As agreed, McCarty provided a statement about Chapman's murder and testified in court. As Motavalli explains, “People are always willing to believe alternative theories.”. [125] In 1954, western historians James D. Horan and Paul Sann wrote that McCarty was right-handed and carried his pistol on his right hip. To complicate matters further, at least two men emerged decades later who were believed by some to be Billy. [79]Garrett refused to surrender the prisoner, and a tense confrontation ensued until he agreed to let the sheriff and two other men accompany the party to Santa Fe, where they would petition the governor to release Rudabaugh to them. Carlysle later attempted to escape by jumping through a window but he was shot three times and killed. Born Henry McCarty, he was the first of two boys raised by a small Irish Catholic family in New York City. He was not a cold-blooded killer, nor was he a robber of trains or banks. He fled from New Mexico Territory into neighboring Arizona Territory, making him both an outlaw and a federal fugitive. [39] On February 20, 1878, while attempting to arrest Brady, the sheriff and his deputies found and arrested McCarty and two other men riding with him. Paulita Maxwell was Billy the Kid’s favorite squeeze, and she was pregnant at the time he was killed, so she probably was carrying his baby. Andrew McCrea reports on the outlaw turned folk hero. The next day, according to Garrett, a Coroner’s Jury held an inquest, determined that the dead man was Billy the Kid, and ruled that Garrett’s killing of him had been a justifiable homicide. The jury members interviewed Maxwell and Garrett, and McCarty's body and the location of the shooting were examined. This was unsupported by his family until 1938, some time after his death. [97] Maxwell, son of land baron Lucien Maxwell, spoke with Garrett the same day for several hours. [53][54], On October 5, 1878, U.S. According to eyewitnesses, the pair were innocent bystanders forced at gunpoint by Jesse Evans to witness the murder. Carlysle offered to exchange places with Greathouse, and McCarty accepted the offer. Although both markers are behind iron fencing, a group of vandals entered the enclosure at night in June 2012 and tipped the stone over.[144]. After returning to New Mexico, McCarty worked as a cowboy for English businessman and rancher John Henry Tunstall (1853–1878), near the Rio Felix, a tributary of the Rio Grande, in Lincoln County. [119] In April 2012, 133 pages of documents were provided; they offered no conclusive evidence confirming or disproving the generally accepted story of Garrett's killing of McCarty, [132] Collector Robert G. McCubbin and outlaw historian John Boessenecker concluded in 2013 that the photograph does not show McCarty. A letter from an official of Saint Peter's Church in Manhattan states it is in possession of records showing McCarty was baptized there on September 28, 1859. [33][5] After regaining his health, McCarty went to Apache Tejo, a former army post, where he joined a band of rustlers who raided herds owned by cattle magnate John Chisum in Lincoln County. Died: July 14, 1881 Fort Sumner, New Mexico American criminal and murderer William H. Bonney, known as Billy the Kid, was the youngest and most famous example of a gun-fighter from the American West. Sue Land, director of the Billy the Kid museum in Hico, says the best piece of evidence that Billy the Kid escaped Fort Sumner unscathed is Pat Garrett's own deputy. Another posse member took Tunstall's gun and killed him with a shot to the back of his head. [36][37] Tunstall's murder ignited the conflict between the two factions that became known as the Lincoln County War. During the encounter, one member of the posse shot Tunstall in the chest, knocking him off his horse. Billy the Kid became a murderer for the first time when he killed Frank P. Cahill on August 17, 1877. During the following decades, legends grew that McCarty had survived, and a number of men claimed to be him. [20], After leaving Antrim, McCarty traveled to southeastern Arizona Territory, where he worked as a ranch hand and gambled his wages in nearby gaming houses. Following the death of her husband Patrick, Catherine McCarty and her sons moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where she met William Henry Harrison Antrim. On April 13, Judge Warren Bristol sentenced McCarty to hang, with his execution scheduled for May 13, 1881. Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. He had several aliases but is best known as Billy the Kid. “Things like this typically start out as bar stories,” Motavalli says. [116] According to a July 2015 article in The Washington Post, the lab results were "useless. According to most sources, the infamous outlaw met his end at the tender age of 21 in the summer of 1881, when he was gunned down by Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. [41], McCarty then joined the Lincoln County Regulators; on March 9 they captured Frank Baker and William Morton, both of whom were accused of killing Tunstall. McCarty was detained and held in the Camp Grant guardhouse but escaped before law enforcement could arrive. [98], Accounts vary as to the course of events. [21] In 1876, he was hired as a ranch hand by well-known rancher Henry Hooker. 