America's Favorite Outlaw: Billy the Kid

Born Henry McCarty in New York City, Billy the Kid committed his first act of murder before he turned 20. Join Candace and Katie as they explore the fact -- and fiction -- surrounding the legendary outlaw in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Kendis Keener, joined by fellow editor Kaye Lambert
Candie Katie. When you think of the American wild West

(00:21):
and all the outlaws of fame and legend and laure
who comes to mind, well, butch Cassidy for one, and
Billy the Kid were too. Billy the Kid actually had
a whole lot of names, or a lot of aliases,
I should say. Who was born Henry McCarty, but he
also went by Henry Antrim, William H. Bonnie, And of

(00:44):
course the kid as he was I was somewhat affectionately known,
and he's sort of a folkish figure. And there's not
a whole lot of of records that exist to show
precise details of his life as then when he was born.
We know when he died. But because his birthdate is
a little bit suspect, people suspect that perhaps some people

(01:06):
said he was born in eighteen fifty nine and died
in eighteen eighty one, which would have made him twenty
one years old, So it wouldn't have made the sheriff
who killed him look so bad for killing a minor,
and we don't know very much about his early life.
We do know that he was born in New York
City and that his mother died of tuberculosis when he
was fairly young, and some historians and chroniclers of Billy

(01:27):
the Kid's life would say that his mother's early death
is what catapulted him into a lifetime of mischief making,
because some eyewitness accounts from his childhood say that he was,
you know, as much a little boy as anyone else,
just running around town causing mild mischief, nothing extreme, and
his stepfather was in the picture for a little while,

(01:48):
but after his mother's death he was pretty much out
of the picture thanks and exactly Billy was forced to
do for himself and bounced around two different foster homes,
and the detail els of his young life sort of
paling comparison to the trouble he got into later. And
he didn't become the kind of cult hero that we

(02:08):
think of him as today until the sheriff who killed him.
Pat Garrett and m. A. Ash Upson wrote The Authentic
Life of Billy the Kid, a sensationalistic tale of his
life exactly, and I haven't read the book. Katie has
read it twelve times and four different land counting and counting.
But if any of you have read it, I'm a

(02:31):
little bit curious about how Billy the Kid is portrayed,
because to read some accounts of him, it's almost like
he was the troubled teen who was reconciled to a
lifetime of crime, cold blooded killer, right. But I'm wondering
if if Garrett makes him out to be just a
ruthless monster, because other accounts just say he started getting

(02:52):
in a little bit of trouble in his teens, but
nothing too big. I mean, he didn't have much money anyways,
so he was maybe picking things up that weren't quite his,
like the butter. Do you remember the butter? A little
a little butter theft, A little butter theft. He stole
it from a rancher. The kid had no money, so
he filched some butter and sold it to a shopkeeper.
And he got caught, obviously, but he only got a um,

(03:15):
a finger shaken in his staces at that point, not
that we condone butterft, not at all. And he was
kind of skinny and had what some people described as
ladies hands, so he was passed over for many types
of employment opportunities that went to heartier fellows, uh, such
as ranch hands, for instance. So he started working at

(03:38):
Star Hotel, washing dishes, waiting on tables, and that's when
he met up with Sombrero Jack. Sombrero Jack was the first,
I suppose one could say bad character the Billy the
Kid crossed paths with. And he noticed that Billy the
Kid didn't have any real clothes to speak of. So
he stole some laundry from a laundromat and able to

(04:00):
Billy the Kid to wear, and he's like, but if
you put this on, you know you're you're risking your
own hide because these are all stolen. And Billy the
Kid was obviously caught when he donned these stolen threads
and put in prison, but he escaped, and this would become,
as Katie is winking at me right now, a hallmark
of his later life. So he got some money from

(04:23):
one of the foster families he'd been a part of,
and he had a toward Arizona to see if his
stepfather could give him a hand with his troubles, and
his stepfather absolutely refused. Real class act that stepfather right,
So here's Billy the Kid. He really is just a kid.
He's skinny, he's fragile, he's got no work, no chance, really,

(04:44):
and he's adrift in the desert. And it was while
he was in Arizona but he met another outlaw named
John Mackie, with whom he dabbled in horse thievery for
a while, and soon after he would engage in his
very first the act of manslaughter, and some people say
it was self defense while others say it was just

