Pat Garrett
Promising a $500 reward stepped up the manhunt and newspapers gave accounts of every movement of Garrett’s Panhandle Posse. Garrett caught up with the Kid again on December 19, 1880, ambushing his group in Fort Sumner. O’Folliard was killed in the ambush, but the Kid, now devastated at the loss of his friend, made it to a one-room stone house at Stinking Springs with four other men. On December 23, Garrett, acting on a tip, surrounded the house and unleashed a hail of gunfire, thinking he had just seen the Kid come out. The person he actually saw and killed was Charlie Bowdre, who had come outside to feed his horse. Garrett then shot the horse so that its body would block the doorway and serve as a barricade.
Garrett and his group now waited out Billy the Kid and the remaining outlaws inside, and though legends that Garrett and the Kid were friends are inaccurate, the two engaged in a playful banter during the siege. Once Garrett’s group started cooking food, Garrett invited the Kid to come out to eat, while the Kid replied by inviting Garrett to “go to hell”. Finally, out of food and options, the outlaws surrendered and were allowed to eat along with Garrett’s group. Upon surrendering, the Kid allegedly said to Garrett, “’Pat, you son-of-a-bitch, they told me there was a hundred Texans here from the Canadian River! If I’d a-known there wasn’t no more than this, you’d never have got me!’’
Garrett took the Kid into custody to much fanfare in New Mexico, making himself a hero. Reporters swarmed the Kid and were surprised to see that he did not act like the cold-blooded killer that they expected. The Kid even said to one of the reporters, “’Advise persons never to engage in killing.” Miguel Antonio Otero was the governor of New Mexico Territory between 1897 and 1907 and a lawyer in 1880. He recalled meeting the Kid in Las Vegas, where he was in shackles waiting to go to Santa Fe for his murder trial. Otero said, “I liked the Kid very much. Nothing would have pleased me more than to have witnessed his escape.”3
Chapter 6: The Death of Billy the Kid
‘’People thought me bad before, but if ever I should get free, I’ll let them know what bad means.” – Billy the Kid to a reporter from the Daily New Mexican after his capture at Stinking Springs.
After being arrested by Garrett, the Kid was taken from Fort Sumner to Las Vegas, New Mexico, where he was also given a chance to speak to reporters. The Kid was apparently playful, as he mentioned to one reporter, ‘’What’s the use of looking on the gloomy side of everything? The laugh’s on me this time. Is the jail at Santa Fe any better than this? This is a terrible place to put a fellow in.” The question about Santa Fe was made in reference to the fact that the Kid was on his way there next, and while he was imprisoned there for the next three months he asked Lew Wallace for clemency. Not surprisingly, Wallace didn’t oblige, telling the Las Vegas Gazette, ‘’I can’t see how a fellow like him should expect any clemency from me.’’
The charges in the Roberts killing were dropped, but the Kid was found guilty of Brady’s murder and was sentenced to hang on May 13, 1881. The Kid offered no words in his defense. With that, he was taken to jail in Lincoln, where he was regularly taunted by Bob Ollinger, who, along with Deputy James Bell, was ordered to guard his cell. Ollinger blamed the Kid for the death of his friend, Bob Beckwith, and never let him forget it.
The Lincoln County Jail
On April 28, with Garrett away, the Kid somehow got out his cell and managed to arm himself. Some suggest that he asked to use the outhouse behind the courthouse and a friend planted a gun for him nearby. At any rate, the Kid swung his heavy handcuffs at Bell, then maneuvered a gun into position and shot and killed Bell, who fell into the courthouse yard. As someone ran for help, the Kid grabbed Ollinger’s shotgun from Garrett’s office. When Ollinger approached the building, the Kid pointed the gun out the open window, said, “Hello Bob!” and blasted Ollinger’s body with buckshot, killing him instantly. The Kid then forced the cook at gunpoint to get a pickax and remove his shackles. From the courthouse balcony, the Kid shouted to the growing crowd that he had not meant to kill Bell, but he would kill anyone that tried to prevent his escape. When the Kid took off on the deputy clerk’s horse, some say he was singing. The same horse, now without its famous rider, came back into town two days later.
