# New Mexico & Illinois: Two Political Murders, No Justice

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/foul-play-a-historical-true-crime-podcast-51278/new-mexico-illinois-two-political-murders-no-justice
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/foul-play-a-historical-true-crime-podcast-51278/new-mexico-illinois-two-political-murders-no-justice.md
Podcast: [Foul Play: A Historical True Crime Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/foul-play-a-historical-true-crime-podcast-51278)
Published: 2026-09-01T09:00:54+00:00
Episode link: http://mythsandmalice.com
Audio file: https://audio3.redcircle.com/episodes/c565fa16-ac92-4796-a9d8-12f3547ff44c/stream.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/foul-play-a-historical-true-crime-podcast-51278/episodes/new-mexico-illinois-two-political-murders-no-justice
Duration seconds: 2104

## Resource

Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary. Fifty states. Fifty crimes. Two hundred and fifty years of American history, told through the true crime cases that other shows leave behind. New Mexico, 1892. A former sheriff walks into the dark with a man he trusts and never comes home. Illinois, 1871. A former Secretary of State steps off his porch for a midnight train and is shot dead in the street. Both men served their communities. Both were killed for it. Both were largely forgotten — until now. This is historical true crime, and tonight both cases are about what happens when political power turns lethal. Case A: Francisco Chavez and the Santa Fe Ring Francisco Chavez was born around 1851 in New Mexico Territory, the son of a family that had shaped this region for generations before the American flag flew over Santa Fe's plaza. He was Hispanic, a nuevomexicano, and he became sheriff of Santa Fe County at a time when the territory's government had been captured by the Santa Fe Ring — an informal network of Anglo-American lawyers, politicians, and land speculators who exploited Spanish and Mexican land grants to strip Hispanic families of land they had occupied for generations. At the center of the Ring stood Thomas Catron, a Confederate veteran and Missouri lawyer who arrived in New Mexico in 1866. By the 1890s, Catron had acquired interests in thirty-four land grants totaling approximately three million acres — making him, by most accounts, the largest private landowner in the United States. He had served as district attorney, territorial attorney general, and U.S. attorney. He owned the territory as surely as anyone could. Chavez stood against him. Historian Tobias Duran, writing in the New Mexico Historical Review, called Chavez a formidable foe of the Santa Fe Ring. He…

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## Transcript

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