Billy the Kid Totally Explained

Everything about William Bonney totally explained

Henry McCarty (November 23, 1859 – July 14, 1881), better known as Billy the Kid, but also known by the aliases Henry Antrim and William H. Bonney, was a famous 19th century American frontier outlaw and gunman who was a participant in the Lincoln County War. According to legend he killed 21 men, one for each year of his life, but more likely he participated in the killing of less than half that number.
McCarty (or Bonney, the name he used at the height of his notoriety) was 5'8"-5'9" (173-175 cm) with blue eyes, smooth cheeks, and prominent front teeth. He was said to be friendly and personable at times, but he could also be short-tempered and determined. This made him a very dangerous outlaw, when combined with his shooting skills and cunning. He was also famous for (apparently) always wearing a sugarloaf sombrero hat with a wide green decorative band. He was little known in his own lifetime but was catapulted into legend in the year after his death when his killer, Sheriff Patrick Garrett, published a wildly sensationalistic biography of him called The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid. Beginning with Garrett's account, Billy the Kid grew into a symbolic figure of the American Old West.

Biography

Early life

Little is known about Bonney's background, but he's thought to have been born on Allen Street on the lower east side of Manhattan Island, New York. His parents were of Irish Catholic descent, but their names, and thus Bonney's surname, are not known for certain. Variations for his parents' names include Catherine McCarty or Katherine McCarty Bonney for his mother and William Bonney or Patrick Henry McCarty for his father (who probably died around the end of the American Civil War). Some genealogists say he was born William Henry Bonney and was son of William Harrison Bonney and wife Katherine Boujean, paternal grandson of Levi Bonney and wife Rhoda Pratt and great-grandson of Obadiah Pratt (Saybrook, Connecticut, September 14, 1742 – Canaan, New York, March 2, 1797) and wife Jemima Tolls (New Haven, Connecticut, August 11, 1754 – Washington, New York, November 24, 1812) (who in turn were the grandparents of Mormon leader Parley P. Pratt, making him and Bonney first cousins once removed.). In 1868, his mother met William Antrim, and after several years of moving around the country with Henry and his half-brother Joseph, the couple married and settled in Silver City, New Mexico, in 1873. Antrim found sporadic work as a bartender and carpenter but soon became more interested in prospecting and gambling for fortune than in his wife and stepsons. Despite this, young McCarty sometimes referred to himself by the surname "Antrim."
   Faced with an indigent husband, McCarty's mother took in boarders in order to provide for her sons. She was afflicted with tuberculosis, even though she was seen by her boarders and neighbors as "a jolly Irish lady, full of life and mischief." The following year, on September 16, 1874, she died, and was buried in the Memory Lane Cemetery in Silver City. At age 14, McCarty was taken in by a neighboring family who operated a hotel where he worked to pay for his keep. The manager was impressed by the youth, boasting that he was the only young man who ever worked for him that didn't steal anything. His school teachers said that the young orphan was "no more of a problem than any other boy, always quite willing to help with chores around the schoolhouse."
   On September 24, 1875, McCarty was arrested for hiding a bundle of stolen clothes for a man playing a prank on a Chinese laundryman. Two days after McCarty was thrown in jail, the teen escaped by worming his way up the jailhouse chimney. From that point on, McCarty was more or less a fugitive. He eventually found work as an itinerant ranch hand and shepherd in southeastern Arizona. In 1877, he became a civilian teamster at Fort Grant Army Post in Arizona with the duty of hauling logs from a timber camp to a sawmill. The civilian blacksmith at the camp, Frank "Windy" Cahill, took pleasure in bullying young McCarty. On August 17, Cahill attacked McCarty after a verbal exchange and threw him to the ground. McCarty retaliated by drawing his gun and shooting Cahill, who died the next day. Once again McCarty was in custody, this time in the Camp's guardhouse awaiting the arrival of the local marshal. Before the marshal could arrive, however, McCarty escaped. It has sometimes been reported that the encounter with Frank Cahill took place in a saloon.
   Again on the run, McCarty, who had begun to refer to himself as "Willam H. Bonney", next turned up in the house of Heiskell Jones in Pecos Valley, New Mexico. Apaches had stolen McCarty's horse, which forced him to walk many miles to the nearest settlement, which was the Jones's home. She nursed the young man, who was near death, back to health. The Jones family developed a strong attachment to McCarty and gave him one of their horses.

