Inspector Charles E. Jones

Charles E. Jones

Mounted Inspector Charles Jones and Mounted Inspector Charles Logan were shot and killed in a secluded spot in the abandoned river bed of the Rio Grande River, a short distance from El Paso, Texas. Their bodies were found the following day.

It was a dark night and the inspectors were traversing the riverbank searching for smugglers. Inspector Logan had a bullet hole through the heart, and Inspector Jones had a bullet through the right breast. They had been sent out from the local station as border riders and their horses were tied to the same bush, about sixty feet from the place where the bodies lay. The bullet that killed Inspector Logan was fired at such close range that powder burned the shirt over his heart, and blackened a big spot around the wound. People in the vicinity heard three shots at 9:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 19, 1908.

Contemporary accounts concluded that in the dark the two inspectors mistook each other for a smuggler.

Inspector Jones was born in England and had resided in El Paso for seven years. He was buried in the Evergreen Cemetery, El Paso, Texas, in an unmarked grave. He was survived by his wife and three children.