LOCAL LEGEND: The Rios Adobe was built...

LOCAL LEGEND: The Rios Adobe was built in San Juan Capistrano in 1794, and a Rios has lived there ever since, the family says (N1). . . . But family legend says Joaquin Murrieta, the Mexican Robin Hood of early California, also lived there in a secret attic room. . . . A trapdoor remains in the ceiling, but was Murrieta ever really there? . . . “It’s iffy that Murrieta ever got south of the Tehachapis,” historian Jim Sleeper says. “And if he ever was in Capistrano, he wouldn’t have had to hide. He would have been roundly cheered in the streets.”