Billy the Kid (born Henry
McCarty; September 17 or November 23, 1859 – July 14, 1881),
also known by the pseudonym William H. Bonney, was an outlaw and
gunfighter of the American Old West, who killed eight men before he
was shot and killed at the age of 21. He also fought in New Mexico's
Lincoln County War, during which he allegedly committed three
murders.
McCarty was orphaned at the age of 15.
His first arrest was for stealing food, at the age of 16, in late
1875. Ten days later, he robbed a Chinese laundry and was again
arrested, but escaped shortly afterwards. He fled from New Mexico
Territory into neighboring Arizona Territory, making himself both an
outlaw and a federal fugitive. In 1877, McCarty began to call himself
"William H. Bonney". Two versions of a wanted poster
dated September 23, 1875, refer to him as "Wm. Wright, better
known as Billy the Kid".
After killing a blacksmith during an
altercation in August 1877, McCarty became a wanted man in Arizona
and returned to New Mexico, where he joined a group of cattle
rustlers. He became well known in the region when he joined the
Regulators and took part in the Lincoln County War of 1878. McCarty
and two other Regulators were later charged with killing three men,
including Lincoln County Sheriff William J. Brady and one of his
deputies.
McCarty's notoriety grew in December
1880 when the Las Vegas Gazette, in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and The
Sun, in New York City, carried stories about his crimes. Sheriff Pat
Garrett captured McCarty later that month. In April 1881, McCarty was
tried for and convicted of Brady's murder, and was sentenced to hang
in May of that year. He escaped from jail on April 28, killing two
sheriff's deputies in the process and evading capture for more than
two months. Garrett shot and killed McCarty, by then age 21, in Fort
Sumner on July 14, 1881. During the following decades, legends grew
that McCarty had survived, and a number of men claimed to be him.
Billy the Kid remains one of the most notorious figures from the era,
whose life and likeness have been frequently dramatized in Western
popular culture.
Early life
Henry McCarty was born to parents of
Irish Catholic ancestry, Catherine (née Devine) and Patrick McCarty,
in New York City. While his birth year has been confirmed as 1859,
the exact date of his birth has been disputed as either September 17
or November 23 of that year. A letter from an official of Saint
Peter's Church in Manhattan states it is in possession of records
showing McCarty was baptized there on September 28, 1859. Census
records indicate his younger brother, Joseph McCarty, was born in
1863.
Following the death of her husband
Patrick, Catherine McCarty and her sons moved to Indianapolis,
Indiana, where she met William Henry Harrison Antrim. The McCarty
family 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 Territory;
McCarty and his brother Joseph were witnesses to the ceremony.
Shortly afterward, the family moved from Santa Fe to Silver City, New
Mexico, and Joseph McCarty began using the name Joseph Antrim.
Shortly before McCarty's mother, Catherine, died of tuberculosis,
then called "consumption", on September 16, 1874,
William Antrim abandoned the McCarty boys, leaving them orphans.
First crimes
McCarty was 15 years old when his
mother died. Sarah Brown, the owner of a boarding house, gave him
room and board in exchange for work. On September 16, 1875, McCarty
was caught stealing food. Ten days later, McCarty and George
Schaefer robbed a Chinese laundry, stealing clothing and two pistols.
McCarty was charged with theft and was jailed. He escaped two days
later and became a fugitive, as reported in the Silver City Herald
the next day, the first story published about him. McCarty located
his stepfather and stayed with him until Antrim threw him out;
McCarty stole clothing and guns from him. It was the last time the
two saw each other.
After leaving Antrim, McCarty traveled
to southeastern Arizona Territory, where he worked as a ranch hand
and gambled his wages in nearby gaming houses. In 1876, he was hired
as a ranch hand by well-known rancher Henry Hooker. During this time,
McCarty became acquainted with John R. Mackie, a Scottish-born
criminal and former U.S. Cavalry private who, following his
discharge, remained near the U.S. Army post at Camp Grant in Arizona.
The two men soon began stealing horses from local soldiers. McCarty
became known as "Kid Antrim" because of his youth,
slight build, clean-shaven appearance, and personality.
