Don't be afraid. Lock the doors. Turn out the lights. Inclimb into bed. It's time for

a real building. Dead time. Stories.

When you mention witches in America, your mind most certainly immediately goes to the Salem Witch

Trials in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. While this was the most famous city to have witch trials,

it wasn't the only city who convicted witches in a court of law. In fact, it went on all over the

country and in some cases centuries after the Salem Witch Trials. In this episode, we will discuss

a little known case just outside of Santa Fe in the Mexico that happened in 1854.

In 1854, Luis Romero and Antonio Tafala were charged with practicing black magic,

abduction, murder, and cannibalism in Nambay, which is located in Santa Fe County, New Mexico.

The two witches were found guilty of satanic deeds and led away from Nambay. It was not clear how

many mouths the two witches were marched. What is indisputable is that after a long trek,

the two witches were forced to sit next to each other and then they were executed by a shotgun blast

to the head. The four men execution squad had been appointed by the Nambay governor to act as provost

officers. Santa Fe, which is south of Nambay, had been under Spanish or Mexican rule since the city's

founding in 1610. Due to the Mexican-American War, Santa Fe was occupied by American troops in 1846

and governed by military law. In 1848, Santa Fe became officially part of the United States

as New Mexico was annexed into the Union as a territory. This meant that Santa Fe would now be

governed by the territorial court, which is comparable to today's district court system.

In March of 1854, Chief Justice Grafton Baker presided over the territorial court,

which was held at the palace of the governors. Under previous Spanish and Mexican rule,

witchcraft was punished by death. Now that Santa Fe and the surrounding territory were under

American constitutional law, Santa Fe ends were puzzled by how the new American legal system

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