The Legend of Billy The Kid: Murder, Myth and Reality in the Old West

In this episode, James is joined by Jem Duducu (author of The History of the Western Movie) to tell the story of a teenage gunslinger who became a legendary figure wrapped in folklore, media exaggeration, and historical debate – Billy the Kid.

Tracing the story of Billy’s criminal career and involvement in the Lincoln County War, we discuss how Hollywood films and pop culture transformed a young outlaw into a Wild West icon, generating the myth that he somehow survived his deadly encounter with the lawman Pat Garrett in 1881, and went on to live into the 1950s as a mysterious drifter and adventurer named Brushy Bill Roberts.

This episode is perfect for fans of true crime, American history, film history and Wild West legends. Whether you're curious about outlaw myths, frontier justice, or the real story behind Billy the Kid, you’ll discover surprising facts, historical insights, and the truth behind the legend.

Check out Jem’s book – The History of the Western Movie

Follow Jem @jemduducu

Thanks to SOULFULJAMTRACKS for their tune "Dark Halloween"

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History's Devils is a history podcast exploring the lives of murderers, charlatans, psychopaths, dictators, war criminals, tyrants, demagogues, revolutionaries, cult leaders, conquerors, fraudsters, and other controversial figures.

History's Devils is hosted by James Crossland, professor of international history and author of:

Rogue Agent: From Secret Plots to Psychological Warfare, the Untold Story of Robert Bruce Lockhart

The Rise of Devils: Fear and the Origins of Modern Terrorism...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hello, folks, and welcome to History's Devils, a podcast journey through the lives of murderers, charlatans, psychopaths, and shithels. My name is James Crossland, and like a lot of men of a certain age, I sometimes wish I was a cowboy. Some intrepid gunslinger type, you know, roaming the plains of New Mexico, at liberty to defy the law, confident that any trouble I get into I can get out of, because I've got a six-shooter in my hand. It's this boy's own fantasy, it's a romantic image, it's a mythologized image. But if we're talking about historical figures who embody this image of sort of unrestrained violent freedom on the frontiers of civilization, it's hard to look past the subject of today's History's Devils episode, Billy the Kid, a notorious outlaw who reportedly killed 21 men, that is to say, one for every year that he lived, until 1881, when he was gunned down by the sheriff Pat Garrett, yet another legend of the Old West, in circumstances that some people regard as mysterious, but uh we'll we'll get to that. Um whether it's the truth or the fiction of it, the story of Billy the Kid is iconic in America's history, and it has been reproduced in gloriously sensationalistic and highly inaccurate ways on film and TV for close to a hundred years. And joining me to sort through the truth from the lies of the kid's story, I am pleased to welcome the author of the history of the Western movie amongst a plethora of other books, Gem Doduchu. Gem, welcome to history's devils.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Hello, uh, thank you very much for what a wonderfully evocative intro that was, James.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

I I love me action, James. Love him. Helps a lot. And we are talking about an evocative person, are we not? Uh he's someone who you you learn about him generally speaking through popular culture. And when we were discussing this episode on the email, it became apparent to you rather quickly that as someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s, my uh touch point for understanding Billy the Kid was the two Young Guns films. Uh Young Young Guns Young Guns 1 and its sequel, Young, the originally titled Young Guns 2. Uh Blaze of Glory. Blaze of Glory, yes. Yeah, that was it because of the songs, of course. Easily his best song, in my opinion. I don't know. I'm not a Bon Jovi connoisseur, but that song was pretty damn good. Um, I mean that film, Charlie Sheen, Christian Slater, Lou Diamond Phillips, Kiefer Sutherland, all these charismatically problematic young leading men of the 80s and 90s, and then in the middle of it, you got Emilio Estevez chewing the scenery as Billy the Kid, to the point where I can't see Billy the Kid as anyone other than Emilio Estevez. Like I I tried watching there's a Netflix series, I think started a couple of years back. I tried watching that and I couldn't do it. I I got like an episode in and I was like, this man isn't Emilio Estevez, so I can't buy into this, basically. It's like it's like if Toby McGuire turned up and said, Hey, I'm Marty McFly now. It's like you're not Marty McFly. Michael J. Fox is Marty McFly. It's it's it's he's that iconic to me. But that's me. Like, where when did you first, what was your first exposure to Billy the Kid?

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Well, I like your intro there, that I think that it is interesting. And and in regards to my book, I take you on the journey from the very first westerns, which were silent and black and white, um, all the way through to where we are right now in the 2020s. And clearly, nobody is going to the movie theater to see a Western. But they are now very much alive and well in TV form. You've mentioned Netflix, um, there's uh there's all kinds of things. There's an entire genre, a sub-genre from Paramount, the Yellowstone, which is sort of like uh neo-westerns, etc., hugely popular. But point blank, you are not going to get bums on seats in a cinema to go and see a Western anymore. But Billy the Kid is still very much alive and well in other forms. And pretty much the moment he died, no, I'm scratch that. While he was still alive, the myth was being made. And this is the point I keep making in in the book as well. And the examples I will give, and I'll sort of spin off at a couple of weird and wonderful places here, James, and we can play with them as much or as little as you want. But the example I start off at the very beginning of the book is like there were samurai, and there are loads of samurai movies. There were Knights in Shining Armour, and there are loads of movies about the medieval knights, and there were Cowboys and the Wild War Frontier, and there are loads of movies about those. In fact, probably more in that third part than anything else. But what all three of those have got in common, they don't overlap at the same time or space or anything like that. But what they do have in common is the fact that what actually we can historically prove and what everybody has in their head are two totally different things. And if you like, pop culture has ruined the conversation about uh frontier expansion in the second half of the 19th century, which doesn't get anybody interested. But you go gunfight at the okay corral, everyone's interested now. So going back to your point, I like so many people when I was a little boy, I watched cowboy movies on TV with my dad. Uh and you know, I I grew up with John Wayne. And and because they're kind of soft movies, when my boys were very little, I got two boys, they're now very big, uh, uh, but you know, I would show them uh John John Wayne movies and as they got older, the Clint Eastwood ones, etc. And they are just a good bit of entertainment. I mean, there are like any genre, there's a whole load of garbage, um, but the good ones are absolutely incredible.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Yeah. The boys old enough to watch Deadwood yet? Because that for me is the uh that is the pinnacle of the the Western in TV form that you mentioned before.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

They are old enough to watch it, but they haven't seen it yet. There are they're watching other things like Breaking Bad, etc. New Mexico. Um, they'll get there.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

They'll get there.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

They they absolutely will get there. But the thing I love about Deadwood when it first came out is I watched it with my wife. And uh we'd watch a scene, and because it's genuinely done in 19th century language, uh, we, you know, we we'd then pause it and go, so I think this scene meant this. And she I think this scene meant this, you know, it's like rather than saying, tell me how your day was, elucidate me on your scenario. And it's like it's and and again, 10 out of 10, there was there was no compromise to it. Everything was dirty and grimy as opposed to the John Wayne movies where you know everyone's got cleanly shaved and nobody's got sweat pits under their arms or anything like that. You know, it just shows you no whereas you said at the beginning, there's a part of every guy of our kind of age who would love to be a cowboy, when you see something like Deadwood, it's like, I never want to go to the Wild West ever. It's it's it looks horrible.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Exactly. But the young guns films present, again, this very dashing sort of romantic image of it that's very appealing. But the thing, you know, as you as you get older, you actually read about this stuff, you read some books about Billy the Kid, and it's quite obvious that despite the fact that he was this very lively and charismatic figure, his life is mysterious. There's a lot of interesting things that happen, and we'll get into some of the stuff that does and does not happen and how it's been depicted. But he's also he was also a murderer and a cattle rustler and a thief, a perpetual troublemaker, lived to defy authority. And he had a death that, as I said, although relatively straightforward, shot by Pat Garrett after a manhunt, it has nonetheless been mythologized to the point that some people believed he lived well into the 20th century under the alias Brushy Bill Roberts. More on him later.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

And we're back to young guns too as well, aren't we?

