Billy the Kid
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00:30On April 28, 1881, 21-year-old Henry McCarty, alias Billy the Kid, was just days from being
00:44hanged for murder.
00:48A promised pardon from the governor of New Mexico never materialized, and Billy was now
00:54in the custody of Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett and two well-armed deputies.
01:00Thursday evening, about 6 o'clock, there's two guards on duty.
01:06Pat Garrett went over it time and time again to not be taken in by this guy's charm.
01:11I don't care how charming he is, you know, at the first chance he gets, he'll kill the
01:14both of you and leave.
01:17Billy the Kid is extremely intelligent.
01:20He was able to get them to underestimate him time and again.
01:25I think he thinks, somewhere in here, I'm going to get out of this.
01:30Escaping was always on the agenda.
01:35Billy the Kid had been on the run from the law since the age of 15.
01:38In just a few short years, he'd become the most wanted man west of the Pecos.
01:44Demonized by a popular press set on cleaning up New Mexico, Billy was portrayed as a bloodthirsty
01:50killer, a ruthless cuss, hell-bent on anarchy.
01:55They were beating the war drums.
01:57Let's get rid of that kid.
02:00Let's hunt him down.
02:02Let's civilize this territory.
02:04Billy the Kid came of age at the moment the myth of the Wild West was forged.
02:11At a time when outlaws were made famous overnight in the pages of dime novels, he took his place
02:16alongside men like Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, and Wyatt Earle.
02:23I grew up with Billy the Kid.
02:26We grew up with the myths, the stories.
02:29People saw him as a voice for the disenfranchised.
02:36He was the Robin Hood of New Mexico.
02:40Billy the Kid was a rebel, an outlaw, good-looking, glamorous.
02:46But you have to separate the romantic, mythical side of Billy and the fact that he was a cop-killer,
02:53and that he murdered people.
02:56You can actually see in this period in America the formation of something which becomes very,
03:03very powerful in 20th century culture, the gangster as hero, the idea that the man of
03:08violence is the man of action, and that there is no difference really between fame and infamy.
03:16The young man who would come to symbolize the freedom and rebellion of the Wild West likely
03:38began his life in the teeming slums of New York City.
03:44He was born Henry McCarty, the son of Irish immigrants.
03:50His mother, Catherine, had fled Ireland to escape the devastating famine of the 1840s,
03:55only to find squalor and hardship in America.
04:00It's not known who Henry's father was or how he died, but Catherine was determined to give
04:05her son a better life than the one she had known.
04:10Shortly after the Civil War, Henry and his mother joined a wave of humanity, heading
04:15west in search of new opportunity.
04:19Out on the trail, young Henry learned to survive the hardscrabble life of a Western pioneer.
04:26Catherine made sure he learned to read and write.
04:29After past the time, the two sang Irish folk songs as they crossed the vast open spaces of America.
04:45Heard by the promise of silver, 14-year-old Henry and his mother and her new husband, a prospector
04:52named William Antrim, settled in the remote outpost of Silver City in southeastern New Mexico.
05:01By 1873, New Mexico had been a territory of the United States for over two decades.
05:08But to American settlers, fresh off the Santa Fe Trail, the region seemed like an exotic foreign country.
05:16The Americans, in their journals and diaries, you can sense the kind of a very patronizing
05:21and very dismissive of this culture here.
05:25The New Mexicans were dark, their religious practices were mysterious, and civilization,
05:32as we customarily think of it, kind of halted here.
05:40In the bustling plazas of the capital, traders could be heard bartering for livestock in Spanish,
05:46French and Navajo.
05:49Rustic dwellings carved into the mesas were home to Pueblo Indians, and Mescalero Apaches
05:55continued to roam the countryside.
05:58New Mexico, it's a place of mestizaje, what we call a mixture of cultures.
06:06So you have the Latino-Mexican influence, you have the Anglo influence, you have the Native
06:12American.
06:14It was a wild, unbelievable land of great violence and great beauty.
06:26Young Henry McCarty was captivated by the world he discovered, instantly embracing New
06:32Mexican culture.
06:34He became a familiar presence in the Hispanic district of Silver City, known as Chihuahua
06:40Hill.
06:41In just months, he was speaking Spanish fluently.
06:45He took to wearing sombreros and beaded moccasins, and he would while away his nights, learning
06:51to dance the Mexican Fandango.
