For a century or more, many of the events that tell the story of the mysterious, compelling and popular outlaw Billy the Kid have been regarded as indelible truth. He has been written about and told by the faithful, in half-baked stories full of amateurish fabrications. Except for a few rare publications, the story of him is mainly focused on repeating old legends. Therefore, people only know the myths, not the truth. The most widely published account of the life of Billy the Kid is The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, published in 1882, which was authored, if it was authored at all, by Sheriff Pat Garrett. This work, full of inaccuracies, half-truths and errors, circulated for many decades, was read by many people and has therefore been reprinted many times.
Where Billy was born – presumably in New York – is less important than the legend that has built up around him. Most writers on the history of 19th century New Mexico agree that it was the Lincoln County fighting that catapulted Billy’s name into history. One such confrontation occurred on 18 February 1878, when John H. Tunstall, a rancher and Billy’s employer, was murdered. The violence continued until 19 July the following year, culminating in a five-day shooting spree and the death of Tunstall’s business partner, Alexander McSween.
The Lincoln County clashes are insignificant from a broader American perspective. But for the people of New Mexico, they are important for a number of reasons, one of which is surely the fact that it was a seizure of economic power in a part of New Mexico where wealth was scarce and the struggle for it brought many deaths and filled newspapers all over America. One of the district’s main incomes was from the sale of beef to the US government, which supplied the scattered military posts and Indian reservations.
John Tunstall was an Englishman who came to Lincoln County in November 1876. He had previously been involved in business and sales, and decided to compete with Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan, the two most powerful and virtually monopolistic ranchers and beef sellers to the US government at the time. They merged their operations to create Murphy & Dolan, the most powerful company in the county. Dolan soon realised that Tunstall, who was slowly gaining more and more customers, was becoming dangerous and had to be removed.
During this time, Tunstall gained a business partner, Englishman and lawyer Alexander McSween. With reasonable prices and fair dealing, they quickly gained the trust of local clients. They were soon joined by a third rancher, John Chisum, which resulted in even more animosity between the Murphy & Dolan duo. Murphy therefore managed to obtain a court order to seize Tunstall’s store and the herd of horses grazing on his ranch, 40 miles from the capital Lincoln, under false pretenses.
Tunstall found out about this, as well as that a group of sheriff’s deputies were preparing to come to his ranch, confiscate his cattle and kill him and his horsemen. Not wanting to quarrel, he was prepared to take the horses himself to the county seat of Lincoln County and await a decision on his appeal.
Murdered in self-defence
In the morning, Tunstall gathered his horses and drivers and set off with them towards Lincoln. Among the riders was a young boy named Billy Bonney, who later became known as Billy the Kid. They soon left the main road and took a short cut through the mountains to Lincoln.
Meanwhile, a party of sheriff’s deputies arrived at Tunstall’s ranch, and when they learned that Tunstall was on his way to Lincoln, they decided to follow him. Before they left, the leader of the sheriff’s deputies said, “Hurry up, boys, my knife is sharp and I want to scalp somebody.”
Tunstall, with his horses and drivers, stopped at Pajarito Springs to water the horses. It was already starting to get dark when they came down the narrow path from the mountains to the lowland spring. From the top of a hill, Billy the Kid spotted a group of horsemen approaching fast, so he went to warn Tunstall. As soon as the pursuers approached Tunstall and the others, they demanded that they surrender, and Tunstall, according to one version, returned fire. At least that was Billy’s later account, although some claimed that he and the other pursuers were so far from the scene that he could not see exactly what was happening.
The pursuers then opened fire and Tunstall was hit in the chest by a bullet and fell from his horse. One of the pursuers roared, took his revolver and shot him in the back of the head. The official report of Tunstall’s death read, “Killed while resisting the arrest of sheriff’s deputies, led by the officially appointed deputy sheriff of Lincoln.”
