Billy the Kid (born Henry McCarty September 17 or November 23, 1859 - July 14, 1881, also known as William H. Bonney ) is a criminal and an Old West American sniper who killed eight people before he was shot and killed at the age of 21. He took part in the Lincoln County War in New Mexico, where he allegedly took part in three murders.
McCarty became an orphan at the age of 13. The owner of the boarding house gave him space to exchange for work. His first arrest was for stealing food at the age of 16 at the end of 1875. Ten days later, he robbed Chinese laundry and was arrested, but he fled only two days later. She tries to stay with her stepfather, and then escapes from the New Mexico Region to the adjacent Arizona Area, making him a criminal and a federal fugitive.
After killing a blacksmith during a fight in August 1877, Bonney became a fugitive in the Arizona Territory and returned to New Mexico, where he joined a group of livestock enthusiasts. He became a renowned figure in the region when he joined the Regulator and participated in the Lincoln War Area. In April 1878, the Regulator killed three people, including Sheriff Lincoln WilliamÃ, J. Brady and one of his deputies. Bonney and two other regulators were later accused of killing the three men.
Bonney's fame grew in December 1880 when the Las Vegas Gazette in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and The Sun in New York City carried the story of his crime. Sheriff Pat Garrett catches Bonney later that month. In April 1881, Bonney was tried and convicted for Brady's murder, and was sentenced to hang in May of that year. He escaped from prison on April 28, 1881, killing two sheriff's deputies in the process and avoiding capture for more than two months. Garrett shot and killed 21-year-old Bonney at Fort Sumner on July 14, 1881. Over the next decades, the legend that Bonney had survived that night, and a number of men admitted it.
Video Billy the Kid
Biography
Early life
Henry McCarty was born to Catherine (nÃÆ' Â © eÃ, Devine) McCarty in New York City. While his birth year has been confirmed to be 1859, the exact date of his birth has been debated either on September 17 or November 23 of that year. A letter from Saint Peters Church official in Manhattan stated that they had a record showing McCarty being baptized in the church on September 28, 1859. The census records show his younger brother, Joseph McCarty, born in 1863.
After the death of her husband, Patrick, Catherine McCarty and her sons moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where she met William Henry Harrison Antrim. The McCartys moved with Antrim to Wichita, Kansas, in 1870. After moving again a few years later, Catherine married Antrim on March 1, 1873, at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe, New Mexico Region; McCarty and his brother Joseph witnessed the ceremony. Shortly after, the family moved from Santa Fe to Silver City, New Mexico, and Joseph McCarty started using the name Joseph Antrim. Catherine McCarty died of tuberculosis on September 16, 1874.
The first crime
McCarty was 13 when his mother died. Sarah Brown, the owner of the boarding house, gives her room and meals in exchange for work. On September 16, 1875, McCarty was caught stealing food. Ten days later, McCarty and George Schaefer robbed Chinese laundry, stealing clothes and two pistols. McCarty was charged with theft and imprisonment. He escaped two days later and became a fugitive, as reported in the Silver City Herald the following day, the first story published about him. McCarty placed his stepfather and stayed with him until Antrim expelled him; McCarty steals clothing and weapons from him. It was the last time the two had met each other.
After leaving Antrim, McCarty went southeast of the Arizona Territory, where he worked as a farm hand and risked his wages at a nearby game house. In 1876, he was employed as a farm hand by renowned breeder Henry Hooker. During this time, McCarty became acquainted with John R. Mackie, a Scottish-born villain and a former US cavalry who, after his return, remained near the US Army post at Camp Grant. The two men immediately began to steal the horse from the local army. McCarty is known as the "Antrim Kid" because of his youth, a bit of building, a clean appearance, and his personality.
