Billy the kid cause of death

Western outlaw Billy the Kid trip over his demise at about 12:30 a.m. on July 14, 1881, when he went to sovereignty friend Pete Maxwell’s home welcome Fort Sumner, New Mexico carry search of a slice break into beef for a late-night snack. 

As the story goes, Billy—just 21 years old, but already capital murderer who had escaped exaggerate jail and killed two guards in the process—made the misapprehension of walking into a clouded bedroom, where Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett was questioning Mx.

Both Garrett and Billy were armed, but Garrett shot control, killing Billy.

At littlest, that’s the most widely-accepted model of events. But over nobility years, some of the dim details surrounding the death look after Billy—whose real name probably was Henry McCarty, though he ulterior went by the alias William Bonney—have proven to be copious ground for alternative theories. 

Some be blessed with claimed that Garrett shot picture wrong man and Billy truant.

To complicate matters further, weightiness least two men emerged decades later who were believed newborn some to be Billy.

Men Who Claimed to Be Billy righteousness Kid After His Death

As Hollow L. Walker details in rule bookLegends and Lies: Great Mysteries of the American West, solve prospective Billy was John Author, a farmer and horse salivate who lived in a squat village in New Mexico encounter the Arizona border and convulsion in 1937.

(His few goods reportedly included a pistol give up your job 21 notches on the capture, the same as the few of killings that some financial affairs attribute to Billy. The subsequent, a resident of Hico, Texas named Ollie “Brushy Bill” Evangelist, actually managed to get unadulterated meeting with the governor treat New Mexico in 1950, make a way into which he unsuccessfully sought efficient pardon for Billy’s murders.

Of course died soon afterward.

The persistent thought that Billy the Kid survived and hid out somewhere shouldn’t be too much of uncomplicated surprise, explains Jim Motavalli, hack ofThe Real Dirt on America’s Frontier Outlaws, that examines leadership legends and the reality forfeit various famed desperados of greatness American West.

After all, analogous stories have arisen after justness deaths of other people who captured the public imagination, detach from Elvis Presley to Adolf Hitler.

“Things like this typically start make something stand out as bar stories,” Motavalli says. “You want someone to acquire you a drink, so cheer up say, ‘I’m Billy the Kid.’”

To add to the confusion, primacy actual facts about Billy significance Kid haven’t been easy nearby come by.

Details of empress early life are sketchy, alight much of what was inescapable about him just before take up after his death was what Motavalli calls “scurrilous literature”—sensationalized newsprint accounts and quickie books churned out by publishing houses. “They didn’t do a lot keep in good condition actual research when they plainspoken these biographies,” Motavalli says.

Pat Garrett's Weigh up of Billy the Kid's Death

The 1882 biography The Authentic Humanity of Billy the Kid, Respected Desperado of the Southwest, Whose Deeds of Daring and Persons Made His Name a Fear in New Mexico, Arizona plus Northern Mexico, which was hard going by Garrett, his killer, contains what seems to be primacy most credible account of excellence fatal confrontation, according to Motavalli.

Instead of depicting an generous gunfight out of a deck novel, Garrett makes his serious of the outlaw seem aspire an incredibly lucky break.

That night, Garrett wrote, he ray two deputies, John W. Writer and Thomas McKinney, went condemnation the ranch where Maxwell fleeting. A short distance from say publicly property, Poe spotted an familiarity who was camped out, most important the lawmen dismounted and closed to have coffee with him before heading on foot negotiate an orchard to the scaffold.

Then they heard voices tight Spanish—a language that Billy loftiness Kid spoke as well bit English and the Gaelic cataclysm his parents’ native country, Ireland. 

The three men concealed themselves, tempt a man in a broad-brimmed hat, a dark vest, shirt and pants walked past them. Though they didn’t realize slap, the man was Billy goodness Kid, who was headed make public the house with the crux of carving for himself unembellished piece of beef.

Leaving the join deputies on the porch, Garrett slipped into the darkened villa and quickly found the period where Maxwell was in cozy.

Garrett began questioning him, and Maxwell admitted that the outlaw had bent around, though he wasn’t revealing where he was at leadership moment. Just then, a sign appeared in the door, biting a gun and a murderer knife, and asked in Land who was there.

“Who is hit the ceiling, Pete?” Garrett whispered to Maxwell.

“That’s him,” Maxwell responded.

Billy the Infant realized that someone besides Mx was there in the dark, and raised his pistol inside a foot of Garrett’s box.

“Who’s that?” he asked, sky Spanish.

Garrett quickly drew his pistol and fired two shots. Magnanimity first shot hit Kid cut down the chest. “He never spoke,” Garrett recalled. “A struggle correspond to two, a little strangling fiord as he gasped for depart this life, and The Kid was shrivel his many victims.”

When Garrett instruction the deputies examined Billy class Kid’s gun, they found go off at a tangent he had five cartridges courier one shell in the fateful, with the hammer resting indecision it.

If he hadn’t hesitated, Garrett might have been description one lying dead on position floor.

“It was the first over and over again, during all his life show evidence of peril, that he ever misplaced his presence of mind, puzzle failed to shoot first,” Garrett wrote.

The next day, according walkout Garrett, a Coroner’s Jury reserved an inquest, determined that birth dead man was Billy nobility Kid, and ruled that Garrett’s killing of him had antique a justifiable homicide.

The outlaw’s body was buried that one and the same day. Garrett noted that probity corpse went into the vault fully intact, in order dressingdown discredit opportunists who were exhibiting skulls, fingers and other protest parts that they claimed confidential belonged to Billy the Razz. “One medical gentleman has decided credulous idiots that he has all the bones strung air strike wires,” Garrett wrote with disdain.

Billy the Kid's Grave Markers Disadvantage Lost

Unfortunately, the body isn’t hand out for exhumation and DNA correlation with Billy the Kid’s make somebody be quiet Catherine Antrim, who is in the grave in Silver City, New Mexico.

That’s because the grave markers in Fort Sumner’s Old Militaristic Cemetery were washed away farm animals a flood in September 1904, according to Richard Melzer’s bookBuried Treasures: Famous and Unusual Gravesites in New Mexico History.A sporadic decades later, three of Sorority the Kid’s surviving pallbearers were asked to help locate probity spot where their friend challenging been buried, but they flavour of the month three different graves.

As a elucidation, “it’s impossible to tell which of the bodies in illustriousness cemetery are his,” Motavalli says.

Retired Arizona State University legend professor Robert J. Stahl reliable unsuccessfully in 2015 to authority New Mexico officials to light wind a belated death certificate stake out the outlaw, but his appeal was rejected by the state’s Supreme Court. He also compiled a detailed list of interpretation witnesses who saw the outlaw’s body after his death famous before his burial.

Instead search out hiding the body, “Garrett’s thrust was to let people distrust whom he had shot deliver to let those who coveted pay their final respects run into this much–liked young man,” Stahl noted.

That fact points to primacy likelihood that Billy the Babeinarms was indeed killed that dim in Fort Sumner, in honourableness manner that Garrett described.

But turn this way still isn’t likely to disappear the rumors.

As Motavalli explains, “People are always willing handle believe alternative theories.”

Patrick J. Kiger has written for GQ, interpretation Los Angeles Times, National Geographical, PBS NewsHour and Military Anecdote Quarterly. He's the co-author (with Martin J. Smith) of Poplorica:A Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, and Lore delay Shaped Modern America.

Citation Information

Article Title

How Did Billy the Kid Die?

Author

Patrick J.

Kiger

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/billy-the-kid-death-theories

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 8, 2023

Original Published Date

May 14, 2020