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Well, exactly. This is something that Emilio Esteves is particularly believes uh quite quite adamantly. But we'll get to Brushy Bill Roberts, but I I raise him because it's one of the many aliases that Billy the Kid may have had, and I think it's probably as good a place to start as any with that name where he gets it. What's funny is he doesn't get the name Billy the Kid until about six months before he was killed.

unknown 8:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

And it's when a a journalist, right, from uh the Las Vegas Gazette, I think Las Vegas, New Mexico Gazette, calls him he basically conflates two words together because throughout his life he was known mostly in in New Mexico territory because Spanish was widely spoken. He was known as either Belito or Chavato, uh, you know, the the kid the kid goat or or the Billy. And this guy basically just puts these two together right at, as I say, the the kind of towards the end of the uh of his life or towards the end of his career as a criminal. So that's quite interesting in and of itself that that that name that's so iconic isn't with him for most of his career.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Yeah. Well, I mean it's it was a pretty short career as well. And of course, the thing is let's talk about Henry, shall we? Uh you know, that he he was not even born William in any way, you know. No, he was uh Henry McCarty.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Totally average name. And indeed, Billy Billy isn't a particularly scary name either. It is purely around this legend. You say, Billy, Billy, if there was no context, when oh, over there's Billy the kid, you'd think, oh, adorable. It's like, no, it was somehow, it's like babyface Nelson. You know, it's sort of like the juxtaposition of the violent man, but the face of an angel, or the face of innocent, shall we say?

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Yeah. So the Billy comes from the alias William H. Bonnie, which he uses during his time as an outlaw. But as you mentioned, his real name was Henry McCarty. He was probably born in 1859 in New York, the son of Catherine and Patrick McCarty, Irish immigrants. Patrick probably dies during the Civil War, if not during shortly after. He then gets a stepfather called William Antrim, which leads to another alias being adopted. But William Antrim, by all accounts, was a bit of a bastard. Family goes out to New Mexico because Billy, and I'm going to use Billy and Henry interchangeably here. You all know who I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Yeah. So he his mother has got tuberculosis. Generally speaking, one of the things people did at this time to relieve the symptoms, they go to a dry climate, go to New Mexico, dry as a bone. Doesn't work. She dies in 1874, and Billy is left with his stepdad, William, who basically just puts him to work stealing stuff so that they can fence it and make money so that the stepdad can drink and gamble and hang out with ladies of the night. He he's not, he is not a great father figure at all. And what's interesting is that you get the first, you get, first of all, that's perhaps the origin story for the criminality, but it's also the origin story for Billy the Kid's noted temper temperament to be very headstrong and and not to take nonsense because he basically just walks out on his stepfather and says, Well, sod this. I obviously you you don't care for me, I don't care for you. Gets out of there, starts running with gangs, and and this is where it really starts. He starts stealing food, clothes, horses, makes his way across New Mexico and eventually into Arizona. And it's worth talking a little bit about the context here. He's about 15, 16 years old at this time. This is a rough time to be hand-to-mouthing it across this part of America because New Mexico, it's not even part of the United States. It's territory, it's not federally controlled. There's more cows than people. There's a hostile desert, very lawless. This is proper frontier territory, lynch mobs in lieu of law enforcement, because no one trusts law enforcement. In the films, this is absolutely essential, isn't it? This environment. This is almost like a character in itself in telling these kind of films.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Yeah, and and if you like the some films clearly try take more care with the history than others. Um, but what they all like, as you said, is this kind of lawlessness. And it's also very intriguing to the rest of the world. There is no equivalent of the Wild West in Asia or Europe. You know, pretty early on, as you got cultures sort of solidifying, they would ultimately solidify their national borders. But when Americans go whoopee in, you know, 1776 Declaration of Independence, well, when the war finally finished and was ratified in 1783, it was just 13 colonies almost all on the East Coast. And so you have for the whole of the 19th century this gradual heading west. And it was piecemeal. It was not, again, I think a lot of people think it was the government's plan to do this. It's sort of like they win a war or they massacre a bunch of First Nations peoples, and it's like, oh yeah, well, we might as well take it over now. And indeed, the whole sort of like bottom left of America, the sort of like the southeast and and sort of like southwest, I should say, and western coast used to be Spanish territory. So California, Nevada, New Mexico, uh uh, Texas, et cetera. So, you know, all that kind of area there. So there had been wars fought over it, you know, the Alamo, et cetera. And therefore, the people there, you know, a lot of them were sort of Hispanics. Uh, there were First Nations people in the area, and then there were all these sort of um Western European immigrants coming over as well. And that they, you know, it therefore it's just bubbling up of things. Uh, you know, let's, you know, we can also talk about uh the Mormons as well and how they were sort of like being chased across the continent. So it you you to when people want to sort of make up this sort of like lawlessness and and the concept of bounty hunters, I do believe a lot of people today think that they're they're a myth or they're only in Star Wars. It's like it's a real job, and actually it's still a job, it has a different name, but it's still a job that exists in in uh in the US today, uh, that going across sort of federal lines becomes hard. It's why why the US Marshall uh force uh exists as well, which again, there isn't an equivalent in somewhere like Germany or Britain. So um yeah, I I love the idea. It's a perfect place to tell a story. But as you just sort of said, we're talking about a teenager stealing goods who is dead by the age of 21. In the big scheme of history, Billy the kid is utterly insignificant, but he's incredibly important in the world of pop culture because America has spread its pop culture around the whole world.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Yeah. And he's he's he is the living embodiment of that environment, not just in the fact that he himself is inherently lawless, but also he is kind of unique amongst a lot of the white folks who come in. I mean, it's majority Mexican and uh Navajo. He is kind of unique amongst them because by all accounts, he's pretty tolerant of uh Hispanics and and the natives. He speaks Spanish fluently, he warms to their culture, warms to their language, eats their food. It's almost like he's been dropped into this alien environment as a you know, this kid from New York, and he's just gone, oh yeah, I like this, I'm just gonna roll with it. And and he sort of becomes part of it. I mean, and he he never he never leaves the region, even though he's hunted for most of his life through it. He never gets out of there when he's got myriad opportunities to. He does seem to genuinely love this part of the world. And what's interesting is that he the one time he does stray out of New Mexico, he goes to Arizona when he's about 18, and it's there that he shoots his first man, shoots and kills his first man in August of 1877, a local blacksmith called uh Wendy Cahill, who with his dying breath names his his killer as this this lad who at the time is known as Henry Antrim. And that then leads him to flee Arizona back to New Mexico to escape the noose. That ride west, though, is gonna lead him into more bloodshed bullets and run-ins with the law. And at this point, for people watching on YouTube, I'm gonna put up a map here of Lincoln County because this it's important to understand what this area that Billy is gonna make his name. So, Lincoln County, it's the biggest county, I think, in America at this time. It's massive. It is like, as we're just saying, uh in theory it's meant to be governed, but in practice it's ruled over by a syndicate comprised of cattle barons, the main one being a man by the name of Lawrence Murphy and his partner James Dolan. They are part of this thing called the Santa Fe Ring, which comes which is basically I mean, it's basically like an Irish mafia. Uh, you got cattle barons, corrupt politicians, and they've even got a gang that backs them, the Seven Rivers gang. They've got a sheriff on the books, William Brady, who's a you know, like all good criminal enterprises, they've paid off the cops. You know, they've got they've got the you know, corrupt sheriff in their back pocket, and they rule this place like an iron fist. And the problem is that there's a young man who's gonna walk into this and create a lot of bother. And his name is John Tunstall, who is this upstart from London. He's he's in his 20s, I think. He's there with dad's money. Dad's his dad's a banker or something. He's written him a big check. He's gone, you know, go make your fortune in the West, have an adventure. And he's turned up and he's gone, right, well, I'm gonna become a cattle baron too. So he's young, he's English, he's Protestant, and here he is amongst all these all these Catholic cattle barons, going, Well, I'd I'd like a slice of this pie as well. So he becomes uh an instant enemy of the Murphy Dolan faction or the house, as they are sometimes called. And the thing about Tunstall is although he presents as a bit of a kind of dandy who's just sort of stepped off the boot, he's not an idiot. He understands this is brutal, so he recruits his own gang to basically protect his interests from the Seven Rivers gang and anyone else. And this gang are called the regulators. Um, great name. Great name.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