The pursuers rounded up the horses and led them back to Tunstall’s ranch. When the shooting started, Billy the Kid and the other horsemen ran into the woods, hid and later took Tunstall’s body to Lincoln. No one who knew Tunstall believed he had been killed for resisting arrest. It was not in his nature. Most were convinced that he was killed because Murphy and Dolan wanted him killed.
There was no official inquiry into the incident and it was not until two and a half months later that a federal police agent appeared in Lincoln as a representative of the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, as the British Foreign Office was concerned about the death of its own citizen. The agent interviewed all the participants and finally issued a report with statements from the main and secondary participants in the event.
Sheriff William Brady, who organised the pursuit of Tunstall but did not take part in it himself, claimed that the pursuers fired in self-defence, but the agent eventually wrote: “The facts show that John H. Tunstall was murdered in cold blood.” But apart from everyone reading this report, nothing happened for a while. No one ever visited the place where Tunstall was murdered again. Only the Lincoln County Historical Society later erected a memorial at the site of the shooting.
But that does not mean that the event does not still attract attention today. One hundred and twenty-seven years after Tunstall’s death, in April 2005, a small group of researchers went there, hoping to find some evidence of the event. They combed the area near the memorial with a metal detector and indeed found metal bullet fragments in the soil, badly damaged by oxidation. Ammunition experts determined that these were old military cartridges. In those days, the US army bought ammunition from Europe and also supplied police stations with ammunition. The cartridge was also consistent with the military calibre in use from 1873 onwards.
Billy the Kid was out Revenge
Although hated by the bigwigs like Dolan and Murphy and Sheriff Brady Tunstall, he was held in high esteem by those who worked for him – Billy the Kid, Fred Waite, Robert Widenmann and Dick Brewer, among others. He was good to his employees, paid them regularly and fairly. Billy later said of him, “He was good to me and treated me like a gentleman. When he was killed, I lost my best friend.” Billy swore that the killers would pay for what they had done with their lives.
Dick Brewer suggested that they visit Judge Wilson together and seek justice from him. Wilson appointed Brewer as assistant police commissioner and gave him arrest warrants for those involved in Tunstall’s murder. Brewer then appointed eleven people as his assistants. Among them was Billy the Kid. The group was called the Regulators.
On 6 March, regulators spotted five horsemen near the Penasco River, including Bill Morton, who they believed had killed Tunstall. Morton was from Virginia and had already killed three innocent people before arriving in Lincoln County, who begged him on their knees to do them no harm. He laughed as he pointed a gun at their heads and blew their brains out.
When the five saw Brewer and his pursuers approaching, they took off running. But their horses were tired, and when they saw that Brewer was about to catch up with them, they gave up. Brewer held only Morton and Baker as prisoners, but released the other three, as they had not taken part in the pursuit of Tunstall. Billy the Kid wanted to shoot the prisoners immediately, but Brewer prevented him, and the group set off for Lincoln with the prisoners.
On the evening of 8 March, she stopped at a ranch. They were joined by William McCloskey, whom Brewer did not trust, knowing that he was a friend of Morton’s. The next morning they stopped at the Roswell Post Office and took the old military road to Lincoln, spending the night at Agua Negra Creek. In the morning McCloskey, Morton and Baker were dead. To this day, what happened is disputed. The only known account of the incident is what the regulators have said, namely that the two prisoners were trying to escape and were shot on the run.
There are several other and more plausible versions of the event. The most widely held is that Morton and Baker had their hands tied tightly behind their backs and that what happened was a simple execution, as Billy the Kid later confessed to a colleague, “Of course, George, I never intended to bring the birds to Lincoln.”
The Dolan master alleged that the regulators killed McCloskey first because he was a protector of the prisoners, one of them pointing a gun at his head and saying, “You son of a bitch, you’re going to die before this happens to the other two.” Billy then killed Morton and Baker, who were on their knees, hands above their heads, begging for their lives. The bodies of all three were later found by Mexican shepherds and buried.
