“Billy entered the room in the dark. Garrett fired, striking Billy in the heart”

Let’s talk about the one person I wish I had never started researching. Once you start, it’s easy to become obsessed because there is so much to his story and so much mystery and conspiracy surrounding it. I’m talking about William H. Bonney, also known as Henry McCarty, or more famously, Billy the Kid.

The Early Days (And the Brother Who Went to Med School)

William H. Bonney’s real name was Henry McCarty. He was born on November 23, 1859, in New York City to Irish Catholic parents. Later in life, Henry would take the name William H. Bonney, using his mother’s maiden name.

In 1872, the family situation changed dramatically. His father, Patrick, essentially vanished, divorce, death, disappearance, no one knows and was no longer in the picture. His mother, Catherine, took the boys (Billy and Joseph) and moved to Silver City, New Mexico. She was a tough woman; she built a name for herself working at a local brothel, and rumors still swirl that before she married her second husband, she actually dated Jesse James.

Catherine eventually remarried a man named William Antrim. Her oldest son, Joseph (Billy’s brother), took on the Antrim name. There is a strange footnote to Joseph’s life: when he died at age 67, no one claimed his body. In cases like this, unclaimed bodies were often donated to science. That is exactly what happened, Joseph was donated to the Colorado Medical School. So, Billy the Kid is buried in New Mexico, but what remains of his brother is likely still at a medical school in Colorado.

Billy’s mother passed away from tuberculosis when Billy was just 15. At that point, Billy was living with a stepfather who had lost interest in him, and naturally, he found trouble.

Sombrero Jack and the Chimney Escape

Billy was arrested for the first time for stealing from a Chinese laundry while hanging out with a man named Sombrero Jack. I kid you not, that was his actual name. Billy and Sombrero Jack stole some clothes and hid them in the floorboards of the house where Billy was staying. When the police arrested him, it should have been a minor incident, just a warning. But Billy was not having it. He was so small and nimble that he managed to shimmy up the chimney of the jail and escape.

He had to make a living, so he became a roaming ranch hand. But the West was unforgiving; by 1877, he had killed his first man during a land dispute.

The Lincoln County War

In 1878, the Lincoln County War broke out. Billy had aligned himself with John Tunstall, an Englishman competing with the business monopoly of James Dolan and Lawrence Murphy. Tunstall was vital to Billy; he hired runaways and educated them.

When Dolan and Murphy killed Tunstall, Billy and a group of young men known as The Regulators sought justice. They went to Sheriff Brady, but Brady sided with the killers. This eventually led to Billy killing Sheriff Brady, the crime that set the stage for his demise.

The feud peaked in a deadly five-day firefight in the town of Lincoln. This is where Billy earned his nickname as the West’s most skilled gunman.

Eventually, the Governor, Lew Wallace, stepped in to stop the war. He promised a pardon to everyone involved if they stopped fighting. Billy agreed to testify and helped authorities track down fifty men. But once the investigation ended, the DA refused to drop the charges. Billy wrote to Wallace, reminding him of the promise, but instead of a pardon, he was arrested.

The Escape

Billy was found guilty, but he escaped. He was later tracked to a cabin in Stinking Springs by Pat Garrett, the new Sheriff. Garrett brought Billy back to Lincoln to stand trial.

When Billy arrived, the deputy assigned to watch him was a little too trusting. Pat Garrett had warned him that Billy was dangerous. While being escorted to the outhouse, Billy convinced the deputy to let him go alone. On the way back, he managed to get a gun, killed the deputy, sawed off his handcuffs, stole more weapons, and fled town.

It is worth noting that aside from stealing the occasional horse or hustling cattle, the serious crimes Billy committed were killing nine people, eight of which occurred during the war.

The Death (Or Was It?)

Billy hid out in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where he began dating Patta Maxwell, a sixteen-year-old girl. Her brother, Peter Maxwell, did not approve. She was betrothed to another, and the romance was a massive scandal.

On the night of July 14, 1881, Pat Garrett went to the Maxwell house to talk to Peter. Billy entered the room in the dark. Garrett fired, striking Billy in the heart and killing him at the age of twenty-one.

This is where the story truly begins.

The Conspiracies

After Billy’s death, there was plenty of tomfoolery surrounding his story. Dime novels and Hollywood made him famous. But there are a few conspiracies you need to know about.

The Love Child: One theory claims Patta Maxwell was pregnant with Billy’s child. To conceal it, she was arranged to marry Joseio, a local sheep herder, but the child was actually Billy’s.

The Fake Death: Another theory suggests Pat Garrett and Billy were friends. Some say Garrett hired the careless deputy on purpose to let Billy escape. When that didn’t work and he had to “kill” him, stories emerged that the body wasn’t Billy.

One report says that when a Mexican woman was preparing the body for burial, she noticed he was still breathing. To cover this up, she and her sister reportedly swapped Billy’s body with a man who had died earlier that week. A witness named John Collins later claimed the man they buried was definitely not Billy.

The Pretenders: Years later, two men claimed to be Billy.

Brushy Bill: In the 1940s, a man named Brushy Bill Roberts came forward at age 80 to ask for the pardon promised to him in 1879. Imagine holding a grudge for sixty years! He was denied and died a month later.

John Miller: A man from Candy Kitchen, New Mexico, who owned a six-shooter and hosted outlaws. There is a side-by-side photo of him as an old man and Billy that looks strikingly similar.

The Grave

You might ask: “Why not just DNA test the body?”

Well, we can’t. Billy was buried at Fort Sumner, but his grave has a complicated history. Flooding washed away headstones and redistributed bones. His current grave is essentially a “best guess” based on where locals remembered it being.

But the story of his tombstone is even crazier.

In 1931, a tour guide named “Uncle Charlie” made a headstone for Tom, Billy, and Charlie with the word “Pals” on it. It was a nice setting. Later, in 1940, a new 100-pound headstone was placed there.

In 1950, that headstone went missing for twenty-five years. It was eventually spotted by tourists in a random field in Granbury, Texas. It was returned in 1976 and bolted down.

But that didn’t stop the theft. In 1981, a truck driver with the CB handle “Billy the Kid”, you can’t make this stuff up, pried up the headstone and stole it. Imagine your connection to the afterlife being interrupted by a guy who thinks stealing your grave marker will make him look cool on the CB radio.

He was eventually caught in California (probably because he bragged about it). The stone was returned, and now a large steel cage surrounds the grave to stop thieves.

Because of all this, Fort Sumner now holds the Billy the Kid Tombstone Race. Contestants have to run while carrying an 80-pound tombstone. The organizers joked that since people were already stealing it, they might as well make it a sport.

The Truth?

Whether or not Pat Garrett actually killed him, Billy took his secrets to the grave. You can visit that grave today. We went, and it is fantastic. The locals are welcoming, and the museum is full of history.

Only Billy knows what really happened.

Visit:

Billy the kid Burial site — 📍 3501 Billy the Kid Dr, Fort Sumner, NM 88119