06:54He would go to the Mexican district of Silver City with his mother, with Catherine, and they'd
07:03go to the dances, and they'd dance together, and they'd sing songs together.
07:08And he certainly caught the eye of many, many senoritas.
07:14These Hispanic mothers, and these old aunts, and these fathers liked him enough to let him
07:22court around and dance with their lovely, protected daughters.
07:28He didn't have his arm out like people might have.
07:34He so embraced our culture, our people.
07:39Somebody that was very respectful, very proper, and very formal in a Mexican sort of way, which
07:47we like our formality.
07:48He had this innate charm.
07:55They often talk about sort of his squirrely teeth and how his mouth was shaped, but it
08:00was always in a smile.
08:02That's what the Hispanic community always says.
08:06He was always smiling, always laughing.
08:13When Henry was just 15 years old, his mother became gravely ill.
08:18She had hoped the dry mountain air that banked off the Rockies and settled over the valleys
08:25would restore her health.
08:27But the galloping consumption, as it was then known, proved too much for Catherine.
08:33She died in Silver City in 1874.
08:41The kid is a young teenager when his mom dies.
08:45Catherine is his one connection to stability.
08:48I mean, this is the mother that's raised you, that's made sure you were fed, that's sent
08:52you to school.
08:54But once Catherine's gone, the stepfather, William Antrim, doesn't really care about the upbringing
09:00of his stepson.
09:02Androm abandons the boy.
09:06I mean, to be out in this distant and strange land, and then to have lost the only connection
09:15you had to who you were and to your past, it just has to be devastating.
09:32An orphan in a tough and transient mining town, it didn't take long for Henry to find trouble,
09:38or for trouble to find him.
09:41In the saloons and brothels in the center of town, Henry hustled to make a few bucks however
09:47he could.
09:49At night, he would bunk down in the boarding houses with a revolving cast of strangers,
09:54one of them a streetwise petty thief named Sombrero Jack.
10:02On the afternoon of September 4th, 1875, Henry acted as lookout while Sombrero Jack robbed
10:10a Chinese laundry.
10:13When some of the plunder, including a loaded revolver, was discovered in Henry's room,
10:18he was arrested.
10:23Alone in a cramped 4x5 cell, Henry could hear the bustle of downtown Silver City through the
10:29tiny barred window.
10:32He knew it might take up to three months for a traveling judge to make it to this part of
10:36New Mexico.
10:38It was a lifetime to a 16-year-old.
10:42One of the things about the kid, he was able to deceive people.
10:47He was able to get them to think that he was inconsequential.
10:53Henry calmed the prison guard into granting him some time outside his cell.
10:59When the coast was clear, Henry, no more than 130 pounds with his boots on, forced his tiny
11:06frame up the chimney.
11:09And the sheriff returns to jail, and there's no kid.
11:12The cell's empty.
11:13The hallway's empty.
11:15Probably, it would have been a slap on the wrist had he stayed there.
11:20But with that jailbreak, he's a wanted man at the age of 16.
11:29Henry decided to head west for Arizona, where he hoped to get a fresh start.
11:35With no horse, no gun, and little money, he was on the run in some of the most hostile land in the country.
11:44This country was so bad, so wild, so dangerous.
11:49Just staying alive was a trick.
11:52This was a country where everybody was against you.
11:56If you had anything worth taking, then you were alone.
11:59This territory, this landscape embraces people who can stand up to the environment, to the harshness, to the desert.
12:11And you had to be a unique individual to survive this kind of landscape.
12:17After 500 miles of unforgiving desert, Henry arrived in a remote army outpost in Arizona known as Camp Grant,
12:27where he stopped running long enough to look for honest work.
12:31Like a lot of kids in his time, he wanted to be a cowboy.
12:46You know, the whole myth and aura that surrounded cowboys surrounded them just as it does now.
12:52He wasn't very good at it, apparently, because the best work he seemed to be able to get was working on the chuck line as a cook.
13:00They thought he was too small and frail to be working with the other cowboys.
13:07Once again, Henry was back to hustling for money.
13:12He became a skilled gambler and dealer of three-card Monty.
13:16And he fell in with a gang of seasoned outlaws who taught him the finer points of stealing horses.
13:23Soon he earned enough to buy the one thing he would need most to survive.
13:30A six-shooter.
13:32It's an equalizer.
13:34If you want some instant respect, put on a six-shooter.
13:37And you're gonna get that respect.