On August 17, 1877, McCarty was at a
saloon in the village of Bonita when he got into an argument with
Francis P. "Windy" Cahill, a blacksmith who
reportedly had bullied McCarty and on more than one occasion called
him a "pimp". McCarty in turn called Cahill a "son
of a bitch", whereupon Cahill threw McCarty to the floor and
the two struggled for McCarty's revolver. McCarty shot and mortally
wounded Cahill. A witness said, "[Billy] had no choice; he
had to use his equalizer." Cahill died the following day.
McCarty fled but returned a few days later and was apprehended by
Miles Wood, the local justice of the peace. McCarty was detained and
held in the Camp Grant guardhouse but escaped before law enforcement
could arrive.
McCarty stole a horse and fled Arizona
Territory for New Mexico Territory, but Apaches took the horse from
him, leaving him to walk many miles to the nearest settlement. At
Fort Stanton in the Pecos Valley, McCarty—starving and near
death—went to the home of friend and Seven Rivers Warriors gang
member John Jones, whose mother Barbara nursed him back to health.
After regaining his health, McCarty went to Apache Tejo, a former
army post, where he joined a band of rustlers who raided herds owned
by cattle magnate John Chisum in Lincoln County. After McCarty was
spotted in Silver City, his involvement with the gang was mentioned
in a local newspaper. At some point in 1877, McCarty began to refer
to himself by the name "William H. Bonney".
Lincoln County War
After returning to New Mexico, McCarty
worked as a cowboy for English businessman and rancher John Henry
Tunstall (1853–1878), near the Rio Felix, a tributary of the Rio
Grande, in Lincoln County. Tunstall and his business partner and
lawyer Alexander McSween were opponents of an alliance formed by
Irish-American businessmen Lawrence Murphy, James Dolan, and John
Riley. The three men had wielded an economic and political hold over
Lincoln County since the early 1870s, due in part to their ownership
of a beef contract with nearby Fort Stanton and a well-patronized dry
goods store in the town of Lincoln.
By February 1878, McSween owed $8,000
to Dolan, who obtained a court order and asked Lincoln County Sheriff
William J. Brady to attach nearly $40,000 worth of Tunstall's
property and livestock. Tunstall put Bonney in charge of nine prime
horses and told him to relocate them to his ranch for safekeeping.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Brady assembled a large posse to seize Tunstall's
cattle.
On February 18, 1878, Tunstall learned
of the posse's presence on his land and rode out to intervene. During
the encounter, one member of the posse shot Tunstall in the chest,
knocking him off his horse. Another posse member took Tunstall's gun
and killed him with a shot to the back of his head. Tunstall's murder
ignited the conflict between the two factions that became known as
the Lincoln County War.
Build-up
After Tunstall was killed, McCarty and
Dick Brewer swore affidavits against Brady and those in his posse,
and obtained murder warrants from Lincoln County justice of the peace
John B. Wilson. On February 20, 1878, while attempting to arrest
Brady, the sheriff and his deputies found and arrested McCarty and
two other men riding with him. Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Widenmann,
a friend of McCarty, and a detachment of soldiers captured Sheriff
Brady's jail guards, put them behind bars, and released McCarty and
Brewer.
McCarty then joined the Lincoln County
Regulators; on March 9 they captured Frank Baker and William Morton,
both of whom were accused of killing Tunstall. Baker and Morton were
killed while allegedly trying to escape.
On April 1, the Regulators ambushed
Sheriff Brady and his deputies; McCarty was wounded in the thigh
during the battle. Brady and Deputy Sheriff George W. Hindman were
killed. On the morning of April 4, 1878, Buckshot Roberts and Dick
Brewer were killed during a shootout at Blazer's Mill. Warrants were
issued for several participants on both sides, and McCarty and two
others were charged with killing Brady, Hindman and Roberts.
Battle of Lincoln (1878)
On the night of Sunday, July 14,
McSween and the Regulators—now a group of fifty or sixty men—went
to Lincoln and stationed themselves in the town among several
buildings. At the McSween residence were McCarty, 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 saloon. Henry
Newton Brown, Dick Smith, and George Coe defended a nearby adobe
bunkhouse.
On Tuesday, July 16, newly appointed
sheriff George Peppin sent sharpshooters to kill the McSween
defenders at the saloon. Peppin's men retreated when one of the
snipers, Charles Crawford, was killed by Fernando Herrera. Peppin
then sent a request for assistance to Colonel Nathan Dudley,
commandant of nearby Fort Stanton. In a reply to Peppin, Dudley
refused to intervene but later arrived in Lincoln with troops,
turning the battle in favor of the Murphy-Dolan faction.