On August 17, 1877, McCarty was in a sedan in Bonita village when he quarreled with Francis "Windy" Cahill, a blacksmith who reportedly had bullied McCarty and more than once, called McCarty a "pimp". McCarty in turn calls Cahill a "bastard," in which Cahill throws McCarty to the floor and both fight for the McCarty revolver. McCarty shot and wounded Cahill. One witness said, "[Billy] has no choice, he must use the equalizer". Cahill died the next day. McCarty fled but returned a few days later and was captured by Miles Wood, the local Peace Magistrate. McCarty was arrested and detained at Camp Grant's guard post but fled before law enforcement arrived.
McCarty stole a horse and fled from the Arizona Region to the New Mexico Territory, but Apaches took the horse from him, leaving him for miles and miles to the nearest settlement. At Fort Stanton in Pecos Valley, McCarty - starved and near death - goes to the house of a friend and a member of the Seven Rivers Warriors gang John Jones, whose mother Barbara is treating McCarty back to health. After regaining his health, McCarty went to Apache Tejo, a former military post, where he joined a group of riders who raided livestock owned by John Chisum's livestock in Lincoln County. After McCarty was found in Silver City, his involvement with the gang was mentioned in a local newspaper.
At one point in 1877, McCarty began to refer to himself as "William H. Bonney".
Lincoln County War
Prelude
After returning to New Mexico, Bonney worked for British businessman and breeder John Henry Tunstall (1853-1878), as a cowboy near Rio Felix - the tributary of the Rio Grande - in Lincoln County. Tunstall and his business partner and attorney Alexander McSween are opposed to an alliance formed by Irish-American businessman Lawrence Murphy, James Dolan, and John Riley. The three men had been in control of the economy and politics over Lincoln County since the early 1870s, partly because of their ownership of the beef contract with adjacent Fort Stanton and the patronized dry goods store in Lincoln.
In February 1878, McSween owed $ 8,000 to Dolan, who obtained a court order and asked Lincoln County Sheriff William J. Brady to attach the property and Tunstall cattle worth nearly $ 40,000. Tunstall put Bonney in charge of the nine horses and told him to move them to his ranch for storage. Meanwhile, Sheriff Brady collects a large posse to grab the Tunstall livestock.
On February 18, 1878, Tunstall knew the existence of a posse on his land and went to intervene. During the meeting, one member of the posse shoots Tunstall in the chest, knocking him off his horse. Another posse member took the Tunstall gun and killed him with a shot to the back of his head. The Tunstall killing sparked a conflict between two factions known as the Lincoln War Area.
Build-up
After Tunstall was killed, Bonney and Dick Brewer vowed unlawfully against Brady and the people on his posse, and obtained a murder letter from Lincoln John B. Wilson's peace conviction. On February 20, 1878, while attempting to capture Brady, the sheriff and his deputies found and captured Bonney and two others accompanying him. US Vice Marshal Robert Widenmann, a friend of Bonney, and army detachment arrested Sheriff Brady's prison guard, placed them behind bars, and released Bonney and Brewer.
Bonney later joined the Lincoln County Regulator; on March 9 they arrested Frank Baker and William Morton, both accused of killing Tunstall. Baker and Morton were killed while trying to escape.
On April 1, the Regulator ambushed Sheriff Brady and his deputies; Bonney was injured in the thigh during battle. Sheriff Brady, and Deputy Sheriff George W. Hindman, were killed. On the morning of April 4, 1878, Buckshot Roberts and Dick Brewer were killed in a firefight at Blazer Mill. Warrants were issued to several participants on both sides, and Bonney and two others were accused of killing three people.
Battle of Lincoln (1878)
On Saturday night, July 14, McSween and the Regulator - now a group of fifty or sixty people - went to Lincoln and stationed themselves in the city among several buildings. At McSween's residence are Bonney, Florencio Chavez, Jose Chavez y Chavez, Jim French, Harvey Morris, Tom O'Folliard, and Yginio Salazar, among others. Another group led by Marin Chavez and Doc Scurlock positioned themselves on the roof of a sedan. Henry Newton Brown, Dick Smith and George Coe defended an adobe bunkhouse nearby.