And everything you've just said, I've been quiet as you're sort of going through it. But I think we can all agree, and hopefully the listeners or viewers can also agree, the story rights itself. I mean, you know, you've got all these cool things like criminal networks, corrupt cops, basically. You can see why it was so such a fertile territory to tell stories. But let's be honest, again, in the big you know, scheme of what was happening in the 19th century, the again, a weird comparison. Um, so please bear with me, is we're obviously going to get onto the Lincoln County War, which I will say nothing about right now, but we'll get we'll get there. Um this is the same decade as the Franco-Prussian War. You know, and in the Franco-Prussian War, 150,000 people more than died. You've got three and a half million people fighting. We got uh, you know, it leads to the formation of the, you know, all the uh Germanic states form into this new brand new country called Germany. Paris is under siege. This is huge. Does anybody write about it? How many movies are there about it, even in Germany? Basically none. And yet this this this it's a large county, but it's a large county of hillbillies in the middle of no in the middle of dust ball bowl. You know, it's it it compared to everything else that's happening on planet Earth, nobody should be interested in Lincoln County and its arguments over dry goods and and cattle grazing rights. And yet there are, I I looked this up on Wikipedia. I mean, sorry, but it's a good place to start. It it claims that there are at least 50 movies featuring uh Billy the Kid, and that does not surprise me at all. And it is worth saying there have been radio shows about him, comic books, TV series as well, video games he's been in as well. And it's like, and you certainly ain't getting that about Bismarck in the Franco-Prussian War, are you?

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Where's the Bismarck video game? I've been waiting for it for decades. Well, the Napoleon III video game, even better. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I mean, again, it's that it's that thing with these, you know, uh geopolitical events in Europe that are gonna have massive ramifications for the 20th century history. But then here we've got this war going on in in Lincoln County. But I guess within within this world of Lincoln County, it is a very big deal because you've because of that lawlessness, you've basically got two armed armed units amassing on either side, and there is going to be trouble. And it's into this trouble that that Billy the Kid steps in 1877 when he's on the run. As the story goes, he's stealing a horse as he does. Turns out to be John Tunstall's horse. Tunstall, instead of you know reporting him to the cops or whatever, or you know, cocking him around the head, says, Oh, horse thief, you could be useful. And he says, Why don't you join the regulators? And the thing is about the regulators, just a there's a mythology about them, particularly because of a certain hip-hop song that mentions them that they're just a bunch of you know gun-toting lunatics, but actually they're a blend of professional cowboys, people who can manage cattle, there's some gunslingers in there, there's there's uh you know, ex-bounty hunters, they're they're an interesting mix. And Tonsil sees Billy and says, Well, he could be quite useful. He's also apparently displays at this time something which is never really explained beyond the fact he apparently just has a God-given gift with the six-shooter and is ambidextrous, can fire you know, accurately with the left and right. I'm not sure how true that is, but it it's it's a it's a recurring part of his legend that that he he just knows how to shoot somehow.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

