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Billy
the Kid is one of the best known characters of the Old West. Unfortunately, parts of the his
life have been built on legends and misinformation.2
Basically, Billy was born in the east and
moved west with his mother to Silver City, NM. At a young age he was jailed for a minor
offense and escaped. In Bonito, Az, he killed Frank Cahilll.
Billy arrived in Lincoln, NM during
a time when the Murphy-Dolan Faction and John Tunstall were trying to secure beef contracts
with the military in Fort Stanton. Tunstall had befriended Billy and a number of
young drifters. The conflict between the Murphy-Dolan Faction and Tunstall turned ugly. John
Tunstall was killed. Angered by the death of their friend, the drifters formed a group known
as the 'Regulators'. As a self-impose police force, they tried to round up the people
responsible for the death of Tunstall.. Many people died during this pursuit..
The plot becomes more complicated and Billy is a wanted man. Pat Garrett becomes sheriff of
Lincoln county and begins his pursuit of Billy. The cat and mouse game between these two
lasts about a year and a half. Billy is cornered, but escapes. Billy is caught and sentenced
to die, but escapes. Finally, Pat Garrett waits for Billy in a room at Pete Maxwell's home in
Fort Sumner, NM. Billy enters and Pat Garrett fires.
Billy the Kid is buried in the old Fort Sumner Post Cemetery near present day Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
There are plenty of signs directing you to the grave.
(The Bettmann Archive)
Billy the Kid was one of several aliases of William H. Bonney, b. New York City, Nov. 23, 1859, a New Mexico outlaw whose short, bloody career became a legend. By the age of 18 he had been charged with 12 murders. While working as a cowhand in the Pecos Valley, he turned to cattle rustling. After the gang he led killed a sheriff and a deputy, he was captured and sentenced to death. He escaped from jail, killing two guards, but was trapped and shot to death on July 13, 1881. A ballet based on his life, with music by Aaron COPLAND, was first performed in Chicago in 1938.
 | Alfred Addis
photographed the Kid's boyhood home in Silver City, looking northeast from the corner of Main and Broadway (where the Big Ditch is today), circa 1880-83. Museum of New Mexico (MNM) Neg. No. 99054 |
 | Deputy Bob
Olinger used to bully the Kid, and died from a double-barreled blast from his own shotgun on April 28, 1881. LCHT |
 | Looking
northwest across Old Fort Sumner's parade ground at the Mawell hosue, circa 1885. The bedroom in which Garrett killed the Kid is in the near corner. (MNM) Neg. No. 45559 |
Bonney
rose to notoriety as a result of the Lincoln County War, a breif
but bloody feud that began after a wealthy young Englishman, John H.
Tunstall and his equally ambitious older partner, an asthmatic Canadian
lawyer named Alexander A. McSween, tried to oust the established
mercantile monopoly.
That monopoly was the powerful L.G. Murphy & Company, founded at
nearby Fort Stanton by a former divinity student from Ireland, Lawrence
G. Murphy, in 1866. 
Kicked off the post for unscrupulous business practices in 1973, he quickly moved to
Lincoln, where he built a large
mercantile and continued his profiteering.
Tunstall's motives became clear when he opened a competing mercantile in
late 1877. Tensions mounted. Kindled by a winter-long legal dispute
between Dolan and McSween over the proceeds of a $10,000 life insurance
policy, tempers finally flared. When Tunstall was shot and killed on the
wintery evening of February 18, 1878, the Lincoln County War erupted.
Tunstall's foreman, Dick Brewer, formed a posse called the Regulators,
some of whom, like the "Kid", were Tunstall's ranch hands. Others, like
the Coe cousins and Charley Bowdre, were sympathizers.