On Tuesday, July 16, the newly appointed sheriff George Peppin sent snipers to kill McSween's defenders in the saloon. The Peppins retreated when one of the snipers, Charles Crawford, was killed by Fernando Herrera. Peppin then sent a request for help to Colonel Nathan Dudley, the commander of nearby Fort Stanton. In reply to Peppin, Dudley refuses to intervene, but then arrives in Lincoln with troops, changing the battle for the Murphy-Dolan faction.
The shooting war broke out on Friday, July 19th. McSween's supporters gathered in his house; when Buck Powell and Sheriff's Deputy Jack Long burned down the building, the residents started firing. Bonney and the others escaped from the building when all the rooms but one burned. During the confusion, Alexander McSween was shot and killed by Robert W. Beckwith, who was later shot and killed by Bonney.
Outlaw
Bonney and three survivors of the Battle of Lincoln were near the Mescalero Indian Agency when the agency's bookkeeper, Morris Bernstein, was assassinated on 5 August 1878. The four were indicted for the murder, despite the conflicting evidence that Bernstein had been murdered by Police Atanacio Martinez. All these charges except Bonney were then canceled.
On October 5, 1878, US Marshal John Sherman informed the newly appointed Territorial Governor and former army general Lew Wallace that he held a warrant for several people, including "William H. Antrim, aka Kid, aka Bonny [sic]" but could not execute them "because of the disturbed conditions in the area, due to the actions of desperate people". Wallace issued the amnesty proclamation on November 13, 1878, which pardoned anyone involved in the Lincoln County War since Tunstall's murder. It specifically excludes those who have been convicted or charged for a crime, and therefore exclude Bonney.
On February 18, 1879, Bonney and his friend Tom O'Folliard were in Lincoln and watched Huston Chapman's lawyer shot and his corpse burned. According to eyewitnesses, the couple were innocent people who were forced at gunpoint by Jesse Evans to witness the killing.
Bonney wrote to Governor Wallace on March 13, 1879, with an offer to provide information about Chapman's murder in lieu of the amnesty. On March 15, Governor Wallace replied, approving a secret meeting to discuss the case. Bonney met Wallace in Lincoln on March 17, 1879. During the meeting and in subsequent correspondence, Wallace promised Bonney's protection from his enemies and his clemency if he would offer his testimony to the jury. On March 20, Wallace wrote to Bonney, "to remove all the suspicions of understanding, I think it's better to put the captains responsible for Sheriff Kimbrell [sic] who will be ordered to see that no violence is used". Bonney responded on the same day, agreed to testify and confirmed Wallace's proposal for his arrest and detention in a local jail to ensure his safety. On March 21, Bonney let himself be captured by a posse led by Sheriff George Kimball of Lincoln County. As approved, Bonney made a statement about Chapman's murder and testified in court. However, after Bonney's testimony, the local district attorney refused to release him.
Still in detention a few weeks later, Bonney began to suspect that Wallace had used excuses and would never give him an amnesty. Bonney escaped from Lincoln County prison on June 17, 1879.
Bonney avoided further violence until January 10, 1880, when he shot and killed Joe Grant, a newcomer to the area, at Hargrove's Saloon in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The New Mexico Weekly Feast reported, "Billy Bonney, more widely known as 'Kid,' shot and killed Joe Grant, the origins of the difficulty were not learned." According to other contemporary sources, Bonney had been warned that Grant intended to kill him. He walks to Grant, tells him that he admired his gun, and asks to check it out. Grant handed it over. Before returning the gun, which Bonney knew contained only three cartridges, he positioned the cylinder so that the next hammer fall would land in an empty space. Grant suddenly pointed the gun at Bonney's face and pulled the trigger. When it failed to shoot, Bonney withdrew his own gun and shot Grant in the head. A reporter for Las Vegas Optic quoted Bonney as saying the meeting was "game two and I got there first".