A shooting war broke out on Friday,
July 19. McSween's supporters gathered inside his house; when Buck
Powell and Deputy Sheriff Jack Long set fire to the building, the
occupants began shooting. McCarty and the other men fled the building
when all rooms but one were burning. During the confusion, Alexander
McSween was shot and killed by Robert W. Beckwith, who was then shot
and killed by McCarty.
Outlaw
McCarty and three other survivors of
the Battle of Lincoln were near the Mescalero Indian Agency when the
agency bookkeeper, Morris Bernstein, was murdered on August 5, 1878.
All four were indicted for the murder, despite conflicting evidence
that Bernstein had been killed by Constable Atanacio Martinez. All of
the indictments, except McCarty's, were later quashed.
On October 5, 1878, U.S. Marshal John
Sherman informed newly appointed Territorial Governor and former
Union Army general Lew Wallace that he held warrants for several men,
including "William H. Antrim, alias Kid, alias Bonny [sic]"
but was unable to execute them "owing to the disturbed
condition of affairs in that county, resulting from the acts of a
desperate class of men." Wallace issued an amnesty
proclamation on November 13, 1878, which pardoned anyone involved in
the Lincoln County War since Tunstall's murder. It specifically
excluded persons who had been convicted of or indicted for a crime,
and therefore excluded McCarty.
On February 18, 1879, McCarty and
friend Tom O'Folliard were in Lincoln and watched as attorney Huston
Chapman was shot and his corpse set on fire. According to
eyewitnesses, the pair were innocent bystanders forced at gunpoint by
Jesse Evans to witness the murder. McCarty wrote to Governor Wallace
on March 13, 1879, with an offer to provide information on the
Chapman murder in exchange for amnesty. On March 15, Governor Wallace
replied, agreeing to a secret meeting to discuss the situation.
McCarty met with Wallace in Lincoln on March 17, 1879. During the
meeting and in subsequent correspondence, Wallace promised McCarty
protection from his enemies and clemency if he would offer his
testimony to a grand jury.
On March 20, Wallace wrote to McCarty,
"to remove all suspicion of understanding, I think it better
to put the arresting party in charge of Sheriff Kimbrell [sic] who
shall be instructed to see that no violence is used."
McCarty responded on the same day, agreeing to testify and confirming
Wallace's proposal for his arrest and detention in a local jail to
assure his safety. On March 21, McCarty let himself be captured by a
posse led by Sheriff George Kimball of Lincoln County. As agreed,
McCarty provided a statement about Chapman's murder and testified in
court. However, after McCarty's testimony, the local district
attorney refused to set him free. Still in custody several weeks
later, McCarty began to suspect Wallace had used subterfuge and would
never grant him amnesty. McCarty escaped from the Lincoln County jail
on June 17, 1879.
McCarty 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 Santa
Fe Weekly New Mexican reported, "Billy Bonney, more
extensively known as 'the Kid,' shot and killed Joe Grant. The origin
of the difficulty was not learned." According to other
contemporary sources, McCarty had been warned Grant intended to kill
him. He walked up to Grant, told him he admired his revolver, and
asked to examine it. Grant handed it over. Before returning the
pistol, which he noticed contained only three cartridges, McCarty
positioned the cylinder so the next hammer fall would land on an
empty chamber. Grant suddenly pointed his pistol at McCarty's face
and pulled the trigger. When it failed to fire, McCarty drew his own
weapon and shot Grant in the head. A reporter for the Las Vegas Optic
quoted McCarty as saying the encounter "was a game of two and
I got there first."
In 1880, McCarty formed a friendship
with a rancher named Jim Greathouse, who later introduced him to Dave
Rudabaugh. On November 29, 1880, McCarty, Rudabaugh, and Billy Wilson
ran from a posse led by sheriff's deputy James Carlysle. Cornered at
Greathouse's ranch, McCarty told the posse they were holding
Greathouse as a hostage. Carlysle offered to exchange places with
Greathouse, and McCarty accepted the offer. Carlysle later attempted
to escape by jumping through a window but he was shot three times and
killed. The shootout ended in a standoff; the posse withdrew and
McCarty, Rudabaugh, and Wilson rode away.