(05:05):
an act of cold blooded killing. Um. But he got
into an altercation with Wendy K. Hill, who was teasing
him about his size, right yes, and ended up shooting him.
And some people say again that he attacked Henry McCarty
Billy the Kid, who was much smaller and Billy didn't
really have a chance and shot him in self defense,

(05:27):
while others say that it was just a little bit
of sport on Billy the Kid's side. Well, no matter
what actually happened, Billie the Kid was pretty scared and
so he got out of Dodge and soon after in
New Mexico, he met up with Jesse Evans and his
gang termed very innovatively the Boys. No one saw that

(05:49):
one coming, so he became incorporated into this little coterie
of gunslingers. And even though the kid wasn't too fond
of the idea of associating himself without laws, he realized
is that if you're going to get by in the
American West, which was largely lawless at this time, you
had to have some sort of protection. And the problem

(06:09):
with the boys, the Jesse Evans Gangs, they were involved
in the Lincoln County War, and basically this is in
the eighteen seventies in New Mexico and a guy named
John Tunstall had moved there and realized that the entire
place was run by Lawrence Murphy and John Dolan. They
owned the only store in the entire county and thanks

(06:30):
to an army contract, had a beef monopoly as well,
and he decided that wasn't fair and wanted to set
up shop against them, and it just started this battle
that went on for years um starting in eighteen seventy
eight when Murphy and Dolan tried to take Tunstall's horses
for a quote unquote outstanding debt that may or may

(06:51):
not have existed, probably didn't. And that's where the gangs
come in and The kid actually turned on his gang
when Tunstall offered him a job in exchange for his
testimony against Dolan and Company. And so the kid thought
this was a pretty good offer. He wanted to do
something a little more righteous than what he had been
involved with, so he agreed and he took on the

(07:14):
new alias William H. Bonnie. This was an act of
reinventing himself in a way, and became part of the Regulators,
the name of the gang that was going to avenge
the death of Tonstall, who was shot and killed by
Sheriff William Brady and his posse, which included Jesse Evans
Is gang. The Regulators were semi lawful until they killed

(07:36):
three men, Bill Morton, Frank Banker, and William McCloskey, and
they also set up a trap for Sheriff Brady. They'd
been trying to do things by the book, trying to
file complaints and and act in a in a proper
paperwork sort of way, but in the American West, that
doesn't get you very far. They were almost forced into
being outlaws. They were doing their best, but when the government,

(07:59):
the local government, is corrupt, that doesn't leave you with
a lot of options and so it's Billy, the kids,
Mexican cowboys and American cowboys, and they finally took up
their guns and started the gun fights for the next
couple of years. And the regulators had a pretty good
reputation until then, and then they became known as these
awful outlaws. These gun fights were pretty violent. Sheriff Brady

(08:23):
was killed in April of eighteen seventy eight and was
riddled with bullet holes. It just wasn't one shot that
happened to get him. They made sure that he was dead,
and the same with the deputy. They made a whiffleball
out of him. It's uncut. I'm sorry I shouldn't speak
so reverently of the past. Eventually, all of these separate
skirmishes culminated in a final event at Alex mcsween's house.

(08:48):
And McSween, as you may recall, had been associated with Tunstall,
the British businessman. He had been his partner as well
as his attorney. So the regulators are held up mc
sween's house and they're surrounded by Darlin's gang, and then
you Sheriff, and they're panicking, and so finally the kid

(09:09):
is the only one trying to keep his wits about
him and devises a plan where half the gang will
go out one side of the house and the other
will escape out the opposite so as to distract the
gun flingers out front. And it works, except that, you know,
half of the outlaws got shot and killed, and Billy
the kid and his cohorts made off off the other side.