So, uh, I mean, if I can get technical for a moment, I don't know how much you want to go down this rabbit hole. Um but should we talk about rifling? Um yeah. So the thing about the the classic six uh six shooter that we've seen from the cowboy era is the barrel is smooth. But if you look at a modern rifle, uh and indeed at the beginning of a James Bond movie, you can see that there are all these grooves that spiral round, and that is referred to as rifling. So anything before you do those grooves can't be a rifle. Rifles are literally named after what's going on inside the barrel. What does that all mean? Well, when when gun go bang and bullet go down tube of the the barrel, um, with no rifling, it's basically just going to sort of clatter its way along, and when it flies out the front, it could go off in lots of different directions. But with rifling and the compressed gases from the gun go bang, is it starts the bullet. Spinning, which means it stays in a straight line. It dramatically increases the uh accuracy of firearms. And so all these guys, also, why why rifles or why long-barreled guns rather than short barreled guns? Well, the longer it goes down the tube, the more it tends to go in that direction, is a simple answer. So a modern day, let's say, assault rifle will be much more accurate, vastly more accurate than a 19th century uh sort of like cult revolver, for example. So when you actually read up on things like the gunfight at the OK Corral, the most exciting 60 seconds in history, uh, and again, multiple movies made up about 60 seconds of action, um, you you you realize uh how close these guys have to be to each other. Um but there's absolutely a skill in terms of firing, reloading, holding the gun in the right position. And I would say, on balance, that Billy clearly wasn't ex-military, he didn't have time for that in his career. I think he was. Uh he did have a natural knack as to how to handle a firearm, but at the same time, again, I love the Sergio Leone Westerns, but nobody with one of those smooth ball rot uh guns could be shooting hats off people's heads. Or if they did, it's because they're actually aiming at their chest and they missed. Uh so um, you know, he wasn't a crack shot because crack shots kind of didn't exist in that with that level of technology, but I think he was pretty good. I also think because he was young, headstrong, he was willing to push into the gunfights, so get closer and therefore more likely to hit the target.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Yeah, I was thinking that the range at which he's engaging people is probably a deciding factor in how many people he can kill. The fact also, I believe, he used a double-action revolver, which reloads itself with each squeeze of the trigger, uh, makes it easier to fire rapidly, which he doesn't seem to have been bullet shy from what we can tell. He's not he's not conserving bullets. Speaking of bullets, Tunstall, Billy the kid's employer, now uh he is, as a consequence of this conflict with the Murphy Dolan gang, he is murdered on the 18th of February, 1878, by a posse that is in the P of the Murphy Dolan faction. Sheriff Brady is apparently with them at this time, or at least he's he's he's got something to do with it. Then what happens is that basically Billy and the regulators, including the captain of the regulators, a man named by the name of Dick Brewer, who's worth mentioning because he's often seen as the kind of antithesis of Billy in that he is uh a bit more level-headed, older, more mature, uh a captain for a reason. They are deputized in a campaign to try to bring Brady and the Murphy Dolan faction to justice on behalf of their former employer. And this starts what becomes known as the Lincoln County War, which is basically a a series of engagements fought um over 1877 and into 1878 between the regulators, Seven Rivers Gang, and other affiliates of the Murphy Dolan faction. This posse of regulators, it's worth it's worth talking about this because in the films they're not often depicted correctly, quite frankly, because because the the the size of the posse varies immeasurably. It starts from there's like a dozen of them, they get up to I think there's as many as 60 at one time. Um to to go back to my to my young guns. I mean, for obvious for reasons of narrative, they they they whittle it down to five guys. Um yeah, but they're awesome. Oh, yeah, and uh well that's the thing, they all kind of embody the whole thing, and they they they are representative because you've got you know Doc Skurlock, Josiah Doc Skurlock played by Kiefer Sutherland, who's who's kind of represents the more educated amongst them. You've got uh Chavez Chavez who who represents the the Mexicans who are involved, and uh Charlie Bowdry, who is I think killed in the first Young Guns film, even though he actually survives long after the war in reality. For some reason they kill him in the street. I mean he's portrayed as a sympathetic character in there, but he's actually probably probably Billy the Kid's best mate, actually. They they end up getting getting buried alongside each other. But the point is that they they are a sizable force, like I say, as many as 60 men at their height, and they fight across plains and deserts, horse trails of Lincoln County, and eventually they end up in a siege in the town of Lincoln itself. But I just want to go through a few instances in the Lincoln County War because this is really where Billy starts to make his name. Um and in particular, the the the first thing he makes his name is the ambush of Sheriff Brady, who is killed on the 1st of April 1878. They absolutely riddle this guy with bullets. Uh he has uh well over a dozen slugs in him after this attack where he's ambushed on the Lincoln Main Street in broad daylight. And Billy's part of this attack, and it's it's there's a brazenness to this. And again, to reiterate, they're deputized and they've been given warrants. I think there's 18 warrants, and they've been told, go arrest these men. And they're just like, No, no, I think I think we'll I think we'll just gun him down in the street instead. Um and that kind of sets the tone for for what's gonna happen. And it's interesting, I wonder how I wonder how common this was, because the deputization process is basically where we don't we don't have enough trained lawmen, whatever that looks like. These guys are handy with the steel, let's put a badge on them and hope that they bring people to justice. I mean, surely this must have happened quite regularly, where they just go off piste and just start murdering people.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

From from the no well, okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That last bit I'm gonna have to push back on. In terms of uh of creating a posse or deputization, from what the what the records show, it happened. You know, happened relatively regularly. And again, we have to remember there was no central authority. These are territories, and there's sort of big debates as we go along. Your reference there to sort of like Deadwood earlier on, you know, one of the key elements there is are we going to be part of North Dakota or South Dakota? You know, playing one side after the other to get the best possible deal. Um, so it absolutely happened, but then again, using the the uh pop cultural references, it doesn't happen nearly as often as you think it would. And more often than not, it might be uh well, let's be blunt. Going back to the bounty hunters and going back to some of the deputization, some of it back in the day was to find uh escape slaves, you know, which is a very unpleasant side of the story that again sort of like gets sweeped to one side. And also in my research, I realized that after the Civil War, there were far more black people on the frontiers than you would initially expect, which made complete sense. You know, if you've been a slave in South Carolina, you don't want to hang around there, so you're gonna get get out of there. Um that that's part one. Um, but also part two, where do I find a new place? So why not get uh a stretch of land in the middle of everywhere? And people were a bit more I don't want to say egalitarian, because as you said, there you know, there's absolutely racism, heinous racism at this time, stuff that we would sort of find deeply unpalatable, that were just standard beliefs at the time, particularly towards the uh the natives. Um but again, you're you're far enough away, I don't care, and I've got my own troubles here, etc. So um, you know, it it was kind of uh a melting pot, but it led to uh huge amounts of fighting and arguing as well, keeping the peace. Again, there's been some interesting uh papers showing uh surprisingly how much the West was pacified by women, specifically the working girls in brothels. Uh you know, it's like that's all of this stuff is pushing against the imagery. And and just going back to the uh, you know, the African Americans, well, if what Jem said's true, why aren't they in the movies? Because we've got a new wave of racism. We're not gonna, in the 1950s, you're not gonna fill your saloon with black people because there was still segregation, you know, 70 years later. Sorry about that. But but yes, you know, so uh there absolutely was deputization. It was for all kinds of things. It certainly didn't always end in a uh shootout, and also sometimes they were deputized to hunt down black people and then lynch them, which you're never going to see in a movie unless it's one of these ones showing you how racist the the West was.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Yeah. Certainly doesn't fit the heroic image, which is often appended to the to the regulators who because of the people, because they're they're fighting corruption, this leads to the kind of Robin Hood depiction of them in many ways. They're fighting against a corrupt syndicate. But what one of the shootouts that is truly remarkable, and it is well evidenced, um, it doesn't seem to have been mythologized, is the shootout at Blazer's Mill on the 4th of April 1878. When they come across one of the guys on their list, a man by the name of Buckshot Roberts, who is, if you imagine, if you say, you know, tough old bastard who's just wandered in off the plains, gruff, he's this gruff, burly buffalo hunter, this leathery old badass Sam Elliott type, people say. Yeah, Sam Elliott, but somehow more leathery. And he's he's riding a mule instead of a horse. He he's true grit. Like he he he's the guy who drinks whiskey mixed with snake's blood as a pick-me-up. He's got that vibe, right? And he and and his name is Buckshot because as a young man, he was reportedly shot with with a shotgun, and they never removed the shot from his shoulder. So he lives his whole life with metal in his shoulder, just going, oh yeah, that's fine. I'll just walk it off, sort of thing. So he's literally carrying steel in his bones. He goes to Blazer's Mill, which is just this little uh house, basically, a little eatery, I think it is, by a lake. Um, and he's actually trying to get out of the war. He's trying to get out of Lincoln. Regulators try to serve him a warrant, gunfight ensues. He unloads with a Winchester, he kills Dick Brewer, the head of the regulators, he blows the finger off, trigger finger off another guy, wounds another person. He even smashes Billy the kid, like tries to engage him, and he's run out of rounds in his Winchester, so he just cocks Billy in the face with a with it with the butt of the rifle. All of this is happening whilst this bugshot Roberts guy is carrying several bullet wounds because they, of course, have fired at him. So he's been shot multiple times, but he's still engaging them. Phenomenal story. He dies the next day from his wounds, but he he takes a couple with him and takes bits of them with him. But the the point of that is that after that, Billy he's not necessarily in charge, but by force of charisma, he does seem to take more of a leading role in the regulators after that. And so he's in a position of relative authority amongst the regulators when the the final like big battle of the Lincoln County War takes place in Lincoln itself over five days in July of 1878. Basically, a siege in the town with about 200 men, Murphy Dolan and their guys outnumber the regulators three to one. The Murphy Dolan gang take up positions on one side of the street, regulators on the other, and the house of uh a fellow named McSween, who is Tunstall's business partner, that becomes the site of this last stand. And that's where Billy and Co. hold up. Um, there's, you know, surrounded by gunmen who are adversarial to them. At this point, the cavalry arrive as well, if it's not ridiculous enough. Someone calls the cavalry to, you know, try to sort this thing out before the whole town gets burned down or whatever. I believe they were called to break up the fight, although again, the way it's often depicted in the films is that the the cavalry are kind of get involved in the shooting, which um I'm not sure if that's that doesn't seem right to me.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