After this most daring escape, it would have surprised nobody if he had finally left the country. Instead, 3 months later the rumor was that the Kid hadn’t gone far at all; in fact, the story was that the Kid was back in the Fort Sumner area, around where he had been captured in December. Nobody was more surprised than Pat Garrett that the Kid, once again, did not leave the area. Perhaps it was because Paulita Maxwell was pregnant, which could explain why the Kid ended up in the Maxwell house. Garrett had heard that the Kid was in Fort Sumner but didn’t believe it at first. Finally, when Pete Maxwell confirmed it, Garrett rode out to the Maxwell house on July 14, 1881.
Shortly after 9:00 p.m. that summer evening, Garrett and two of his men waited for the Kid in a peach orchard. After midnight, they approached the house. It was dark and the Kid was without a hat and boots. In his stocking feet, he walked toward the porch, on his way to cut some meat from a freshly slaughtered deer hanging on the Maxwell’s porch. The Kid saw men in the dark and drew his gun from his waistband. “Quien es?” he said, asking in Spanish, “Who is it?” He repeated the question in English and Maxwell said to Garrett, “El es”, meaning “It’s him.” Garrett fired twice and 21 year old Billy the Kid was dead.
Naturally, there have been countless variations of the events of that night, some portraying Garrett as acting in self-defense, others making him out to be a murderer. One account had Garrett talking to Maxwell, a friend of the Kid’s, when the Kid entered the room to their surprise. One theory even goes so far as to claim Garrett bound and gagged Paulita and hid behind her waiting for the Kid to come back to the house, whereupon they shot him. All accounts agree that the Kid did not recognize Garrett and never fired his gun.
Billy the Kid was buried alongside friends O’Folliard and Bowdre
Chapter 7: Billy the Kid’s Life After Death
For decades after the Kid’s death, most took Pat Garrett’s The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid as a factual biography. The book, which was ghostwritten by Ashton Upson, was published in April 1882. Historians have verified that Garrett’s book about the Kid is filled with errors, presumably to make the Kid look like a cold-blooded killer and to make Garrett look like the hero that finally stopped him. At the time, Garrett received some heat for the manner in which he killed Billy the Kid, so there’s no question he wanted to use his version to portray himself in a more positive light. An updated edition, published in 2000, contains footnotes from historian Frederick Nolan, which help set the record straight.
Nevertheless, the damage done from Garrett’s book had deep roots and set the stage for a lot of the mythmaking about the Kid’s life. The first edition of the book did not sell well, but by 1954, it was considered a factual reference book. By the 1960s, the book was in libraries in the U.S. and Europe and by the 1970s, the book was in its 10th printing. In an effort to make himself look heroic and to clear his name with those that suggested he unfairly ambushed the Kid, Garrett created one of the greatest legends of the West, even if the legend was based on fiction.
What followed was a slew of dime novels and movies featuring the Kid as the early 20th century equivalent of a bad boy rock star, leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake. Unlike some icons of the West, the Kid left behind no family to see to it that his story was told correctly, and the lack of solid facts about the Kid’s life made it easier to create a legend. If there is no easy way to refute a story, then it lingers as if the possibility remains that it is true.
