The summer of 1881 marked the end of one of the most legendary lives in the history of the American West. Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Garrett had been hunting the outlaw ever since the Kid broke out of jail in Lincoln seventy-eight days prior. At around midnight, Garrett waited inside the dark bedroom of Pete Maxwell when the Kid stepped in.
The young outlaw, noticing a large shape looming in the shadows, asked, “Who is it? ” Garrett answered with two shots from his . 44-40 Colt revolver. The Kid’s mortal body was buried the next day, but his legend would outlive him for generations.
Despite the fame, the irrefutable fact about Billy the Kid is that historians know very little about him. No one can say with certainty where or when he was born, who his father was, or even what he truly looked like. The famous tintype portrait of the Kid has endured, but it is a damaged, mirror-imaged photograph that has been retouched over the years, misleading viewers. Everything about the young man is open to question, including his date of birth.
Much of his life remains completely undocumented. His real name was Henry McCarty. He had one brother, Joseph, and his mother Catherine was likely born in Ireland. Catherine married William Antrim, a Civil War veteran who became the boys’ stepfather after the family moved from Indianapolis to Wichita, Kansas, and later to Silver City, New Mexico.
Catherine died of tuberculosis when Henry was around fourteen. After her death, William Antrim proved unwilling to raise the boys, and young Henry was soon left to roam the streets. Henry quickly developed a reputation for mischief. He stole butter, gambled in saloons, and ran with an older thief named George Schaefer, known as Sombrero Jack.
When Schaefer stole clothing belonging to white citizens, Henry agreed to dispose of it. The clothing was discovered in Henry’s room, and Sheriff Harvey Whitehill threw him in jail. Within half an hour, the boy escaped by shimmying up the fireplace chimney. He fled to Arizona, where he worked odd jobs, stole horses, and fell in with criminals.
In August 1877, he shot and killed a blacksmith named Francis “Windy” Cahill during a fight in a Camp Grant cantina. The shooting was ruled criminal and unjustifiable, but Henry fled back to New Mexico. He was no older than seventeen. By late 1877, the teenager was riding with the outlaw gang of Jesse Evans.
Around this time, he began calling himself William H. Bonney. His path soon led him into the turmoil of Lincoln County, where a complex conflict was brewing between two rival commercial factions. On one side was the mercantile monopoly of Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan, backed by the powerful Santa Fe Ring.
On the other were lawyer Alexander McSween and the ambitious young English rancher John Tunstall, who openly intended to break the monopoly. After McSween was charged with embezzling funds from the estate of Emil Fritz, Sheriff William Brady, an ally of Dolan, seized property belonging to both McSween and Tunstall. Tunstall, just twenty-four years old, hired armed men to protect his interests. Billy was among them.
On February 18, 1878, a posse led by Buck Morton and including Jesse Evans caught up with Tunstall on the road. The official story claimed Tunstall fired first and was killed while resisting arrest, but most believed he was lured in and murdered. Tunstall was shot through the chest and finished off with a pistol. Billy and the other hands heard the shots from a distance but witnessed nothing.
His death sparked the Regulators, a group of armed men sworn to avenge Tunstall. They were led by Tunstall’s foreman Dick Brewer, with Billy riding among them. They tracked down Morton and Frank Baker, who were killed alongside William McCloskey under disputed circumstances. Days later, the Regulators ambushed and killed Sheriff Brady in Lincoln.
Deputy George Hindman also fell in the gunfire. The next significant confrontation occurred at Blazers Mill, where a crippled buffalo hunter named Buckshot Roberts refused to surrender. In the ensuing fight, Roberts was shot in the belly but fought on, firing a Winchester with incredible speed and killing Dick Brewer with a shot through the eye. Roberts died the following day.
Public sympathy began to shift against the Regulators, who were increasingly viewed as just another band of killers. The Regulators found their fortunes further complicated when federal authorities and Governor Lew Wallace intervened. The governor offered a pardon to all participants in the Lincoln County War except those under indictment, hoping to restore order. Billy continued his outlaw career, stealing horses and running with a growing circle of criminals.
He was finally captured by Sheriff Pat Garrett in December 1880 at Stinking Springs. Charlie Bowdre was shot dead in the opening exchange, and Tom O’Folliard had already been killed during an earlier chase. Billy and his companions surrendered, and Garrett took them to Santa Fe. Billy was convicted of Sheriff Brady’s murder and sentenced to hang.
On April 28, 1881, he was being held in Lincoln while Garrett was out of town. Deputy James Bell escorted him to an outhouse and back, but within moments, Bell lay dead, shot by the Kid. Billy retrieved Bob Olinger’s shotgun and killed the deputy from the window. After severing his leg shackles with a pickaxe, he took a horse and rode out of town, cementing his reputation as a desperate and dangerous man.
Governor Wallace placed another five hundred dollar bounty on his head. In July 1881, Garrett received word that the Kid was back at Fort Sumner. Garrett arrived with two deputies and waited outside Pete Maxwell’s home. Billy entered the dark bedroom barefoot and unarmed except for a pistol and butcher knife.
Maxwell recognized his voice, and in the confusion of the dark, the Kid raised his pistol. Garrett fired twice and killed him. A coroner’s jury ruled the killing a justifiable homicide, and witnesses throughout Fort Sumner confirmed that the body was indeed that of the notorious outlaw. The territory of New Mexico awarded Garrett the bounty.
Billy the Kid was buried at Fort Sumner next to his friends Tom O’Folliard and Charlie Bowdre. He was no more than twenty-one years old. Almost every aspect of his life remains shrouded in mystery, but the documented evidence is overwhelming that he died that night at the hands of Pat Garrett.
In the decades that followed, dime novels, newspaper articles, movies, and books transformed him into the most famous figure of the Old West, a young outlaw whose legend has proven far more enduring than the uncertain facts of his brief life.