Lincoln County War

In the autumn of 1877, Bonney (McCarty) moved to Lincoln County, New Mexico, and was hired as a cattle guard by John Tunstall, an English cattle rancher, banker and merchant, and his partner, Alexander McSween, a prominent lawyer. A conflict, known later as the Lincoln County War, had begun between the established town merchants and the ranchers. Events turned bloody on February 18, 1878, when Tunstall, unarmed, was caught on an open range while herding cattle and murdered. Tunstall's murder enraged Bonney and the other ranch hands.
They formed their own group called the Regulators, led by ranch hand Richard "Dick" Brewer, and proceeded to hunt down two of the members of the posse that had killed Tunstall. They captured Bill Morton and Frank Baker on March 6 and killed them on March 9 near Agua Negra. While returning to Lincoln they also killed one of their own members, a man named McCloskey, whom they suspected of being a traitor.
On April 1, Regulators Jim French, Frank McNab, John Middleton, Fred Waite, Henry Brown and Bonney ambushed Sheriff William J. Brady and his deputy, George W. Hindman killing them both in the high street of Lincoln itself. Bonney was wounded while trying to retrieve a rifle belonging to him, which Brady had taken in an earlier arrest. ventured into the house under white flag in an attempt to negotiate the group's surrender, with Greathouse being sent out as a hostage for the posse. At some point in the night it became apparent to Carlysle that the outlaws were stalling, when suddenly a shot was accidentally fired from outside. Carlysle, assuming the posse members had shot Greathouse, decided to run for his life, crashing through a window into the snow outside. As he did so, the posse, mistaking Carlysle for one of the gang, fired and killed him. Realizing what they'd done and now demoralized, the posse scattered, allowing Bonney and his gang to slip away. Bonney later wrote to Governor Wallace claiming innocence in the killing of Carlysle and of involvement in cattle rustling in general.

Pat Garrett

During this time, the Kid also developed a friendship with an ambitious local bartender and former buffalo hunter named Pat Garrett. Running on a pledge to rid the area of rustlers, Garrett was elected as sheriff of Lincoln County in November 1880, and in early December he put together a posse and set out to arrest Bonney, now known almost exclusively as Billy the Kid, and carrying a $500 bounty on his head.
The posse led by Garrett fared much better, and his men closed in quickly. On December 19, Bonney barely escaped the posse's midnight ambush in Fort Sumner, during which one of the gang, Tom O'Folliard, was shot and killed. On December 23, he was tracked to an abandoned stone building located in a remote location called Stinking Springs. While Bonney and his gang were asleep inside, Garrett's posse surrounded the building and waited for sunrise. The next morning, a cattle rustler named Charlie Bowdre stepped outside to feed his horse. Mistaken for Bonney, he was killed by the posse. Soon afterward somebody from within the building reached for the horse's halter rope, but Garrett shot and killed the horse, the body of which then blocked the only exit. As the lawmen began to cook breakfast over an open fire, Garrett and Bonney engaged in a friendly exchange, with Garrett inviting Bonney outside to eat, and Bonney inviting Garrett to "go to hell." Realizing that they'd no hope of escape, the besieged and hungry outlaws finally surrendered later that day and were allowed to join in the meal.

Escape from Lincoln

Bonney was jailed in the town of Mesilla while waiting for his April 1881 trial and spent his time giving newspaper interviews and also peppering Governor Wallace with letters seeking clemency. Wallace, however, refused to intervene. Bonney's trial took one day and resulted in his conviction for the murder of Sheriff Brady: the only conviction ever secured against any of the combatants in the Lincoln County Cattle War. On April 13, he was sentenced by Judge Warren Bristol to hang. The execution was scheduled for May 13, and he was sent to Lincoln to await this date, held under guard by two of Garrett's deputies, James Bell and Robert Ollinger, on the top floor of the town's courthouse. On April 28, while Garrett was out of town, Bonney stunned the territory by killing both of his guards and escaping.
The details of the escape are unclear. Some historians believe that a friend or Regulator sympathizer left a pistol in a nearby privy that Bonney was allowed to use, under escort, each day. Bonney then retrieved this gun and after Bell had led him back to the courthouse, turned it on his guard as the two of them reached the top of a flight of stairs inside. Another theory holds that Bonney slipped his manacles at the top of the stairs, struck Bell over the head with them and then grabbed Bell's own gun and shot him. ten-gauge double barrel shotgun and waited at the upstairs window for Ollinger, who had been across the street with some other prisoners, to come to Bell's aid. As Ollinger came running into view, Bonney leveled the shotgun at him, called out "Hello Bob!" and shot him dead. The townsfolk supposedly gave him an hour that he used to remove his leg iron. The hour was granted in thanks for his work as part of "The Regulators." After cutting his leg irons with an axe, the young outlaw borrowed (or stole) a horse and rode leisurely out of town, reportedly singing. The horse was returned two days later.

