Outlaw and murderer, born in New York City, New York, USA. Moving with his family to Coffeyville, Kansas (1862), Colorado, and Silver City, New Mexico (1868), he allegedly killed his first man at age 12. After killing three Indians in Arizona (1876) and rampaging throughout the Southwest and Mexico, he led a faction in New Mexico's notorious Lincoln County [cattle] War (1878), and killed Sheriff Jim Brady. He continued killing and committing cattle theft with his followers until he was captured and sentenced to hang for Brady's death (1880). He escaped under heavy guard, killing two deputies, and remained at large until fatally shot by Sheriff Pat F Garrett in Fort Sumner (1881).
Henry McCarty (November 23, 1859 – July 14, 1881) better known as Billy the Kid, but also known by the aliases Henry Antrim and William Harrison Bonney, was a 19th century American frontier outlaw and gunman who was a participant in the Lincoln County War.
He was reputed to have killed 21 men, one for each year of his life, but the actual total is probably closer to nine (four on his own and five with the help of others).
Short and lithe, McCarty had blue eyes, smooth cheeks and prominent front teeth. Although little known in his own lifetime, McCarty was catapulted into legend in the year after his death when his killer, Sheriff Patrick Garrett, published a wildly sensationalistic biography of the outlaw called The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid.
Biography
Early life
Little is known about McCarty's background, but he is thought to have been born on Allen Street, in the lower east side of Manhattan island, New York. His parents were of Irish Protestant descent, but their exact names, and thus McCarty's own surname, are not known for certain. Variations for his parents' names include: Catherine McCarty or Katherine McCarty Bonney for his mother and William Bonney or Patrick Henry McCarty for his father (who probably died around the end of the American Civil War). Despite this, young McCarty sometimes referred to himself by the surname 'Antrim'.
Faced with an indigent husband, McCarty's mother took in boarders in order to provide for her sons. The following year, on 16 September 1874, his mother died and at 14 McCarty was forced to find work in a hotel.
On September 23, 1875 McCarty was arrested for hiding a bundle of stolen clothes for a man playing a prank on a Chinese laundryman. Two days after McCarty was thrown in jail, the scrawny teen escaped by worming his way up the jailhouse chimney. The civilian blacksmith at the camp, Frank "Windy" Cahill, took pleasure in bullying young McCarty. On August 17 Cahill attacked McCarty after a verbal exchange and threw him to the ground. McCarty retaliated by drawing his gun and shooting Cahill, who died the next day. Before the marshal could arrive, however, McCarty escaped.
Again on the run, McCarty, who had begun to refer to himself as Willam H.
Lincoln County Cattle War
In the fall of 1877 McCarty/Bonney moved to Lincoln County, New Mexico and was hired as a cattle guard by John Tunstall, (an English cattle rancher, banker, and merchant), and his partner, Alexander McSween (a prominent lawyer).
A conflict, soon to become known as the Lincoln County Cattle War, had begun between the established town merchants (called "The House") and the ranchers.
They formed their own group called The Regulators, led by ranch hand Richard "Dick" Brewer, and proceeded to hunt down two of the members of the posse that had killed Tunstall.
On April 1st, Regulators Jim French, Frank McNab, John Middleton, Fred Waite, Henry Brown and McCarty ambushed Sheriff William Brady and his deputy , killing them both. McCarty was wounded while trying to retrieve a rifle belonging to him, taken from him by Brady in an earlier arrest.
On April 4th, they tracked down and killed an old buffalo hunter known as Buckshot Roberts, whom they suspected of involvement in the Tunstall murder, but not before Roberts shot and killed Dick Brewer, who had been the Regulators' leader up until that point. McCarty took over as leader of the Regulators following Brewer's death. Under indictment for the Brady killing, McCarty and his gang spent the next several months in hiding, and were trapped, along with McSween, in McSween's home in Lincoln on July 15, 1878, by members of "The House" and some of Brady's men. McCarty and the other Regulators fled, McCarty killing a "House" member named Bob Beckwith in the process.
Lew Wallace and amnesty
In the autumn of 1878, former Union General Lew Wallace became the new territorial governor of New Mexico. McCarty, who had fled to Texas after escaping from McSween's house, was under indictment, but Wallace was intrigued by rumors that the young man was willing to surrender himself and testify against other combatants if amnesty could be extended to him. In March of 1879 Wallace and McCarty, now back in the Lincoln area, met to discuss the possibility of a deal. True to form, McCarty greeted the Governor with a revolver in one hand and a Winchester rifle in the other. After taking several days to consider Wallace's offer, McCarty agreed to testify in return for amnesty.