A few weeks after the Greathouse
incident, McCarty, Rudabaugh, Wilson, O'Folliard, Charlie Bowdre, and
Tom Pickett rode into Fort Sumner. Unbeknownst to McCarty and his
companions, a posse led by Pat Garrett was waiting for them. The
posse opened fire, killing O'Folliard; the rest of the outlaws
escaped unharmed.
Capture and escape
On December 13, 1880, Governor Wallace
posted a $500 bounty for McCarty's capture. Pat Garrett continued
his search for McCarty; on December 23, following the siege in which
Bowdre was killed, Garrett and his posse captured McCarty along with
Pickett, Rudabaugh, and Wilson at Stinking Springs. The prisoners,
including McCarty, were shackled and taken to Fort Sumner, then later
to Las Vegas, New Mexico. When they arrived on December 26, they were
met by crowds of curious onlookers.
The following day, an armed mob
gathered at the train depot before the prisoners, who were already on
board the train with Garrett, departed for Santa Fe. Deputy Sheriff
Romero, backed by the angry group of men, demanded custody of Dave
Rudabaugh, who during an unsuccessful escape attempt on April 5, 1880
shot and killed deputy Antonio Lino Valdez in the process. Garrett
refused to surrender the prisoner, and a tense confrontation ensued
until he agreed to let the sheriff and two other men accompany the
party to Santa Fe, where they would petition the governor to release
Rudabaugh to them. In a later interview with a reporter, McCarty said
he was unafraid during the incident, saying, "if I only had
my Winchester I'd lick the whole crowd." The Las Vegas
Gazette ran a story from a jailhouse interview following McCarty's
capture; when the reporter said Bonney appeared relaxed, he replied,
"What's the use of looking on the gloomy side of everything?
The laugh's on me this time." During his short career as an
outlaw, McCarty was the subject of numerous U.S. newspaper articles,
some as far away as New York.
After arriving in Santa Fe, McCarty,
seeking clemency, sent Governor Wallace four letters over the next
three months. Wallace refused to intervene, and McCarty went to trial
in April 1881 in Mesilla, New Mexico. Following two days of
testimony, McCarty was found guilty of Sheriff Brady's murder; it was
the only conviction secured against any of the combatants in the
Lincoln County War. On April 13, Judge Warren Bristol sentenced
McCarty to hang, with his execution scheduled for May 13, 1881.
According to legend, upon sentencing, the judge told McCarty he was
going to hang until he was "dead, dead, dead";
McCarty's response was, "you can go to hell, hell, hell."
According to the historical record, he did not speak after the
reading of his sentence.
Courthouse and jail, Lincoln, New
Mexico
Following his sentencing, McCarty was
moved to Lincoln, where he was held under guard on the top floor of
the town courthouse. On the evening of April 28, 1881, while Garrett
was in White Oaks collecting taxes, Deputy Bob Olinger took five
other prisoners across the street for a meal, leaving James Bell,
another deputy, alone with McCarty at the jail. McCarty asked to be
taken outside to use the outhouse behind the courthouse; on their
return to the jail, McCarty—who was walking ahead of Bell up the
stairs to his cell—hid around a blind corner, slipped out of his
handcuffs, and beat Bell with the loose end of the cuffs. During the
ensuing scuffle, McCarty grabbed Bell's revolver and fatally shot him
in the back as Bell tried to get away.
McCarty, with his legs still shackled,
broke into Garrett's office and took a loaded shotgun left behind by
Olinger. McCarty waited at the upstairs window for Olinger to respond
to the gunshot that killed Bell and called out to him, "Look
up, old boy, and see what you get." When Olinger looked up,
Bonney shot and killed him. After about an hour, McCarty freed
himself from the leg irons with an axe. He obtained a horse and rode
out of town; according to some stories he was singing as he left
Lincoln.
Recapture and death
While McCarty was on the run, Governor
Wallace placed a new $500 bounty on the fugitive's head. Almost
three months after his escape, Garrett, responding to rumors that
McCarty was in the vicinity of Fort Sumner, left Lincoln with two
deputies on July 14, 1881, to question resident Pete Maxwell, a
friend of McCarty's. Maxwell, son of land baron Lucien Maxwell, spoke
with Garrett the same day for several hours. Around midnight, the
pair sat in Maxwell's darkened bedroom when McCarty unexpectedly
entered.
Accounts vary as to the course of
events. According to the canonical version, as he entered the room,
McCarty failed to recognize Garrett due to the poor lighting. Drawing
his revolver and backing away, McCarty asked "¿Quién es?
