New Mexico Politics

Examining Legend: The Pardoning of Billy the Kid

By Bea Gordon, 8-17-10

	Henry McCarty, also known by other names.

The pending pardon of a 150-year-old criminal by the governor of New Mexico would seem like a blip on the international stage--certainly not the stuff of headlines in the Hindu, India’s national newspaper, or the Guardian in London. But this criminal captures what people, here and elsewhere, think they know about the Wild West.

Whether you know him as Henry Antrim, William H. Bonney, Henry McCarty or Billy the Kid, the infamous outlaw skyrocketed into folk legend nearly a century and a half ago.

So does he deserve the exoneration promised long ago and recently revived by Gov. Bill Richardson? That depends. How much do you really know about his story?

Billy, Briefly…

The unlawful tendencies of McCarty—his real name--first manifested themselves after an incident and an arrest involving stolen butter in Grant County, NM.
The escalated in the territory of stolen cavalry horses, which landed McCarty in jail once again. Sealing his fate as a fugitive on the run, the teenager broke out of jail in Arizona, reportedly using his slender frame to his advantage by shimmying up the chimney.

As the story goes, the 15-year-old burgeoning outlaw hopped between Arizona and New Mexico for a bit before settling down in Lincoln County, NM, in late 1877. Subsequent to this, McCarty began working on local ranches. It was here that McCarty adopted the name William H. Bonney and joined forces with local merchant James Dolan. His stint with Dolan landed him in jail, where he was hired by English cattle rancher and merchant, John Tunstall.

In the late winter of 1878, Tunstall was moving livestock to nearby Lincoln when he was murdered by hired hands of a business competitor, none other than Dolan. The group included the county sheriff. McCarty and Tunstall’s other men, outraged, formed a group they called the Regulators.

According to Lincoln War historian, Joel Jacobsen, in his book, “Such Mean as Billy the Kid,” the Regulators went in search of the killers. Whether or not Billy’s gun discharged the fatal shot, the group gunned down Lincoln County Sherriff William Brady and a few other men associated with Dolan. In retaliation, Dolan supporters
set the Regulators’ headquarters on fire, at which point McCarty is rumored to have assumed control of the group, leading the men to a life on the run.

The Pardon, Part I

After hearing that then-Gov. Samuel Axtell was to be replaced by Lew Wallace, McCarty wrote a letter to Wallace asking for a pardon on the murder charges against him in exchange for his testimony against Dolan’s men. Wallace agreed and the man newspaper’s started calling “Billy the Kid” gained prominence.

Billy gave his testimony in Sante Fe, but went on the run again when a prosecutor pointed out Wallace didn’t actually have the authority to grant the pardon. The Kid took up rustling again and spent two years in Fort Sumner. During that time, Pat Garrett was elected sheriff and U.S. marshal in the hunt for Billy the Kid. In late 1880, the Kid surrendered to Garrett. Once in custody, he was sentenced to hang for the murder of Lincoln County Sherriff Brady.

But on April 28, 1881, the Kid slipped his hand out of his cuffs and beat his sole deputy over the head. According to historian Robert M. Utley, in his biography “Billy the Kid,” the fugitive then shot the man as well as his other guard and returned to Fort Sumner to try living in obscurity.

A hair before midnight on July 14th, Sherriff Garrett hunted the Kid down in Fort Sumner, finding the fugitive on his way to enjoy a late steak dinner. Precariously straddling the realm between fiction and fact, the Kid’s last words were said to be “Quien es?” as he noticed Garrett’s shadow against the bedroom wall. As is the case with most folk heroes, however, the American public refused to let him die.

The Pardon, Part II

The Kid lives anew on the Internet, where the call to pardon him has more than a few fans. One of them appears to be Richardson, a history buff on his way out of the governor’s chair.
“Governor Richardson has always said that he would consider making good on Governor Wallace’s promise to Billy the Kid for a pardon,” Richardson spokeswoman Alarie Ray-Garcia told the Associated Press.
At issue is not only the accuracy of history—some argue Garrett shot another man and lied about the victim being the famous fugitive---but also the value of a late pardon.