Death

Responding to rumors that Bonney was still lurking in the vicinity of Fort Sumner almost three months after his escape, Sheriff Garrett and two deputies set out on July 14, 1881, to question one of the town's residents, a friend of Bonney's named Pedro Maxwell (son of land baron Lucien Maxwell). Near midnight, as Garrett and Maxwell sat talking in Maxwell's darkened bedroom, Bonney unexpectedly entered the room. There are at least two versions of what happened next.
   One version says that as the Kid entered, he couldn't recognize Garrett in the poor light. Bonney drew his pistol and backed away, asking "¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?" (Spanish for "Who is it? Who is it?"). Recognizing Bonney's voice, Garrett drew his own pistol and fired twice, the first bullet hitting Bonney just above his heart, killing him. In a second version, Bonney entered carrying a knife, evidently headed to a kitchen area. He noticed someone in the darkness, and uttered the words "¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?" at which point he was shot and killed in ambush style.
   Although the popularity of the first story persists, and portrays Garrett in a better light, many historians contend that the second version is probably the accurate one. A markedly different theory, in which Garrett and his posse set a trap for Bonney, has also been suggested, most recently being investigated in the Discovery Channel documentary "Billy the Kid: Unmasked." The theory contends that Garrett went to the bedroom of Pedro Maxwell's sister, Paulita, and tied up and gagged her in her bed. Paulita was an acquaintance of Billy the Kid, and the two had possibly considered getting married. When Bonney arrived, Garrett was waiting behind Paulita's bed and shot the Kid.
   Henry McCarty, alias Henry Antrim, alias William H. Bonney, alias Billy the Kid, was buried the next day in Fort Sumner's old military cemetery, between his fallen companions Tom O'Folliard and Charlie Bowdre. A single tombstone was later erected over the graves, giving the three outlaws' names and with the word "Pals" also carved into it. The tombstone has been stolen and recovered three times since being placed in the 1940s, and the entire gravesite is now enclosed by a steel cage.(External Link

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Notoriety, fact vs reputation

As with many men of the old west dubbed gunfighters, Billy the Kid's reputation exaggerated the actual facts of gunfights in which he was involved. Despite being credited with the killing of 21 men in his lifetime, he's believed to have participated in the killing of only nine men. Five of them died during shootouts in which several of the "Regulators" took part (including the revenge killing of Sheriff Brady, who had murdered Billy's employer, Englishman John Tunstall); of the other four, two were in self-defense gunfights and the other two were the killings of Deputies Bell and Olinger during the Kid's jail escape. Still, Billy the Kid, with the Winchester rifle given him by John Tunstall (and taken from him by Sheriff Brady), was the best shot to emerge from the Lincoln County War. After killing Brady, Billy walked coolly over to the body and recovered his rifle.

Left-handed or right-handed?

Billy was right-handed. In the 20th century, it was widely assumed that Billy the Kid was left-handed. This belief came from the fact that the only known photograph of Bonney, an undated ferrotype, shows him with a Model 1873 Winchester rifle in his right hand and a gun belt with a holster on his left side, where a left-handed person would typically wear a pistol. The belief became so entrenched that in 1958, a biographical film was made about Billy the Kid called The Left Handed Gun starring Paul Newman. Late in the 20th century, it was discovered that the familiar ferrotype was actually a reverse image. This version shows his Model 1873 Winchester with the loading port on the left side. All Model 1873s had the loading port on the right side, proving the image was reversed, and that he was, in fact, wearing his pistol on his right hip. Even though the image has been proven to be reversed, the idea of a left-handed Billy the Kid continues to widely circulate. Perhaps because many people heard both of these arguments and confused them, many hold the belief that Billy the Kid was ambidextrous. Many Billy the Kid sites describe him as such, and the fact is still widely disputed.(External Link

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Imposters

Legend grew over time that Billy the Kid had somehow cheated death. At least two men pretended to be Bonny, and were successful in convincing at least a few people.