In 1880, Bonney formed a friendship with a breeder named Jim Greathouse, who later introduced him to Dave Rudabaugh. On November 29, 1880, Bonney, Rudabaugh and Billy Wilson ran from the posse led by deputy sheriff, James Carlyle. Cornered at the Greathouse ranch, Bonney told the posse they held the Greathouse as a hostage. Carlyle offered to swap places with Greathouse, and Bonney accepted the offer. Carlyle then tried to escape by jumping through the window but he was shot three times and killed. The shot ended in a deadlock; the posse was resigned and Bonney, Rudabaugh, and Wilson left.
A few weeks after the Greathouse incident, Bonney, Rudabaugh, Wilson, Charlie Bowdre, Tom Pickett, and O'Folliard climbed into Fort Sumner. Unknown to Bonney and his friends, a posse led by Pat Garrett is waiting for them. The fence fired a shot, killing O'Folliard; the rest of the villains escaped unscathed.
Capture and blur
On December 13, 1880, Governor Wallace posted a $ 500 reward for Bonney taking. Pat Garrett continued his search for Bonney; on December 23, after the siege in which Bowdre was killed, Garrett and his group captured Bonney along with Pickett, Rudabaugh and Wilson at Stinking Springs. The prisoners, including Bonney, were shackled and taken to Fort Sumner, then to Las Vegas, New Mexico. When they arrived on December 26, they were greeted by a lot of curious audiences. The next day, armed bands gathered at the train depot before the prisoners, who had boarded the train with Garrett, left for Santa Fe. Deputy Sheriff Romero, backed by an angry group of people, demands the custody of Dave Rudabaugh, who has killed a local prison warden. Garrett refused to hand over the prisoners, and a tense confrontation took place until he agreed to let the sheriff and two other men accompany the party to Santa Fe, where they would petition the governor to free Rudabaugh to them. In a later interview with a reporter, Bonney said he was not scared during the incident, saying, "if I only have my Winchester I'll lick the whole crowd". The Las Vegas (New Mexico) Gazette contains stories from prison interviews after the arrest of Bonney; when the reporter said Bonney looked relaxed, he replied, "What's the point of looking for the bleak side of everything? The laughter is with me this time." During his brief career as a villain, Bonney is the subject of many US newspaper articles, some of them as far as New York.
Upon arriving in Santa Fe, Bonney, looking for clemency, sent Wallace Governor four letters over the next three months. Wallace refused to intervene, and Bonney went to court in April 1881 in Mesilla, New Mexico. After two days of testimony, Bonney was found guilty of the murder of Sheriff Brady; it was the only conviction guaranteed against one of the warriors in the Lincoln War Area. On April 13, Judge Warren Bristol sentenced Bonney to hang, with an execution scheduled for May 13, 1881. According to legend, after being sentenced, the judge informed Bonney that he would be hanged until "dead, dead, dead"; Bonney's response was, "You can go to hell, hell, hell". According to historical records, he did not speak after reading the sentence.
After his sentence, Bonney was transferred to Lincoln, where he was held in the upper floor of the town court. On the evening of April 28, 1881, when Garrett was at White Oaks collecting taxes, Deputy Bob Olinger brought five other prisoners across the street to eat, leaving James Bell, another deputy, alone with Bonney in jail. Bonney was asked to be taken out to use the latrine behind the courthouse; when they returned to prison, Bonney - who walked in front of Bell up the stairs to his cell - hiding in an obscure corner, out of his handcuffs, and hitting Bell with the loose end of the handcuffs. During the ensuing fight, Bonney grabs the Bell revolver and fatally shoots him in the back as Bell attempts to escape.
Bonney, with his feet still shackled, went into Garrett's office and took the shotgun left by Olinger. Bonney waited at the top window for Olinger to respond to the shot that killed Bell and called him, "Look, old boy, and see what you get". When Olinger looked up, Bonney shot and killed him. After about an hour, Bonney frees himself from the iron feet with an ax. He got a horse and rode out of town; according to some stories he sang when he left Lincoln.