With such a gap in knowledge, Billy the Kid has plenty of myths to match the legend. One thing that Billy’s quotes and his contemporaries’ comments suggest is that everyone agreed he was a fairly friendly, witty young man. Regulator Frank Coe later said o
f him, “I never enjoyed better company. He was humorous and told me many amusing stories. He always found a touch of humor in everything, being naturally full of fun and jollity. Though he was serious in emergencies, his humor was often apparent even in such situations. Billy stood with us to the end, brave and reliable, one of the best soldiers we had. He never pushed in his advice or opinions, but he had a wonderful presence of mind. The tighter the place the more he showed his cool nerve and quick brain. He never seemed to care for money, except to buy cartridges with. Cartridges were scarce, and he always used about ten times as many as everyone else. He would practice shooting at anything he saw, from every conceivable angle, on and off his horse.” Frank’s cousin George described the Kid as “a brave, resourceful and honest boy. He would have been a successful man under other circumstances. The Kid was a thousand times better and braver than any man hunting him, including Pat Garrett.”
Given his legendary ending, like Jesse James, plenty of people came forward in later years claiming that Billy the Kid was not the man killed by Garrett in 1881. One Texan known as Brushy Bill claimed to be the Kid, despite the fact his physical appearance and birth date didn’t match the Kid’s. Brushy Bill had also once claimed to be part of Jesse James’s gang. Not surprisingly, no historian has ever lent credence to Brushy Bill’s claims, but Brushy Bill’s home town of Hico, Texas opened up the “Billy The Kid Museum” to capitalize off the buzz.
In addition to arguments over how many people the Kid killed, there has been a persistent debate over which hand he shot those people with. Part of the confusion came from the fact that one of the ferrotypes commonly seen was a mirror image of the original. For that reason, Billy the Kid was often believed to be left-handed. Others insist that the Kid was right handed, and Clyde Jeavons, a former curator of the National Film and Television Archive, explained the effect of the ferrotype’s mirror image: “You can see by the waistcoat buttons and the belt buckle. This is a common error which has continued to reinforce the myth that Billy the Kid was left-handed. He was not. He was right-handed and carried his gun on his right hip. This particular reproduction error has occurred so often in books and other publications over the years that it has led to the myth that Billy the Kid was left-handed, for which there is no evidence. On the contrary, the evidence (from viewing his photo correctly) is that he was right-handed: he wears his pistol on his right hip with the butt pointing backwards in a conventional right-handed draw position.” Ironically, the debate overlooked the fact that the Kid may very well have been ambidextrous: newspaper accounts at the time claimed the Kid shot guns “with his left hand as accurately as he does with his right” and that “his aim with a revolver in each hand, shooting simultaneously, is unerring.”
In many ways, the entire state of New Mexico became the Kid’s family over time and adopted him as one of its own. Of course, there are financial reasons behind this since Billy the Kid brings in more tourist dollars to the state today than cattle ranching. His only photograph, a 25-cent tintype, was purchased for $2.3 million in a 2011 auction. The image from that tintype can be seen on countless items ranging from mugs to hats to shot glasses at the Kid’s own museum in Fort Sumner.
Some New Mexicans have gone so far as to suggest that Billy the Kid should be pardoned for his crimes because Governor Lew Wallace did not keep his end of his bargain with the Kid. Randi McGinn, an attorney from Albuquerque, filed a formal petition for the pardon and set off a debate that raged in New Mexico for seven years. Governor Bill Richardson set up a website to get opinions from the public, although descendants of Pat Garrett and Lew Wallace were clear in their opinion. They were outraged and felt that a pardon was disrespectful to the memories of Garrett and Wallace. In his last day in office on December 31, 2010, Richardson announced on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he gave it serious thought, but that he was not going to pardon the Kid without having a better understanding of why Wallace did not follow through with the pardon.
However, where Billy the Kid really seemed to find his home was among the Mexican-American ranchers in the state who were victimized by the corrupt political system. They were sympathetic to the Kid, partially because they sympathized with his cause, but their acceptance of him was more complex than that. The Mexican-Americans that encountered the Kid embraced him because he embraced them back. The Kid moved easily in the Mexican-American community at a time when many white men would not even consider such a thing. He learned their language, danced their dances, ate their food, and loved their young girls, which may have ultimately led to his demise.
