he knew anything; he was considered simple-minded.
The trial in the 14th District Court in the courthouse at San Patricio was quick. The judge was Benjamin F. Neal, who had been the first mayor of Corpus Christi. The conduct of the trial was irregular. Sheriff Means served on the grand jury that indicted Chipita. There was no jury panel so people were rounded up off the streets. Four members of the jury had been indicted for felonies, one for murder. Owen Gaffney, chief justice of the county (county judge) was the jury foreman. He was also a friend of the sheriff’s. Some members of the grand jury also served on the trial jury.
The motive for the killing was supposed to be robbery but the horse trader’s $600 in gold was found in his saddlebags near where his body was found. Chipita would not help in her own defense. The trial lasted most of a morning. The jury brought back a verdict before noon. Silvera was found guilty of second-degree murder and Chipita was found guilty of first-degree murder. The foreman Owen Gaffney read it out: “We, the jury, find the defendant, Chipita Rodriguez, guilty of murder in the first degree, but on account of her old age, and the circumstantial evidence against her, do recommend her to the mercy of the court. Judge Neal did not follow the jury’s wishes. He gave Juan Silvera five years in prison and ordered Chipita to be hanged on Nov. 13, 1863. How Neal saw the case or why he imposed the sentence he did is a mystery. He made no sentencing statement and left no explanation that survived. Some of the trial records were burned in a fire in 1889; part of the court record survived. What information that survived suggests the evidence was not carefully considered, the case was wholly circumstantial, and there were no witnesses and no motive.
Behind this great mystery is an untold story. Why Chipita would not help in her defense was never explained. Corpus Christi’s newspaper “The Ranchero” complimented the judge and jury for finding Chipita guilty and said, “We are decidedly pleased with our neighbors in San Patricio. ” People in San Patricio weren’t much pleased with themselves. Prominent citizens in the town urged Sheriff Means not to carry out the sentence. Chipita was not known to be a violent or mean-spirited person. The people thought there was something wrong with the trial and the sentence.
The day before the hanging, the sheriff suddenly left town, leaving the hangman, John Gilpin, to do the job on his lonesome. The judge was also out of the county. When the hangman arrived, he tried to borrow a cart to transport Chipita to the hanging site on the river, but was turned down. He was forced to confiscate the cart. At the hanging tree, there was a murmur from the crowd when the cart was moved forward, the new hemp rope jerked tight, and Chipita dropped from the bed of the cart, her feet dangling inches from the ground.
The oxen moved so slowly, and her body was so light and frail, that the fall didn’t break her neck, so she strangled to death. A woman watching fainted a young boy ran away crying and a man turned his back saying, “I’ve had enough of this. ” Finally, Gilpin, the hangman, cut her down and they buried her in the plank-box coffin in an unmarked grave at the foot of the mesquite on the Nueces River, a thousand yards from the shocked town of old San Patricio.