3 of the 5 signed legal documents confirming the elderly man as Billy the kid,the other 2 agreed he was the kid, but did not want to get involved in legal proceedings. [43] On the morning of April 4, 1878, Buckshot Roberts and Dick Brewer were killed during a shootout at Blazer's Mill. Cahill was a known bully who had picked on the Kid numerous times. [84], After arriving in Santa Fe, McCarty, seeking clemency, sent Governor Wallace four letters over the next three months. That's extra impressive when you know that Billy the Kid died at just 21 years old. For years, this was the only photograph scholars and historians agreed showed McCarty. [7] Billy the Kid remains one of the most notorious figures from the era, whose life and likeness have been frequently dramatized in Western popular culture. After the death of his father, he traveled west with his mother ending up in Silver City, New Mexico Territory in 1873. [13] Shortly before McCarty's mother, Catherine, died of tuberculosis, then called "consumption", on September 16, 1874,[17] McCarty's stepfather, William Antrim abandoned the family leaving both McCarty boys orphans. That night, Garrett wrote, he and two deputies, John W. Poe and Thomas McKinney, went to the ranch where Maxwell lived. Instead he was a gunfighter in a feud between two factions in which both sides stole from each other and killed. [86] According to legend, upon sentencing, the judge told McCarty he was going to hang until he was "dead, dead, dead"; McCarty's response was, "you can go to hell, hell, hell. Miller's body was buried in the state-owned Arizona Pioneers' Home Cemetery in Prescott, Arizona; in May 2005, Miller's teeth and bones[113] were exhumed and examined,[114] without permission from the state. [123][124], The image shows McCarty wearing his holstered Colt revolver on his left side. The jury certified the body as McCarty's and, according to a local newspaper, the jury foreman said, "It was the Kid's' body that we examined. [116] In 2014, Cooper was awarded $100,000 in punitive damages but the decision was later overturned by the New Mexico Court of Appeals. The prisoners, including McCarty, were shackled and taken to Fort Sumner, then later to Las Vegas, New Mexico. On March 15, Governor Wallace replied, agreeing to a secret meeting to discuss the situation. During the meeting and in subsequent correspondence, Wallace promised McCarty protection from his enemies and clemency if he would offer his testimony to a grand jury. [90][91] [92] After about an hour, McCarty freed himself from the leg irons with an axe. That’s because the grave markers in Fort Sumner’s Old Military Cemetery were washed away in a flood in September 1904, according to Richard Melzer’s book Buried Treasures: Famous and Unusual Gravesites in New Mexico History. Garrett noted that the corpse went into the grave fully intact, in order to discredit opportunists who were exhibiting skulls, fingers and other body parts that they claimed had belonged to Billy the Kid. "[69] According to other contemporary sources, McCarty had been warned Grant intended to kill him. Census records indicate his younger brother, Joseph McCarty, was born in 1863. At least, that’s the most widely-accepted version of events. Brady and Deputy Sheriff George W. Hindman were killed. Tunstall put Bonney in charge of nine prime horses and told him to relocate them to his ranch for safekeeping. Billy the Kid had a brother, or perhaps a half-brother, named Joseph Antrim. If he hadn’t hesitated, Garrett might have been the one lying dead on the floor. Drawing his revolver and backing away, McCarty asked "¿Quién es? [133] Whitny Braun, a professor and researcher, located an advertisement for croquet sets sold at Chapman's General Store in Las Vegas, New Mexico, dated to June 1878. Ten days later, he robbed a Chinese laundry and was again arrested, but escaped shortly afterwards. He was 21 years old when he died. [142] It was stolen on February 8, 1981, but recovered days later in Huntington Beach, California. Nobody is sure of the exact date he was born but it seems to have been sometime in September 1859 because there’s a baptism record for … The story is from 1981. [36][38], After Tunstall was killed, McCarty and Dick Brewer swore affidavits against Brady and those in his posse, and obtained murder warrants from Lincoln County justice of the peace John B. Billy the Kid Biography, Life, Interesting Facts. Beginning with the 1911 silent film “Billy the Kid”, which depicted McCarty as a girl impersonating a boy,[145] he has been a feature of more than 50 movies including: and a stage musical, Billy The Kid, by Ben Morales Frost and Richard Hough, American cattle rustler, gambler, horse thief, outlaw, cowboy and ranch hand. Hico's Billy the Kid Museum speculates that Billy moved to Texasin 1883, two years after his supposed death in New Mexico. As is the case with so many mythologized historical figures, it can be difficult to separate fact from fiction. [45], On the night of Sunday, July 14, McSween and the Regulators—now a group of fifty or sixty men—went to Lincoln and stationed themselves in the town among several buildings. Billy was killed in the room of her brother Pete Maxwell in Fort Sumner. At Fort Stanton in the Pecos Valley,[32] McCarty—starving and near death—went to the home of friend and Seven Rivers Warriors gang member John Jones, whose mother Barbara nursed