Governor Otero recalled that the Kid was different than other boys his age, obviously affected by being on his own as a child and primarily being in the company of men older than he was. He said that the Kid was bright and eager to learn. Otero was also the first person to try to explain the Kid’s special relationship with the Mexican-Americans from the Mexican-American point of view when he published The Real Billy the Kid: With New Light on the Lincoln County War in 1936. Otero not only challenged the version of history told from the point of view of the white men, he exposed the level of corruption that the white men brought on the citizens on the county. Historian Frederick Nolan, an acknowledged expert on Billy the Kid, said that there is still much to be learned about the Kid’s folk hero status in the Mexican-American culture, but the information will need to come from “that side of the cultural divide.” Perhaps that information will shed more light on William Henry McCarty’s life, more than just his legend.
Bibliography
Bell, Bob Boze. The Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid. Phoenix: Tri-Star Boze Publications. 1992.
Nolan, Frederick. The West of Billy the Kid. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1998.
Utley, Robert M. Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1989.
Wallis, Michael. Billy the Kid: Endless Ride. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2007.
John Dillinger
Chapter 1: The Times
The United States of the1920s was a time and place of tremendous contradiction. Called “The Roaring Twenties” by some and the “Jazz Age” by others, it has been romanticized as a carefree era of speakeasies, flapper girls, jazz and moonshine. This is part truth and part myth, an image cultivated even at the time by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald in his novel The Great Gatsby. But it was one of the great conservative social experiments of American history, the 18th Amendment prohibiting the sale of alcohol, that set the stage for the gaiety and casual lawlessness that prevailed during the decade.
Politically, it was a conservative era characterized by a retreat from political reform and internationalism. Disillusioned by the nation’s late but expensive entry into World War I, Americans seemed to turn inward toward private pleasures and private concerns. The Red Scare that had flared briefly during the war was followed by an ongoing backlash against immigrants that found expression in the imposition of strict immigration quotas, and in the revival of the Klu Klux Klan. The passion of the Progressive Era for social reform was replaced by a concern with prosperity. As President Calvin Coolidge famously said at the time, “The chief business of the American people is business.”
The Chicago gangster Al Capone was both an icon and a kind of folk hero of the era. Though he attained great wealth through a host of illegal activities that included saloons, brothels, and whiskey running, he tried to create an image of himself as just another successful businessman. He was part of a new breed of organized crime figures that ran their outfits like corporations and were part of regional and even national networks. The evolution of modern law enforcement to keep up with their increasingly sophisticated ways would be echoed in the ‘30s by the emergence of the modern FBI in response to the crime sprees of John Dillinger and other outlaws of that decade.
The seeds of the crimewave that would come in the early ‘30s can be traced to the end of the previous decade. Ov
er the course of a fatal few days in October of 1929, the booming U.S. stock market experienced $26 billion dollars in losses—about a third of the total value of the market. The Crash, at it came to be known, was certainly the symbolic endpoint for the Roaring Twenties, and it ushered in a newly somber, less carefree national mood.
Despite the rebounding of the stock market, there was a fundamental weakness at the heart of the economy, one that did not come out of the blue. Despite the perception of the ‘20s as a time of prosperity, unemployment had stubbornly hovered around 10% for much of the decade. In part due to America’s post-war economic isolationism, the agricultural sector had for a number of years been in steady decline. This was critical: though the country was becoming increasingly urban, a large percentage of the population’s livelihood was still connected to farming. Finally, a substantial national debt incurred during World War I was an ongoing drag on the economy.
By the end of 1930, the reality of the Depression was undeniable. Business failures were up sharply, and GNP was down 12%. The all-important “durable goods” sector was hit especially hard—with the steel industry alone experiencing a 38% drop in production. Even with all this bad news, the numbers weren’t as bad as they’d been during the brief but brutal recession of 1921, and Americans still held out hope that it was all just part of a cyclical downturn that would soon reverse itself.
The Top 5 Most Notorious Outlaws Page 7