The only real investigation was carried out in July 2006, 128 years after the event. Several rifle bullet casings and a few pistol bullet casings were still found at the scene.
The Sheriff’s death
That Billy later became a notorious outlaw in the eyes of the people is one of the myths of the Wild West. In reality, he was just one of many petty cattle and horse thieves who made a modest living. He probably killed no more than four or five people. He spent most of his life on ranches, so his reputation as a wild outlaw probably comes from two sources.
Sheriff Pat Garrett, who was believed to be the man who shot him, was the author of a number of cheap and raunchy novels that became very popular in eastern America at the time. He referred to the Kid as public enemy number one, and it was he who was supposed to have taken him out of the world. At that time, he was running for sheriff again and trying to make a political name for himself, so his fame came in handy. Around 1880, a series of Wild West novels swept America, and many authors went out of their way to make readers’ hair bristle with horror.
One of the key events in Lincoln County was the murder of Sheriff William Brady. The event was significant because Brady, as a representative of the law, was closely associated with the Nolan-Murphy duo. Billy the Kid was accused of the murder, arrested, tried, found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Many books have been written about all this, and all of them have misrepresented the event.
The following version is generally accepted. Sheriff Brady and his four deputies would leave the Dolan store and head towards the courthouse. The fact that the sheriff marched down the street with his deputies was nothing new. In fact, there were so many shootings at that time that many people did not dare to walk around the town alone, but only with an armed escort. A written statement by one of the regulators was later found in the New Mexico National Archives, in which he wrote: “As soon as I get to Lincoln, Brady will try to arrest me. This must not happen. If I am arrested, I will be lynched.”
Last night it snowed, then it started to rain and the morning was very cold and the streets were muddy and full of puddles. A few men were waiting in ambush under the eaves of the Tunstall store, guns in hand. They were regulators, and among them was Billy the Kid. As the sheriff and his men approached the store, shots rang out and Brady was instantly dead. He was riddled with bullets. Another deputy fell dead, and the others hid in a nearby shelter.
Billy the Kid and another Regulator stepped out of the ambush and approached Sheriff Brady’s body, at which point one of the Sheriff’s deputies opened fire. The bullet struck him in the upper thigh near the buttocks, exited and struck the leg of the regulator who was with him. Both men were wounded and quickly retreated from the street.
Could it be that the regulators came to Lincoln with the sole purpose of killing Brady? Some information suggests not, and that they were there to appear before the grand jury and tell what they knew about recent events as witnesses. They were under the eaves waiting for the rain to stop and for the grand jury to meet and call them to the stand. When they saw the sheriff and his deputies coming towards them, they were convinced that he wanted to arrest them, so they opened fire. Whether Sheriff Brady really wanted to arrest them, no one knows.
The shooting at Blazer’s Mill near Mescalero, New Mexico, which left two dead and one wounded, further added to Billy the Kid’s reputation. On 4 April 1878, he and his regulators stopped for lunch at Blazer’s Mill. It was owned by a man called Blazer, who was also known as “Doc” because he had pulled rotten teeth out of soldiers during the Civil War.
Next to the mill was a two-storey building which Blazer rented to the Mescalero State Agency for Apache. The agency supplied them with food and sold them clothes, blankets and small tools that the head of the agency, a man named Godfroy, stole from the state warehouses. Godfroy’s wife also occasionally cooked lunches for passing travellers. As the regulators were having lunch, Andrew Roberts, one of the pursuers who killed Tunstall, approached the mill on a mule. One of the regulators spotted him, approached him and began to persuade him to surrender. They talked for about half an hour and then other regulators came up and demanded that he surrender.
Roberts did not think anything of it, knowing that Morton, Baker and Brady were already dead and not wanting to be next on the execution list. They all drew their guns, and Roberts, being more skilful, immediately shot one of the regulators in the chest, and then the other sent a bullet into his abdomen. The wounded man began to retreat, took refuge in an empty room of the building where the Apache Agency was located, continued firing and hit one of the regulators in the head, killing him. The regulators retreated and left, and Roberts died the next morning.