him back to health. On November 29, 1880, McCarty, Rudabaugh, and Billy Wilson ran from a posse led by sheriff's deputy James Carlysle. According to the canonical version, as he entered the room, McCarty failed to recognize Garrett due to the poor lighting. It was the last time the two saw each other. Mabry dismissed Roberts' claims, and Roberts died shortly afterward. [b], On March 20, Wallace wrote to McCarty, "to remove all suspicion of understanding, I think it better to put the arresting party in charge of Sheriff Kimbrell [sic] who shall be instructed to see that no violence is used. Most know him as “Billy The Kid” or simply “The Kid”. Sarah Brown, the owner of a boarding house, gave him room and board in exchange for work. [107] The book, The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid,[d] was first published in April 1882. Details of his early life are sketchy, and much of what was written about him just before and after his death was what Motavalli calls “scurrilous literature”—sensationalized newspaper accounts and quickie books churned out by publishing houses. [127] Several historians have written that McCarty was ambidextrous. Marshals Service", Letter, 15 March 1879, Lew Wallace to W. H. Bonney, Letter, 20 March 1879, W. H. Bonney to Lew Wallace, Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire, Dick Brewer, Billy the Kid and the Regulators, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Billy_the_Kid&oldid=1011511687, American people convicted of murdering police officers, People shot dead by law enforcement officers in the United States, Wikipedia pending changes protected pages, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2019, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2012, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2020, Pages using Sister project links with wikidata namespace mismatch, Pages using Sister project links with hidden wikidata, Pages using Sister project links with default search, Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, William H. Bonney, Henry Antrim, Kid Antrim, This page was last edited on 11 March 2021, at 07:59. (New Mexico Territorial Legislature July 18, 1882). "[133], In early October 2015, Kagin's, Inc., a numismatic authentication firm, said the image was authentic after a number of experts, including those associated with a recent National Geographic Channel program,[135][136] On the fateful day, the argument got out of control resulting in Billy the Kid killing Cahill. But a man known as “Brushy Bill” Roberts, told the story before he died in December 1950 that he was actually Billy the Kid. He had a quick fuse and would shoot anyone who irritated him, eventually killing twenty-one men: one for each year of his life, as he died at twenty-one. The three men concealed themselves, as a man in a broad-brimmed hat, a dark vest, shirt and pants walked past them. But legends don’t die so easily. [112], John Miller, an Arizona man, also claimed he was McCarty. The 1882 biography The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, Noted Desperado of the Southwest, Whose Deeds of Daring and Blood Made His Name a Terror in New Mexico, Arizona and Northern Mexico, which was written by Garrett, his killer, contains what seems to be the most credible account of the fatal confrontation, according to Motavalli. Another group led by Marin Chavez and Doc Scurlock positioned themselves on the roof of a saloon. He was a heavy-drinking cattle rustler and thief. He was reportedly killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett, who later burnished the legend of the Wild West outlaw. Legend has it that William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, died at the tender age of 21. This photo provided by Frank Abrams shows what historians believe is a photo of outlaw Billy the Kid, second from left, and Pat Garrett, far right, taken in 1880. [5] Two different versions of a wanted poster dated September 23, 1875, refer to him as "Wm. To add to the confusion, the actual facts about Billy the Kid haven’t been easy to come by. [42], On April 1, the Regulators ambushed Sheriff Brady and his deputies; McCarty was wounded in the thigh during the battle. [118] but confirmed the records' existence, and that they could have been produced earlier. © 2021 A&E Television Networks, LLC. He walked up to Grant, told him he admired his revolver, and asked to examine it. Unbeknownst to McCarty and his companions, a posse led by Pat Garrett was waiting for them. [citation needed] Most of these claims were easily disproven, but two have remained topics of discussion and debate. As Dale L. Walker details in his book Legends and Lies: Great Mysteries of the American West, one prospective Billy was John Miller, a farmer and horse trainer who lived in a small village in New Mexico near the Arizona border and died in 1937. [103][104], Five days after McCarty's killing, Garrett traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to collect the $500 reward offered by Governor Lew Wallace for his capture, dead or alive. What if the story you read in school isn't the entire story of Billy the Kid? Letter from Governor Wallace to W.H. [109] Although only a few copies sold following its release, in time, it became a reference for later historians who wrote about McCarty's life.