Betrayed by a Dream
A Bunkhouse Confession
March 2026
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Around midnight on January 16, 1910, Fortunata Campbell and Apolonia Gillam heard someone prowling outside of the house they shared in Pagosa Springs, Colorado.1 Campbell went to the door and opened it, to see who was there. The intruder grabbed her arm, pulled her outside, and shot her three times, killing her.
The authorities soon identified Jose Benedito Martinez as the shooter. Martinez was “a prominent and wealthy resident of [Archuleta] County.”2 The murder, it seemed, was a crime of passion. According to a newspaper account, Martinez had courted Campbell for over a year. Recently, however, she had rebuffed him. The theory was that he shot her because she had spurned his advances.3
Martinez was arrested and charged with murdering Campbell. The local community was so convinced of his guilt that venue for his trial had to be changed from Archuleta County to Conejos County.4 There, the trial was conducted in both English and Spanish, using an interpreter.5
At the trial, a witness named Gallegos testified that he was standing 50 or 75 feet from Campbell’s house when he heard the shooting. After the shots, he met a man named Carillo coming from a livery barn across a creek, about 120 feet from the house.6 Carillo told him, “Old Ben [meaning Martinez] has killed Fortunata Campbell.”7
But when Martinez called Carillo as a witness, he denied making that statement to Gallegos. He also testified that he was not present and did not see who did the shooting. For his part, Martinez testified that he knew nothing of the murder and had been at home when it occurred.8
An unusual piece of evidence was admitted at the trial: the deposition of a man named Mark Clark. In the deposition, Clark stated that a few days after the shooting, he had slept in a bunkhouse with Martinez. Around 1:30 in the morning, he heard Martinez exclaim, “I shot her, I shot her, I shot her, I had to do it to save myself from the pen.”9 Clark stated he thought Martinez was asleep when he said it, but he wasn’t sure.
Martinez was convicted of second degree murder and received a sentence of 10 to 20 years. The trial court denied his motion for a new trial. He appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court.
The Appeal
On appeal, the supreme court considered the admission of Carillo’s and Clark’s statements. Carillo’s hearsay statement—that “Old Ben” had killed Campbell—had been admitted as part of the res gestae of the crime. That, the court said, “was error.”10 The court explained that the res gestae is “matter incidental to the main fact and explanatory of it, including acts and words which are so closely connected therewith as to constitute a part of the transaction, and without a knowledge of which the main fact might not be properly understood.”11 To be part of the res gestae, the words and acts must be “the events themselves speaking through the instinctive words and acts of the participants; the circumstances, facts and declarations which grow out of the main fact, are contemporaneous with it and serve to illustrate its character.”12 But Carillo “was not a participant, by-stander or witness to the transaction. He was in no way connected with it, or interested in the result, as far as the evidence discloses.”13 His statement therefore did not qualify as res gestae evidence.
The court turned to whether the admission of Carillo’s statement had so prejudiced Martinez that reversal was required, and concluded that it had. The state’s evidence was “of such a character [that] it [was] impossible to say that consideration of the incompetent evidence was not an important factor in the minds of the jurors in arriving at a verdict.”14 Martinez’s conviction would therefore have to be reversed.15
The court next turned to the evidence from Clark about Martinez’s late-night confession. Martinez’s trial counsel had waived any objection to the evidence, stating, “I waive the objection; and let [the jury] have the full benefit of [the testimony].”16 But because the court was ordering a new trial based on Carillo’s testimony, and because the state might also seek to present Clark’s testimony at a second trial, the court decided to give its opinion concerning the waived issue.
The court explained that only a party’s voluntary statements may be used against him. But “[o]ne is not responsible for what he says in his sleep, because he is unconscious and it is not voluntary.”17 If the jury found that Martinez was awake when he made the statement, it could consider the statement; but if not, “[w]ords uttered by the accused while asleep are not competent evidence against him.”18 Here, the trial court’s instruction to the jury about this evidence had been erroneous and had not guided the jury properly to determine whether to consider the evidence. That’s because the trial court had instructed the jury that they could consider Martinez’s statement, even if he was asleep when he made it.
The court therefore reversed Martinez’s conviction and remanded for further proceedings. But it does not appear that Martinez was ever retried for the murder.
The Rest of the Story
More recently, biographer Herman J. Viola has supplied some additional details about Campbell’s murder.19 According to his account, after Campbell’s divorce from an abusive man named Venceslado Valdez in about 1905, she sometimes supported herself through prostitution. Martinez was a violent man who had been having an affair with Campbell. He suspected her of cheating on him. When he came to her little two-room house that January night, he found her with another man (possibly a client) and so he pulled her outside, where he killed her.
Viola’s research discloses one additional intriguing detail about this case. Fortunata Campbell, the murdered victim, was the grandmother of prominent American politician Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who served in both chambers of the US Congress, including two terms in the US Senate (1993–2005).20
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Notes
1. See Martinez v. People, 132 P. 64 (Colo. 1913).
2. “A Prominent Citizen Charged with Murder,” Aspen Democrat-Times, p. 1, col. 3 (Jan. 20, 1910).
3. Id.
4. “Martinez Found Guilty of Manslaughter,” Durango Herald, p. 4, col. 2 (Dec. 29, 1910).
5. See id.
6. Martinez, 132 P. at 64.
7. Id. at 64–65 (internal quotation marks omitted).
8. Id. at 64.
9. Id. at 65 (internal quotation marks omitted).
10. Id.
11. Id.
12. Id.
13. Id.
14. Id.
15. Interestingly, the court scolded Martinez’s attorney for presenting an extended discussion of the res gestae issue that relied heavily on dozens of authorities from other states, when reliance on the several Colorado authorities on the subject would have been sufficient.
16. Martinez, 132 P. at 65.
17. Id.
18. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
19. Viola, Ben Nighthorse Campbell: An American Warrior 109–11 (Orion Books 1993).
20. Id. at 106 (“Fortunata is Ben Nighthorse Campbell’s paternal grandmother.”). Viola acknowledged that the senator’s background was “like a patchwork quilt, bits and pieces stitched together.” Id. at 1. Because of his research, however, Campbell himself came to believe that Fortunata was his grandmother. In 1993, he told a reporter that “my grandmother,” who he identified as Fortunata Campbell, “was murdered on the streets of Pagosa Springs” by a jealous lover. “Tribal Roots Saved Race, Campbell Says,” Rocky Mountain News, p. 5A, col. 4 (Aug. 25, 1993). The genealogical evidence bears out the family connection. The 1900 federal census shows a “Fortunata C. Valdez,” born in 1879, living in a household in Rio Arriba, New Mexico; her son, Alejandro, also listed on the census record, was born in March 1899. His information corresponds to Albert (or Alejandro or Alexandro) Valdez Campbell, Ben Nighthorse Campbell’s father. The family must have relocated from Rio Arriba to Pagosa Springs. Albert Campbell was later listed in the 1950 census, married to Mary Campbell (whose maiden name was Mary Viera; she was Ben Nighthorse Campbell’s mother, born in Portugal). The Campbell household in the 1950 census also includes “Benny Campbell,” age 16, whose information corresponds to Ben Nighthorse Campbell. This information is also summarized in at least one online genealogical site that includes a Campbell family tree. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Campbell-19265.