Brushy Bill

In 1950, a paralegal named William Morrison located a man in West Texas named Ollie P. Roberts, nicknamed Brushy Bill, who claimed to be the actual Billy the Kid, and that he indeed hadn't been shot and killed by Pat Garrett in 1881. Almost all historians reject the Brushy Bill claim. Among other problems, the real Billy the Kid was believed to have spoken Spanish fluently and could read and write English (the Kid wrote several letters to New Mexico Governor Lew Wallace, seeking a pardon), whereas Brushy Bill apparently couldn't speak Spanish at all and was, in fact, illiterate. However, Morrison has claimed that Brushy Bill did speak fluent Spanish and was very literate. Despite this and discrepancies in birth dates and physical appearance, the town of Hico, Texas (Brushy Bill's residence) has capitalized on the Kid's infamy by opening the Billy The Kid Museum.

John Miller

Another claimant to the title of Billy the Kid was John Miller, whose family claimed him posthumously to be Billy the Kid in 1938. Miller was buried at the state-owned Pioneers' Home Cemetery in Prescott, Arizona. Tom Sullivan, former sheriff of Lincoln County, and Steve Sederwall, former mayor of Capitan, disinterred the bones of John Miller in May 2005. DNA samples from the remains were sent to a lab in Dallas, Texas, to be compared against traces of blood taken from a bench that was believed to be the one Bonney's body was placed on after he was shot to death. The pair had been searching for Bonney's physical remains since 2003, beginning in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and eventually ending up in Arizona. To date, no results of the DNA tests have been made public, although Sederwall has obliquely stated that "What I know isn't what's written in history. What I know about this case differs from history." (External Link

) The facts, in any case, are not well-known. According to an affidavit offered by Homer Overton on December 27, 2003, Pat Garrett's widow told him before her death that her husband had never shot Billy the Kid, but that he and the kid had conspired to shoot a drunk in the face who had hair and a build similar to Billy's. It was this body that Pat Garrett passed off as Billy the Kid. Some discrepancy exists here, however, as Overton remembered the year as 1940, when Apollonia Garrett died in 1936. Still, a number of witnesses to the Federal Writers' oral history project in the 1930s doubted that Garrett had actually shot "the Kid". Moreover, Elizabeth Garrett, the only surviving daughter of Pat Garrett and his wife Apollonia Garrett, told interviewer Paul Cain in 1983 that her father never shot Billy the Kid.

Popular culture

Billy the Kid has been the subject or inspiration for many popular works, including:

Film

Billy the Kid, 1930 film directed by King Vidor, starring Johnny Mack Brown as Billy and Wallace Beery as Pat Garrett
Billy the Kid Returns, 1938: Roy Rogers plays a dual role, Billy the Kid and his dead-ringer lookalike who shows up after the Kid has been shot by Pat Garrett.
Billy the Kid, 1941 remake of the 1930 film, starring Robert Taylor and Brian Donlevy
The Outlaw, Howard Hughes' 1943 motion picture
The Kid from Texas (1950, Universal International) film starring Audie Murphy--location of title character's place of origin changed to appeal to Texans and capitalize on Murphy association with that state
The Left Handed Gun, Arthur Penn's 1958 motion picture starring Paul Newman
The Tall Man, 1960 TV series featuring Barry Sullivan as Pat Garrett, the "Tall Man", and Clu Gulager as Billy.
Billy the Kid vs Dracula, William Beaudine's 1966 motion picture with John Carradine
Chisum, 1970 movie starring John Wayne as John Chisum, dealing with Billy the Kid's involvement in the Lincoln County War, portrayed by Geoffrey Deuel
Su Precio...Unos Dólares(External Link), a 1970 Mexican film with the characters William Bonney and 'Calamity Jane' Canary.
Dirty Little Billy(External Link), Stan Dragoti's 1972 film starring Michael J. Pollard.
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Sam Peckinpah's 1973 motion picture with Kris Kristofferson as Billy, James Coburn as Pat Garrett and with a soundtrack by Bob Dylan
Gore Vidals Billy the Kid (External Link), Gore Vidal's 1989 film starring Val Kilmer as Billy and Duncan Regehr as Pat Garrett
Young Guns, Christopher Cain's 1988 motion picture starring Emilio Estevez as Billy and Patrick Wayne, son of John Wayne as Pat Garrett
Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure, 1989 film starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, with Dan Shor as Billy the Kid
Young Guns II, Geoff Murphy's 1990 motion picture starring Emilio Estevez as Billy and William Petersen as Pat Garrett
Requiem for Billy the Kid, Anne Feinsilber's 2006 motion picture starring Kris Kristofferson
I'm Not There, (2007) uses Billy the Kid as a persona for Bob Dylan

