gangs plan was to pin the blame for the crimes on the two Californio servants of the Frenchmen. They were to have been murdered where their bodies could not be found, however Pio Linares did not remain to oversee the execution of his plan but returned to San Luis Obispo. The two bandits, who were to carry out this plot spared the servants' lives, without telling their comrades. The result was that one of these servants went to the Rancho Huerhuero and informed Captain David P. Mallagh, of the murder. Mallagh immediately rode with one servant to San Luis Obispo bringing word of the crimes. Following this crime, as they returned to San Luis Obispo, the gang also murdered Jack Gilkey, an American hunter at his home six miles away from the Rancho, on the Camate, near where the gang had stayed overnight before their attack on the Rancho San Juan the next day. He had sold some meat to the gang when they camped there and was killed to prevent him from telling authorities of the gangs presence in the area at the time of the murders. The news of this attack; that for once left several witnesses, allowed Captain Mallagh, Walter Murray and others in the town to capture a gang member recognized by the servant, while other members of the gang fled the town. Murray and others in the town and surrounding ranchos organized a Vigilance Committee in San Luis Obispo County. Additional testimony was given by Andrea Baratie, wife of the murdered Bartolomé Baratie. She was witness to the crime including that of the murder of her husband then kidnapped. She was later let go instead of being killed as ordered by Linares, by another gang member, El Mesteño. The Vigilance Committee was able to destroy this gang that had been conducting numerous robberies and murders for many years in the county. Rancho Claim Dismissed Within two years of the murders, the Southern District court dismissed the claim of the grantees on August 8, 1860. The reason given for the failure of the grant case, was a failure to prosecute the case, but Walter Murray in his letters to the newspaper San Francisco Bulletin in defense of the actions of the Vigilance Committee, says the Frenchmen were there intending to purchase the grant: The killing of Baratie and Borel came at a critical time in the