[107]. [134], In August 2015, Lincoln State Monument officials and the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs said that despite the new research, they could not confirm that the image showed McCarty or others from the Lincoln County War era, according to Monument manager Gary Cozzens. [30], McCarty stole a horse and fled Arizona Territory for New Mexico Territory,[31] but Apaches took the horse from him, leaving him to walk many miles to the nearest settlement. McCarty was 15 years old when his mother died. The posse opened fire, killing O'Folliard; the rest of the outlaws escaped unharmed.[75][76]. [111] Nevertheless, Hico, Texas, Roberts' town of residence, capitalized on his claim by opening a Billy the Kid museum. Who is it?"). His legend survived and grew long after his death. New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, List of fugitives from justice who are no longer sought, "The Old Man Who Claimed to Be Billy the Kid", "Billy The Kid: Facts, information and articles about Billy The Kid, famous outlaw, and a prominent figure from the Wild West", "This Date in History – August 17, 1877 – Billy the Kid kills his first man", "The Tunstalls Return – John Tunstall's kin traveled from England to fathom death in Lincoln", "I Shot the Sheriff (and I Killed a Deputy, Too) – Billy Kid and the Regulators vs Sheriff Brady and His Deputies", "Tunstall Ambushed – Regulators vs Dolan's Henchmen", "New Mexico Office of the State Historian | people", "The Tale of the Empty Chamber Billy the Kid vs Joe Grant", "Deputy Sheriff Antonio Lino Valdez profile", "Book Review: Billy the Kid's Writings, Words & Wit, by Gale Cooper", "The Holy Grail for Sale – The Billy the Kid tintype is on the auction block, and it might just clear half a million", "La controvertida muerte de Billy "el Niño", el pistolero "hispano" de los 21 asesinatos", "122 Years Later, Lawmen Are Still Chasing Billy the Kid", "Historian Seeks Death Certificate to End Billy the Kid Rumors", "A Shot in the Dark: Billy the Kid vs Pat Garrett", "One man's quest to bury the Wild West mystery of Billy the Kid's death", 2 won't face charges in Billy the Kid quest, "Billy the Kid and New Mexico Open Records Law", "Award ends suit over Billy the Kid records", Lawsuit seeks DNA evidence for 1881 death of Billy the Kid, "Billy the Kid quest evolves into records fight", "Historian asks state's high court to help set record straight on Billy the Kid's death", "Billy the Kid photograph fetches $2.3 million at auction", "Billy the Kid portrait fetches $2.3m at Denver auction", "Billy the Kid photograph sold at auction in Colorado for $2.3m", "The fact and fiction of America's outlaw", "Billy the Kid Experts Weigh in on the Croquet Photo", "Billy the Kid: New Evidence. [44] Warrants were issued for several participants on both sides, and McCarty and two others were charged with killing Brady, Hindman and Roberts. Henry Newton Brown, Dick Smith, and George Coe defended a nearby adobe bunkhouse. After murdering a blacksmith during an altercation in August 1877, McCarty became a wanted man in Arizona and returned to New Mexico, where he joined a group of cattle rustlers. [126] The opinion was confirmed by Clyde Jeavons, a former curator of the National Film and Television Archive. Some newspaper gossip claimed he was planning to shoot Pat Garrett for killing the Kid, but Joe denied it, saying he and Garrett had discussed the issue and parted amicably. He left Arizona about 1880 and lived in Trinidad, Colorado, as a professional gambler. But that still isn’t likely to dispel the rumors. "[c] McCarty responded on the same day, agreeing to testify and confirming Wallace's proposal for his arrest and detention in a local jail to assure his safety. Billy the Kid was a late 19th-century thief and gunfighter. Pat F. Garrett, the famous sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico who shot Billy the Kid. After McCarty was spotted in Silver City, his involvement with the gang was mentioned in a local newspaper. Billy the Kid, byname of William H. Bonney, Jr., original name Henry McCarty?, (born November 23, 1859/60, New York, New York, U.S.—died July 14, 1881, Fort Sumner, New Mexico), one of the most notorious gunfighters of the American West, reputed to have killed at least 27 men before being gunned down at about age 21. [122], One of the few remaining artifacts of McCarty's life is a 2-by-3-inch (5.1-by-7.6-centimeter) ferrotype photograph of McCarty by an unknown portrait photographer in late 1879 or early 1880. “One medical gentleman has persuaded credulous idiots that he has all the bones strung upon wires,” Garrett wrote with distain. The infamous New Yorker, whose Wild West antics ranged from stealing food to killing at least eight men, was supposedly gunned down at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, in July 1881. Wilson. A year and four days after McCarty's death, the New Mexico territorial legislature passed a special act to grant Garrett the $500 bounty reward promised by Governor Wallace. Though they didn’t realize it, the man was Billy the Kid, who was headed for the house with the intention of carving for himself a piece of beef. McCarty escaped from the Lincoln County jail on June 17, 1879. “Who is it, Pete?” Garrett whispered to Maxwell. Bonney". The two men soon began stealing horses from local soldiers.