Retrieval and death
While Bonney is on the run, Governor Wallace puts a new $ 500 prize on the head of a fugitive. Nearly three months after his escape, Garrett, responding to Bonney's rumors around Fort Sumner, left Lincoln with two deputies on July 14, 1881, to question the residents of Pete Maxwell, a friend of Bonney. Maxwell, son of the land baron Lucien Maxwell, talked to Garrett the same day for several hours. Around midnight, the couple sat in Maxwell's dark bedroom when Bonney suddenly entered.
Accounts vary according to the course of the event; according to the canonical version, upon entering the room, Bonney failed to recognize Garrett because of poor lighting. Drawing revolvers and backwards, Bonney asked "Ã,¿QuiÃÆ' Â © n es? Ã,¿QuiÃÆ' Â © n es?" (Spanish for "Who is it? Who is it?"). Realizing Bonney's voice, Garrett pulled his gun and fired twice. The first bullet hit Bonney in the chest just above his heart, killing him.
Hours after the shooting, a local peace judge collected a coronary jury of six people. The jury interviewed Maxwell and Garrett, and Bonney's body and the location of the shootings were examined. The jury certified his body as Bonney's, and according to the local newspaper, a jury spokesman said, "It is the Kid body we are examining". Bonney was awakened by candlelight; he is buried the next day and his grave is symbolized by a wooden marker.
Five days after Bonney's murder, Garrett went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to collect the $ 500 prize offered by Governor Lew Wallace for his capture, alive or dead. William G. Ritch, the governor of New Mexico who acted, refused to pay the prize. Over the next few weeks, residents of Las Vegas, Mesilla, Santa Fe, White Oaks, and other New Mexico cities garnered more than a $ 7,000 reward reward for Garrett. A year and four days after Bonney's death, New Mexico's territorial legislature passed a special act to give Garrett the $ 500 prize promised by Governor Wallace.
Because people started claiming Garrett was ambushing Bonney unjustly, Garrett felt the need to tell the story and asked his friend, journalist Marshall Upson, to write a book for him. The book, The Authentic Life of Billy, Kid, was first published in April 1882. Although only a few copies were sold after it was released, it eventually became a reference for the next historian who wrote about Bonney's life.
Maps Billy the Kid
Rumor to survive
Over time, the legend who claimed Bonney was not killed, and that Garrett launched the incident and death from friendship so that Bonney could avoid law, form and grow. Over the next fifty years, some men claimed they were Billy the Kid. Most of these claims are easily not proven but two remain the topic of discussion and debate.
In 1948, a Central Texas man Ollie P. Roberts - nicknamed Bill Brushy - began claiming he was Billy the Kid and gone before New Mexico Governor Thomas Mabry sought forgiveness. Mabry rejected Roberts' claim, and Roberts died shortly after. Nevertheless, Hico, Texas, the city where Roberts lived, made use of his claim by opening the Billy the Kid museum.
John Miller, an Arizona man, also claims he is Bonney. This was not supported by his family until 1938, shortly after his death. Miller's body was buried in Arizona State Pioneer State Cemetery in Prescott, Arizona; in May 2005, Miller's teeth and bones were dug up and examined, without permission from the state. Samples of DNA from the remnants were sent to a laboratory in Dallas and tested to compare Miller's DNA with blood samples obtained from floorboards in the old Lincoln County courthouse and the bench where Bonney's body was allegedly placed after he was shot. According to a July 2015 article in the Washington Post, the lab results were "useless".
In 2004, researchers sought to unearth the remains of Catherine Antrim, Bonney's mother, whose DNA would be tested and compared to the body buried in William Bonney's tomb. By 2012, his body has not been dug.