The incident was later recounted by Blazer’s son, who was still living in the mill in 1930. He was thirteen years old at the time and witnessed the event. He said that a few years later, police officers accompanied Billy the Kid back to Lincoln from his trial in Mesilla, where he was sentenced to death by hanging, and on the way they stayed overnight at Blazer’s Mill. He heard Billy the Kid recounting what had happened at the time.
Roberts had indeed taken refuge in an empty room and kept firing, but when Billy the Kid counted six shots fired, he knew that his gun was empty and he had to reload it with ammunition. He made good use of this reloading time. The door to the room to which Roberts had taken refuge was half open, and when Roberts saw Billy approaching him rapidly, he grasped the handle and tried to close it. Billy shot through the half-closed door and hit Roberts above the hip, but he still had enough strength to slam the door. Billy the Kid then walked away with the rest of the regulators.
The house burnt down
Billy the Kid may have received almost all the attention of the public and the media, but he was still seen as a poor man with no assets and only an occasional job as a cattle driver. On the other side were his opponents, the rich people themselves, such as Nolan, Murphy and other ranchers, and the sheriff, who had the army and the law on his side. Billy never robbed trains or banks like other famous bandits. This was never clearer than when Alexander McSween’s house in Lincoln burned down and several people were killed.
On 14 July 1878, a group of regulators arrived in Lincoln with warrants for the arrest of those involved in Tunstall’s murder. Their protector was Alexander McSween, Tunstall’s partner and a sworn opponent of Dolan. They split into two groups, both of which took up suitable defensive positions, while a third group, which included Billy, entrenched itself near McSween’s house.
Lincoln County Sheriff Peppin was not in town, but he left his deputy Jack Long and a group of deputies barricaded in the Torreon, a two-storey stone tower built as a defence against Apache attacks. Whoever was in the tower clearly had a great advantage over his opponent.
McSween owned Torreon and the land and the house next door, and he was very angry that the sheriff’s deputies were nestled in Torreon. But the tower was then rented by Saturnino Baca and he allowed them to stay there. McSween therefore terminated Baca’s lease and demanded that he and the sheriff’s deputies move out of the tower. Saturnino Baca, a former sheriff and officer during the Civil War, was angered by the news and called Colonel Dudley from nearby Fort Stanton to help him. The latter sent an army doctor, Apelles, to Lincoln to see what was actually going on.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Peppin, Dolan’s puppet, is back in town. He ordered his deputy Long to go to McSween and arrest him. But when Long approached his house, he was greeted by gunshots and quickly retreated. The exchange of gunfire began, and lasted intermittently for five days. Peppin soon realised that he needed help and sent a message to San Patricio asking for more men-at-arms. These arrived shortly and were stationed on a hill south of the town from where they could fire on the Regulators.
Meanwhile, Colonel Dudley from Fort Stanton was looking for a suitable excuse to help Peppin. He knew that he was forbidden to do so by the Police Regulation Act. If he had helped him anyway, he could have been discharged from the army, imprisoned and fined. But he quickly found himself lying that he had received a message from the sheriff saying that someone had fired on the army doctor, Apelle, from McSween’s house. He prepared to enter Lincoln with the army.
The indiscriminate shooting terrified the people of Lincoln. They barricaded themselves in their houses, put heavy furniture behind their doors, closed the shutters on their windows and hid their children in their basements. The first casualties fell on both sides. In the morning hours of 19 July, a group of soldiers from Fort Stanton, led by Colonel Dudley, approached the town. The forty soldiers also carried a Gatling machine gun, a howitzer, a wagon full of ammunition and three days’ worth of food.
Dudley later lied under oath in court that he was only trying to protect women and children in the city. He ordered soldiers to surround McSween’s house, and they succeeded in driving the regulators out of two of their strongholds. The only significant stronghold of the regulators was now McSween’s house, and they announced that they would shoot anyone who tried to leave. This suited Colonel Dudley and soldiers were already pointing howitzers at the house.