13:40He quickly became very good with a gun.
13:47He learned how to handle himself.
13:50Because you had to in order to get along out in that raw country.
13:55In the years since escaping the Silver City jail, Henry had started to make a name for himself as an outlaw.
14:07He had taken to wearing a gambler's ring on his pinky and brightly colored scarves around his neck.
14:14He spent his nights hanging out with other toughs at raucous saloons, where he picked up the nickname, The Kid.
14:27On the evening of August 17, 1877, The Kid danced across a line from which he could never return,
14:35when he ran into a local thug named Frank Cahill.
14:41Windy Cahill.
14:43He's a real boastful, outspoken bully.
14:47He thought it was fun to slap this little guy around, just to amuse the other patrons.
14:52And he did that one time too many.
14:56He started really in on the kid.
14:59One thing led to another.
15:01He got him down and was pounding him.
15:04And the kid was working his hand towards a gun in his belt.
15:08Cahill tried to slap him, but couldn't.
15:10Belly shot is not a way to die.
15:18It took Cahill all night to die.
15:21But by that time, the kid had fled.
15:24Murder is a hanging offense.
15:33This is quite a bit different than stealing something from a laundry.
15:37The kid really has reasons to be afraid of being caught, and he's on the run.
15:42Even though if he had stayed, there could have been an argument made for self-defense.
15:46But the kid is not willing to take that chance.
15:51The kid had killed a man.
15:54He had undergone a quick and fiery baptism from orphan boy to desperado.
15:59Now, he could only count on his wits, his gun, and his horse.
16:05I think it must have had a profound psychological impact upon Billy.
16:11Being still young, very impressionable, very vulnerable.
16:16You know, what does it mean to kill a man?
16:20And I think it further settled Billy into the role of an outlaw.
16:27I mean, after that, there was no turning back.
16:30New Mexico is a great place to be a fugitive.
16:53The distances are so vast.
16:56There's so many places to hide.
16:58It's a great playground, basically, for a getaway artist.
17:03Especially if you're friendly with the locals.
17:06You speak their language, and you've endeared yourself to them.
17:11In 1877, riding a stolen gray mare,
17:15the kid crossed the Arizona border back into New Mexico.
17:19He had changed his name and was now going by the alias William H. Bonney.
17:25Quietly, he made his way across the territory, catching a meal where he could,
17:30and relying on the hospitality of the Hispanic farmers,
17:33whose ranches had dotted the countryside for generations.
17:36But times were changing in New Mexico.
17:45At the end of the Civil War, American businessmen had flocked to the territory,
17:48looking to profit off this vast new land.
17:51The men of this new Anglo establishment quickly became the largest property owners in New Mexico,
17:58often wresting land from Hispanic ranchers, with the aid of unscrupulous bankers,
18:04a rigged legal system, and when all else failed, the business end of a gun.
18:10It was incredible what these people controlled.
18:15They got into the railroading business, into mining, into cattle, into all of it.
18:21But land was at the very cornerstone of their empire.
18:26Some of the most lucrative land holdings were in Lincoln County, the largest county in New Mexico.
18:37For the past decade, the whole county had been run by tough Irish immigrants,
18:41Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan.
18:45Their business was primarily in cattle ranching and government beef contracts.
18:49But there was barely a dollar spent for 30,000 square miles that they didn't get a piece of.
18:57Murphy and Dolan's enterprise came to be known as the House, named for their headquarters,
19:03a giant timber frame building in the town of Lincoln.
19:08The House owned everything in the county, and they had pretty much of a stranglehold.
19:13They had no real competition.
19:15They simply ruled the place like a fiefdom.
19:20They were good to their friends, but everyone else, you better watch out.
19:24You didn't want to get in their way, that's for certain.
19:27But someone was getting in their way.
19:30John Tunstall, the 23-year-old son of a wealthy British merchant,
19:35had recently arrived in town with grand plans to build a cattle empire
19:40and seemingly limitless funds to match.
19:44Though he was young and had little experience in ranching,
19:47Tunstall knew that competing with the House could get rough.
19:53Tunstall's looking for good cowboys,
19:56but cowboys that are not only good with a rope,
19:59but also really handy with a pistol and a rifle.
20:06The kid arrived in Lincoln in 1877 and was soon arrested.
20:11He was jailed for stealing horses from the Tunstall ranch.
20:14But much to the kid's surprise, instead of pressing charges against him,
20:20Tunstall offered him a job.