¿Quién es?" (Spanish for "Who is it? Who is it?").
Recognizing McCarty's voice, Garrett drew his revolver and fired
twice. The first bullet struck McCarty in the chest just above his
heart, while the second missed. Garrett’s account leaves it unclear
whether McCarty was killed instantly or took some time to die.
A few hours after the shooting, a local
justice of the peace assembled a coroner's jury of six people. The
jury members interviewed Maxwell and Garrett, and McCarty's body and
the location of the shooting were examined. The jury certified the
body as McCarty's and, according to a local newspaper, the jury
foreman said, "It was the Kid's body that we examined."
McCarty was given a wake by candlelight; he was buried the next day
and his grave was denoted with a wooden marker.
Five days after McCarty's killing,
Garrett traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to collect the $500 reward
offered by Governor Lew Wallace for his capture, dead or alive.
William G. Ritch, the acting New Mexico governor, refused to pay the
reward. Over the next few weeks, the residents of Las Vegas,
Mesilla, Santa Fe, White Oaks, and other New Mexico cities raised
over $7,000 in reward money for Garrett. A year and four days after
McCarty's death, the New Mexico territorial legislature passed a
special act to grant Garrett the $500 bounty reward promised by
Governor Wallace.
Because people had begun to claim
Garrett unfairly ambushed McCarty, Garrett felt the need to tell his
side of the story and called upon his friend, journalist Marshall
Upson, to ghostwrite a book for him. The book, The Authentic Life of
Billy, the Kid,[d] was first published in April 1882. Although only a
few copies sold following its release, in time, it became a reference
for later historians who wrote about McCarty's life.
Rumors of survival
Over time, legends grew claiming that
McCarty was not killed, and that Garrett staged the incident and
death out of friendship so that McCarty could evade the law. During
the next 50 years, a number of men claimed they were Billy the Kid.
Most of these claims were easily disproven, but two have remained
topics of discussion and debate.
In 1948, a central Texas man, Ollie P.
Roberts, also known as Brushy Bill Roberts, began claiming he was
Billy the Kid and went before New Mexico Governor Thomas J. Mabry
seeking a pardon. Mabry dismissed Roberts' claims, and Roberts died
shortly afterward. Nevertheless, Hico, Texas, Roberts' town of
residence, capitalized on his claim by opening a Billy the Kid
museum.
John Miller, an Arizona man, also
claimed he was McCarty. This was unsupported by his family until
1938, some time after his death. Miller's body was buried in the
state-owned Arizona Pioneers' Home Cemetery in Prescott, Arizona; in
May 2005, Miller's teeth and bones were exhumed and examined, without
permission from the state. DNA samples from the remains 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 a bench where McCarty's body allegedly was 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 exhume
the remains of Catherine Antrim, McCarty's mother, whose DNA would be
tested and compared with that of the body buried in William Bonney's
grave. As of 2012, her body had not been exhumed.
In 2007, author and amateur historian
Gale Cooper filed a lawsuit against the Lincoln County Sheriff's
Office under the state Inspection of Public Records Act to produce
records of the results of the 2006 DNA tests and other forensic
evidence collected in the Billy the Kid investigations. In April
2012, 133 pages of documents were provided; they offered no
conclusive evidence confirming or disproving the generally accepted
story of Garrett's killing of McCarty, but confirmed the records'
existence, and that they could have been produced earlier. In 2014,
Cooper was awarded $100,000 in punitive damages but the decision was
later overturned by the New Mexico Court of Appeals. The lawsuit
ultimately cost Lincoln County nearly $300,000.
In February 2015, historian Robert
Stahl petitioned a district court in Fort Sumner asking the state of
New Mexico to issue a death certificate for McCarty. In July 2015,
Stahl filed suit in the New Mexico Supreme Court. The suit asked the
court to order the state's Office of the Medical Investigator to
officially certify McCarty's death under New Mexico state law.
Photographs
One of the few remaining artifacts of
McCarty's life is a 2-by-3-inch (5.1-by-7.6-centimeter) ferrotype
photograph of McCarty by an unknown portrait photographer in late
1879 or early 1880. The image shows McCarty wearing a vest over a
sweater, a slouch hat and a bandana, while holding an 1873 Winchester
rifle with its butt resting on the floor. For years, this was the
only photograph scholars and historians agreed showed McCarty. The
ferrotype survived because McCarty's friend Dan Dedrick kept it after
the outlaw's death. It was passed down through Dedrick's family, and
was copied several times, appearing in numerous publications during
the 20th century. In June 2011, the original plate was bought at
auction for $2.3 million by businessman William Koch.