Around 1 pm, Sheriff Peppin ordered his men to burn the house with sacks of shavings and shavings. The fire soon spread through the wooden house and the regulators and the occupants had to retreat to the only safe room. They knew that Dolan’s men would shoot at them as soon as they stepped out of the house. But the fire was so strong that they decided to leave the house. They ran out the back door, but were met by a hail of bullets. Billy the Kid said that he had to jump over the bodies of his fallen comrades. Among the dead was McSween, who was hit by five bullets.
One regulator said he was hit by three bullets and became unconscious. When he came to, he saw Dolan’s men laughing and drinking whisky. He pretended to be dead and did not even utter a sound when someone kicked him with a heavy boot to see if he was dead. He lay motionless for four hours before crawling away. The next morning, where McSween’s house had stood, there was only a pile of ashes. Alexander McSween was buried in a small cemetery next to John Tunstall’s grave.
Billy the Kid and his companions fled into the night. They were very disappointed with what was happening. They had come to town with legal arrest warrants and to protect McSween, but were prevented from doing so by the sheriff and the US army.
Counterfeit dollars
But all that was happening in Lincoln County, all those shootings and murders, would not have attracted the attention of federal agents. Indeed, similar incidents occurred in many cities of the Wild West. But counterfeiting of money and securities could not and should not be ignored by the federal administration in Washington, because it could spread to other parts of the country. Several residents of the District were involved in this illegal activity and Billy the Kid’s name can be found among them.
At the time, Billy the Kid and his gang stole 118 head of cattle from the ranch of H. Chisum, who allegedly owed them $600 for “certain favours”. The thieves stamped the stolen herd and sold it to Colorado buyers. When Chisum found out who the buyers were, he went to Colorado and simply took his herd back. He had no trouble doing so, which is rather unusual, since one would have expected the Colorado buyers to defend their newly purchased property at gunpoint or to demand the sheriff’s protection.
It was at this time that counterfeit money started to appear in Lincoln County. Probably the Colorado buyers paid Billy with counterfeit dollars and did not want to attract the attention of the police when Chisum took their cattle.
At that time, another mysterious person appeared in these parts – the famous outlaw Jesse James. Although many historians have claimed that these two famous outlaws never met, they were wrong. Some reliable witnesses have confirmed that they were seen together several times in Las Vegas, then a seedy crossroads of trade routes. Jesse James introduced himself as Mr Howard. His son-in-law had already been arrested for counterfeiting at the time, and the federal authorities had also already established that the money was being counterfeited in New York and then shipped south of the country, where it was easier to distribute.
The counterfeit dollars arrived in Kansas City from New York, where someone opened a bank account and deposited a large amount of counterfeit money, claiming that he needed it to buy livestock. This was a perfectly normal procedure at the time. A few days later, he withdrew the money, saying that the cattle-buying deal had collapsed. Thus the money was laundered. It should be remembered that, in those days, US banks issued their own money under authorisation from the US Congress, and that even a small amount of counterfeit money could be fatal to a bank.
Billy the Kid was one of those involved in the distribution of counterfeit money. The chaotic situation at that time can be seen from the fact that he too was a victim who was paid in counterfeit dollars.
In March 1881, a federal judge in Bristol began proceedings against William Wilson, accused of distributing counterfeit money. Wilson was a close associate of Billy the Kid and a member of the Regulators. This made Billy the Kid a person who was closely associated with counterfeiting money. This was a serious offence and the penalties for such an offence were very severe, so someone in whom Billy the Kid had great confidence contacted Federal Agent Wild and passed on an unusual proposition.
Billy the Kid was ready to testify in court against the counterfeiters if the Governor pardoned him. The federal public prosecutor dropped all charges against him. Billy the Kid knew all about the counterfeiting ring and how cattle were paid for with counterfeit money in Colorado, but he didn’t know that federal agents already had most of the information, so nothing came of the deal.
