Bertha Wahl Shooting - Arizona Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

Source: The Pistols, Plows and Petticoats Historic Driving Tour Brochure. John C. Wahl was a major cattleman in Round Valley and his wife, Caroline was a major sheep owner. She jokingly told Eujenio Matas, a young sheepherder, that if he worked for them for seven years he could marry their young daughter Bertha. Everyone knew that Caroline was joking, but now Matas was upset that at age fourteen, Bertha was preparing to leave and attend boarding school in Albuquerque for her high school education. He was angry and wanted to get even so he shot and killed her in her bedroom with her mother and sister witnessing the event. Matas was taken to jail, tried and found guilty of murder. He was to be hanged on December 1, 1899, but for some reason the then Governor of Arizona Territory, Nathan Oakes Murphy, commuted his sentence to life in prison. Matas spent fourteen years in the Yuma Territorial Prison when acute tuberculosis won him a medical discharge. He returned to his former home in New Mexico, married and had two children before succumbing to TB after five years of freedom.

Marker Name: Bertha Wahl Shooting Type of history commemorated: Event County: Apache Name of any agency/ agencies setting marker: Round Valley Positive Action Tourism Committee and Springerville-Eagar Chamber of Commerce Year placed: 2002

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Date Logged Log User Rating   06/11/2022 T2D visited it