Tom Godwin was a farmer, stock raiser, owner and manager of the Mountain House bar and restaurant, and Tehachapi’s town constable. After two friends, James Hayes and Milton Dosier, were disturbing the peace, Godwin tried to stop the disturbance and ended up shooting and killing Dosier; a judicial investigation found the shooting justified. Later, around 7 pm on Oct. 21, 1876, Hayes went into the Mountain House to avenge his friend’s death, saw Godwin, shouted, “Tom Godwin, you are my meat!” and fired his pistol. Godwin was hit before he could move and died 19 hours later, leaving a wife and three children. Hayes, which was not his real name, said in jail that he would not embarrass his mother and sister in Rhode Island by using the name he was born with. He was tried and convicted for this killing and a couple more murders that he had confessed doing himself or being part of, and he was hung on March 30, 1877. Hayes was the first legal hanging in Kern County and was hung with the same rope used to hang the outlaw Tuburcio Vasquez two years earlier. Townspeople were so enraged by the killing of their beloved constable that they would not allow Hayes to be buried in the same cemetery as Godwin. Hayes was reportedly buried on a hill to the northwest, where his was the only body buried, and it is believed the grave was inadvertently disturbed during homebuilding in the Golden Hills area in the 1970s.