20:23Billy couldn't believe his luck.
20:25When he got the chance to go straight, he took it.
20:28One of the things that the kid says later,
20:33Tunstall was the only man that treated me like I was decent and white.
20:38He didn't treat him like some riff-raff or scum or a horse thief.
20:41He treated him like a human being.
20:43And for someone, a teenager like the kid, that was a big, big deal.
20:48The kid joined a group of young men who, like himself, were outsiders.
20:57Young men who'd been drifting,
20:59trying to scrape together a living out on the plains.
21:04Together they learned how to be proper cowboys.
21:07At night they told stories and slept under the stars.
21:11Tunstall provided money to keep them in boots and bullets.
21:15And most of all, he gave them the promise of a future.
21:21But to Murphy and Dolan, the two Irish immigrants,
21:24who had enjoyed unfettered power over the county for years,
21:28the idea of a well-heeled Englishman moving in on their turf was unthinkable.
21:35The first thing you have to remember about both Murphy and Dolan
21:37is that they've grown up in rural Ireland.
21:41They've experienced what is proportionally still in human history
21:45the most deadly famine that there's ever been.
21:48And that sort of experience doesn't make people nice.
21:52It makes them incredibly ruthless.
21:55It gives them an extraordinary other kind of hunger.
21:59It's a hunger never to have this happen to you again.
22:02You think they're going to sit still and let this bloody Englishman
22:07come in and take it all off them?
22:09This is the very kind of Englishman that's kept our people under their heel
22:14and ground us into the dirt and made us starve,
22:17and now he thinks he's going to come out here and take this off us
22:21after what we've had to do to get it?
22:23You've got to be kidding me.
22:28The House concocted a plan to get rid of Tunstall once and for all.
22:32They enlisted Sheriff William Brady to enforce a phony court order
22:37confiscating all of Tunstall's horses and cattle.
22:42On the afternoon of February 18, 1878,
22:46John Tunstall rode into town to challenge the claim on his property.
22:49Along the way, he ran into the sheriff's posse.
22:54When they find Tunstall, he of course rides forward to talk to them.
23:00Here's a man who actually believes that the law will protect him.
23:04They never give him a chance.
23:09They shoot him out of the saddle.
23:12That's the way the law works in Lincoln County.
23:15One of them dismounted, walked over, and put a bullet in Tunstall's head.
23:20Then just out of sheer meanness, they shot Tunstall's horse.
23:25They arranged the bodies as though man and horse were taking a nap together.
23:30They put Tunstall's hat under the horse's head
23:32and folded Tunstall's coat up underneath his head,
23:35and they thought it was a good joke.
23:36Tunstall's gang of men retrieved his dead body and buried him at his ranch.
23:47The kid had learned a hard truth about the way the world worked in New Mexico.
23:52To him, Murphy, Dolan, the house, and the whole system was corrupt.
24:00He made a pact with Dick Brewer, Doc Scurlock, and the other men who had worked for Tunstall.
24:07Together they would form their own cowboy army.
24:11Calling themselves the regulators, they vowed to dispense their own brand of justice.
24:16Billy had one capacity above others, and that was loyalty.
24:24He was extremely loyal.
24:26He was loyal to everyone who would give him that chance to be loyal.
24:32And when Tunstall was killed, he was held bent on revenge.
24:38He's gonna get every man that's been involved in this killing,
24:41and he has a particular hit list that he wants to take care of.
24:47William Brady, the sheriff of Lincoln County,
24:50the man the regulators believed ordered Tunstall's murder,
24:54was number one on that list.
24:57On April Fool's Day, 1878, they got their chance to even the score.
25:04One day, in Lincoln, the kid is there and several regulators,
25:07and Sheriff Brady is walking down the street with several of his deputies.
25:13I think they knew his patterns.
25:15They knew he took that morning stroll every day.
25:20And behind an adobe wall, the kid and his fellow regulators are hiding.
25:24The kid and the regulators put over a dozen slugs into Sheriff Brady.
25:42He was dead before he hit the ground.
25:44It's an assassination, there's no question about it.
25:50And certainly, why would they think Brady deserved any better
25:55after he had sent known killers out to murder Tunstall?
25:58Brady was a murderer, even though he wore a badge.
26:01They shoot him down like a dog.
26:03Because, you know, this is a war.
26:06The only way we're gonna get a decent law around here
26:09is to kill the law we've got and put our law in it.
