Short Stuff: The Death of Billy the Kid

you are misinformed, buddy. Yeah, I mean the song literally stops with the townfolk in their kin like the c came rolling in to watch the hanging of Billy the Kid and there's one more course and that's it. You know Now that makes me question if whether we really did start the fire. Hey, did you see that video of him playing the piano on the street the other day? And uh wherever he's from Island. I did see a tweet that mentioned it in um link that I surmised

from the headline what had happened. So yeah, basically it was pretty neat. Someone was throwing out of piano and Billy Joel goes over there and he's playing it, and he's like, hey, it's a good piano. It's out of tune, but he's got good actions. The petals work. You said, somebody should donate this thing. It sounds like he's like Rodney Dangerfield. Now, well at least not too far off. So um No, it turns out that Billy the Kid.

Everything I know about Billy the Kid I learned from Young Guns and Billy the Kid didn't die at all. He went on to live to about a hundreds something years old in New Mexico. Um, because he escaped and his death was faked. That's right. It was was that Emilia was he Billy? Yes? Yes? Yeah? And uh man, that was a great movie to me. Billy the Kid is Chris Christofferson from the Great Great Sam Pecumpalm movie

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. I never saw that one. Well, there's two versions, and see if you can watch the director's cut, because the other ones a mess. Oh is that right? It's like a Hurricanes episode. Yeah, And funny enough you mentioned Hurricane. Bob Dylan is in that movie and does the soundtrack and score. Who does he play in the movie? Let me guess the Undertaker. No, something like that. I think he's just like a stranger in town that does a couple of things. It's not a

big part Sam Peck. And Paul was a Bob Dylan fan. Sure, he did tons of drugs and was an alcoholic, sure, but Bob Dylan fan. Yeah. Man, huh. Alright, So can we get going on this? This is a short stuff. We wasted three and a half minutes. Well, we'll just say this, Billy the Kid died. That's that. That's right. I think we should kind of reverse this a little bit and talk a little bit about Billy the Kid first. Yeah, agreed.

Did you know he was a born New Yorker? I did because I'm kind of into these old West dudes, and I've researched some of them to certain degrees. And he was born William Henry McCarty Jr. Uh. And if you've heard the name William Bonnie, that was a name he went by a lot. I think you've heard William Bonnie a lot more, probably than McCarty. Yeah, for sure. I actually had never heard Henry McCarty until today. Yeah. And he was orphaned at fourteen and became one of

the Lincoln County regulators. Yeah, and so regulators will sound familiar if one you are a Young Guns fan or if you're a Nate Dog and Warren g fan. Either way, the regulators were kind of a group of hired hands for a guy and hired guns, I believe too young ones, um for a guy named Tunstall, I believe down in Lincoln County, New Mexico. And Um, toun Stall was killed from what I understand, fairly unfairly um, and that kind of set Billy the Kid and his his posse of

regulators off on a bit of a killing spree. Started what's known as the Lincoln County War. That's right. And uh, during one of those skirmishes there was some murders that happened. And Pat Garrett, who was a sheriff in New Mexico played by James Coburn in the Bob Dylan movie played by Bob Dylan and Young Guns, Uh he was. I haven't seen Young Guns a long time. That was a big college movie for us. I need to see that again. It was like it didn't come out when you were

in college. Sure, No, yeah, I don't think so. Look it up and I'll keep going all right live corrections. So Pat Garrett formed a posse. UH captured Billy and that part of the Billy Joel song checks out, and he was sentenced to hang. They captured him at Stinking Springs, New Mexico, and while he was awaiting his execution, he was kept in a it wasn't even a prison, it was a room, a locked room at the Lincoln County Courthouse. Uh. I found this article says too, I heard, I saw

there were five other prisoners. Um. Regardless, there were other prisoners being guarded by some armed men. Uh. One of them was an enemy of Billy's named Bob Ollinger. And at one point he took all the rest of the guys over to a hotel across the street to eat, left Billy there under the charge of Deputy James bell Man. These are some great old timey Old West names, aren't they. Oh? Yeah, when was Young Guns out? So if you if you were in college at age seventeen, then I'm impressed. I

said it was a big movie in college. I didn't say it came out in college. I asked you, than came out in college? And you said, oh yeah, I thought you mean, was it out in college? As if it came out after that thought that that's what I meant. Now, it came out in high school, but we watched the heck out of it in college. I should have that, should have said. So James Bell is watching Billy. Billy says, uh, hey, gout, he's a bathroom. Can you take me out to the outhouse?

He said, I really gotta go. He shackled, his arms and legs are shackled. Take him out use the bathroom. On the way back end, they're going up the steps. Billy's in front, and the account I read was that he ducked around a blind corner, got his hands out, and then smashed this guy in the head with his arm irons. The guy went, what Billy pulled his gun from his holster. The other guys holter, Yeah, of course Billy didn't have a gun on him. Why would they

do that. He's like, why didn't I think they're using that first? They're like, well, he's in handcuffs, just go ahead and keep his gun on him. And so he pulls the guy's gun on him, and the guy tries to run and Billy shoots him dead in the back. And so now roughly we reached the end of the Billy Joel song, which I think is a good time for an ad break. What do you think, Sure, we'll be right back. M alright, Chuck, We're back. And um, Billy the kid has just shot the deputy that's in

charge of watching him. Another deputy runs back, uh or runs back from the hotel and okay, Olinger, um apparently is he's running and he hears his name and looks up, and Billy the kids got Olinger's own rifle on him and shoots him dead like a dog in the street. So Billy the kids killed two people. Now he's out of his shackles and he grabs a horse and high tails it out of town for a life on the

run that would last about four more months. Yeah, that's um the only dispute I have with that accoun on us. It supposedly took him about an hour to get out of his leg shackles with an axe, and I guess no one just came up there. When Olinger came to find him, Billy actually yelled down, look up, old boy, and see what you get. Wow, And that's the last words that he heard. So Billy's on the run at this point uh, And obviously Pat Garrett has be in

his bonnet to go get him again. Well, sure, he's the Sheriff of Lincoln County and Billy the kid, who's become one of the most notorious bandits in the country has just escaped out from under his watch. So yeah, there's a reward. Well, sure there's a reward too. So Pat Garrett had this um history of lying in wait, in ambushing people and shooting them, whether they were ready to shoot back or not, killing them very frequently. He'd done it before, and um, he wanted to do it again.

