08:44 AM CDT on Monday, June 19, 2006

Associated Press

Pancho Villa’s death mask, featuring the famous Mexican outlaw’s prominent mustache and eyebrows, sold at auction on Sunday for $17,000.

The rare mask was sold to a private collector who wished to remain anonymous, said Scott Franks, owner of Waco-based A&S Antique Auction Company, which held the auction.

The mask was among hundreds of eclectic items from the estate of Charles Trois, an eccentric retired artist who built a European-style village across from Enchanted Rock near Fredericksburg.

The Villa death mask is said to have been made the day after his assassination in 1923.

Villa, born Jose Doroteo Arango Arambula, joined the Mexican Revolution in 1910, fighting the government with peasant armies.

He rose in the ranks to become one of the war’s best-known generals and was known to use firing squads.

While Trois claims the mask is the only original, Villa scholar Ray Sadler said there possibly are four masks.