The image shows McCarty wearing his
holstered Colt revolver on his left side. This led historians to
believe he was left-handed, but they did not take into account that
the ferrotype process produces reversed images. In 1954, western
historians James D. Horan and Paul Sann wrote that McCarty was
right-handed and carried his pistol on his right hip. The opinion was
confirmed by Clyde Jeavons, a former curator of the National Film and
Television Archive. Several historians have written that McCarty was
ambidextrous.
Croquet tintype
A 4-by-6-inch (100 mm × 150 mm)
ferrotype purchased at a memorabilia shop in Fresno, California, in
2010 has been claimed to show McCarty and members of the Regulators
playing croquet. If authentic, it is the only known photo of Billy
the Kid and the Regulators together and the only image to feature
their wives and female companions. Collector Robert G. McCubbin and
outlaw historian John Boessenecker concluded in 2013 that the
photograph does not show McCarty. Whitny Braun, a professor and
researcher, located an advertisement for croquet sets sold at
Chapman's General Store in Las Vegas, New Mexico, dated to June 1878.
Kent Gibson, a forensic video and still image expert, offered the
services of his facial recognition software, and stated that McCarty
is indeed one of the individuals in the image.
In August 2015, Lincoln State Monument
officials and the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs said that
despite the new research, they could not confirm that the image
showed McCarty or others from the Lincoln County War era, according
to Monument manager Gary Cozzens. A photograph curator at the Palace
of the Governors archives, Daniel Kosharek, said the image is
"problematic on a lot of fronts," including the
small size of the figures and the lack of resemblance of the
background landscape to Lincoln County or the state in general.
Editors from the True West Magazine staff said, "no one in
our office thinks this photo is of the Kid [and the Regulators]."
In early October 2015, Kagin's, Inc., a
numismatic authentication firm, said the image was authentic after a
number of experts, including those associated with a recent National
Geographic Channel program, examined it.
Posthumous pardon request
In 2010, New Mexico Governor Bill
Richardson turned down a request for a posthumous pardon of McCarty
for the murder of Sheriff William Brady. The pardon considered was to
fulfill Governor Lew Wallace's 1879 promise to Bonney. Richardson's
decision, citing "historical ambiguity," was
announced on December 31, 2010, his last day in office.
Grave markers
In 1931, Charles W. Foor, an unofficial
tour guide at Fort Sumner Cemetery, campaigned to raise funds for a
permanent marker for the graves of McCarty, O'Folliard, and Bowdre.
As a result of his efforts, a stone memorial marked with the names of
the three men and their death dates beneath the word "Pals"
was erected in the center of the burial area.
In 1940, stone cutter James N. Warner
of Salida, Colorado, made and donated to the cemetery a new marker
for Bonney's grave. It was stolen on February 8, 1981, but recovered
days later in Huntington Beach, California. New Mexico Governor Bruce
King arranged for the county sheriff to fly to California to return
it to Fort Sumner, where it was reinstalled in May 1981. Although
both markers are behind iron fencing, a group of vandals entered the
enclosure at night in June 2012 and tipped the stone over.
Popular culture
Beginning with the 1911 silent film
“Billy the Kid”, which depicted McCarty as a girl
impersonating a boy, he has been a feature of more than 50 movies
including:
The Adventures of Billy, another
1911 silent film directed by D. W. Griffith, Starring Edna Foster as
a girl impersonating a boy (Billy)
The Outlaw (Jack Buetel as Billy)
The Left Handed Gun (Paul Newman as
Billy)
Chisum (Geoffrey Deuel as Billy)
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Kris
Kristofferson as Billy)
Dirty Little Billy (Michael J.
Pollard as Billy)
The Authentic Life of Billy, the
Kid (book)
Young Guns (Emilio Estevez as
Billy)
Young Guns II (Emilio Estevez as
Billy)
The Kid (Dane DeHaan as Billy)
Old Henry (Tim Blake Nelson as
Billy)
Bill & Ted’s Excellent
Adventure (Dan Shor as Billy)