As a result, Billy the Kid and his gang were on the run again, and his pursuer, Sheriff Pat Garrett, had two warrants in his pocket, one for the murder of Sheriff William Brady and one for the murder of Roberts. Both arrest warrants were signed by Judge Bristol.
The pursuers headed towards Fort Sumner in pursuit of the fugitive, who was believed to be hiding nearby. The weather was very bad, with a blizzard and very cold. Billy was first called Billy the Kid by the newspapers that day, a nickname that stuck with him for the rest of his life.
Garrett is informed by someone that Billy is at the Wilcox ranch and that a gang is trying to sell a wagon full of allegedly stolen beef. There was a good chance that they would then return to Fort Sumner, where they had acquaintances at the old army hospital. Garett hurried there and posted men around the building. About eight o’clock in the evening he was informed that someone was approaching the building. In the darkness they saw horses and men slowly approaching the building in the snow.
Billy the Kid was in the lead, but then he went to the back because he was out of tobacco and wanted to get some from Wilson. As the first line approached the entrance to the building, there was a shout to stand and shots were fired. The first horse reared up on its hind legs and neighed, the rider crouched in the saddle, stricken. Garrett reloaded his rifle, and his men opened fire. But Billy and the others quickly turned and rode away.
They left behind only a badly wounded Irish-American, Folliard. He managed to hold his horse and, bent over in pain in the saddle, shouted to Garrett and the others not to shoot: “I’m wounded!” They pulled him from the saddle, carried him into the house and laid him on a blanket, but he died half an hour later. He was only 22 years old. He was in a lot of pain and before he died he asked Garrett to kill him if he was his friend.
With the loss of Tom Folliard, Billy the Kid began to realise how close he was to Sheriff Garrett. With only five men left, they took refuge on the Wilcox Ranch, not knowing if they could trust the owner, but with no other choice. On the morning of December twenty-first, Billy the Kid sent the ranch’s co-owner, Manuel Brezet, to Fort Sumner to see if Garrett and his group were still there.
Upon arriving at Fort Sumner, Brezet immediately informed Garrett that the group of regulators had already left the ranch. Garret and his men rode to the spot, found horse hoof prints in the snow, and followed the trail after the fugitives. He was sure they were headed for Stinking Spring, where there was a water spring and an abandoned stone house nearby.
At 3am, he and his men surrounded the house, waiting to see what would happen. Inside the house, Charles Bowdre woke up first and came out to feed the horses. Garrett shouted to him to give up, and Bowdre quickly walked to his horse, pulled out two pistols and opened fire. He was immediately hit by three bullets, wounding him badly, but managed to crawl back into the house. Then silence reigned for a few minutes. Soon, someone shouted from the house that Bowdre was badly wounded and wanted to surrender. Billy the Kid pushed his wounded comrade through the door and Bowdre staggered, bleeding, towards his pursuers. He died moments later.
Then, what the pursuers thought was the sound of gunshots coming from the house. Late in the afternoon, Billy the Kid called out that they wanted to surrender. They came out of the house waving white sheets, the last of them Billy the Kid. They all came out of the house unarmed. They piled the pistols, rifles, belts, remaining ammunition and saddles in a heap in the middle of the room and Billy the Kid urinated on it.
For decades, no one could explain this strange process. In reality, the regulators had a lot of counterfeit money with them, and what the pursuers had to dig the firing lines with was just digging a hole in the clay floor of the room. They then hid the counterfeit money in it, confident that at least one of them would be able to come back to it later. Peeing on the pile of weapons was only to mislead Garrett into not investigating what the group had been doing before the surrender.
In 1932, one of the surviving regulators, the elderly Tom Pickett, was living in Arizona. He was living miserably, running out of money, so he sent someone to Stinking Spring to look for the buried money. But the hole he dug was empty, so Pickett was convinced that the paper money had rotted away in the meantime. Even more likely, someone had already picked it up. Evidence for this would come from a loaded revolver left in the cave, which was described as Billy the Kid’s revolver.
