On the morning of February 29, 1908, Pat Garrett rose early and dressed with unusual care, donning a formal Prince Albert frock coat. He kissed his wife, Apollonia, and their younger children goodbye, then climbed into a two-horse buggy with a business associate named Carl Adamson. They were headed to Las Cruces to settle a dispute over goats. Garrett was fifty-seven years old, a man whose name was already legend.
He had killed Billy the Kid, served as sheriff of Lincoln County, and later as sheriff of Doña Ana County. But the years had not been kind. He was deeply in debt, had lost his customs collector position under President Theodore Roosevelt, and had spent his final years lurching from one failed venture to another. By 1908, he was bitter, erratic, and frequently involved in fistfights.
The dispute that morning involved a young cowboy named Wayne Brazel. Garrett had allowed Brazel to lease land that Garrett considered his own, even though it was technically owned by his son. In exchange for a five-year lease, Brazel had agreed to give Garrett ten heifer calves and a colt. Instead, Brazel—financed by Garrett’s neighbor W.
W. Cox—stocked the land with over twelve hundred goats, which would ruin the pasture for cattle. To make matters worse, Brazel’s partner was Archie Prentiss “Print” Rhodes, a man who had once threatened to kill Garrett and who had recently been acquitted, with the help of attorney Albert B. Fall, of supplying horses for a bank robbery Garrett had investigated.
Garrett’s attempts to void the lease had failed. A hearing went nowhere, despite both sides arriving armed. Garrett wrote to a friend, desperate for fifty dollars, saying he was “in a hell of a fix. ” Then a man from El Paso offered to buy Garrett’s ranch—a man named Jim Miller, known across the West as “Deacon Jim,” a professional assassin who had killed dozens of men for money.
Miller had a thousand head of cattle ready to move, but only if the goats were cleared off the land first. Adamson, who had been acting as an intermediary, suggested a meeting in Las Cruces between Garrett and Brazel. Garrett agreed. That morning, after watering the horses about a half mile west of the ranch, Garrett asked a teenage employee if he had seen Brazel.
The boy pointed to a plume of dust in the distance—Brazel was just ahead. What happened next is disputed. According to Adamson, they caught up with Brazel on the road. Tempers flared over the goats.
Garrett threatened to remove Brazel from the land. Adamson claimed he stepped away to relieve himself, heard a single gunshot, then another, and turned to see Garrett fall, shot twice. Brazel rode into Las Cruces shortly afterward and turned himself in, telling deputies he had killed Pat Garrett. He claimed self-defense, saying Garrett had reached for his shotgun.
But the physical evidence told a different story. Garrett’s pants were undone, and a glove was missing from his left hand, suggesting he had been urinating when he was shot. The first bullet had entered the back of his skull and exited above his right eye—a shot from behind. The second bullet struck him in the stomach, likely after he had fallen.
His shotgun was found neatly placed beside the body, not dropped in a struggle. Empty rifle casings were found thirty or forty feet away, though no rifle was ever tied to them. Garrett lay in state in Las Cruces for six days. Thousands paid their respects.
A coffin had to be special-ordered because none was long enough. He was buried on March 6, 1908, with no religious ceremony, as he had requested. His friend Tom Powers, a saloon owner and gambler, read a eulogy written by the famous agnostic Robert G. Ingersoll.
Brazel was charged with murder. His bail was posted by several leading citizens of Las Cruces, including W. W. Cox.
The trial came more than a year later, in May 1909. It lasted one day. Brazel’s defense attorney was Albert B. Fall.
The prosecution called no eyewitnesses—Adamson never testified. The doctor who performed the autopsy was cross-examined, but the defense never asked about the angles of the bullet wounds. The rifle casings were not mentioned. The jury deliberated for fifteen minutes and returned a verdict of not guilty, accepting the claim of self-defense.
A barbecue was later held at the Cox ranch in celebration, with Brazel as the guest of honor. Many did not believe Brazel had acted alone. Rumors swirled that Jim Miller was the true trigger man, hired by W. W.
Cox, who feared Garrett and owed him no goodwill after the shooting at the Cox ranch years earlier. Others pointed to Print Rhodes, who had been seen near the murder site and who had openly threatened Garrett. Some claimed Garrett had been getting too close to solving the disappearance of Albert Jennings Fountain, a case that had implicated Oliver Lee, another Cox associate. Decades later, accounts from the son of Oliver Lee and others alleged that Rhodes had shot Garrett in the back of the head with a rifle, and that Brazel had fired a pistol into his body to make it look like self-defense.
But no hard evidence ever confirmed these claims. Jim Miller was hanged by vigilantes in Oklahoma in 1909 for another murder. He made no confession regarding Garrett. Carl Adamson, the only witness, later served time in prison for smuggling Chinese immigrants across the border—a venture that involved several of the same men connected to the case.
Wayne Brazel vanished in 1914, never to be seen again. His fate remains unknown. Historian Leon Metz, who wrote the definitive biography of Garrett, concluded that Brazel acted alone, likely out of genuine fear of a desperate and volatile man. But the evidence that Garrett was shot from behind while urinating strongly undercuts the self-defense claim.
The truth of Pat Garrett’s death remains unresolved. What is certain is that a legendary lawman, flawed and debt-ridden, died on a dusty road over a dispute about goats, and that the man who admitted to the killing walked free in a single day. No one was ever held accountable.