Constable Thomas Godwin

Constable Thomas Godwin. Tehachapi Constable. “I’m coming to see you Tom”, said James Hayes. “Well, come a’ shooting” Godwin replied ---and he did! , Tom Godwin was a farmer, stock raiser, and owner/manager of the Mountain House bar and restaurant, but he was also the Tehachapi town Constable (the Law). , Two very good friends, James Hayes and Milton Dosier were disturbing the peace. Godwin attempted to stop the ruckus and ended up shooting and killing Dosier., A judicial investigation found the shooting justified. Awhile later, around 7 pm on Oct 21, 1876, Hayes, as he was calling himself then, went into the Mountain House to revenge his friends’ death, saw Godwin, and according to witnesses hollered, “Tom Godwin, you are my meat!” while firing his pistol at the same time. Before Godwin could move he was hit. He died 19 hours later leaving a wife and three children. , James Hayes, not his real name, (in jail he said he wasn’t going to embarrass his mother and sister back in Rhode Island by using the name he was born with) was tried, convicted of this and a couple more murders that he had confessed doing himself or being a part of, and was hung on March 30, 1877. Hayes was the first legal hanging in Kern County, and was hung with the same rope used to hang the outlaw Tuburcio Vasquez two years earlier. , Townspeople were so enraged with the killing of their beloved Constable that they would not allow Hayes to be buried in the same cemetery as Tom Godwin. Hayes was reportedly buried on “a hill to the northwest”. His was the only body buried at that location and it is believed it was inadvertently disturbed during the building of homes in the area known as Golden Hills in the 1970’s., Dedicated April 29, 2017 , Peter Lebeck Chapter 1866 , The Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus , Dale “Top” Turner, Noble Grand Humbug