At 14, Henry was for all intents and purposes an orphan. His stepfather was either unwilling or unable to care for his stepsons. Exactly what happened to Henry’s brother Josie is unclear, but Antrim sold the family house and Henry spent some time living with the Truesdell family. He helped out in the kitchen of the hotel that the family owned to earn room and board and was reportedly one of the few boys that worked there that never stole anything. However, some sort of domestic disturbance resulted in Henry having to move out and into a boarding house.
Long after Henry was dead, with the myth of Billy the Kid on the rise, the stories about the murders and assorted other crimes that he was supposedly responsible for in Grant County grew. Whether it was killing a kitten with his pocketknife or stoning a Chinese man to death, Billy the Kid often got the blame. Much, if not all of it, was either greatly exaggerated or simply a lie. It may have helped sell dime novels or newspapers if Billy the Kid was linked to a crime, but in many cases, it simply was not true.
It is true, though, that Henry made the acquaintance of a petty thief named George Schaefer while staying at the boarding house in Silver City. Schaefer, nicknamed Sombrero Jack, liked Henry and let him tag along with him in the saloons and gambling halls. Likely eager for a parental figure, Henry willingly followed Sombrero Jack’s lead, including his plan to rob Charlie Sun’s laundry service. Sun was a Chinese immigrant who was also a regular target of taunting and harassment by the local boys.
On September 4, 1875, Henry served as the lookout while Sombrero Jack stole blankets, clothes, and two loaded revolvers from Sun’s laundry. Sombrero Jack stowed some of the goods in a pit in nearby Georgetown, then offered Henry some of a share of it in exchange for smuggling it all back into Silver City. When the boarding house owner was cleaning Henry’s room a few days later, she found the stolen property, which included one of the guns, and called Sheriff Harvey Whitehill.
Whitehill was aware that Henry didn’t have parents to watch over him, but he had previously detained Henry for stealing cheese and now wanted to teach him a lesson. Thus, Whitehill arrested him on the spot. Chances are, he was only going to let Henry sit in the jailhouse for a day or two to think about what he had done, then take him home since his wife told him to bring the boy home for breakfast. He didn’t get the chance, though, because after two days in jail, on September 25, Henry escaped. Using his powers of persuasion, a guard allowed Henry to spend some time in the jailhouse corridor, out of his cell. After being left alone for about 20 minutes, a man who had been standing nearby confirmed that he saw the skinny teenager climb out of the chimney. Henry was now a wanted man.
When Billy the Kid became a household name, the legend became that he had fled Silver City because he had killed a man there. That legend was refuted by Whitehill, who later wrote an account of his time as a frontier law man in Silver City. Whitehill wrote about the two offenses Billy the Kid was arrested for, while also noting he was an affable kid who had participated in the crimes more out of a necessity than because he was a hard criminal. According to Whitehill, the kill The Kid was credited with by the rumors were completely baseless.
Chapter 2: Henry McCarty on the Run
‘’Billy never talked much of the past. He was always looking into the future.” – Frank Coe
Not surprisingly, the legends surrounding what happened next are just as colorful. One story said that Henry made it to Camp Thomas in Arizona territory, where he shot and killed a buffalo soldier with a shotgun, then took off on a stolen horse. Given that Camp Thomas did not exist yet, that story is not true. There are also other wild tales of Billy the Kid roaming the country, slaughtering Indians and brawling in New York City. The most likely story is that he got help from Clara Truesdell, the closet thing that Henry had to a mother at the time. Chauncey Truesdell said that his mother washed and dried Henry’s clothes and gave him food. After he spent the night on the floor, Mrs. Truesdell put Henry on a stagecoach to Clifton, a mining town in the mountains of southeast Arizona.
Clifton was named for Henry Clifton, a prospector who made his way to Southern Arizona from Prescott to mine for gold and instead found copper ore. This Henry was not there to mine, though. He went to Clifton to find his stepfather, but when he found William and told him the story, Antrim refused to help. With nothing left to do, Henry stole clothes and a gun from his stepfather’s room and never saw him again.
Over the next two years, Henry bounced from place to place in Arizona, perhaps earning money at a cattle ranch or the gambling halls. In the spring of 1876, Henry heard that there was better opportunity to make money off of the soldiers at the card tables in Camp Grant, north of Tucson. Using a horse he stole from a soldier at Camp Goodwin, Henry left for Fort Grant.
Fort Grant in the late 19th century
At Fort Grant, Henry began to make a name for himself as gambler and an outlaw who was particularly adept at stealing horses. He started to wear a pinky ring, which many superstitious gamblers wore for luck, and he dressed in brightly colored scarves. When he earned enough money, he bought a six-shooter. For most men of the West, a gun was a necessity, but it was even truer for the teenager that now was called Kid Antrim, a playful reference to his small physique and lack of facial hair. Indeed, Kid Antrim was smaller than most of the men he encountered and needed an equalizer.
