Murdered By Cannibals!: The Short, Sensationalized Life of Lieutenant R.E.L. Robinson, 1890's News Correspondent - Softcover

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On May 26, 1894, twenty-four-year-old Lieutenant R.E.L. Robinson walked over a low sand ridge on the Island of Tiburon with a party of primitive Seri hunters and was never seen again. Newspapers across the country reported that he had been murdered and eaten by cannibals on the small Mexican island in the Gulf of California. Newspapers in Arizona, where Robinson had been living since 1891, were more skeptical.

Robinson clearly planned to disappear on Tiburon. He wrote of his death or imprisonment by the Seri in his journal the night before he vanished. Before he left Arizona, he told friends in Yuma to announce his murder by cannibals on Tiburon. He wrote in his personal journal about his plan to live among the Seri and study their culture. He also believed Tiburon to the resting place of a fortune in lost Spanish gold. He had previously tried to fake his death. And according to some reports, Robinson took out a large life insurance policy before leaving for Tiburon.

But did Robinson die on Tiburon, or just disappear? Eventually, after he failed to reappear for several months and after a Seri translator “confessed” that other tribal members had killed him, the press declared Robinson dead, and the news cycle moved on.

But nothing about Robinson’s short, sensational life was that straightforward.

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