26:11What started off as a revenge killing,
26:17sparked by an old world rivalry between the Irish and English,
26:23quickly spiraled into anarchy.
26:27The regulators and the house were engaged in gang warfare,
26:31ambushing each other on the countryside
26:35and squaring off in the center of town.
26:37With each encounter, the body count rose.
26:42In just a few weeks of fighting, the press began calling the conflict
26:48the Lincoln County War.
26:52The Lincoln County War was the finality
26:55of a lot, a lot, a lot of hostility
26:58that had been bubbling for a decade.
27:00When finally everybody took arms and said,
27:03let's finish this.
27:04It was just an open free-for-all, one former regulator recalled.
27:10Everyone just had to line up on one side or the other.
27:14So there's a lot of, a lot of hard feelings going on here.
27:19And this isn't unique, of course, to the Irish and the Englishmen Tunstall,
27:22but there's a lot of hard feelings between the Mescaleros and the Hispanics.
27:28It doesn't take much to get an argument going,
27:32and that's why so many dead bodies pile up so quickly.
27:37Law completely broke down in Lincoln County.
27:40There was really no semblance of law and order.
27:42Every son of a bitch up there wanted to kill somebody.
27:47The kid watched many of his friends die in the relentless violence.
27:52Simply by staying alive, he became one of the leaders of the regulators.
27:57And in the process, he made a name for himself as a fearsome fighter.
28:01The remarkable thing about the kid, he's the only one of the soldiers that was in every single skirmish,
28:13every fight, every face-off, every no-you-don't.
28:18He was there.
28:19And he just kept getting better at it.
28:24I think he just gets stuck in the logic of this conflict,
28:28and I think he does what young men of his age have done throughout history,
28:32which is he fights for the dead.
28:34He keeps going because his mates have been killed.
28:36It's very, very intense in this incredibly intimate conflict.
28:41I think there's a sense that Billy sort of doesn't have anywhere to go.
28:44The people he's connected to who might have been able to help him
28:49and might have been able to give him a job or get him up the ladder are being killed.
28:56Blending into the darkness of the New Mexico night,
28:59the kid could always find comfort and refuge with the Hispanic ranchers.
29:04On the tiny sheep farms that surrounded Lincoln,
29:07he was becoming a heroic figure in another struggle.
29:10The Hispanos would have seen in the kid a person who was fighting their enemies.
29:18The people he was fighting against, even the ones who were on the side of the law, were crooks.
29:23The Hispanos knew that.
29:25These were not fine, outstanding citizens who were being gunned down.
29:29He was engaging against people who had stolen a whole country.
29:33He was engaging against people who had stolen their lands.
29:36The kid is a consistent rebel, rebelling against the new Anglo establishment.
29:43They're co-opting all the land grants, they're making themselves wealthy.
29:48And so when he strikes against the house, he's always striking a blow for those who are being dispossessed,
29:56the Mexican sheepherders.
29:57So it's not a very long journey to make him into this fighter for justice.
30:04The Hispanos gave him a shelter and hid him.
30:08They were able to use the kid and construct a hero at a time when heroes were on short supply.
30:18A time when they had no heroes.
30:20Five months after the Tunstall murder, the violence of the Lincoln County War reached its peak.
30:31A bloody siege in the center of Lincoln, known as the Big Killing, left five more men dead.
30:38The kid narrowly escaped with his life.
30:40To the anxious American politicians and businessmen in the territory, the vigilante violence was bad for business and needed to be stopped.
30:51Indictments were handed down against the kid and three other regulators for the killing of Sheriff Brady.
30:58Still, the bloodshed continued unabated.
31:01All this murder and mayhem naturally made its way back to Washington.
31:11And the federal government's response was, let's put an end to this.
31:16President Rutherford B. Hayes himself intervened, appointing a new governor to the New Mexico Territory,
31:23former Union Army General Lew Wallace.
31:25Wallace traveled to the town of Lincoln with a mandate to restore order as quickly as possible.
31:32He came down here and he began to take testimony for everybody.
31:36He was interested in who killed who and when, and he couldn't get anybody to testify.
31:43Everybody was frightened.
31:45Finally, he found a willing witness.
31:48In Lew Wallace, the kid saw an opportunity to clear his name.
31:52He wrote a letter to the governor offering to testify against members of the House in exchange for a full pardon.
32:00He's trying not to be on the run. He's trying to go straight.