Yeah, it doesn't seem right. And and again, what you're saying there about Billy, how can he be headstrong, great gunslinger, really young, and yet also be put into a responsibility of like like leadership? I I you know I would I don't know, I wasn't there, but you know, it would seem to me probably there was somebody smart who was leading them, but when they got into a fight, it's sort of like follow Billy. You know, he he's he's good in a fight. And again, so I'm sorry to do this, but sort of like to compare it to other things, like let's say the Franco-Prussian role. It's so many people writing about it in so many different areas that we can pick to put pull it together, and also there's a lot of evidence that the the Prussians did actually use to besiege and capture parrot, okay? But the problem with sort of like who was running the regulators in in 1879, it's such a small beer that's been over-lionised because the newspapers are, you know, they don't they don't sell papers by saying young man steals a cow, you know, that's that's like Billy the kid has a shootout and like slaughters the cattle. That's a story. And and you see this just 10 years later in in London with with Jack the Ripper. It's worth pointing out, a man who we do not know his name but has been forever remembered as Jack the Ripper because the newspapers wrote that. And so they're always in the eye. Uh yeah, and and the mythmaking, therefore, unlike the samurai or the knight, the mythmaking's happening while the people are alive, actually doing the stuff. And they're uh a minor event gets uh blown up and blown up and blown up till the point where, yeah, a hundred years later, yeah. I mean, literally a hundred years later, no, no, slightly over his death, you are watching a young guns movie, uh, you know, a cinematic movie about him that's that's utter nonsense, but is sort of like harking back to this this image.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Yeah, I I do wonder that watching the films, how much they're ripping from the headlines of the era, because to your point about why would you elevate this, you know, juvenile delinquent with a with a itchy trigger finger to leading the regulators, it's possible that at this time that's when the well the the press coverage is starting to hone in on him quite a bit at this time because he is he has this charismatic way about him and everything else. And so the way that the the siege of Lincoln, as it's called, is is is reported on it, does emphasize how spectacular it is that you've got these these you know young lads from the regulators basically holed up in this in this house fighting again. The the scene is they're fighting off Murphy Dolan, Seven Rivers gang, the cavalry, the you know, everyone's there. And in reality, and again, it's the the the depictions of this in film very cinematic. You've got you know big big bombastic. Bombastic, I mean quite ludicrous. I remember uh Estebes gets thrown out where they set fire to the house and they throw him out in a in a trunk, don't they? And then he comes out standing in the open with two guns, no one shoots him, and he yet manages to pick people off. It's completely and it's all in slow-mo as well.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Do you know the famous person in that scene that isn't credited?

SPEAKER_00 36:44

John Bon Jovi. No, no, that's the second film. That's the second film. Um I I oh I can't remember.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

Basically, uh a very famous person turned up uh because he he was friends with some of the you know the brat pack and basically went, Oh, can I be in this scene? And they went, Yeah, we'll put a moustache on you and whatever. Tom Cruise is in that scene.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

Oh, really? He's one of the besiegers, isn't he?

SPEAKER_01 37:07

Yes, that's but I mean you yeah, you sort of blink and you miss him if you freeze frame it a couple of times. Yeah, that's Tom Cruise, it's Tom Cruise.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

Very cool. Um, cool film, obviously, the set to hang out on it back in the day. Yeah, but um, and and that would have been a fun scene to shoot as well, because it is epic. And and it it bears some semblance to reality in as much as yes, they do set fire to the house that the regulators are in. Yes, there is a breakout, and yes, McSween, the man who owns the house, does get shot on his own doorstep. In the film, the the cavalry just for some reason unload an entire Gatling gun into him, which is not what happened, because that would be ridiculous, but he he does get shot several times. The regulators do escape and and and Billy amongst them. And that's when we get into this final stage of his life where he's he's he is now a certifiable outlaw. And this is is where we run into, I think that things are a little less documented at this time what's actually happening, but we do know that he ends up requesting a pardon, which does not fit with the myth at all, but he ends up requesting a pardon for the new governor of New Mexico Territory, Governor Lou Wallace, in November 1878. He says, Look, if you can pardon me for the crimes committed during the Lincoln County War, I will t I will testify against the Murphy Dolan faction. And what ends up happening is he is taken into custody for the purposes of of giving this evidence, and he ends up um being double-crossed, basically. It looks like they they're actually gonna because uh this is perhaps again undermines the myth of him being a little bit wily. He doesn't seem to have understood that the pardon that was being offered to people who were involved in the Lincoln County War did not include people who were already wanted for crimes before that war, which is him, because of cattle rustling and murdering that guy in Arizona and everything else. And so he was never gonna be pardoned. So he kind of walked into a trap.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

At that time, that's a lot of uh of knowledge to place on. At that time, he's 18, 19. You know, he he may be wily, but he isn't gonna understand the nuances of law.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

But he is, interestingly, I mean, he is literate.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Yes, I was gonna say I deliberately did avoided that statement. Yeah, yeah. He could he could read, but I mean, I don't know all the laws of Britain right now.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

Well, this is true, yeah, yeah. Try reading an insurance document. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

And while I know this is a tad later, but uh, you know, these sort of uh amnesties did happen more often than you'd think. And uh the the other famous example is Butch Casting and Sundance Kid, and and their their gang, they were literally uh exonered so long as they didn't do any more uh railroad uh jobs and then they just couldn't help themselves. Let's do another railroad job, and then they end up going to Bolivia. Um, which by the way, if you've ever seen uh Butchcasting and Sundance Kid, which is an awesome movie, um, it's uh the the scene at the end when they're surrounded by the Bolivian army and they have to sort of gun their way out of it, etc. In reality, three Bolivian soldiers. That was it.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

Well, that's that's no fun. No, no, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

Hi, my name's Jem.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

I'm here to spoil you on the whole army. Oh, that's a shame. Well, again, never let it get in the way of a good story. Yeah, um, and and that's again applies to the means by which Billy manages to escape custody on in this instance. He's held um in uh by on the orders of Governor Lou Wallace, he escapes on the 17th of June 1879, and the means by which he escapes is he basically just walks away because he's he's under house arrest and he basically waits for his jailer, I don't know, goes to take a piss or something, and he just goes, Well, I'm just gonna leave. And he just goes and grabs a horse and and rides away.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

If he was, yeah, yeah. So if he was as notorious as the films and propaganda would say, or story, shall we say, legend would say, you there's no way he's gonna be under house arrest. He he's in jail, you know, he's behind bars. So I think this shows you that again, I think that's an indication that people saw him as one of the regulators and not Billy the kid at that time, as you said, you know, correctly. He's only known that really in the last six months of his of his career. So I think he was seen as a potential troublemaker. Yeah, somebody we need to be investigating, but he's not too much trouble. And really, it's after that first escape that he, well, he has already killed people and been involved in sort of some shootouts. I my argument is he becomes the legend after that first escape. Because that isn't even the the only time he escapes from custody either.

