On September 28, 1958, Fernando Rios, a 26-year-old Mexican tour guide and gay man, died due to injuries sustained during an assault he experienced the previous night in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The assault was perpetrated by John Farrell, a 20-year-old student at Tulane University, who was accompanied by fellow students Alberto Calvo and David Drennan.
Earlier in the night, Farrell had recommended to Calvo and Drennan that they rob a gay man, with Farrell targeting Rios at the Cafe Lafitte in Exile, a gay bar. The two left the bar together, with Farrell, accompanied by Calvo and Drennan, assaulting Rios in an alley of the St. Louis Cathedral, resulting in his death the next day. Following his death, the three individuals turned themselves in to the police, and pleaded not guilty to murder. The three were ultimately found not guilty, with their defense team employing a gay panic defense. Subsequent prosecution resulted in convictions on lesser charges, but did not result in any of the men serving jail time.
After the murder trial, which attracted a significant amount of local news coverage—much of which expressed a bias in support of the accused—the event largely faded from local memory. However, the 2017 publication of a book on the killing written by local LGBTQ historian Clayton Delery revived interest in the incident, leading to increased contemporary coverage of the event. Multiple sources have referred to the killing of Rios as an incident of gay bashing and a hate crime. Background
LGBTQ culture in New Orleans
Throughout the 20th century, New Orleans had been known for having a large LGBTQ population, particularly in the city's French Quarter neighborhood. In the early part of the century, urban decay in the area caused property prices to drop, prompting an influx of LGBTQ individuals that turned it into a gayborhood. By the 1950s, the French Quarter was widely regarded by residents of the city to be a place of vice, with a significant LGBTQ population and many dive bars, though the neighborhood was also a popular tourist attraction. While some tourists were drawn to the neighborhood in part because of its associations with vice and illicit activities, it also benefitted from its history and unique architecture.
Starting in the 1940s and going into the 1950s, there was a significant push from New Orleanians to clean up the French Quarter, with opinion pieces published in local newspapers highlighting the blighted status of the neighborhood. At the time, New Orleans's tourism industry was growing, and city officials were concerned that the visible LGBTQ community in the French Quarter could damage that industry. As a result, New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Story Morrison organized a "Committee on the Problem of Sex Deviates", which recommended that the city government take a more hostile stance towards the city's LGBTQ population, including an increase in the number of police raids on gay bars. In 1955, the superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), Provosty A. Dayries, publicly referred to homosexual people as the city's "Number One vice problem", further stating, "They are the ones we want to get rid of most." These actions in New Orleans can be viewed as part of the nationwide Lavender Scare, a moral panic regarding homosexual and other LGBTQ people in American society.
Racism and xenophobia in the 1950s The 1950s also saw a vocal amount of anti-Mexican sentiment in the United States. The population of Mexicans in the United States had grown during World War II, in part due to government programs such as the Bracero Program, which brought in hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers during the war. However, following the war, xenophobia against Mexicans was widespread and culminated in part with Operation Wetback, a mass deportation program headed by the federal government that sent several thousand Mexicans in the United States back to Mexico. In addition to prejudice against Mexicans, the 1950s also saw several high-profile crimes against other minorities. In the area around New Orleans, this included several lynchings, including those of African Americans Mack Charles Parker and Emmett Till.
Killing
Night of the killing
In September 1958, a group of Mexican doctors and their wives were on a tour of the city that was being led by Fernando Rios, a 26-year-old tour guide from Mexico City. The group, including Rios, was staying at the Roosevelt Hotel. On the night of Saturday, September 27, after a day of showing the visitors around the city, Rios, a gay man, went to the French Quarter to enjoy the nightlife at the Cafe Lafitte in Exile, a gay bar on Bourbon Street. Rios was dressed in formal wear, including a dress shirt, necktie, and suit with faux-gold cufflinks, and he was carrying in his pockets his wallet, rosary, hotel key, and a note containing the name and address of a contact he had in Memphis, Tennessee. Rios had no friends or family members in New Orleans and he went to the bar alone.
Also at the bar that night was John S. Farrell. Farrell was a student at Tulane University, a prestigious Southern Ivy university located about from the French Quarter in Uptown New Orleans. Farrell had recently transferred to Tulane and had only been living in New Orleans for about two weeks at the time. He lived on campus with Alberto A. Calvo, a student from Panama. On the afternoon of September 27, the two of them drove from the campus to the local train station to pick up David P. Drennan, another Tulane student who was a friend of Calvo's, with the intention of hanging out in the city. This was the first time that Farrell had met Drennan, though all three individuals were members of the same fraternity. Drennan was 19 years old, while both Calvo and Farrell were 20.