32:05Hey, let's quit this. Let me, let me live a life.
32:09I'm, I'm, I'm, dammit, I'm not 20 years of age yet.
32:13I don't want to be dead.
32:16Wallace agreed to the deal.
32:18And the kid appeared before a grand jury.
32:22Due in part to his testimony, more than 200 indictments, many for murder, were returned against 50 men, including the House leader, Jimmy Dolan.
32:34But when it came time to grant the kid his pardon, Wallace was nowhere to be found.
32:38He had returned to the governor's mansion in Santa Fe, leaving the kid's fate in the hands of the authorities in Lincoln.
32:47Basically, I don't think Lew Wallace gave a damn about Billy the kid.
32:53He just wanted to get out of here. And get out of here, he did.
32:57With the governor gone, the local district attorney, who was a close associate of Murphy and Dolan's, dropped most of the charges against the members of the House.
33:09But indictments against the kid and the regulators remained. Before Billy could be taken back into custody, he slipped out of town.
33:22There was a last gathering of the gang, the regulators, where they all decided to get the heck out of New Mexico.
33:32They said, we're going to Colorado and we're going to Kansas and we're going to Texas. We're going to hell with this.
33:38And Billy said, well, boys, I'm going to stay here and steal myself a living.
33:42The kid went back to stealing horses and wrestling cattle, quickly becoming a nuisance to the wealthy Anglo ranchers in the territory.
33:55The kid is a consistent rebel all the way. He didn't back down from the house. He's not going to back away now.
34:04He is now a real thorn in the power structure in New Mexico. And so they're determined to get him.
34:10Over the next few months, newspapers were filled with accounts about the kid, mostly embellished.
34:18He was portrayed as a murderous villain terrorizing the countryside, a desperate cuss hell-bent on anarchy, in charge of a ruthless gang of criminals.
34:28There was scarcely a violent crime committed in the whole of New Mexico that wasn't blamed on the kid.
34:34The large majority of the territorial press were mouthpieces for the house, for the big bosses up in Santa Fe.
34:46They were beating the war drums.
34:48Let's civilize this territory. Let's get rid of that kid. Let's get rid of Billy the Kid.
34:56In 1880, an enterprising newspaper editor named J. H. Coogler gave the kid his most famous alias.
35:09Soon, a notice appeared in town squares across the territory.
35:12Wanted, dead or alive, Billy the Kid.
35:29In the spring of 1880, a traveling photographer arrived in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
35:34Dusty and bedraggled, the kid decided to pose for a 25-cent tintype.
35:44For the past several months, Billy had counted on his close relationship with the Hispanic ranchers in Fort Sumner to help him elude capture.
35:52It was rumored that he'd fallen in love with a 16-year-old Hispanic girl named Paulita Maxwell.
36:00Years later, Paulita would say the photo taken that day didn't do him justice.
36:07Paulita would have seen a slim, attractive young man, dancing eyes, mischievous eyes.
36:20Yes, he was scarred, yes, he was battered, but he was a man who still had his dreams.
36:28So she would have seen that great yearning in his spirit.
36:33Billy was always looking for a family.
36:37He wanted a home.
36:39And that's the one thing that he never really had and couldn't get.
36:42But I think he felt that Fort Sumner was home.
36:55A hundred miles away, the town of Lincoln had a new sheriff, determined to make a name for himself.
37:02Pat Garrett, he's a man on the make.
37:06He's a man who wants respectability.
37:09He wanted to be a famous lawman, like Wild Bill Hickok.
37:13And in capturing the kid, he could do so.
37:17By December of 1880, Garrett had assembled a gang of lawmen.
37:25Dubbed the Panhandle Posse, it included some of the toughest cowboys from Texas.
37:31The newspapers would follow their every move, providing details to a public now eager to see Billy the Kid brought to justice.
37:40It's no simple feat.
37:43This is winter.
37:44This is November, December, when he's out there on the trail.
37:48Finally, through a combination of stealth and some sleuthing, he tracks him down.
37:57Garrett and his posse killed two of Billy's friends, Tom Folliard and Charlie Beaudry.
38:03And in just a matter of days, they backed the kid into a corner in a tiny cabin in a desolate area known as Stinking Spring.
38:16The kid and the others were trapped inside the place.
38:18There was nowhere for him to go.
38:21Garrett shot one of their horses right in the doorway.