SPEAKER_00 41:41

Yeah, there's a more spectacular escape to come. Uh, yeah, you're right. This is really when the outlaw, and again, it's only for a few months of his life, but this this period of acute outlawness, if that's a word, uh, starts with a number of things. It is now invented it. Um, he's pursued he is pursued by bounty hunters after his escape, and one of them is a guy called Joe Grant, who is actually uh shot by Billy the Kid in a saloon in January 1880, uh saloon in Fort Sumner, which is one of Billy's uh main places of refuge, this sort of old fort that was uh bought by a private interest turned into a town in the middle of New Mexico. He he encounters this guy there, he uh manages to shoot him, gets away. He then forms a gang that comprises some former regulators and some real hardcore outlaws, and one, in fact, is a man by the name of Dave Rudabar, who is way more bloodthirsty and nasty than Billy the Kid ever was. He was a legendary train robber, bank robber, killer, reputed to have taught Doc Holliday how to shoot. Rudabar is one of these guys who just bumps into everyone in the old west, you know, wired up Doc Holiday, whoever, Billy the Kid. And he's got this new gang around him, Billy has. He gets into further trouble. But what's important is it's trouble that loses him a lot of friends. We mentioned before that he ingratiates himself quite a lot with the local Hispanic community, speaks Spanish fluently, and when he's on the run, that gives him a lot of friends, that a lot of hiding places, people who are gonna give him a roof over his head, food for the night, that sort of thing. But then something happens in November 1880, which really sullies his reputation, and that's an incident that occurs at a roadhouse outside the town of White Oaks in New Mexico, where the gang is held up at this roadhouse, uh, a mob, again, not not law enforcement, just a mob of concerned citizens, probably a few r looking for a lynching, turn up, surround the place, they nominate a guy called Carlisle, who's a local blacksmith, they make him a deputy, again, this sort of wanton way in which you you create law enforcement, and they send him in to negotiate a surrender for Billy and his cohorts. And Billy decides to charm his way out of this by getting Carlisle drunk and just saying, Hey, no, no, don't worry. Just party with us for a bit, uh, pour some whiskey, have some fun, da da da. And Carlisle gets gets into it. And so they spend several hours just drinking with this guy, and and the mob outside eventually are going, Well, what the hell is going on? He's meant to be in there making an arrest. You know, what could can we do something, please? And then there's conflicting reports of what happens next. Rudabar claimed that they get into an argument with Carlisle at this point. Carlisle freaks out, throws himself out of a window, and in the process is gunned down by the gang. Billy says that a shot was fired by the posse from outside, and that's what spooks Carlisle, who then jumps out of a window and gets shot by the lynch mob, who think that he's one of the one of Billy's gang. And Billy gets blamed for this. Now, either way, Carlisle managed to both defenstrate himself and get shot dead at basically the same time, which is quite an achievement given that he was legless drunk at this time. It's it's it's quite a scene that unfolds here. But the point is that Billy gets blamed for this man's murder, uh, this man's death in in whatever way it was. And it does seem to really crystallize this idea that in in a lot of the public mindset that actually he's he's a bad guy, more so when at this time he gets a bounty put on his head, which I think is $500. How does that stack up in terms of bounties in this period? $500, what I mean, is that it's a pretty good one.

SPEAKER_01 45:27

Okay, let me put it this way. It's not that it's not the highest, but um you obviously need to make it worth people's time. And it is notoriously hard to put it into context. Yes, you can add on inflation, but also you have to remember that you know, for $500, you could buy all the component parts and then some and the land as well to build a house, you know. So how would you like a house? Now, of course, you're gonna have to build it yourself or maybe get some, you know, uh some locals to do it for you. So I mean, you know, it was a huge amount. And going back to your point there about the kind of Hispanic community, is I I agree there clearly was sympathy for him, but now he's just carrying too much heat. He's not worth it. Or maybe I'll lure him in and get him stuff like that $500. Uh so suddenly there is nowhere. And that was the point of bounties, it was to reduce people's options. And going back to something you said earlier, which I think so many people don't understand in the movies, because they're always riding around, and any kind of western, they're always riding around in the desert, and it looks like they're traveling hundreds, if not thousands, of miles, and they don't. Weirdly, you you know, if if he had at that point got out of there and gone all the way to, let's say, uh North Dakota, he would have been fine. He he would have had another alias, nobody's got a clue who he is. Now, his hot-headed nature probably would end up in getting into trouble again, but nobody will know that he is Billy the Kid. Um, but no, they they hang around in the area. Maybe the argument is they know the layer of the land, they kind of know people there. But if the whole, if if the whole power uh complex is tilted against you, it's time to actually get out of there. But all these people, apart from Butchcasting the Sundance Kid, they're you know, they were the right thing. Let's go to a totally different country. Yay! Um, but you know, they uh didn't end up. But yeah, they they sort of hang around, and it's kind of like an inevitability that the noose is going to tighten around them, and that's ultimately what happens to Billy.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

Yeah, because it's not it's not just bounty hunters. Uh apparently uh there's even a story that a secret service agent from the the secret service, which is established after the civil war to hunt down counterfeiters, one of them is even dispatched because there's a belief that he might be involved in counterfeiting. I'm not sure the truth of that, but if so, it speaks to the fact that there's a lot of people gunning for him. There's even there's even some people from the the army who are looking for him. And then amongst all this is the the guy who is eventually going to claim the scalp. And that is Pat Garrett, who is appointed sheriff explicitly to track him down. It's worth it talking about this because the the relationship between these two is very central to the myth. In fact, there's a film made about it, um, the one with Chris Christofferson.

SPEAKER_01 48:04

Yeah, Pat Garrett and Billy the Tibbs, directed by Sam Peckenpah, which I think is a really underrated Western. It didn't do well when it first came out. It's got um Bob Dylan in it as well, which I think put people off. Um but he does look weird. Yeah, yeah. Um, but um knocking on Heaven's Door, he wrote for that movie and then didn't put it in that movie. So one of his sort of biggest ever hits. So I loved Pat when I first saw it. Um the one of the opening scenes is they're shooting heads off chickens that are buried up to their neck, and it's sort of like that, looks like they're actually doing it. And they weren't, but what they were doing was having small explosives, basically caps next to the chickens' heads, so they were blowing chickens' heads off. So yay, you couldn't do that in Hollywood anymore. No, no, it's incredibly visceral. They kind of intercut the death of the chickens with also the death of Pat Garrett as well. So it's it's it's what but everybody's too old in the I mean, I love Sam Peck and Parr, and his other more famous Western is the Wild Bunch, and I cannot recommend that enough for people. But um, yeah, I it it everyone's too old. Uh the equipment's wrong. You know, it's one of these things where with all these westerns, is it a great western? Is it a great movie? Yeah, absolutely. Does it tell you what you need to know about the history? Abs absolutely not. We're in brave heart territory of Rome.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