The arrangement called for McCarty to submit to a token arrest and a short stay in jail until the conclusion of his courtroom testimony. Although McCarty's testimony helped to indict John Dolan, (one of the powerful "House" faction leaders), the district attorney disregarded Wallace's order to set McCarty free after testifying. A natural escape artist, McCarty slipped out of his handcuffs and fled.
For the next year and a half, McCarty survived by rustling, gambling and killing. The "Kid" asked Grant if he could see his ivory handled revolver, while looking at the weapon McCarty cycled the cylinder so the hammer would fall on the empty chamber. McCarty then let Grant know who he was, when Grant fired, nothing happened and McCarty shot him dead.
McCarty drew enough attention to himself through his activities as a cattle rustler that he and his gang were pursued by a posse and trapped inside a ranch-house (owned by friend James Greathouse at Anton Chico in the White Oaks area) in November 1880. Realizing what they had done and now demoralized, the posse scattered, allowing McCarty and his gang to slip away.
Pat Garrett
During this time, the Kid also developed a fateful friendship with an ambitious local bartender and former buffalo hunter named Patrick Garrett. Running on a pledge to rid the area of rustlers, Garrett was elected as sheriff of Lincoln County in November 1880, and in early December of that year he put together a posse and set out to arrest McCarty, now known almost exclusively as Billy the Kid and carrying a $500 bounty on his head. On December 19, McCarty barely escaped the posse's midnight ambush in Fort Sumner, during which one of McCarty's gang, Tom O'Folliard, was shot dead.
While McCarty and his gang were asleep inside, Garrett's posse surrounded the building and waited for sunrise. Mistaken for McCarty, he was shot dead by the posse. (The horse's body then blocked the only exit.) As the lawmen began to cook breakfast over an open fire, Garrett and McCarty engaged in a friendly exchange, Garrett inviting McCarty outside to eat, McCarty inviting Garrett to "go to hell."
Escape from Lincoln
McCarty was jailed in the town of Mesilla while waiting for his April 1881 trial, and spent his time giving newspaper interviews - he was by now a famous local figure - and also peppering Governor Wallace with letters seeking clemency. McCarty's trial took exactly one day, and resulted in his conviction for killing Sheriff Brady - the only conviction ever secured against any of the combatants, on either side, in the Lincoln County Cattle War. On April 28, while Garrett was out of town, McCarty stunned the territory by killing both of his guards and escaping. Some historians believe that a friend or Regulator sympathizer left a pistol in a nearby privy that McCarty was allowed to use, under escort, each day. McCarty then retrieved this gun and after Bell had led him back to the courthouse, turned it on his guard as the two of them reached the top of a flight of stairs inside. Another theory holds that McCarty slipped his manacles at the top of the stairs, struck Bell over the head with them and then grabbed Bell's own gun and shot him. Meanwhile, McCarty scooped up Ollinger's ten-gauge double barrel shotgun and waited at the upstairs window for Ollinger, who had been across the street with some other prisoners, to come to Bell's aid. As Ollinger came running into view, McCarty leveled the shotgun at him, called out "Hello, Bob!"
Death
McCarty's freedom would prove short-lived, however. Responding to rumours that McCarty was still lurking in the vicinity of Fort Sumner almost three months after his escape, Sheriff Garrett and two deputies set out on July 14, 1881 to question one of the town's residents, a friend of McCarty's named Pete Maxwell.
One version says that as the Kid entered, he could not recognize Garrett in the poor light. McCarty drew his pistol and backed away, asking "¿Quién es? Recognizing McCarty's voice, Garrett drew his own pistol and fired twice, the first bullet hitting McCarty just above his heart and killing him instantly.
In a second version, McCarty entered carrying a knife, evidently headed to a kitchen area.
Henry McCarty, alias Henry Antrim, alias William H.
Perhaps because many people heard both of these arguments and confused them, it is widely believed that Billy the Kid was ambidextrous.
Claimants to the title
Brushy Bill
In 1950, a lawyer named William Morrison located a man in West Texas named Ollie P. Roberts, nicknamed Brushy Bill, who claimed to be the actual Billy the Kid, and that he indeed had not been shot and killed by Pat Garrett in 1881.
Despite this and discrepancies in birthdates and physical appearance, the Town of Hico, Texas (Brushy Bill's residence) has capitalized on the Kid's infamy by opening the Billy The Kid Museum.
John Miller
Another claimant to the title of Billy the Kid, also likely to be a hoax, was John Miller, who claimed to be Billy the Kid in 1938. DNA samples from the remains were sent to a lab in Dallas, Texas to be compared against traces of blood taken from a bench that was believed to be the one McCarty's body was placed on after he was shot to death. The pair had been searching for the physical remains of McCarty since 2003, beginning in Fort Sumner, New Mexico and eventually ending up in Arizona.
In film, literature, radio, and music
Billy the Kid has been the subject or inspiration for many works of art, including:
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