It seems nearly every history written around San Juan Capistrano seems fit to include the murder of my great grand uncle Dolores Garcia. Garcia ran a saloon on the Camino and on the night of June 16, 1897 was shot dead there.
While historians of the sensationalist school muddle the facts: Was Garcia in the doorway or behind the bar counter when shot? Was he shot through the jaw or skull? The newspapers of the day contributed, too, to the confusion (just as they do today with conflicting "facts").
There seems to be no confusion over the perpetrator, but plenty about his name )was it Felix, Feliz, Flores, or Fellows?). According to newspaper reports and the court case file, there had been bad feelings between the two for some time previous. Apparently Manuel Fellows, a vaquero, was a hard-drinker and when drunk would rail against Dolores Garcia violently.
On the night of June 16, Fellows was rather inebriated, boasting he was going to shoot Garcia with a heavy rifle he carried. Some witnesses placed Garcia behind the bar taking care of the usual business; more lurid claims put him dramatically silhouetted in the doorway of the saloon.
A few historians carry the story forward and say that Fellows was sent to San Quentin to be hung...which, indeed, he was...but he wasn't. Which is why following up on a story is just good reporting and history.
To me this is family history of the tightest kind: My great grand uncle, deputy sheriff Reginaldo O. Pryor, for example, brought the murder suspect from Los Angeles to San Quentin, and my other great grand uncle, deputy John Landell had brought Fellows from Capistrano up to Los Angeles for trial.
Fellows was convicted at his first trial and sentenced to hang, even being put on "Murder's Row and his execution set for December 17, 1898, but an appeal stayed his execution.
Fellows' second trial kept him from the hangman and, in fact, he was paroled within a few years of his sentencing, returning as late as 1915 to San Juan Capistrano where he was alleged to have threatened someone with a gun.
Dolores Garcia is remembered in old San Juan mostly because his adobe house (which was used as the saloon quarters) is still seen along Camino Real and the house he had built for his wife, Refugia Yorba, was bought later by another great grand uncle, Albert Pryor, and is now used as the base for the San Juan Capistrano Historical Society in the Rios District.
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