Completely. Uh yeah, like 35-year-old Billy the Kid. I I I found it very hard to to yeah. But um that um that that again, but that's the the premise of the the title of that film says it all, you know, Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid, the relationship between the two. One of the big myths about their relationship is that Garrett, you know, rode with the kid and they were very, very close and all this, and uh that that never happened. I mean, they knew each other, uh, they were familiar with each other, but they weren't, you know, blood brothers, best of friends, anything like that. This is a business exchange. This is Garrett looking for money he wants to he wants to settle down, get get um, get a business going. This is a way to to establish himself as a lawman, collect the bounty, make a name for himself, get some dosh. It's it's as simple as that, really. And what what happens is just to go through the the pursuit, because it does go in in various ways, but the the main the main point uh that occurs is that Billy is eventually captured by Pat Garrett at a place uh called uh Stinking Springs. Wonderful name, full name. When the regulators are surrounded in this little uh stone outhouse that's that's by there, Garrett eventually forces them to surrender. By some accounts, he he they they are surrounded there, the regulators without food and water, and then in the morning Garrett just starts frying up some bacon and they go, Well, God, I really want to eat that bacon. Can we just surrender now? But the the the point is they don't have this mass shootout. One of them, Charlie Bowdry, is killed, the guy who's probably closest to Billy at this time, but uh Billy himself is just he just surrenders, which again is not something that's depicted too much in the films because it it it undermines the myth. He is sentenced to death, but he escapes the jail in Lincoln on the 28th of April, 1888. And this is this is a fantastic story because there's there's a uh a myth about him getting out of his shackles. I'm not sure by what means he gets out of his shackles, but he apparently manages to get out of his shackles when he's being escorted back from the outhouse, spins around on the staircase, thumps the guy escorting him, a deputy by the name of Bell in the face, takes his gun, shoots Bell in the back as he's running away, not very honorable. He then gets a shotgun that belongs to the other deputy, Bob Olinger, who was A, a former associate of the Murphy Dolan faction, and B, had spent the whole time Billy was incarcerated taunting him, chiding him, bullying him, you know, spitting on him, everything else. So Billy gets a shotgun and goes, Well, I'm just gonna sort this out, and uh goes goes to the the the top of the jailhouse, sees uh Bob Olinger in this in the street, and either yells out, hello Bob, or hello old boy. I'm not sure which it is, he yells out something to him, Olinger turns around, and he blasts him with a shotgun, and that's the end of that. And then again, this is and I'm not sure how much of this is myth and reality, but it's it's reported in the papers that he then dances a little jig on the roof of the jailhouse with like a gun in his head. That ain't gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 52:19

But uh yeah, I'm not quite sure. I don't know what to believe about you know I I think hello Bob sounds better than hello old boy, but oh definitely, definitely hello Bob, and then allegedly by Bob after he shoots him. Uh you know, it's a good line, and there have been good lines in history, and I don't I you know I want that to be true, let me put it that way.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

Yeah, I I want the whole thing to be true, to be honest, because he he he kills these two guys, steals a horse again, gets the hell out of there, spectacular escape, evades the noose, and Garrett's back to square one. He's got to find him. But this goes back to the point you were making before about how at this stage he's kind of running out of places to go, and for whatever reason, he just refuses to leave New Mexico. So he returns, like you know, a cursed boomerang to Fort Sumner to see uh allegedly a girl he's got there, a lady by the name of Polita Maxwell. Her brother Pete Maxwell owns the fort. He doesn't like that she's interested in this notorious outlaw. So he informs on uh to Garrett and says this is where he's at. And then on the evening of the 14th of June 1881, Garrett goes to the house where Billy is staying. It's the dead of night. Billy hears someone in the house, he gets up with his gun, he's uh he's hissing, you know, Kines, Kinness, you know, who is it? Who is it? And at this point, Garrett shoots him in the dark. From here, we get we get the start of myths. Everything from Garrett shoots the wrong guy, and then to save face, he covers it up and says, uh, yeah, this is Billy the kid when it's not. The other leaning into this myth about them being great mates, Garrett just lets him go and says, Look, if you ride out of here now and go to Mexico or go to you know California or go to somewhere other than here, uh, we'll just we'll just call it quits and I'll say that I'll say that you're dead. That's not what happened. His body is identified by numerous people in Fort Sumner who know him. It's a small community, it's something like 200, 300 people. They all know him. They identify him. Uh some people weep over his body, his body is cleaned, it is dressed, there's a wake held the next day where they can all see him. Lots of people see him. There is a story I was always told, and I have no idea where this came from, that he's not shot in a dark room by Pat Garrett, but they're they're they they're talking to each other, and Garrett asks him to hang up a picture, and he puts this picture on the wall, and when his back's turned, Garrett shoots him. Have you ever heard this story before?

SPEAKER_01 54:49

No, I haven't. And and that kind this is the thing. If you're gonna start making stuff up, you're not gonna make it less uh dramatic. Um already the the stuff about how it it happened at night, that's been widely not reported in the legends, myths, etc. Uh, you know, newspapers, because it's not exciting enough. You know, you just you know you want it to be a certain way with these things. But it is interesting. My my my view is that uh America uh loves an outlaw. I mean, you could argue everyone does, but they've got to have follow certain rules. Whereas Robin Hood didn't, I'm sorry, I the one first person I ever banned on my Facebook history page was when I said, you know, uh Robin Hood, the Robin Hood of legend never existed. There might have been a guy called Robin who might have robbed, but you know, Fry Tark, steal from the rich, give to the poor, share of novel, no. Uh anyway, um so but they have to follow certain rules. But Billy the kid didn't steal from the rich and give to the poor. You know, he gunned down people, he gunned down law enforcement at certain times. And the last time we see that is with Bonnie and Clyde. And, you know, and and yes, like, oh, they only killed police officers. Well, first of all, the police are also human beings uh and they're just doing their job. But secondly, no, no, they didn't. They killed uh innocent people as well. But when they died, huge, um, huge crowds around them as well. And it's like, why? Why for these criminals? And and it, you know, when you look at these true crime podcasts, they're always referred to as true crime, but it's always murder. You'll never get a podcast or you'll never have lionized a serial rapist. So, uh, that's disgusting. What? And murder's okay. I mean, look, for the record, both are horrible, but um, it is interesting what society will and won't tolerate and will and won't turn into kind of an anti-hero. And you know, you picked a brilliant topic here because Billy the kid is on the absolute apex, the absolute top of anti-hero. People want to be him, but they don't want to be him, they want to be the legend of him. And the more you look into it, it's like this is a 21-year-old kid who, you know, first sign of trouble would shoot his way out of it. It's like he's not a nice guy, and he wasn't smart enough to get out of the area when everybody's looking for him.

SPEAKER_00 57:01

Yeah, that I mean, there's not too much to admire, but I do think it's the fact that he has this very inglorious, unremarkable end that, as I say, it it feeds into that mythmaking, which is as you mentioned, is is is happening while he's alive, and then it it it accelerates, the volume gets turned up to 11 once he's once he's dead. This is when the the stories about him killing 21 men emerge. In reality, he probably killed maybe nine, I think is. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was going.

SPEAKER_01 57:30

It's sort of like it's eight, nine, it is contested. Look, that's eight or nine more than either of us have, and okay, that's a that's still quite a lot of people by the time you're 21. But yeah, the legend won't allow it. It's it is a cooler, one for every year of his life. It's like, okay, so you're more than doubling the number for no reason whatsoever.

