Billy the Kid is one of the most notorious Wild West outlaws in history. That's extra
impressive when you consider that he died at just 21 years old. How did he become a
legend in such a short time? Here's the sad, true story of Billy the Kid.
"What makes you think this story is a sad one?"
Historians know very little about the outlaw's early years. According to the book Billy the
Kid: A Short and Violent Life, his mother Catherine was an Irish immigrant to New York
City. That's where Henry McCarty, later known as Billy the Kid, was born in 1859. No one
knows the exact month or day for sure. It's also unknown if his parents were married or
if his father was ever in the picture.
Billy probably spent the first six years of his life in the Irish slums of Manhattan or
Brooklyn. The conditions would have been horrific. In the 1860s, when Billy was growing up there,
almost 300,000 people lived in one square mile. The Irish were only allowed to rent
the worst of the worst tenements, and Billy easily could have lived in a 12-by-12-foot
room with 20 other people.
Disease was rampant in the slums, and the mortality rate for Irish children was 25 percent.
The fact that Billy made it to 21 could almost be seen as a miracle considering his origins.
While his later life would be characterized by Wild West violence, his childhood would
have been marked by the poverty and brutality of New York's ghettos.
By the time the Civil War ended, Billy and his mother moved to Indianapolis. She was
single by this point and started a relationship with a man named William Antrim.
In 1870, the whole group relocated to Wichita, Kansas. It was there that Billy's life took
a positive turn. His mother, Catherine, ran her own laundry business, which must have
been successful because she was able to purchase land outside of town.
Her boyfriend William built a cabin and a storm cellar, probably with the help of Billy
and his younger brother Joe. There was every indication that Catherine had put down roots
and that Billy would grow up living a happy, secure life surrounded by family.
"Wonderful."
But...that didn't happen. Unfortunately, Billy was soon dealt a devastating blow. In 1871,
Catherine was diagnosed with tuberculosis. At the time, many doctors thought that drier
climates could cure a person of TB, so the family packed up their belongings and moved
to New Mexico Territory.
Billy was only 14 when his mother died of TB. While William officially became their
stepfather, he wasn't interested in raising the two boys. He found separate foster homes
for the brothers, then abandoned them.
At this point, it seems Billy was still a good, law-abiding kid. He found honest work
at a hotel, where he washed dishes and waited tables. Despite earning a living, he also
managed to go to school.
But something soon changed in Billy. HistoryNet reports that first he stole some food. Then,
a few months later, he was involved in a "prank" with a friend who stole a bundle of clothes.
However, someone turned Billy in for the crime. The sheriff didn't want to do anything more
than scare the boy straight when he put Billy in a cell for a couple days. But Billy took
it very seriously. He managed to climb up a chimney and escape. Now he had no family
and, in his mind at least, he was a fugitive from the law.
Billy was now a teenager, living alone in a very dangerous part of the country. Regardless
of his age, there were a million ways to die in the West…
"Outlaws, angry drunk people, scorned hookers, hungry animals, diseases, major and minor
injuries, Indians, the weather, you can get killed going to the bathroom."
According to Legends of America, two years after escaping jail, Billy met a blacksmith
named Frank "Windy" Cahill, who liked to pick on the Kid. One day, the insults went too
far. On August 17th, 1877, History reports, Cahill called Billy a "pimp." Billy responded
by calling Cahill a "son of a bitch." The blacksmith jumped Billy, threw the teenager
to the ground, and pinned him. Panicking, Billy pulled out a gun and shot Cahill. He
died the next day. One witness said Billy had "no choice" but to use self-defense. The
Kid didn't stick around to make his case. Now he really was a fugitive.
Billy joined various gangs and made most of his money through cattle-rustling. But one
day he stole some horses and was thrown in jail. The horses' owner, an Englishman named
John Tunstall, came to see Billy in his cell. After they talked, Tunstall dropped the charges
and gave him a job. It was like the family Billy had been missing for so long. Tunstall
may have been the closest thing to a father Billy ever had.
But Tunstall was involved in an escalating feud over territory. On February 18th, 1878,
a posse shot and killed Tunstall in cold blood in front of Billy. The story of the Kid swearing
vengeance over his father-figure's grave is a myth, but Billy was now part of a blood
feud, known as the Lincoln County War.
Over the next five months, both sides would participate in various shoot-outs and revenge
killings. Billy is credited with a higher body count than he actually had, although
he definitely killed at least a few people, including a sheriff. By the end of the war,
which his side lost, Billy was known as one of the best gunmen in the West.
According to Legends of America, in 1879, New Mexico Territory Governor Lew Wallace
heard Billy would be willing to surrender and testify against other outlaws if his charges
were dropped. The two eventually met to discuss the situation and Governor Wallace offered
Billy a seemingly straightforward deal.
"You testify against everyone involved in this damn war and I'll pardon you."
The Kid agreed to testify. According to their arrangement, Billy would be arrested for show,
then spend time in jail until the trial dates. Billy's evidence was enough to convict at
least one major bad guy, but the district attorney refused to follow Wallace's orders
that he be released afterward. So, without a pardon, Billy had no choice but to escape
jail, once again, and continue living on the run.
Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life says that the pardon might have meant a chance
at "legitimate prosperity." Billy was hardly the worst person in the West, but, according
to the book, the law "singled him out for special treatment."
Billy should have been a free man at that point. Instead, with outstanding warrants,
he returned to what he knew best: a life of crime. He formed his own gang of outlaws and
started rustling cattle again. For a year, he lived around Fort Sumner. There, he became
friends with a local bartender named Pat Garrett. HistoryNet even reports that it's "more than
possible" Garrett joined Billy and his gang on some of their cattle raids.
But the West was often one big gray area when it came to who was a good guy and who was
a bad guy. So it wasn't that shocking when Garrett was elected Lincoln County sheriff.
Suddenly, Garrett was in charge of actively tracking down his old friend.
It was a complicated pursuit, and numerous people were shot and killed...but not Billy.
The sheriff "set-up many traps and ambushes in an attempt to apprehend Billy, but the
Kid seemed to have an animal instinct that warned him of danger." That instinct didn't
last long. On December 23rd, just days after Governor Wallace put a $500 reward on Billy's
head, Garrett and his posse captured the Kid alive.
Billy took it in stride, telling a reporter from his jail cell...
"What's the use of looking on the gloomy side of everything? The laugh's on me this time."
By this time, Billy the Kid had become a folk hero to some and an evil outlaw others. In
addition to endless newspaper articles written about him, there were plenty of people on
street corners and bar stools sharing tall tales about the Kid.
"I'm going to shoot you and kill your people. Boom, boom, boom. And your sheriffs, maybe.
Pew, pew, pew."
Billy spent months in a Santa Fe jail before his trial began in April 1881. While he'd
committed plenty of crimes by then, the charges were for killing Sheriff William Brady during
the Lincoln County War. The jury deliberated for exactly one day before finding Billy guilty.
The sentence was death by hanging, and the execution date was set for May 13th.
He had no intention of sticking around for that. Billy was in irons and under constant
surveillance by two guards, James Bell and Robert Olinger, on the second floor of the
courthouse. Garrett, who knew the Kid's reputation for successful escape attempts, was taking
no chances. But, somehow, Billy got his hands on a gun. Historians have no solid proof,
but it's thought either one of his old gang members hid a pistol in the toilet or he took
it off Bell himself.
The Kid took out Bell first, then grabbed a shotgun and waited at a window for Olinger,
who headed toward the courthouse when he heard the shots. Billy called out, "Hello, Bob,"
and blasted him. Billy then stole a horse and raced out of town.
Against all odds, he escaped custody yet again, but it would be his last time. The next time,
Pat Garrett wouldn't take Billy the Kid alive.
Garrett later wrote that people were upset he didn't seem to be very concerned about
recapturing the Kid, but the sheriff said he was, quote...
"Quietly at work [...] maturing [his] plans of action."
It's almost unbelievable that with his head start and ability to go almost anywhere, Billy
never left New Mexico Territory. Instead, he returned to Fort Sumner and didn't bother
to keep a low profile. Within three months, Garrett was on to him.
On the night of July 14th, 1881, the sheriff and his posse went to rancher Peter Maxwell's
house to ask if he knew where the Kid was. Maxwell absolutely did Billy was on his way
over with some beef for dinner. Garrett was in Maxwell's dark bedroom talking to him when
Billy showed up at the door. Sensing someone else in the room but unable to see his old
acquaintance-turned-adversary, Billy pulled his gun and asked, "Who's that?" in Spanish.
Garrett later wrote about that moment…
"[It was] the first time, during all [Billy's] life of peril that he ever lost his presence
of mind, or failed to shoot first and hesitate afterwards."
It would be the mistake that killed him.
Garrett let off two shots; one of the bullets hit Billy right in the heart. After years
of escaping one dangerous situation after the next, Billy the Kid was dead at the age
of 21.
Billy the Kid barely spent two decades on Earth and he was only famous for a brief period
of time. But that didn't stop people from taking his name and image and turning it into
whatever they wanted it to be.
According to Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride, within a year of his death, dozens of novels
and nonfiction accounts very light on facts were published. Even Pat Garrett wrote a biography
of Billy. Each subsequent generation used Billy to represent something different. In
the 1920s, with the Wild West officially in the past, books presented him as the Robin
Hood of a "lost pastoral world." Other decades cast him as a "frontier superhero," "homicidal
maniac," or a "martyred symbol of freedom." There have been more than a dozen movies and
even a ballet devoted to him. Plus, he still makes millions for the tourism industry of
New Mexico.
However, some people truly refused to let Billy die because they claimed to actually
be the outlaw. Vintage News says that one person, Brushy Bill, was taken somewhat seriously.
Living in Texas in the 1940s, he managed to convince the locals, some of the Kid's contemporaries,
and a lawyer that he was in fact the outlaw. Brushy Bill petitioned the governor of New
Mexico for a pardon, but the governor was not convinced. Brushy Bill stuck to the story
until he died in 1950 and even requested that his tombstone include the line: "A.K.A. Billy
the Kid."
More than 160 years after Billy the Kid was born, his legend is still going strong and
it shows no signs of slowing down even if that legend is based on both fact and fiction.
"It doesn't matter what's true. It matters the story they tell when you're gone."
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