Early in the night, Farrell recommended that the three of them "roll a queer", which was a slang term for robbing a gay man. However, the other two rejected the idea of gay bashing and instead went to a movie theater. Following the movie, the three went to the French Quarter, parking their car near the St. Louis Cathedral on Royal Street. The two went to Pat O'Brien's Bar and a steakhouse, where they all consumed alcoholic beverages. After midnight, Farrell again recommended that the three "roll a queer". Calvo and Drennan were less hesitant than earlier in the night, and shortly after 1:30 a.m., Farrell entered the Cafe Lafitte. Farrell told his two companions to wait outside while he found a victim. Once inside, he sat at the bar next to Rios. The two began to interact, during which time Farrell had two beers. Rios had offered to pay for the second one, which Farrell accepted. At around 2 a.m., the two left the bar, with Farrell saying he was parked nearby and that he could drive Rios back to the Roosevelt, which he said was on his way back to Tulane's campus. Additionally, according to a 2023 article in the French Quarter Journal publication, the two had planned for a "hook-up". Farrell led Rios towards the cathedral, with Calvo and Drennan trailing behind them from a distance. According to Farrell, during their walk, Rios asked if he had ever "gone to bed with a man", which Farrell denied, further requesting that he not talk about that again.
Attack
While Farrell and his companions had parked on Royal Street, Farrell led Rios past that street and in front of the cathedral, maintaining a ruse that he was still looking for the car. Rios, believing that they would not be able to find the car, attempted to flag a taxi, but at that time, Farrell stated that he had remembered parking near the alley that they were standing in front of: Orleans Alley North, popularly known as Pere Antoine Alley, located between the cathedral and its rectory, the Presbytere. As a tour guide, Rios was probably familiar with the area and the alley, as it was a popular daytime thoroughfare for pedestrians located adjacent to Jackson Square, a focal point of the French Quarter. As the two of them walked down the alley, Farrell's companions were fixed on either end, with one on Royal Street and the other on Chartres Street, though in later testimony, Farrell said that he only saw Calvo, who was behind them. In later police testimony, Farrell claimed that Rios grabbed his penis while they were in the alley, prompting him to strike Rios "only once". Following this, his two companions showed up, though Farrell did not recall either of them doing anything as Rios called out for help. However, multiple other sources report that all three individuals were involved in the assault, with Rios being struck multiple times in his head and receiving several kicks to his abdomen. Ultimately, the attack left Rios unconscious and bleeding, and the three also took his wallet.
Following the attack, the three left the alley and made their way back to their car. At around 3 a.m., while still in the French Quarter, the group ran into two fellow Tulane students, who they told about the robbery. Afterwards, Drennan returned home while Farrell and Calvo went to Calvo's dormitory, where the two woke up his roommate and told him of their activities. They then went through the contents of the wallet, amounting to about $40 () in American, Canadian, and Mexican currency, and destroyed any identifying information, burning Rios's identification cards. Starting the following morning, the three told several more students that they had beaten and robbed a gay man over the weekend, with several of the people they told characterizing their discussion of events as boastful.
Shortly before 6 a.m. on September 28, the unconscious Rios was discovered in the alley and taken by authorities to Charity Hospital. A police investigation into the matter commenced shortly thereafter. Rios never regained consciousness, and he died in the hospital at 5:21 p.m. The following morning, during an autopsy, the coroner, Nicholas Chetta, ruled the death a homicide and noted damage to several of Rios's internal organs, including his brain, heart, liver, and lungs. Additional injuries included subdural hematoma, facial lacerations, and multiple skull fractures and hemorrhages. The coroner also noted that Rios had "eggshell cranium", meaning that sections of his skull were abnormally thin and susceptible to more damage. Following the autopsy, his body was sent back to Mexico for burial.
Legal proceedings Television and radio news programs reported on Rios's death on Monday, September 29, with the first print record appearing in The Times-Picayune the following morning. That Monday, after Calvo, Drennan, and Farrell realized that Rios had died, the three met to discuss what they should do next. While the three initially considered telling a Catholic priest, who would be bound to secrecy by the seal of confession in the Catholic Church, they instead decided to tell an administrator at Tulane. The three talked to two deans, William Ray Forrester and John H. Stibbs, who advised the students to turn themselves in. On September 30, the three were arrested by the NOPD after admitting to beating and robbing Rios.
Police statements