A MURDER IN TUTUHAN

Salomón Tenorio Garrido was the alguacil of Hagåtña in the early 1900s.

The alguacil (Spanish title) was like a sheriff, court clerk or bailiff. His signature appears in countless court documents, like the one above.

Salomón was born around 1863, the son of Diego Garrido and María Tenorio. He married the former Carmen León Guerrero Blaz.

He had a ranch in what is now called Agaña Heights. According to one source, writing between 1917 and 1919, the ranch was southwest of today's Government House.

Salomón began noticing that things on his ranch went missing. Chickens, eggs, pigs. He told his wife, "I'm going to spend the night at the ranch and catch the thieves." Carmen pleaded with him not to do it, but Salomón took his machete and went to the ranch. He had his son Vicente bring him his rifle to the ranch later that day. The young Vicente returned home.

TUTUHAN

The next morning, Salomón had not returned home and Carmen was getting anxious because it was time for her husband to get ready for work at the court house. She saw a woman passing by the house on her way to fetch water from a well and told her about it. Carmen had already sent, Vicente, her oldest son who was around 12 or 13 years old, to check on his dad. Just as Carmen was talking to this woman passing by, Vicente returned to the house, visibly shaken.

So upset was Vicente that he couldn't talk for half an hour. The whole while Carmen kept asking him what was wrong. Finally he said, "Tåta is dead." Carmen became emotional and started screaming and all the children with her. The judge was called and he, accompanied by some men, went to the ranch and found Salomón dead on the ground. They carried his body to the hospital, where the doctor looked over the wounds of his body.

His wounds included gun shots, so he was probably overpowered by more than one man and shot with his own rifle. This happened in 1904.

The thing was that the gun shots that night were heard by a sentinel who stood guard not far from the ranch, in a place known back then as Kasamata, where Government House is now and where a tuberculosis hospital was located from 1916 till around 1930. But the sentinel who heard the gun fire felt he could not leave his post to check on what happened. One wonders if he had gone looking and found Salomón, would he have found Salomón alive? Would there have been enough time to run down to Hagåtña, bring back help, bring Salomón to the hospital and save his life?

No one, as far as we know, was ever charged with his murder. There were a few suspects, but nothing based on solid evidence and the case went cold to this very day.

* Salomón is the Spanish version of the name Solomon, which is the English version of the Hebrew original Shelomoh