Games

Billy the Kid Returns, a PC game based on the life of Billy the Kid published by Alive Software in 1993

The Legend of Billy the Kid, a game published by Ocean Software in 1991 for PC and Amiga.

Music

Bob Dylan's album Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, soundtrack of the 1973 film by Sam Peckinpah

Jon Bon Jovi's album "Blaze of Glory", used as part of the soundtrack for Young Guns II

Running Wild's song, "Billy the Kid"

Charlie Daniels's song, "Billy the Kid"

Billy Dean's song, "Billy the Kid"

Diablo Royale's song, "Dead at 21"

"Me and Billy The Kid", written and recorded by Joe Ely. Also recorded by Marty Stuart and Pat Green.

Ricky Fitzpatrick's song, "Ballad of Billy the Kid", (External Link

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Jerry Granelli's album from 2005 "Sand Hills Reunion" featuring words and music about Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. (External Link

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Billy Joel's song, "The Ballad of Billy the Kid"

Chris LeDoux's song, "Billy the Kid"

Will Oldham has related his moniker "Bonnie Prince Billy" to Billy the Kid's alias "William Bonney"

Tom Pacheco's song "Nobody ever killed Billy the Kid" on his disc "Woodstock Winter"

Tom Petty's song, "Billy the Kid"

Marty Robbins' song "Billy the Kid" from the album Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs Volume 3

German Heavy Metal veterans Running Wild's song, "Billy the Kid"

Western performer Dave Stamey's "The Skies of Lincoln County", which features the deceased Bonney as narrator, answering historical distortions put forth by Pat Garrett

Two Gallants' song "Las Cruces Jail"

Rapper Fabolous has the alter-ego William H. Bonney for his love of being a babyface outlaw who has his way with women

Dan Jefferies's song titled "I want to shag Billy the Kid!"

Why?

references Billy the Kid in "Song of the Sad Assassin"

Stage

Aaron Copland's 1938 ballet, Billy the Kid

Joseph Santley's 1906 Broadway play co-written by Santley, in which he also starred

Television and radio

Purgatory, a 1999 made-for-TV movie on TNT, played by Donnie Wahlberg

Billy the Kid, a New Mexico PBS documentary

The first episode of the radio program Gunsmoke, titled Billy the Kid, in which Billy is a 12 year old boy who kills a rancher with a knife and escapes at the end of the episode

The 2003 Discovery Channel Quest, "Billy the Kid: Unmasked" investigated the life and death of Billy the Kid through forensic science.

The Histeria! episode "The Wild West" featured Billy the Kid as the guest host, portraying him as an actual kid pretending to host a kids' show (ala Howdy Doody) while on the run from the law.

TV series The Tall Men ran from 1960 to 1962, starring Clu Gulager as Billy and Barry Sullivan as Pat Garrett

TV series The Simpsons featured an episode (Treehouse of Horror XIII) where William H. Bonney (Billy the Kid) comes back to life and takes control of Springfield.

TV series The Time Tunnel eponymous episode Billy the Kid: time travellers encounter Billy, portrayed by Robert Walker, Jr..

TV series Voyagers! episode "Bully and Billy": time travellers encounter William H. Bonney (Billy the Kid).

TV series Maverick featured an episode where Bret (James Garner) meets several infamous outlaws, including Billy the Kid.

Comics

Belgian comic book series Lucky Luke has Billy the Kid as an antagonist in several of its issues, portraying him as a juvenile (or juvenile-looking) outlaw of small stature and childish behaviour. Billy frequently cries, forces the saloon to serve milk and robs grocery stores for lollipops.Further Information

Get more info on 'William Bonney'.

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