It seems Kid Antrim’s first opportunity to use his six-shooter came on August 17, 1877 when he crossed paths with a bully named Windy Cahill. Taking note of Henry’s small stature, Cahill amused himself by slapping Henry around until he had him down on the ground. Henry yelled for Cahill to let him up, but he wouldn’t, so Henry freed his arm and reached for his holster. He fired his gun into Cahill’s stomach. He may have been able to make a case of self-defense, but not wanting to take the chance, Henry took off, leaving Cahill to die later that night.
On the run again, Henry changed his name to one of his most notorious monikers, William H. Bonney. Henry was now Billy. He rode a stolen horse out of Arizona and back to New Mexico. He survived the harsh late summer heat with the help of Mexican ranchers out in the open range, who took him in and gave him a meal when he needed to eat. Mexicans had owned land in New Mexico for generations, but an influx of British and Irish immigrants was changing that. Like many, they viewed the West as the land of opportunity and came to the United States with money to spend. They invested in railroads, mining, and cattle ranches, but what they really wanted was land. With the assistance of corrupt bankers and an equally corrupt law enforcement system, many wealthy immigrants were able to take the land right out from under the Mexicans.
Such was the case with Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan. In Fort Stanton, New Mexico in 1866, Murphy went into business with Emil Fritz and the two men opened L.G. Murphy & Co., a store and brewery. Through government contracts, the company became the supplier of vegetables and meat to Fort Stanton and the Mescalero-Apache Reservation. Murphy and Fritz then sold land that they did not really own to local farmers. When farmers were not able to pay back their loans, Murphy and Fritz foreclosed on the land and took the cattle and crops. They then turned around and used the cattle and crops to fulfill the obligations of their government contracts. A group of local politicians from Santa Fe, known as “The Ring,” were in on the scheme and made sure that Murphy and Fritz did not have to worry about legal problems.
The good times at Fort Stanton came to an end for Murphy and Fritz in September 1873. Murphy had hired a fiery-tempered James Dolan, another Irishman, to work as a clerk in the store. Dolan got into a conflict with a local soldier and tried to shoot and kill him. With complaints about price gouging and shorting the Indians on supply orders already circulating, L.G. Murphy & Co. was evicted from Fort Stanton. Meanwhile, Fritz sold his interest in the company to Murphy and returned to Germany after being diagnosed with kidney disease.
However, the government contracts remained intact, allowing Murphy to build a new store in Lincol
n County. Dolan bought into the business in 1874, and Murphy and Dolan Mercantile and Banking soon had a stranglehold on the economy of Lincoln County. The large two-story building, which became the Lincoln County Courthouse in 1930, was nicknamed “The House,” which also came to reference Murphy, Dolan, and their crew of corrupt politicians and members of law enforcement. Now working with Fort Sumner, The House picked up right where it left off in Fort Stanton, investing in railroads, cattle, and land. If a business transaction occurred in Lincoln County, it is highly likely that Murphy and Dolan were involved.
Murphy was also an alcoholic, drinking to the point that he was not a factor in the war that was developing between the Irish and British in Lincoln County. In March 1877, the face of the business changed when Murphy was diagnosed with colon cancer. The worse the pain got, the more Murphy drank. Murphy and Dolan had already taken on a new business partner, John Riley, in the fall. With Murphy facing terminal illness, he sold his stake in the company to Dolan and Riley and the business changed to Jas. J. Dolan & Co. Lawrence Murphy spent the last year of his life getting treatment for cancer in Santa Fe.
Chapter 3: William H. Bonney Enters the Lincoln County War
“At least two-hundred men have been killed in Lincoln County during the past three years, but I did not kill all of them.” – Billy the Kid
It was about this same time that Billy arrived in town. He had joined forces with a gang of ex-soldiers and assorted desperadoes at an abandoned army post called Apache Tejo, south of Silver City. Former cavalry sergeant John Kinney was the boss of the gang, called The Boys, but the leader of the pack was Jesse Evans. Under his lead, The Boys stole cattle, horses, or whatever else Kinney needed to make a profit. As much as Billy the Kid came to be known as a notorious outlaw, Evans was much more feared during his lifetime. The Boys would not hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way. It was also understood that the gang was on the secret payroll of Dolan and Company, stealing horses and providing guns for hire to The House.
Jesse Evans
New Mexico was the site of a brutal land war between the English and the Irish, and Billy the Kid now found himself right in the middle of it. Lincoln County was the largest county in the entire country, covering about a quarter of the state, and it was rampant with greed and corruption. Disputes were settled with guns, and most of the gunmen were never punished. Much of the land was either unsurveyed public land or the product of Spanish land grants, issued years before white men entered the territory. Its remote location also contributed to the lawlessness of the region. Despite its sparse population, New Mexico accounted for 15 percent of the murders in the United States in the 1870s. The Civil War had made many men immune to the horrors of death.
