Fred Petersen, the head gardener at Bidwell Mansion, got an early start on the morning of February 28, 1900. And it was not long after his arrival that he made a grisly discovery.

At 6:30 a.m., just as it was getting light, he came upon the body of a man lying by the driveway, his head battered and bloody. As reported by the Chico Record, “A glance was sufficient to tell Peterson that an awful crime had been committed, for the upturned face of the body was covered with blood, the features disfigured and the head resting in a pool of blood.”

The victim was Billy Simpson, an Indian* and a long-time employee of John and Annie Bidwell. Fred Petersen would have known and recognized him. He alerted Reuben Messinger, Bidwell’s stableman and coach driver. As they stood over the slain man, John A. McFeely hurried over to join them. He was on his usual morning walk from his home on Arcadian Avenue to his hardware store on Second Street. The horrified men notified John Bidwell and summoned the police. By the time the constables arrived, a large crowd of men and boys had gathered around the body and trampled the ground in every direction.

That evening John Bidwell noted the event in his diary: MURDER: Billy Simpson found dead this morning – murdered – nearby.

“Nearby” was directly behind the mansion. The newspaper reported that the body “was discovered in the driveway about twenty yards northwest of the woodshed near the mansion.” Although I don’t know where the woodshed was located, this site would be on the unpaved driveway near the carriage house, where today a path runs toward the Chico State campus. Other reports said that the body was discovered beneath a large fig tree.

Both the Chico Record and the Chico Daily Enterprise reported the crime in gruesome detail. From the Enterprise on March 2nd:

That Simpson had been murdered in cold blood, and by some man or men who were determined on robbery, there seems no possibility of a doubt. Those who were early on the scene could plainly see the marks in the driveway where Simpson had fallen, when the first terrible blow was delivered.

The murderer evidently slipped up behind his victim and dealt him a terrific blow on top of the head with some blunt instrument. Stunned and bleeding with his skull fractured in a dozen places the inoffensive Indian had fallen to the ground, and while the victim was lying prostrate on the ground, the murderer, evidently intent on making sure that his victim was dead, delivered two more blows upon the head and face of the fallen man.

The report goes on to detail the dreadful injuries inflicted upon Billy Simpson. Then:

After making sure that his victim was beyond giving an alarm, the murderer carried the body of the Indian under the dense foliage of a giant fig tree, where he proceeded to rifle the pockets of the dead man. A trail of blood marks the path of the murderer as he bore his human burden off of the driveway into the darkness to conclude his hellish work.

All this happened while John and Annie Bidwell and their servants went on with their evening inside the walls of Bidwell Mansion.

Who murdered Billy Simpson? Why? When did it happen? Did anyone hear the crime?

Stay tuned for more about Billy Simpson, about the arrest and fate of his murderers, and their motives for the killing.

*I will be using the term “Indian” or “American Indian” rather than “Native” or “indigenous person,” simply because “Indian” was the term in use at the time and it is still preferred by some indigenous groups.