Highlighted Crime
Story of the Week -
On April 9, 1881, after a one-day trial, Billy the Kid was
found guilty of murdering the Lincoln County, New Mexico, sheriff and is
sentenced to hang. There is no doubt that Billy the Kid shot the sheriff, although
he did it in the context of the bloody Lincoln County War, a battle between two
powerful groups of ranchers and businessmen fighting for economic control of
Lincoln County. When his boss, rancher John Tunstall, was murdered in February
1878, the hotheaded Billy swore vengeance. Unfortunately, the leader of the men
who murdered Tunstall was the sheriff of Lincoln County, William Brady. When
Billy and his partners murdered the sheriff several months later, they became
outlaws, regardless of how corrupt Brady may have been.
After three years on the run and several other murders,
Pat Garrett finally arrested Billy in early 1881. Garrett, a one-time friend,
was the new sheriff of Lincoln County. On this day in 1881, a court took only
one day to convict Billy of the murder of Sheriff Brady. Sentenced to hang,
Billy was imprisoned in Lincoln’s county jail while Sheriff Garrett gathered
the technical information and supplies needed to build an effective gallows.
On April 28, while Garrett was out of town, Billy managed
to escape. While one of the jail’s two guards was escorting a group of
prisoners across the street to dinner, Billy asked the remaining guard to take him
to the jail outhouse. As the guard escorted him back to his cell, Billy somehow
managed to slip a wrist through his handcuffs. He slugged the guard and shot
him with a pistol either that he took from the guard or that a friend had
hidden in the outhouse for him. Hearing the shot, the second guard ran back to
the jail, and Billy killed him with a blast from a shotgun he found in
Garrett’s office. Reportedly, Billy then smashed the gun and threw it down on
the dead guard, yelling, “You won’t follow me anymore with that gun!”
After murdering the guards, Billy seemed in no hurry to
flee. He armed himself with two pistols and, according to one account, “danced
about the balcony, laughed and shouted as though he had not a care on earth.”
Apparently, the people of Lincoln were either too fearful or too admiring of
the young outlaw to act. After nearly an hour, Billy rode off. He was not able
to ride far enough. Upon his return to Lincoln, Garrett immediately formed a
posse and set off to recapture the outlaw. On July 14, 1881, Garrett surprised
Billy in a darkened room not far from Lincoln and shot him dead.
Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”
Michael Thomas Barry is the author of seven nonfiction
books that includes In the Company of
Evil Thirty Years of California Crime 1950-1980. Visit Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com for
more information. His book can be purchased from Amazon through the following link:
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