Lies You Believe About Billy The Kid

When Pat Garrett, the sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, pumped a bullet into the chest of 21-year-old William H. Bonney, he ended the short and sad life of Billy the Kid and helped kick off a legend that stretched from the Old West to today. Even before his death on July 14, 1881, Billy the Kid had become larger than life, mostly thanks to American newspapers. And the tall tales and outright lies only grew following his death.

"He is definitely one of the most mythologized figures of American frontier history — I would argue one of the most mythologized figures in American history," James B. Mills, the author of "Billy the Kid: El Bandido Simpático," told The Indianapolis Star. Among the many lies you may believe about Billy the Kid are that he killed a man for each year of his life, had a volatile temper, was left-handed; or didn't really die in 1881. In that last tale, he either escaped to Canada or lived a quiet life under the name Brushy Bill Roberts before dying peacefully in 1950.

Billy the Kid was most likely born in the slums of New York City sometime in 1859 with the name Henry McCarty. By age 14, he was living in what was then the territory of New Mexico and had become orphaned following the death of his mother, Catherine, from tuberculosis. Among one of many lies concerning Billy's reputed body count was that he killed a man at age 12 for disrespecting his mother, which forced him to flee. The truth was far from that. Billy's first real run-in with the law was for allegedly acting as a lookout for an older friend who robbed a Chinese laundry. During his incarceration, Billy broke out of the county jail and fled to Arizona territory.

It was there that he picked up his famous moniker "Kid" and where he killed the first of four men — a much lower number than the 21 deaths later attributed to him. In August 1877, Billy shot and killed Francis "Windy" Cahill after the older man pinned Billy and slapped him amid an argument during a card game. After the shooting, Billy fled back to New Mexico territory. Similar to his first killing, in January 1880, he shot and killed a drunk bully named Joe Grant at a New Mexico saloon after Grant attempted to shoot him in the back. Billy later shot and killed two deputies while escaping from jail in April 1881.

Billy the Kid was involved in a number of other killings — including the one that led to his death — while a member of a vigilante posse as part of the Lincoln County War. The bloody year-long conflict between cattle ranchers and merchants vying for power took place in New Mexico from 1878 to 1879 b. By 1878, Billy was using the alias William Bonney and was working as a ranch hand for John H. Tunstall. In February of that year, a posse headed up by Sheriff William Brady gunned down Tunstall, prompting Billy and several others — as many as 60 men at its height — to form a deputized posse called the Regulators. In all, as part of the Regulators, Billy killed five men, including Sheriff Brady.

Related to the lies about how many men he killed, Billy the Kid was neither bloodthirsty nor did he have hair-trigger temper. Billy was considered to be friendly, funny, and even tempered. "I have been told that Billy had an ungovernable temper; however, I never saw evidences of it," Miguel Antonio Otero Jr., Billy's friend, wrote in his 1936 biography of the legendary outlaw, "The Real Billy the Kid." "He was always in a pleasant humor when I saw him — laughing, sprightly, and good natured."

In December 1880, Pat Garrett, the newly appointed sheriff of Lincoln County who had been friends with Billy,, hunted him down and arrested him for the murder of Sheriff Brady. Billy was going to hang for the killing but escaped to Fort Sumner, New Mexico after killing two guards. Garrett tracked him there and killed him. The end of Billy the Kid spawned international headlines and made Garrett famous. Not long after, he began writing a book about the notorious outlaw.

"I am incited to this labor, in a measure, by an impulse to correct the thousand false statements which have appeared in the public newspapers and in yellow-covered, cheap novels," Garrett wrote in the introduction to the work, "The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid." While he claimed he wanted to set the record straight, the book, which was partially ghostwritten by an itinerant journalist, included many of the myths, legends, and lies Garrett claimed to be clearing up.

In the wake of Billy the Kid's brutal death, several conspiracy theories cropped up purporting that Pat Garrett hadn't actually killed the outlaw, and was actually quietly living out his life under an assumed name. Some say he escaped to Canada or changed his name to either John Miller or "Brushy Bill" Roberts. The theories are mainly based on two ideas: That Garrett let Billy go because of their friendship, or that the sheriff shot the wrong man and then (literally) buried the truth. Garrett and Billy spent time drinking and gambling together before Garrett became sheriff, but there isn't much backing up the idea that he would go to great lengths to cover the gunfighters' tracks.

The second theory is more tantalizing and even inspired a book, "Billy the Kid: Beyond the Grave," which lays out evidence for Garrett having killed the wrong man. Author W.C. Jameson focuses on Garrett's shady behavior at the time of the killing and a lack of an official paper trail surrounding the death. He believes "Brushy Bill" Roberts was in fact Billy the Kid and points to a "statistically significant photo comparison" the FBI made of Billy the Kid and Brushy Bill. Roberts died in Texas in 1950, age 90, still trying to convince people he was the famous killer. While there is some uncertainty surrounding the records of Billy's death, most historians firmly believe he died that July night in 1881.

In the years since Billy the Kid's death, there has been an avalanche of books, movies, TV shows, music, and even a ballet about the outlaw that have added to the already overburdened mythology surrounding him. One of the often mistaken beliefs about him that Hollywood clung on to was that he was left-handed. The 1958 film "The Left Handed Gun" starring Paul Newman portrayed Billy as being a southpaw as well as a "madman," as PBS says.

The mistake arose from a single tintype photograph of Billy from around 1879 or 80 (two more photos have since been discovered of him including one that pictures him with Pat Garrett). In the tintype, Billy's six-shooter is strapped on his left hip, but it was later discovered the image was flipped and he actually wore his gun on his right side. Some historians even believe he was ambidextrous. In the end, once you've brushed away the layers of lies, myths, and legends, there isn't that much left of what we know about the young gunslinger as one would hope considering how large Billy the Kid looms in the American lore.