José Doroteo Arango, better known as Francisco "Pancho" Villa, was gunned down along with his assistant Daniel Tamayor, his unfortunate chauffeur Migel Trujillo and bodyguards Rafael Madreno and Claro Huertado in Hidalgo del Parral. Bodyguard Ramon Contreras survived the attack, killing one assailant.
The fatal trip into town in his Dodge sedan was to pick up payroll for his ranch employees. Details of the killings remain unclear, but it is widely suspected Plutarco Elías Calles and President Alvaro Obregón had a role in the killings, and that they were brought about by Villa's murmurings that he might reenter politics. Jesús Salas Barraza took responsibility for the murder, with it being attributed to resentment over Villa whipping him in a feud over a woman, but it's generally felt that this was to divert attention from the plotters. Barraza served three months out of a twenty-year sentence for murder, and went on to become an officer in the Mexican Army. Most of the surviving assassins also ended up in the Mexican army.
Telegraph service to Villa's hacienda of Canutillo was interrupted briefly, apparently in a move to cut communications lest his followers there start an uprising.
Villa left a complicated personal life in his wake. His longest lasting spouse, Luz Corral, was not living with him at the time, and Austreberta Rentería was in residence at his hacienda as his wife. Court challenges would uphold Corral as his legal spouse, and she would inherit his estate. He had at least four living children at the time of his death.
Villa was an extremely odd character who had served brilliantly as a cavalry commander in the initial stages of the Mexican Revolution, but who was unable to adjust to the changes in military technology that had altered how cavalry had to be used. He's the best remembered Mexican Revolutionary by far, although politically not a terribly effective one. His decision to rail Columbus New Mexico in 1916, in retaliation for Woodrow Wilson allowing Carranza to transport his troops across Texas and back into Mexico, nearly lead the US into war, and provided an embarrassing episode in which a US expeditionary force was unable to run him down. The Punitive Expedition, as it was known, did however serve to prepare the US for entry into World War One.
Perhaps Villa's violent life and death make the gathering of "prominent young girls" in a pageant in Seneca Falls depicting the progress of women, in which they were depicted as ancient warriors, a bit ironic.
Warriors. Agnes Lester, Marjorie Follette, Emily Knight, Elizabeth Van Sickle, Carol Lester, prominent young girls of Seneca Falls, as warriors in the Drama depicting the Progress of Woman to be given at the reception at Seneca Falls, N.Y., on July 20, 1923.
The bodies of Villa and his men, laying dead in their Dodge, depicted the true face of war, which is not very glamorous. Women in liberal western societies, but only in liberal western societies, would "progress" into combat over the next century, but it's not an existential progress, but a retrograde trip into barbarity.
Casper's paper for the same day reported the end of the second dusk to dawn flying record attempt in Rock Springs.
Speaking of violence and women, the Casper paper was reporting a Cheyenne rancher was charged with violation of the Mann Act in the far western part of the state.
There were strikes in Port Arthur, Texas.
