Editor's note:This article is a part of a series reviewing Utah history for KSL.com's Historic section.SALT LAKE CITY — In late November and throughout December 105 years ago, Utah dealt with what became one of its bloodiest tragedies in state history. It involved a desperado, an argument over a woman, a shootout with police and a desperate weekslong mine search for a murderer who simply vanished.

It remained an unsolved criminal mystery for nearly a century.

Rafael “Red” Lopez entered the world of villainous folklore because of it. Lopez worked in Salt Lake County’s mines and in the early hours of Nov. 21, 1913, shot and killed fellow miner Juan Valdez in a spat over a woman. The Deseret News reported that Lopez waited for Valdez outside the woman’s home before he shot him.

It led to a massive manhunt in southwestern Salt Lake County and northwestern Utah County that lasted into January 1914. The manhunt turned deadly rather quickly.

Bingham Police Chief J.W. Grant, as well as Salt Lake County sheriff’s deputies Otto Witbeck and Nephi Jensen, were killed by Lopez in an ambush in the afternoon of Nov. 21, 1913. After their deaths, a group of about 200 law enforcement officials and civilians formed a posse that searched for Lopez and they eventually trapped him in a mine, according to a history compiled by Salt Lake City Television.

On Nov. 29, 1913, two other deputies, James Hulsey and Vaso Mandarich, were shot and killed by Lopez during their plan to light an ore cart full of hay and “smoke out” Lopez.

The official hunt for Lopez continued until it was called off on Jan. 5, 1914. However, there were signs he snuck around Utah’s mines during the manhunt before his escape. For example, in research conducted by Salt Lake County sheriff’s deputy Randy Lish, Lopez just moved from mine shaft to mine shaft because, as a mine worker, he knew the mines well.

Lopez ate by taking the worker’s box lunches. "Some, they'd say, they gave him the food. Some say that he took the food. Some say he pointed guns at them,” Lish told KSL TV in 2012.

Authorities finally gave up, and it remained a mystery until 2003 when Lish’s research determined what happened to Lopez. He said Lopez fled Utah and that Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, the same man who set up the ambush that led to the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde, had shot and killed Lopez during a train robbery in 1921.

The Salt Lake County attorney’s office officially closed the case in 2003 after Lish finished his research.

Here are some other Utah's other notable crime mysteries:

Jean Baptiste

Much like Alcatraz has Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin — the mystery of the three men who attempted to flee the penitentiary by swimming the San Francisco Bay in 1962, Utah has Jean Baptiste.

As the legend goes, Baptiste, a gravedigger, was found to have robbed roughly 300 graves in 1862, according to a 1995 report by Yvette Ison for “History Blazer.” Mobs threatened to lynch Baptiste after learning about the charges against him and even other prisoners weren’t fans of him, so officials exiled him to Fremont Island on the Great Salt Lake for safety.

Cattle herders traveled to the island three weeks later and found that Baptiste disappeared. A heifer had been killed and pieces of a house on the island were gone. They figured Baptiste had used materials from the island to construct a makeshift raft and escape, Ison wrote.

His fate was never determined, though some believe a skeleton found in the Jordan River in 1893 was his because of an iron clamp attached to its leg.

Feb. 9 murders

Twenty-nine-year-old Sonia Mejila was strangled in her Taylorsville apartment on Feb. 9, 2006, and Damiana Castillo, 57, was strangled in her Taylorsville apartment two years later to the date. Police collected DNA evidence that linked the two murders, but the DNA found wasn’t in the state’s database.

Prosecutors charged “John Doe” with two counts of aggravated murder and other charges related to the case nearly two years to the day after the second murder. It remained a mystery until an apparent break in the case this week. Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said officials finally identified the person they believe carried out the attack through DNA.

The person, whose identity remains under wraps, was in “another jurisdiction” and is not yet in Salt Lake County custody.

Related:

'We know' who killed 2 women exactly 2 years apart, DA says

Investigators believe they know the identity of a person suspected of killing two people on the same date two years apart in the same area.

Ted Bundy’s alleged victims

It is known serial killer Ted Bundy wreaked havoc on Utah during the time he lived here, but the exact extent remains a mystery.

Prior to his 1989 execution, Bundy confessed to 30 murders, including eight attacks in Utah; however, with lack of evidence, the Deseret News reported police narrowed it down to five they could pin on him within weeks of the confession: Laura Aime, Debbie Sue Curtis, Debi Kent, Melissa Smith and Nancy Wilcox. All five disappeared in Utah between Oct. 1974 and June 1975.

Even within those five, Curtis and Wilcox are still on Utah’s Bureau of Criminal Identification missing person list because their bodies were never found. Wilcox is also on the listed in Unified Police Department’s cold case list.

Nancy Baird, one of the three other women Bundy confessed to killing, is also on the state’s missing person case.

Bundy's infamous story will return to Utah in 2019. The Sundance Institute announced that the movie "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile" about Bundy is set to debut at the Sundance Film Festival, which opens Jan. 24, 2019.

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