Reviewed by Bob Walch

November 2010 — San Francisco attorney and historian John Boessenecker has released a lengthy, all-encompassing biography of one of the most notorious bandits in California’s early history. In Bandido: The Life and Times of Tiburcio Vasquez (The University of Oklahoma Press, $34.95), the author covers the infamous outlaw’s life from his early days growing up in Monterey to his illegal escapades and eventual execution.

Although he grew up in a family of means, Vasquez associated with a rough group of young men, including some thieves and killers. When he followed a similar path as his companions, Vasquez quickly rose through the ranks of various outlaw bands, and eventually was mentioned in the same breath as the iconic Joaquin Murrieta.

Vasquez served two terms in San Quentin and enhanced his notoriety with bloody prison breaks and equally violent bandit raids throughout Central and Southern California before he was finally executed.

The consummate ladies’ man, the outlaw had many dalliances, but it was his last one that led to his capture in the Hollywood Hills and his subsequent death on the gallows at the age of 39.

Although most of his family lived in the area stretching from Monterey to San Juan Bautista, Vasquez’s uncle, José Tiburcio Vasquez, was granted the 4,5000-acre Rancho Corral de Tierra in San Mateo County in 1839 and became the first settler in Half Moon Bay. As a youth, Tiburcio Vasquez was no stranger to his uncle’s ranch, especially after his father and mother separated and his father supposedly moved in with his brother José.

Buried in the Mission Santa Clara cemetery in Santa Clara, Calif., Tiburcio Vasquez’s fame spread throughout the state for all the wrong reasons.

In this nicely illustrated biography, John Boessenecker provides a well-documented and comprehensive look at this little understood, infamous outlaw of early California.