Escape from prison
On 13 April 1811, in Mesilla, New Mexico, Billy the Kid stood up in the courtroom to hear what Judge Bristol would sentence him to. He sentenced him to death by hanging for the murder of Sheriff Brady, even though not a shred of evidence was presented at his trial to prove it. The sheriff’s deputies – seven in number, led by Deputy Sheriff Robert Olinger – were to transport him back to Lincoln after the verdict was announced, where he was to be hanged between 10am and 3pm on 13 May. The newspapers said that Billy the Kid, at the age of 20, looked more like a juvenile than a murderer and a terror and a terror to those around him.
In Lincoln, he was imprisoned on the second floor of the courthouse. There were no bars, and prisoners were simply chained to the floor. Billy the Kid’s escape from prison has been described at least a hundred times in books, newspaper articles and films. The common denominator of all versions is that Sheriff Garrett was out of town at the time of the escape. There were supposedly five other prisoners in the jail, whom the guard took across the street every evening to a nearby inn for dinner. Only Billy the Kid always had his dinner brought to the jail, as Garrett would not allow himself to be unlocked from his chains except when he went to the toilet. And that is when the escape happened.
The other inmates were having dinner in the inn when Billy the Kid asked the guard who was staying with him if he could take him to the toilet. The guard unlocked him, leaving only the handcuffs on his hands. They went down two floors and Billy the Kid went to the toilet, did his business, came back and started climbing the stairs to the top floor. The guard was coming around and was a little behind him. Billy the Kid took advantage of this, and with a jerk of his shoulders, quickly forced open the door to the adjoining room where the weapons were kept, picked up a revolver from the table, held it in front of the guard’s nose and fired.
The guard rolled down the stairs dead, and Billy the Kid took a double-barrelled shotgun and ordered the servant, who didn’t understand what was happening, to saddle his horse. Olinger, who was in town, heard the shot and immediately hurried towards the courthouse. When he got there, he heard a voice greeting him from the second floor: “Goodbye, old man.” He looked up and caught the moment when Billy the Kid fired the shot that ended his life. Then Billy the Kid drove off to an unknown destination.
Who is it?
In July 1881, Bily the Kid was still at large after escaping from prison and killing the duo. Everyone who read the newspapers knew where he was hiding. Even the Las Vegas Gazette reported, “William Bonney, alias the Kid, was seen near Fort Sumner, riding a horse he had stolen from a ranch.”
And what did Sheriff Pat Garrett do to catch him and bring him to justice? Garrett himself stated that he spent a lot of time on his ranch. And a lot of time at that time meant about 70 days. “I’m doing it my way and gathering information,” he claimed, when people began to wonder why he was no longer prosecuting the outlaw. Was he perhaps afraid of being hit by an apostate’s bullet?
One of the reasons why Billy the Kid was still around Fort Sumner may have been his friendship with the underage Pauline Maxwell. Finally, Pat Garrett had the presence of mind to travel to Fort Sumner with John Poe and Thomas McKinney, two businessmen who were in Lincoln for the cattle trade and whom he had sworn in as his assistants. The trio set up camp eight miles away. The next day, Poe traveled to the town, perhaps to find out where Billy the Kid was hanging out. But, being one of the few Anglo-Saxons in the area, he was shunned by the locals.
So he decided to visit Pete Maxwell, who was the only one who could know where Billy the Kid was. They approached the property through an orchard, but on foot, and heard someone speaking in Spanish, but because of the distance they could not understand the conversation. Then they saw that someone had stood up. He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, a dark waistcoat and trousers. According to Garrett, it was Billy the Kid. After a short thought, he said that he had made a mistake and that it would be best if they went back. The two companions suggested that they visit the Maxwell ranch and try to find out about Billy the Kid.