(09:30):
So the escape plan wasn't the best, but it did
save the kids hide, which was you know, what counted
to him, and he ran. He was an outlaw again
for what is this? What third fourth time I've lost
count Um. You know, he is famous for supposedly having
committed as many murders as there were years of his life, right,

(09:51):
we don't know if if that's actually true, if it
was more like nine nine. But he was good at
getting himself off the hook. But when he he got
word that there was a new governor in Lincoln named
lou Wallace, he offered to surrender and come back to
Lincoln and give a testimony in exchange for getting the
new governor's good graces. He said he was tired of

(10:14):
being an outlaw and wanted to do the right thing,
and kept writing him letter upon letter you know, offering
to give himself up in exchange for some kind of amnesty,
and Lou Wallace I believe, at one point did agree
to it, or made some sort of promise to him
that maybe that was something they could do, which he
later recanted. Wallace was still not fully aware of the

(10:35):
kind of power and cloud that Dolan and his gang had,
so even if he had wanted to give the kids
some sort of asylum and some sort of pardon, he
wouldn't have been able to because his hands were tied.
Any sense of court system or legality there was in
Lincoln was overruled by Dolan and Billy the Kid at

(10:56):
this time was so notorious from the Lincoln County War,
the up shot of which no one won and they
just large gun battles every couple of days, that it
wasn't possible for him, I mean politically, and not to
mention that at this time the newspapers are really getting
hold of his name and splashing it everywhere. And maybe

(11:17):
people had had some semblance of sympathy for him in
the past, but now now that he shoots people and
then leaves and gives lots of interviews about it. While
he didn't jail people are, you know, they're they're thinking
he's traveled. No one wants him in town um, so
he goes off to Fort Sumner. So it goes off

(11:37):
to Fort Sumner and there he gets embroiled and more
gang conflict, surprise, surprise, and then the opposition posse of
his kills a deputy named James Carlyle, and the kid
gets blamed, even though it supposedly friendly fire that killed
the deputy. He's so notorious at this point. Anywhere he goes,
he's like a little black rain cloud on the west.

(12:00):
Trouble just follows him and it's so easy to scapegoat
him well, and at this point I believe he has
a bounty on his head and they are after him.
That's one too many people, and it's about time the
law catches up with Billy the Kid, and the law
came in the form of Pat Garrett. He was an
appointed U s Marshal on the hunt, and on December

(12:20):
eighty he trapped him and got him to surrender, threw
him in prison, and he was convicted of murdering Sheriff
Brady and sentenced to hang to hang. So it's April
eighty one, he's in prison, he's supposed to hang and
being Billy the Kid, he murders his guards and escapes.

(12:43):
Good job, they kid. This one's on us. So where
does he go? Well, back to Sumner because he feels
somewhat safe there. It's a place where he feels that
he somewhat belongs. But Garrett is not going to let
him get away with us. So he gets words supposedly
through this guy mac Swell, who he knows that the
kid is in town. And Maxwell is somewhat friendly with

(13:06):
the kid, or at least the kid thinks that he is,
And on the night of July four one, he came
sniffing around for dinner. And the events of the evening
of July four eighty one are a bit murky, but
how most people interpret the story is this, Billy the
Kid knocks on Maxwell's door, hoping that he can get
his dinner, and he enters the house and it's pretty dark,

(13:28):
and he's a little bit uncertain of what's going on
because he sees two strange men on the front porch,
and men were actually Garrett's to deputies. Well, Billy the
Kid proceeds inside the house and he can make out
a shadowy form in Maxwell's room, and he calls out
asking about the two men, gets no answer, so he
calls out again, but this time asks the question in Spanish,

(13:49):
and at this point Garrett is pretty sure that's Billy
the Kid, so he and his gun and shoots, and
then Maxwell and Garrett slip outside and they come back
in and they asked certain that yes, indeed, that was
Billy the Kid, and now he is dead on Maxwell's floor.
Although some people refused to believe that Billy the Kid
died at all, and there were several people who for

(14:09):
years pretended that they were him and he had escaped
that evening in a staged death, it's pretty believable given
all of his stunts prior to his supposed death. But
for people who really get into American West lore and
sorts of legendary figures like Billy the Kid, it's rather
anticlimactic to think that Billy the Kid died after an ambush.

(14:33):
I mean, that's the sort of trap that he's been
springing his whole life for other people, but alas it
got him in the end. But today, the state of
New Mexico really does have to believe the kid to
thank for bringing a thriving tourism industry to its fair
borders where people can see different spots where Billy the
Kid engaged in gun slinging and all sorts of pranks

(14:57):
harmless and not so. If you want to go see
these dumping grounds of Billy the Kid, that's where you
should go. And if you want more information on the
wild West and guns and guns flingers, be sure to
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