38:25After a night with no food, no water and no fire, the kid finally ran out of options.
38:31He walked out, threw his hands in the air and surrendered.
38:36When he came out, he said,
38:39Hell, Pat, I thought you had 200 Texans out here.
38:43Otherwise, I'd have never given up.
38:46He's actually going to jail and he's probably going to be hanged.
38:51And yet he's laughing about it.
38:53Because in here, I think he thinks somewhere in here, I'm going to get out of this.
39:00News of the kid's capture spread across the territory.
39:06When Garrett arrived in Las Vegas, New Mexico, with the kid in irons, the sheriff was greeted as a conquering hero.
39:12Crowds lined the street to see the famous manhunter and to gawk at the mythic outlaw.
39:19The newspaper reporters are allowed in and they get to talk to the kid.
39:30And as he's talking to the reporters, the kid says, you know, this is good.
39:37Maybe people will think I'm half human now because they haven't thought I was human before.
39:41They've considered me an animal.
39:43Maybe now they'll think I'm half human.
39:45He did look human indeed, one reporter wrote.
39:52There was nothing very mannish about him and his appearance.
39:56For he looked and acted like a schoolboy.
39:59With the traditional silky fuzz on his upper lip.
40:03And clear blue eyes.
40:05With a roguish snap about them.
40:06Billy was loaded onto a train bound for Santa Fe.
40:17Where he would await his trial for murder.
40:20As he pulled away from the station, the defiant kid smiled and laughed.
40:26Inviting reporters to come visit him in jail.
40:29The train, of course, is the machine in the garden.
40:37The change that's going to come to the entire west.
40:40And so now he is, of course, placed on this machine.
40:45And now it's going to take him to Santa Fe.
40:49And there, of course, they'll chain him.
40:52And they'll prepare him for execution.
40:55Once he's on that train, it's a one way trip.
41:00Billy was convicted of first-degree murder for the killing of Sheriff Brady.
41:08He was sent back to Lincoln in the custody of Pat Garrett and two well-armed deputies.
41:13J.W. Bell and Bob Ollinger.
41:18At only 21 years of age, he was a dead man walking.
41:22Scheduled to hang in just a matter of days.
41:25He believed that he was going to get away.
41:29All he had to do was recognize the opportunity.
41:32It was a matter of time, and he picked his time well.
41:38On the afternoon of April 28, 1881, Garrett was out of town on county business,
41:44and Bob Ollinger was across the street eating dinner.
41:50The kid said, I need to go use the outhouse.
41:54Bell takes the kid out to the outhouse.
41:57They come back in, and at the top of the stairs, he surprises Bell.
42:01Billy gets Bell's gun.
42:07And Bell panics, and he starts running down the stairs.
42:12He does inflict one mortal wound.
42:17Billy grabs Bob Ollinger's shotgun.
42:21And he runs to one of the windows where he could see out across the street because he expected that Ollinger probably heard the gunfire.
42:31And Ollinger, I've always imagined him picking up his head and saying, did you hear that? Did you hear something?
42:38It's a shot.
42:41And so he, I don't know what was going on in his mind, but he must have known something like fear, real fear.
42:52And Ollinger came running across from the ward lane.
42:57Someone yelled out.
42:59The kids killed Bell.
43:02And just as soon as Goss spoke those words, Ollinger hears the voice from above in the window.
43:09Hello, Bob.
43:11Hello, Bob.
43:13Hello, Bob.
43:15And Ollinger looked up into the twin barrels of his own shotgun.
43:24He's hit by 36 buckshot, which is about a quarter pound of lead.
43:29He's dead when he hits the ground.
43:32It is so unexpected.
43:35He's got no chances of getting out of this.
43:38And suddenly, whip, whap, bang, they're dead.
43:43And dead very, how shall I say, spectacularly.
43:49And he then comes out, commandeer's horse, and rides out of town singing.
43:54He was very good at, uh, getting away, escaping.
44:04Escape was one of his great talents.
44:06In that moment, when he leaves the courthouse on horseback, as he goes out of sight, he passes into legend at that moment.
44:21He would, uh, the story will never be the same after that.
44:28The story would take less than a day to make front page headlines across the country.
44:43The telegraph gave electric life to the details of Billy's escape.
44:52He became nationally famous, because instantaneously, people would know about Billy and what he did.
45:02And he was glamorized.
45:05And he was made into a mythical character.
45:07The New York Times.