SPEAKER_00 57:47

Yeah. The obsession with him still remains, and it's interesting that the obsession remains about what he looks like, because the photographs of him is a constant source of controversy. There is for the record only one confirmed photograph of Billy the Kid, um, which I I will put up now. Ugly looking Yeah, looks pretty gormless, actually. Yeah, he does. He he does not look like some dashing hero of legend. But then we've had these other ones um back in the early or something. I think there was the yes, so there was oh oh that's the Silver City photo, I think you're referring to, of him as a young, sort of far more dashing looking man uh in Silver City, New Mexico, which we know that is the town that he he his parents located to when when he uh first went to New Mexico. Uh I I don't know. I mean, even if it is him, I'm not sure what it what it proves. I'm not sure what we get out of it. The other one, which was the photo of him apparently playing croquet with the regulators, I believe that has been disproved. Uh, but they're always doing the thing with the facial recognition gimmicks where they're like, oh, you know, the points on his the biometrics and it matches the the one that we do know is of him. I'm not really sure what the point of of it is, but it does just speak to the obsession with with Billy's.

SPEAKER_01 59:04

Exactly. That's what it is. I mean, it's like, why? Oh, you know, there's been lots of murders since Jack the Ripper. Why is it an entire industry? You know, I I live in London. You can go on a Ripper tour today if you wanted to. Why? Uh I don't get that. Um, and it's the same thing with Billy. You know, you you all you you know, there are tours in in New Mexico around this, and that's endless amounts of movies. There's just there's just these certain people that become anchor points for for pop culture. It just excites the imagination. If you wanted to explain to a little kid, you know, what was the Wild West all about, you know, the fact that he's called Billy the Kid, you just take out perhaps the uh elements of like the extreme violence and it's just like, oh, and he got away, and the oh, the police were chasing after him. It'd be absolutely suitable for a small child to be doing it. Going back to my children, you know, you there's I mean, Chih uh Chisholm is uh one of the guys uh in the Lincoln County War, uh, and there's literally a movie called Chisholm starring John Wayne. As a kid, I had no idea that that was connected at all. But you know, you just get this constant reiteration, reinvention of these things. I think we all like an outlaw, but we don't want them to be too bad. We don't want them to be sort of Hannibal Lecter or Hitler or something like that. You know, we we want there's a certain level of cheekiness, naughtiness, and a 21-year-old pushing against the system who's escaped the law a couple of times. It plays well with uh the little the little devilness uh devilishness in us all.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:28

Yeah. And to to end on someone whose imaginations were definitely excited by Billy the Kid, I mentioned him at the start. We have to talk about Brushy Bill Roberts, who emerges from uh Hico, Texas in 1950. He has sworn affidavits from, I think it's five people who say who apparently knew Billy the Kid, who say this man who's got to be in his 90s or so, he says this man, Brushy Bill Roberts, is in fact William H. Bonnie, aka William McCartney, aka William the Kid, um, who allegedly survived the encounter with Pat Garrett. For obvious reasons, Pat Garrett's surviving children, they are pretty pissed off when this guy emerges and says this because all of a sudden the great achievement of their dad's life means nothing if this man is legit. I wish this was true. What an amazing story if this guy was really Billy the Kid, but it was not. The affidavits were from people who barely knew the kid, if at all. Bushy Bill Roberts was illiterate. We mentioned before that uh Billy the Kid could read and write. Did he forget? Well, did he also forget Spanish? Because um uh Billy was fluent in Spanish. Yeah, this this guy could basically say cerveza por favor. That was the extent like he could not he he could not speak Spanish. He showed a lot of scars uh when he was he was doing an interview in Santa Fe to prove he was Billy the Kid. He showed off a body that was riddled with scars, some that could have been bullet bullet wounds, and he said, Look, you know, obviously I've this is I've got the kind of body that Billy the Kid would have. Here's the thing though, as far as we can tell, Billy the Kid was only shot once. And even then, we're not sure if it was just a glancing blow, basically, during the ambush on Sheriff Brady back in 1878. So, yeah, I'm sure he got some bumps and bangs and bruises, but uh nothing to say that he's this scarred mess. No, it's not evidence. But the biggest problem with the Roberts testimony is that if you actually set back and look at who he was, you understand that he was a near delusional bullshit artist. Because before deciding he was Billy the kid, Brushy Bill claimed that he was a rough rider with Theodore Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War, that he fought with Pancho Villa in the Mexican Revolution. He had apparently been a buffalo hunter, a champion boxer, a bounty hunter. He had ridden with the infamous outlaw Jesse James. Basically, as Brushy Bill Roberts tells it, he was the forest gump of the Wild West. He he went everywhere and did everything, but in reality, he was a grifting liar who was hard up for money and wanted some attention. But nevertheless, his story really caught the eye of the guy who made Young Guns 2, and I'm very happy to say it has caught the eye of Emilio Esteves himself, who is currently planning to make Young Guns 3, which will pick up the brushy Bill Roberts story and tell the story of an aging Billy the Kid fighting alongside Pancho Beer. I cannot wait. I cannot wait!

SPEAKER_01 1:03:37

I can tell you right now, it will flop at the box office. Oh, I will watch it. There was um a Kevin Costner movie called Um Horizon, an epic uh American saga part one, uh, and it absolutely tanked at the box office. I went to see it in the cinema, I think it was two summers ago. I it was me and one other guy in the cinema, and at that point I went, nobody's gonna this isn't gonna make any money.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:57

It's a Kevin Costner sort of van, it's the ultimate Kevin Costner vanity project because in his later life he's basically decided he's a cowboy, right? That seems to be what what he's what he's decided in his dotage that he's just a cowboy. Um I never saw it. I did actually want to see it.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:13

It it was I couldn't be bothered. It was well done. Okay, I'll tell you right now, it was very well done. If you know your westerns, you're getting the greatest hits of the westerns. Okay. But annoyingly, it ends on a trailer for part two. And part two was made at the same time. And I I've got a friend who is uh a he's a new uh a film reviewer in in Italy. He's British, though, and he had he'd been able to see part two, and I said, Well, does it wrap it all up? And he goes, No, that ends on a trailer for part three. So clearly they'd filmed a little bit of part three. So it's it is a totally failed project. It wasn't bad, but it's like, who the hell, again, is going to see to westerns? And the other thing is the reason why westerns have been so popular is they're cheap to make. They are they were the horror movies of 50, 60 years ago. And and the thing is, if you spend 50 million dollars on a Western today, it's like, well, now you need to be generating 150 million of people coming to see your western, which it's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:09

No, no, it's probably not gonna happen for Young Guns 3 either. More's the pity. If indeed it's ever made, it I mean, maybe it'll go to Netflix. I don't know. The point is, though, that we're we're uh 150 odd years, whatever, on from his death, and still still there's that investment in the story, even if it's the fictionalized aspects of the story. And as we've discussed, this this guy at his heart is a murderous, tear away teenager. Yet he's come to symbolize the freedom and the spirit of the old West. Whether he's a true history's devil or just some mischievous imp of the plains, I don't know. I'll leave that up to the uh the discerning listener. But uh thank you, Jem, for at least uh trying to help us understand this and and and get some get some facts uh from amidst the fiction. Absolute pleasure, James. Thanks very much for having me. And thank you all very much for listening to History's Devils. Do continue to listen, like, subscribe, do all the things you meant to do on the Spotify, on Apple, the YouTube, everything else. And we will see you next time for another History's Devils.