This week in 1887

“Good-bye for all my gentlemens, good-bye.  I am going to die like a man; isn’t that so gentlemen?”

— Jose Ramirez, convicted of murder, hanging, California.
Executed December 2, 1887

Fernando Acero, a hulking 225 pound, six-foot tall beast, considered a “quarrelsome, aggressive, vindictive bully…inclined, in his cups, to provoke quarrels” singled out  142 pound Jose Ramirez, who had seduced the woman on whom Acero previously set his sights, Helena Gutierrez. In a saloon confrontation, the men exchanged Harsh words that escalated into roughhousing, and finally bullets. Only Acero who fled the scene, was badly wouneded.  Both men were arrested, and Acero, whose wounds did not seem fatal at the time, made a “dying declaration” six days after the shooting naming Ramirez the killer, and finally did die two days later. Though he had a dedicated lawyer, Ramirez was finally sentenced on October 21, 1887, close to a year after he shot Acero in a Santa Clara County bar.
 
Jose was described as a calm and “peacable” man, which he aptly demonstrated at his death. According to a San Fransisco reporter, the executionee was in “unusually high spirits” that morning, and died as he declared he would, “like a man.”