45:10He was even in the London Times.
45:13Big towns, small towns.
45:14Uh, you know, Fredericksburg, Illinois, whatever.
45:17Name any town you like.
45:19Chicago, sure. San Francisco, certainly.
45:22So he became an absolute icon of American outlawing.
45:26Just a few years earlier, he'd been a skinny orphan boy from New York City.
45:34Now, Billy was the most feared man in New Mexico.
45:39He knew it wouldn't be long before someone came looking for him.
45:43But he still refused to leave the territory.
45:46He was urged to by friends to, you know, don't let the sun set on you in New Mexico.
45:53But he made no attempt to get away, and he could have.
45:59Most of us know exactly why he did that.
46:03Two words, Paulita Maxwell.
46:06His true love.
46:08He wasn't going to go down to Mexico.
46:11That would have been the smart thing to do.
46:14But, you know, sometimes a kid isn't always smart.
46:17Sometimes the heart rules.
46:19And I think it certainly did in that case.
46:23It had been nearly three months since Billy escaped from Lincoln.
46:28Some began to wonder if Pat Garrett was too afraid to go after him again.
46:33But Garrett was biding his time.
46:36And he knew exactly where Billy was.
46:38You know, Pat Garrett kept getting these persistent tips from Fort Sumner that the kid was up there.
46:45Turned out the tips were coming from Pete Maxwell, Paulita's big brother, who did not approve of the relationship.
46:51And, uh, finally Garrett decided he had to act on him.
46:56Garrett and two new deputies headed up north along the Pecos River.
47:00They arrived in Fort Sumner the night of July 14th, 1881, and went directly to the Maxwell home.
47:10Garrett posted his two men on the front porch.
47:12So as not to be noticed, he snuck in through the back and found his way to Pete Maxwell's bedroom.
47:22At that same moment, Billy and his stocking feet approached the porch where Garrett's men were stationed.
47:29Billy came into Maxwell's house in the dead of night, presumably to cut a piece of meat from a beef that was hanging on the porch.
47:41He came up, he saw those two silhouettes there hunkered down, and he asked him in Spanish,
47:48Guinness, Guinness, who is it?
47:52There was no answer.
47:54Well, the kid backs away from him, and backs away from him, and finally backs into the doorway.
48:01And from inside the room, he's framed in the light, the moonlight.
48:06And Garrett is sitting on the bed with Pete Maxwell.
48:10Maxwell leaned over and said, L.S., it's him.
48:17It's him.
48:19And Garrett took his gun and blasted it.
48:23And there fell dead, Billy the Kid, right on that floor.
48:37With that question on his lips.
48:41Guinness.
48:43Never knowing who killed him.
48:53The folks in the local community are horrified by what's happened.
48:59The local senoritas, Paulina Maxwell, gather up Billy's body.
49:05They anoint him and lay him out.
49:08And, uh, sort of pray over him that night.
49:12They loved the kid.
49:13New Mexicans felt that he was one of us.
49:19Lo nuestro.
49:21One of ours.
49:24News of his killing spread fast.
49:27Everyone from preachers and pulpits to kids in the schoolyards
49:32retold the story of how legendary outlaw Billy the Kid was gunned down.
49:36My maternal grandmother, she would tell me of that day when her brothers ran into the house in Kansas City, Missouri,
49:47and said, two days ago, out in New Mexico Territory, they killed Billy the Kid.
49:53She remembered that day as clear as a bell when she was an old, old woman.
50:00And I think a lot of people did.
50:05For killing Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett would enjoy momentary fame as America's greatest lawman.
50:12But in 1908, mired in gambling debts, he was mysteriously shot dead along a remote stretch of road in the New Mexican desert.
50:21For the big businessmen in Santa Fe, economic progress was slow to come to the territory.
50:30And they would have to wait another 30 years for statehood.
50:35The house and its beef empire would go bankrupt.
50:38And the names Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan would fade from memory.
50:45Only the legend of Billy the Kid would endure.
50:51That was Henry McCarty that died.
50:57That was Billy Bonnie that died.
51:00Billy the Kid rode on.
51:03And he rides on forever.
51:05Billy the Kid's being early on forever.
51:06Billy the Kid's being and his friends were alone forever.
51:08Billy the Kid's been and his friends were on forever.
51:14Billy the Kid's been on forever.
51:17The End
51:18Billy the Kid's been and I Marty's been named when he passed the day.