JOAQUIN MURIETA Described by one historian a vicious and abandoned character, low, brutal, and cruel, intrinsically and at heart a thief and a cut-throat, Joaquin Murieta may have been all those things. But who was Joaquin Murieta, the man And who was Joaquin Murieta, the legend Joaquin the legend grew from a novel written by John Rollin Ridge in 1854, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin ...