Billy the Kid convicted of murder - Apr 09, 1881 - HISTORY.com

Thanks for reminding us TSgt Joe C. that on April 9, 1881 that Michael Henry McCarty AKA William Bonney AKA Billy the Kid was tried, convicted and sentenced to hang.
However he killed a guard and escaped and was hunted down later that year and killed by Pat Garrett.
Images: 1880 Billy the Kid AKA William Bonney; Billy the Kid [left] with Pat Garett [right]; William Bonney; 1880 Billy_the_Kid_Ferrotype;
Below are two separate articles about the man who was known as Billy the Kid.
"Michael Henry McCarty was born on 20 November 1859 in New York City to Ireland-born Catherine McCarty. Her sometimes-partner Edward McCarty was a fruit peddlar who was married and had another family. By age 14, Billy was a juvenile delinquent, and was 'bound' out West by the city – a common practice during the post-Civil War Era. Billy and his older brother Joe and their unmarried mother traveled via Wichita, Kansas and Denver, Colorado to Santa Fe, New Mexico where she married William Antrim (1873).
The new family set out southward for Silver City, in Grant County. Still into mischief and petty theft, young Henry stole a tub of butter off a buckboard and was caught by the sheriff. Not wanting to jail the teenager, the sheriff spanked him in front of a crowd – an insult that Henry/Billy never forgot. Henry's mother died of tuberculosis in September 1874, and Henry made a meager living working at a hotel.
On 23 September 1875, Henry and an older accomplice stole a large hamper of finished laundry from a Chinese (perhaps a prank), and Henry was again caught by the sheriff, who this time threw the young man into jail. Henry did not squeal on his accomplice, who managed to bust Henry out of the pokey. Henry fled to New York City, taking the name William Antrim.
Soon after turning 16, Billy had a job and regular friends (boys and girls) in New York. One night Billy got into a fight with an 18-year-old who had been drinking; the brawl ended with the older gang member stabbed to death. Billy once more needed to flee town; Billy's birth father paid for his fare back to New Mexico.
At around this time (1876), Billy broke into the jail in San Elizario, Texas to free his friend Melquiades Segura; Billy locked the two guards inside and threw away the key, then he and his pal fled across the river to Mexico. The event is celebrated in June as the Billy The Kid Festival.
Billy passed thru Silver City on his way to the lawless settlement of Camp Grant in Arizona. Billy had few other skills, but he was talented at gambling, as well as with the ladies – Billy was often described as charming – which combination bred jealousy with other men of the camp. On 17 August 1877, Billy was called out by Frank 'Windy' Cahill, a 32-year-old Irish immigrant, in the dirt street in front of the blacksmith shop. Cahill called Billy a pimp, Billy called Cahill an S.O.B.; Cahill attacked Billy, and in the ensuing scuffle Billy drew a pistol from his belt and shot Cahill in the belly. Billy was put in jail but escaped and fled once more.
Apaches captured Billy's horse, and he trudged many miles until he was taken in by the Jones family; Mrs. Jones nursed Billy back to health, and gave him a horse when he left. Billy continued on to Mesilla, a town just south of Las Cruces, New Mexico. He took on a new name, William Bonney, derived from his mother's family background. Now 18 years old, William H. 'Billy' Bonney soon met and charmed the head bandit of the area, John Kinney, and gained full membership in the gang; he rode with the gang for most of 1877. Billy heard of work to the north, and rode into Lincoln County.

The promise of $500 made to Billy was not for his skills as a cowpuncher, but for his willingness to break the law. The town and county of Lincoln in central New Mexico were a-boil with tension, as the leaders of the town were battling the ranchers. John Tunstall, merchant and banker, was partner with Alexander McSween, a rancher; allied with them was wealthy cattle baron John Chisum. Billy hired on as a cattle guard for Tunstall, about whom Billy later said, "He was the only man that ever treated me like I was a free-born and white."
The other faction – called 'The House' – was led by merchants James Dolan, Lawrence Murphy and John H. Riley. On 18 February 1878, three men ambushed and killed unarmed Tunstall out on the range, purportedly on the orders of Dolan. At Tunstall's funeral, Billy swore, "I'll get every son-of-a-bitch who helped kill John if it's the last thing I do." Billy joined The Regulators, a vigilante outfit supported by McSween. The Regulators hunted down and captured, then killed, two of the men who shot Tunstall. A few weeks later, suspicious of old buffalo hunter Buckshot Roberts, the Regulators tracked him down, and in the ensuing gunfight, both Roberts and the Regulators leader Dick Brewer died. Billy became the leader of the Regulators, and he is credited with masterminding the brazen daylight ambush and murder of Lincoln's Sheriff William Brady and his deputy George Hindman (both aligned with the House faction), on the streets of Lincoln on 1 April 1878.
Billy and other Regulators were indicted for the killings, and went into hiding. On 15 July 1878, they were cornered at McSween's house in Lincoln; a five-day siege by 'The Enforcers' ended when they set the house on fire. Billy and the others fled; Billy killed an Enforcer named Bob Beckwith. McSween was shot leaving his home; Billy fled to Texas.
In late 1878, retired Union general Lew Wallace became governor of New Mexico Territory. In the interest of peace, he announced an amnesty for all particpants in the Lincoln County Cattle War not then under indictment. By March of 1879, Billy had returned to Lincoln, and there met with Gov. Wallace to discuss terms. Billy agreed to testify in return for amnesty; he was paraded to jail for show. Even though Billy's lengthy June 1879 testimony helped to indict Dolan, the district attorney returned Billy to jail, in defiance of the governor's deal. Billy slipped his handcuffs and escaped.
Billy hung around Fort Sumner, in east-central New Mexico, surviving on gambling and cattle rustling. In January 1880, Billy shot and killed one Joe Grant in a Fort Sumner saloon; some say Grant was sent to kill Billy. In November of 1880, Billy and his gang were surrounded by a posse at the ranchhouse of James Greathouse, a friend. Under a flag of truce, the posse sent James Carlyle into the house to negotiate a surrender of the gang, with Greathouse sent out as hostage for the posse. Late that night, a sudden gunshot outside alarmed Carlyle, and he jumped thru a window into the snow. The posse thought this was an escaping outlaw, and they shot and killed Carlyle. When the posse realized what they had done, they gave up and left, and Billy's gang slipped away.

During this time, Billy developed a friendship with a local bartender and saloonkeeper and former buffalo hunter, tall Alabama-born Patrick Garrett. In November 1880, the ambitious Garrett was appointed Sheriff of Lincoln County. Gov. Wallace had recently placed a $500 bounty on the head of young Bonney, now generally known as 'Billy the Kid'. Garrett formed a posse and set out on Billy's trail. Billy escaped a midnight ambush in Fort Sumner on 19 December; gang member Tom O'Folliard was shot and killed by Garrett. Billy and his gang holed up in a stone building at remote Stinking Springs. While the outlaws slept, Garrett's posse surrounded the cabin. When cattle rustler Charlie Bowdre stepped outside at dawn to feed his horse, he was mistaken for Billy and shot dead by the posse. Garrett later shot the horse, blocking the only exit from the cabin. The posse began cooking breakfast, and Garrett and Billy exchanged banter and insults. The outlaws realized that they had no chance of escape and were getting hungry; they surrendered and joined in the meal.
Billy was put in the Mesilla jail to await a trial set for April 1881. The now-famous 'Kid' gave many newspaper interviews; his letters to Gov. Wallace seeking clemency were ignored. The one-day trial resulted in Billy's conviction for the murder of Sheriff Brady (the single conviction against any participant, on either side, in the Lincoln County Cattle War). On 13 April, Judge Bristol sentenced Billy to hang one month hence. Billy was sent to the Lincoln Courthouse jail under guard of two of Garrett's deputies. On 28 April, Billy shot both deputies and escaped. Many details are uncertain, but Billy killed Deputy Bell with a pistol, then grabbed a ten-gauge shotgun and waited for Deputy Ollinger to return from across the street. Billy shot the second deputy, then cut the chain of his leg irons with an axe, and rode out of the terrified town at a leisurely pace.

