THE spirit of Billy the Kid, one of the Wild West’s most notorious outlaws, is to be laid to rest.
The Governor of New Mexico – where, according to legend, the Kid shot 21 men before falling to sheriff Pat Garrett – is ready to make good a predecessor’s broken promise of a pardon.
Bill Richardson feels the Kid may have had a “raw deal” and is willing to make amends 129 years after his death.
Mr Richardson’s sense of justice, coupled with a chance to boost tourism, may shatter some of the mystique of the boyish bandit, who died aged about 22.
He is proposing a series of “cowboy courts” be convened where William Bonney – Billy the Kid – is said to have brought down his foes in the 1870s with his quick-draw skills.
The danger, warn scholars, is that the courts may discover his gunfighting tally was wildly exaggerated by his contemporaries and later by Hollywood. Billy the Kid may have shot as few as four men, not an exceptional tally in a country recovering from the mass slaughter of civil war.
Historians now accuse general Lew Wallace, then governor of the New Mexico territory, of prolonging the Kid’s crimes by promising him his freedom, only to renege on the deal.
As a shy teen, Bonney became caught up in a dispute between ranchers and townspeople, the “Lincoln County war”.
In a tale told in 60 movies – he has been played by Paul Newman, Val Kilmer and Kris Kristofferson – he joined a posse called The Regulators, seeking revenge on a gang that had killed his ranch boss.
In 1877, The Regulators went on a killing spree, but Wallace promised Bonney a pardon if he would give evidence against a rival gang. Bonney stood by his end of the deal, but Wallace found it politically impossible to release him. The Kid escaped and returned to a life of crime.
Bonney was ambushed and shot dead in a ranch house by Garrett in 1881 and is buried in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, between two former Regulators under a stone with the single-word epitaph “Pals”. When Garrett was shot, years later, crowds cheered his killer.
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