Pat Garret later claimed that the renegade Billy the Kid was finally captured and killed on the night of 14 July 1881. Instead of approaching the ranch by the main road, they approached it from the opposite side, he said. Maxwell’s house was a one-story structure with a covered front porch. Garrett is said to have left his two companions there, and he slowly entered the house, went to the master bedroom, awoke Maxwell, who was asleep, and learned from him that Billy the Kid had been in the house but did not know where he was now.
Meanwhile, Poe, who was in the foyer, noticed someone approaching him from the side of the fence. Before he knew it, the stranger was beside him, pointing a revolver at him and asking in Spanish: “Quien es? Who is it?” The same thing is said to have happened to Mc Kinney. The stranger then disappeared into the room, and, according to Garrett’s account, had a revolver in one hand and a knife in the other.
Garrett reportedly asked Maxwell, who was still in bed, who it was, but got no answer. The stranger reportedly approached the bed and also asked Maxwell who the people were that he had met. Maxwell then allegedly turned to Garrett and whispered, “That’s him.” The stranger reportedly flinched and asked again in Spanish who it was. Garrett testified that he then quickly drew his revolver, rolled to the side, fired twice, and the stranger collapsed to the ground.
Sam is said to have jumped to his feet, ran out of the room in a huff and told his two companions that Billy the Kid was dead. But Poe allegedly replied, “Pat, the Kid would never have come here, you shot the wrong man.” But Garrett could not be persuaded. They all returned to the room to find that the stranger had been shot in the heart. A few minutes after the shooting, the local people began to arrive at the house, they began to mourn for the dead Mexican, they took him away and laid him on the workbench in the carpenter’s shed, the women lit candles around him and began to put flowers on him. Garrett and his companions spent the night at the ranch, fearing that they would be attacked by friends of the murdered stranger.
The next morning, a mortuary inspector was sent from Fort Sumner. A jury was hastily assembled to decide on the cause and manner of death, with Sheriff Garrett himself as its foreman. They inspected the scene, and the body was examined by the coroner alone. Then Garrett himself dictated the post-mortem report: ‘William Bonney alias Kid died of a shot in the left side of the chest, in the region of the heart, fired from Pat Garrett’s pistol. We believe that Garret was justified in firing the shot and we unanimously call upon the entire community to thank him and reward him.”
For unknown reasons, this report was never filed in the official files on the incident. Despite the official report, Garrett’s companions Poe and McKinney were still in doubt as to whether Billy the Kid had really been shot. Even Joe Poe, who many years after the stranger’s death described and wrote about what had happened, bought into Garrett’s version of events. Some say it was because they were both members of the Masonic organisation and had to act in concert.
On the afternoon of 15 July 1881, the stranger, identified by Garrett as Billy the Kid, was placed in a wooden coffin and buried at Fort Sumner next to the graves of Charlie Bowdre and Tom Folliard. From the time of the stranger’s death until the time of burial, little more than 12 hours had passed. The death of such a well-known outlaw as Billy the Kid should have attracted many reporters and curious onlookers, and this publicity would of course have benefited Sheriff Garrett’s re-election to office. It was also quite common at the time for the bodies of known criminals to be publicly displayed and photographed. This was the case with Jesse James, the Dalton gang, the victims of the O.K. Coral fight and other revolvers.
Did Garrett shoot the wrong man? Soon, rumours of this kind spread and there was no way to silence them. Over the following decades, quite a few men claimed to be Billy the Kid. Most of these claims could be refuted immediately, but two were still quite convincing in their proof. John Miller, who died in Arizona in 1937, even tried to prove his true identity in a book. In 1950, William Roberts, identified by some as Billy the Kid, died in Texas. A few years before his death, he proved in interviews that he knew an extraordinary amount of information about Billy the Kid.
So who was buried in what many people thought was Billy the Kid’s grave? A few years ago, some researchers decided to find his grave, open it, see what was left inside and do a DNA analysis of the remains. They opened the grave, but there was nothing there, even though the remains should still be there after all these years. The grave was empty.