Billy's freedom lasted barely three months. On the night of 14 July 1881, Billy was staying with Celsa Gutierrez in a former Fort Sumner barracks building owned by Pete Maxwell. Garrett had heard that Billy was still in the area, and he and two deputies stopped to question Maxwell, a known friend of Billy. Near midnight, Billy entered Celsa's rooms and took off his hat, gunbelt and boots, then lay on the bed to read a newspaper. He asked Celsa to fix something to eat; she replied that she had little in the house, that Pete had a side of beef hanging on his porch, and if Billy'd cut a piece, she would cook it. Billy grabbed a small butcher knife and walked in stocking feet thru the dark over to Maxwell's porch-fronted adobe house. As Billy approached the porch, he saw two men leaning against the porch rails, assuming that they were Mexican workers. Billy stepped on the porch and asked in Spanish who the men were; when they did not answer, he realized that they were not Mexicans. He moved to the doorway of Maxwell's bedroom, asking Pete who the two men were. Garrett recognized Billy's voice, and fired two rounds from his revolver. The first bullet hit Billy in the side (he was turning away), and passed thru his heart; the second bullet struck two inches from the door jamb.
Both Garrett and Maxwell panicked, not knowing that Billy died instantly; they ran out of the room, over Billy's body and into the street. It was some time before they, backed by a mob of curious townspeople, ventured to return to Maxwell's bedroom, where they found the lifeless body of William H. 'Billy the Kid' Bonney – dead at the age of 21 years. Billy was buried the next day in the Fort Sumner Cemetery. A year after Billy was killed, Sheriff Garrett auctioned Billy's saddle and revolver; the winning bid was $13.50. (Pinkerton detective Charlie Siringo quit at $12 because he thought the items were not worth more than that.)
Pat Garrett milked his fame for all it was worth, publishing a book (see below) with the help of a ghost-writer, Ash Upton. Garrett's later years were spotty: he won and lost elections for sheriff in towns across New Mexico & Texas; he led a contingent of Texas Rangers; he was appointed customs inspector in El Paso; he attempted many other business ventures, including cattle ranching. By February 1908, he was deeply in debt. On February 28, Garrett rode to meet with one of his debtors, W.W. Cox, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and was shot dead by two of Cox's men. The killer confessed, but was nonetheless acquitted – Garrett was shot in the back of the head; the killer claimed self-defense.

The most famous outlaws of the Old West nowadays are probably Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid. Historians work to prove and disprove purported facts, while the legends abound and cannot be quelled. Fiction and non-fiction books are written, television and feature films get made, and accuracy is often ignored.
New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya tells two stories of the legendary New Mexico lawman Elfego Baca [1865-1945]. One has Billy and Elfego as pals in their teens walking from Socorro, New Mexico to Albuquerque, a distance of seventy miles. The other has Elfego talking the deputy who has custody of Billy (escorting him on a train to the capitol in Santa Fe) into allowing Elfego to buy Billy and the deputy lunch at the Alvarado Hotel Harvey House restaurant in Albuquerque. Both could have happened, but you will notice that these two tales are not consistent with the biographical profile above.
Other writers, as seen below, have written books about Billy's connections with other people, including possible romantic pairings. Billy's tombstone was stolen in 1950, and not recovered until 1976, so the gravesite is now secured by a cage of heavy steel bars. In 2003, three Texas sheriffs got the support of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in attempting to exhume the remains of both Billy and his mother, for the purpose of using DNA testing to disprove theories that Billy survived his killing and lived to be an old man – just as similar tales were constructed about Jesse James and Butch Cassidy. The people of Lincoln and Silver City successfully blocked the exhumations.

Whatever the historical truth about Billy The Kid, the Legend of Billy The Kid is the essential American story: the lone individual, a man with a perhaps disreputable past, who takes on the self-righteous gangs of corrupt conspirators who forever seek to conquer honest folk by the use of political stealth, surface piety, blatant thievery, and overt force, including murder."
http://www.genordell.com/stores/western/billy.htm

"The Death Of Billy The Kid, 1881
Billy The Kid was born in the slums of New York City in 1859. After the death of his father, he traveled west with his mother ending up in Silver City, New Mexico Territory in 1873. Little of substance is known about Billy's life during this period, and myth has replaced fact to shroud the early years of Billy the Kid in folklore. What is known for sure is that he arrived in Lincoln County, New Mexico in 1877 using the name William Bonney. His life would last only four more years, but in that short period he became embroiled in the events that made him a legend.

Lincoln County was in a state of near-anarchy in 1877. The native Apache had recently been subdued and the local cattlemen divided themselves into two camps in a fight for local power. Unfortunately for Billy the Kid, he allied himself with the losing side in this "Lincoln County War." Billy worked as a ranch hand for John Tunstall a leader of one faction seeking control of the county. Tunstall befriended the Kid acting in many ways as a surrogate father. Tunstall's ambush and murder in 1878 by a sheriff's posse set the Kid off on a path of revenge. His first victims were the sheriff and his deputy, killed from ambush on the streets of Lincoln. On the run for two years, the Kid was eventually captured, tried, convicted and returned to Lincoln to hang for the murders. However, Lincoln's makeshift jail was no match for Billy the Kid.

On the evening of April 28, 1881 as he was climbing the steps returning him to his cell, the Kid made a mad dash, grabbed a six-shooter and shot his guard. Hearing the shots, a second guard ran from across the street only to be gunned down by the Kid standing on the balcony above him. Mounting a horse, William Bonney galloped out of town and into history.

Death of a Legend
Pat Garrett was elected Sheriff of Lincoln County in 1880 on a reform ticket with the expectation that he would reinstate justice in the area. One of his first acts was to capture Billy the Kid, sending him to trial for the murder of the Lincoln sheriff and his deputy. Garrett was away from Lincoln on county business when the Kid made his escape. Rather than chase after the fugitive, Garrett kept to his ranch mending fences and attending to his cattle. In July, the Sheriff received word that the Kid was hiding out at the abandoned Fort Sumner about 140 miles west of Lincoln. Rounding up two of his deputies, John Poe and Thomas McKinney, Garrett set off in pursuit of the Kid.

On the night of July 14, the Sheriff and his two deputies approached the dusty old Fort now converted to living quarters. The residents were sympathetic to the Kid and the lawmen could extract little information. Garrett decided to seek out an old friend, Peter Maxwell, who might tell him the Kid's whereabouts. As chance would have it, the Kid stumbled right into the Sheriff's hands. Garrett published his account of the incident a year after it happened:

"I then concluded to go and have a talk with Peter Maxwell, Esq., in whom I felt sure I could rely. We had ridden to within a short distance of Maxwell's grounds when we found a man in camp and stopped. To Poe's great surprise, he recognized in the camper an old friend and former

Pat Garettpartner, in Texas, named Jacobs. We unsaddled here, got some coffee, and, on foot, entered an orchard which runs from this point down to a row of old buildings, some of them occupied by Mexicans, not more than sixty yards from Maxwell's house. We approached these houses cautiously, and when within earshot, heard the sound of voices conversing in Spanish. We concealed ourselves quickly and listened; but the distance was too great to hear words, or even distinguish voices. Soon a man arose from the ground, in full view, but too far away to recognize. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, a dark vest and pants, and was in his shirtsleeves. With a few words, which fell like a murmur on our ears, he went to the fence, jumped it, and walked down towards Maxwell's house.

Little as we then suspected it, this man was the Kid. We learned, subsequently, that, when he left his companions that night, he went to the house of a Mexican friend, pulled off his hat and boots, threw himself on a bed, and commenced reading a newspaper. He soon, however, hailed his friend, who was sleeping in the room, told him to get up and make some coffee, adding: 'Give me a butcher knife and I will go over to Pete's and get some beef; I'm hungry.' The Mexican arose, handed him the knife, and the Kid, hatless and in his stocking-feet, started to Maxwell's, which was but a few steps distant.

When the Kid, by me unrecognized, left the orchard, I motioned to my companions, and we cautiously retreated a short distance, and, to avoid the persons whom we had heard at the houses, took another route, approaching Maxwell's house from the opposite direction. When we reached the porch in front of the building, I left Poe and McKinney at the end of the porch, about twenty feet from the door of Pete's room, and went in. It was near midnight and Pete was in bed. I walked to the head of the bed and sat down on it, beside him, near the pillow. I asked him as to the whereabouts of the Kid. He said that the Kid had certainly been about, but he did not know whether he had left or not. At that moment a man sprang quickly into the door, looking back, and called twice in Spanish, 'Who comes there?' No one replied and he came on in. He was bareheaded. From his step I could perceive he was either barefooted or in his stocking-feet, and held a revolver in his right hand and a butcher knife in his left.


The death of Billy the Kid
From a contemporary illustrationHe came directly towards me. Before he reached the bed, I whispered: 'Who is it, Pete?' but received no reply for a moment. It struck me that it might be Pete's brother-in-law, Manuel Abreu, who had seen Poe and McKinney, and wanted to know their business. The intruder came close to me, leaned both hands on the bed, his right hand almost touching my knee, and asked, in a low tone: -'Who are they Pete?' -at the same instant Maxwell whispered to me. 'That's him!' Simultaneously the Kid must have seen, or felt, the presence of a third person at the head of the bed. He raised quickly his pistol, a self-cocker, within a foot of my breast. Retreating rapidly across the room he cried: 'Quien es? Quien es?' 'Who's that? Who's that?') All this occurred in a moment. Quickly as possible I drew my revolver and fired, threw my body aside, and fired again. The second shot was useless; the Kid fell dead. He never spoke. A struggle or two, a little strangling sound as he gasped for breath, and the Kid was with his many victims."

References:
Garrett, Pat, The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid (1882, republished 1954); Utley, Robert, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (1989)."
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Thanks for the reminder of the History of the Wild West...
Thanks for the share...

Wild West is always a great story. Wonder if we can ever decide between fact or fiction TSgt Joe C.