He went to go look for Billy a kid. Um. Like we said, he he made his way as an outlaw, like a double outlaw by this point, um on the lamb for good four months before he was caught up with I think still in New Mexico in um July of eight one, and he apparently was staying at the house or nearby the house of a friend named Peter Maxwell. And Peter Maxwell had a younger sister that Billy the Kid was sweet on, and Peter Maxwell didn't like that

Billy the Kid was sweet on her. And by sweet on her, I mean that they were having extramarital sexual relations, and Peter didn't like that because he was planning on marrying off his his sister to a rich Land baron nearby, and Billy the Kid was kind of toying with that possibility. Um so Peter Maxwell is in this kind of mindset allegedly when Pat Garrett shows up. That's right, Garrett shows up.

This isn't well, he doesn't show up at night, but eventually night falls, and uh, well, actually maybe he did show up because supposedly he he found him asleep. Uh Pete Maxwell, that is, And Garrett very presumptuously goes into his room and sits down next to him and says, Pete, wake up, wake up. And then he wakes up, and

he says, where's that Billy the Kid? And as the story goes, and we're gonna poke holes at it in a second, right, then Billy the Kid actually walks into that room, that dog gone room, and has a gun and a knife because he had just went to cut

some meat off. He was hungry, I guess after some he had post coital hunger pains and carves some meat off and was from a yearling supposedly and had just eaten a little bit, and so he has a knife and a gun and can't really see him the dark and starts going Keyennis Keiennis Spanish for who is it? Who's there? And Maxwell or I'm sorry. Pat Garrett supposedly recognizes the voice as Billy in the dark and shoots him dead. Yeah, and I just want to make sure

we're all on the same page. Heart Yearling is a young horse. He was after some horse meat to eat. That's right. So this was the death as far as

Pat Garrett said of Billy the Kid. But like we said before, Pat Garrett already kind of had developed a reputation of ambushing people, of lying in wait, catching him off guard when they least expected it, And even in this story that he told this this is the official line that Pat Garrett told in the biography he wrote about Billy the Kid, Um, that that was how he died.

But even that, which is kind of on the edges of fair um is disputed, is probably untrue, and that the truth is probably involves even more of an ambush and more surprise, and even less of Billy the Kid

being able to defend himself than that. Yeah, I think the other version is that he was actually ambushed and set up by Maxwell because he didn't like him being with Paulita, his little sister, and basically said, hey man, it's uh, it's all going down here, and here's your here's your chance to come over to Fort Sumner and take care of this kid once and for all. And so he did so, and a lot of people say

that's how it really went down. And then and then he tipped off pat Garrett, right, yeah, and that he in fact even changed his age. Who was he was supposedly like eighteen or nineteen when he was shot dead and said no, no, no no, he was really twenty one. So I didn't have this extra judicial killing him some kid. He was a full grown man and it was just happenstance that he happened to walk in the room where

I was sitting there with a loaded gun. Yeah, And the other people historians think, like, probably Billy the kid didn't walk in with a gun and a knife looking for some yearling meat. He probably walked in fully unarmed, expecting Pete Maxwell's sister to be waiting for him there, and instead pet Garrett and his gun was waiting for him there. So he probably was fully ambushed and killed murdered. I guess it's the other way to put it in

that that's probably how Billy the Kid died. Either way, he died at the other end of Pat Garrett's gun. That much we know about, right, even though there are were and have been rumors over the years that uh, he was in cahoots with Pat Garrett and he let him escape, and that he lived to be a ripe old age. There have been exhumations, they've been DNA tists over the years. Obviously, nothing has ever come back with any sort of conclusion. Uh, Young guns seem to be

pretty concluding. I got a little cherry on top two if you're interested, let's hear it. You know that very famous picture of Billy the Kid, sort of one of two, although the second one they aren't quite sure at him. But there's that one, very very famous perotype, which is a picture on like a metal plate. Um that photo, that farotype, the original plate was bought for uh two point three million dollars by none other than William Coke,

who's that the Koke brothers. Oh, yeah, I forgot. He's super into like Old West stuff apparently, Yeah, I forgot about that. Well, that's pretty interesting, quite a quite a quite quite a cherry on top. I'm glad a millionaire gets what he wants in the end. As for Garrett Uh, he was originally denied the five hundred dollar reward. A bunch of the city's felt bad for him and raised seven thousand dollars, and then a year later there was I think an injunction or a vote or something where

he actually finally got the reward. So in today's dollars, supposedly, if that all checks out, he got about two hundred and something thousand dollars for killing Billy the kids. He's like that barista from Starbucks who refused service to that woman You wouldn't wear a mask. Now they're rich, right Dan, I don't serve anyone coffee without a mask. There you gifts, We'll start to go fund me for Chuck everybody. Um, well,

that's it for short stuff, right, Chuck. That's right? Get up Stuff You should know is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.