In 2007, amateur writer and historian Gale Cooper filed a lawsuit against the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office under the state Records of Public Records Records to produce a 2006 DNA test record and other forensic evidence collected in a Billy the Kid investigation. In April 2012, 133 pages of documents were provided; they do not offer conclusive evidence confirming or disproving the generally accepted story of Garret's murder of Bonney, but affirming the existence of the tape, and that they can be produced earlier. In 2014, Cooper was awarded $ 100,000 in damages but the decision was subsequently scrapped by the New Mexico Appeals Court. The lawsuit eventually cost Lincoln County nearly $ 300,000.
In February 2015, historian Robert Stahl filed a petition to the district court in Fort Sumner asking the state of New Mexico to issue a death certificate for Bonney. In July 2015, Stahl filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of New Mexico. The lawsuit asked the court to order the State Medical Investigator Office to formally declare Bonney's death under the laws of New Mexico state.
Photos
By 2018, only one photo is confirmed to indicate that Bonney is known to exist; others who think to describe it are disputed.
Dedrick ferrotype
One of the few remaining artifacts from Bonney's life was a Bonney's 2-by-3-inch (5.1-by-7.6-centimeter) ferrotype photograph by unknown portrait photographer in late 1879 or early 1880. The picture shows Bonney wearing a vest over a sweater, a humped cowboy hat, and a bandanna, holding a Winchester 1873 rifle with his butt on the floor. Over the years, this is the only photographer and historian who agrees to show Bonney. Ferrotype survived because Bonney's friend Dan Dedrick defended him after the criminal's death. It was inherited through the Dedrick family, and copied several times, appearing in various publications during the 20th century. In June 2011, the original plate was purchased at auction for $ 2.3 million by businessman William Koch.
The picture shows Bonney wearing a Colt coated pistol on his left side. This causes historians to believe that he is left-handed, but they do not take into account that the ferrotype process produces an upside-down image. In 1954, Western historian James D. Horan and Paul Sann wrote that Bonney was "right handed and carried his pistol on his right hip." That opinion was confirmed by Clyde Jeavons, former curator of the National Film and Television Archive. Some historians have written that Bonney is ambidextrous.
Croquet tintype
The 4 "x 6" Ferrotype purchased at a memorabilia store in Fresno, California in 2010 has been claimed to show Bonney and the Regulator members playing croquet. If authentic it is the only photo known Billy the Kid and Regulators together and the only image to show their wives and female friends. Collectors Robert Ã, G. McCubbin and the historian villain John Boessenecker concluded in 2013 that the photo did not show Bonney. Whitny Braun, a professor and researcher, found an advertisement for a set of croquettes sold at Chapman's General Store in Las Vegas, New Mexico, dated June 1878. Kent Gibson, a video and forensic expert, offers his facsimile software service. , and states that Bonney is one of the individuals in the picture.
In August 2015, Lincoln State Monument officials and the New Mexico Department of Culture said that despite new research, they could not confirm that the images showed Bonney or others from the Lincoln County War era, according to Monument manager Gary Cozzens. A photo curator in the archives of the Governor's Palace, Daniel Kosharek, said the picture was "problematic on many fronts", including the small size of the figures and the lack of resemblance to the landscape landscape for Lincoln County or the state in general. An article in True West Magazine says, "no one in our office considers this photo to be a Kid [and a Regulator]".
In early October 2015, Kagin, Inc., a numismatic authentication firm, said the image was genuine after a number of experts, including those associated with the National Geographic Channel program recently, examined it.
Posthumous apology
In 2010, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson refused a request for Bonnie's posthumous pardon for the murder of Sheriff William Brady. The forgiveness was to fulfill the promise of Governor Wallace in 1879 to Bonney. Richardson's decision, citing "historical ambiguity," was announced on December 31, 2010; her last day at the office.
Grave tomb
In 1931, Charles Ã, W. Ã, Foor, an unofficial tour guide at Fort Sumner Cemetery, campaigned to raise funds for permanent markers for Bonney's tomb, O'Folliard , and Bowdre. As a result of his efforts, a stone monument marked with the names of the three men and the date of their death under the word "Pals" was established in the middle of the burial area.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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