Historian Drew Gomber had a point when he told the El Paso Times “there is no point in restoring the civil rights of a dead man.” So maybe the question is not so much whether or not the Kid should get pardoned, but rather: Why do we even care?

Biographer, historian and author Mark Gardner has one answer. “As Americans, we identify with the idea of a Wild West.  Just look at all the presidents who’ve been called cowboys.” This nation of gunfighters, outlaws, and lawmen is in our DNA, he continues, “and anything that has the potential for altering those cherished icons generates a lot of attention.”

But Turner’s been over this link between Americans and the great frontier, confronting the space between the John Wayne version of the West and reality.

“Regardless of the historical person, the legend is a cherished legend,” says Gardner. “People fall in love with a story and they want a piece of it somehow.”

But does that gap really matter? When we think about people like Butch Cassidy or Billy the Kid would we be satisfied with historical accuracies? What if all we really want are the Paul Newmans and the Robert Redfords?

Sure, the Kid shot people—but so did most of his contemporaries. “Was he a killer? Yes, without question,” said Gardner. “But there were a lot of killers in New Mexico. You just can’t really judge these men based on modern justice and that’s why this publicity is such a good thing. I hope the passion its eliciting makes people look more closely at history.”

If we look at it the case logically, the facts aren’t really going to change, Gardner says, but then again if we look it as a people who are passionate about perceptions of historical figures, it’s a fairly momentous decision. As he said in our interview, “a pardon from Governor Richardson means nothing and it means everything.”

The discussion, although on it face a bit dated and silly, is not a waste of time, Gardner counters. “Why would anyone waste time going to a museum or a library? Our history is an incredibly important part of who we are….And in an era where the big news is the latest iPad, well I think there’s certainly a little room in the papers for our heritage.”

Gov. Wallace gave the Kid a deal, the biographer argues, so why not just stick to that? In all honesty, he adds, “I’m actually much more sympathetic to Garrett. The fact that he tracked down the Kid twice is remarkable.”

Grounding the Myth

Arguably, no one stands to be more affected by a pardon than Garrett and, by extension, his relatives.

Susannah Garrett, great granddaughter of the frontier lawman, has a different take than those who may forsake history for the allure of legend. The problem with the pardon, she said, is that her great-grandfather “was very measured about how he brought law into this area [New Mexico] when things got really out of control… Even Billy trusted him and he did a lot that was really out of the box.”

With all of the focus on pardoning the Kid, Garrett’s point is that people forget that it opens Pat Garrett up for yet another round of mudslinging. And that, she says, “is not right.” The lawman faced outrageous charges from outside parties almost immediately after he gunned down the outlaw. The turn of public opinion and the spin placed on his death, according to Susannah Garrett, were remarkable in their speed.

Pat Garrett had to wait nearly a year before being issued his reward for killing the Kid, although supporters did collect about $6,000 for the sheriff to show their gratitude.

According to his granddaughter, he deserved that and more. He was, she says, fundamentally a very good, serious and strictly principled person. She recounted a story in which Garrett took a number of prisoners to a Sante Fe jail. After the first night, he went to the jailer and asked if the prisoners had been fed. They had not.  Instead, the jailer’s family had benefited from the prisoners meal. Garrett corrected the situation.

As for the Kid, Susannah Garrett laments the loss of dimensionality to myth. “I appreciated the collective imagination taking off, but these are real people and when we talk about the pardon we [asked Gov. Richardson] to think of the real deal.” She highlighted the dangerous temptation to forget and minimize the fact that the Kid was a desperate outlaw.

“Billy was kind of a lost soul… and [he] blew it—he pretty much blew it when he broke out of jail—he made a choice and he wasn’t going to take any chances with the law and so he took off,” Garrett continues.  And, if the pardon is given a green light, it needs to be “made very clear that it’s a pardon for one murder—the Brady murder.”

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