Early 1877 not only brought Billy to Lincoln County, but it also brought competition to The House. A trio comprised of Alexander McSween from Scotland, John Tunstall from England, and John Chisum from Texas formed an alliance with the goal of creating their own financial empire. They established their own bank and store not far from The House; clearly, the Irishmen did not intimidate Tunstall. He wrote a letter to his father in England in April 1877 and explained that in order to succeed in New Mexico, a man needed to be part of “a ring.” He was building his own ring and it was his intention to “get half of every dollar that is made in the county by anyone.” He set his goal as three years, but within a year, both he and McSween would be dead.
Billy’s first encounter with Tunstall was shortly after he stole his horses in 1877 in Rio Feliz, about 30 miles south of Lincoln County. He was put into the earthen pit that served as the county jail, but instead of pressing charges against him, Tunstall offered Billy an opportunity to work for him instead. The “ring” that he told his father about needed men like the Kid and the Kid was grateful to get out of jail, so he accepted.
Tunstall was far from a saint. After all, he was trying to do the same thing that Dolan was doing. However, he treated his men well, and the Kid felt loyal to him. He said that Tunstall was the only one that treated him like a decent human being. For the first time in a long time, Billy had steady work, a place to sleep, and regular meals. As was typical for him, he was attracted to any semblance of a home that he could find.
Early in 1878, Tunstall and McSween ran into money problems, brought on by a civil suit for $10,000 filed by The House. William Brady was the first sheriff of Lincoln County, and though he proved himself to be a capable lawman, he was also close to his fellow Irishman and also deeply in debt to them. When it came time to issue a fake court order for the livestock from Tunstall’s ranch, it was Brady who gladly led a posse to ride out to the ranch to issue the order.
The bad blood that boiled between the Irish and the British in Europe now carried over to the wide-open spaces of New Mexico. Survivors of the Irish potato famine would have no mercy on a Brit. Irish Catholics were not allowed, under British rule, to purchase land. They were permitted only to rent small plots of land from the British and most Irish peasants chose to grow potatoes because they could grow three times as many potatoes as grain on their small plots. One acre of potatoes could feed a family for a year. However, in 1845, fungus devastated most of the potato crops and with the British slow to provide relief, nearly a million Irish starved and died from disease. Two million others were forced to emigrate to Great Britain, the U.S., and Canada, just as Catherine McCarty did. The House was not going to allow an Englishman to take what they worked so hard to get.
On February 18, 1878, Tunstall rounded a group of his men, including the Kid, to ride into town to challenge the claim on his property. Along the way, he saw Brady and his posse, and thinking this was a chance to discuss the situation, rode up to Brady. His men, meanwhile, were chasing a flock of wild turkey, leaving Tunstall alone. Tunstall’s men yelled for Tunstall to take cover when they saw Buck Morton point his shotgun at him and shoot him in the chest before he could even get out of the saddle. Another of Brady’s posse, Tom Hill then walked over to Tunstall as he lay bleeding in the dirt, took his pistol, and shot him in the back of the head. An investigator later implicated Jesse Evans in the shooting as well. The final move was to shoot Tunstall’s horse. Brady’s men covered Tunstall with a blanket and put his bloody topcoat under his head, as if for a pillow. They put Tunstall’s hat under the horse’s head.
The Kid and the rest of Tunstall’s men watched horrified from the cover of the nearby rocks and trees. When Tunstall’s body was laid out in McSween’s parlor, Billy approached the dead man and said, “I’ll get some of them before I die.” McSween was a lawyer, though, and wanted to take a lawful approach to getting revenge for his partner’s death. Knowing that most of law enforcement was on The House’s payroll, McSween obtained an arrest warrant for Sheriff Brady and his posse from the justice of the peace, John B. Wilson.
The Kid and Fred Waite were deputized, and along with Constable Atanacio Martinez, who was not very eager to be party to arresting Sheriff Brady, went to Dolan’s store to serve the warrants. Brady and other associates of The House greeted them, guns drawn. Instead of arresting Brady and his crew, Billy and his men were taken at gunpoint to the county jail, where they remained until after Tunstall’s funeral.
McSween tried to enlist the help of authorities to investigate not only the murder of Tunstall, but also what amounted to an organized crime syndicate led by Dolan. However, when one of the Kid’s friends, Rob Widenmann, claimed that Dolan tried to have him poisoned, it merely added fuel to the fire, and it was evident that the violence was not about to end. Under investigation for embezzlement anyway – charges of which he was later cleared - McSween wrote his will and took off to the mountains with his wife.
With McSween on the run, Squire Wilson appointed Dick Brewer, Tunstall’s foreman, as a “special constable” with the authority to make arrests. Brewer formed a posse, the Regulators, which included the Kid, Charlie Bowdre, and several other men, including some Mexican-Americans who wanted to f
ight The House. At times, the Regulators had as many as 60 men under its umbrella. Acting as a lawfully appointed posse, the Regulators operated for five months with the sole intent of avenging the death of John Tunstall. Many claimed that of all of the Regulators, the Kid was the most loyal and he was present for every gun battle that took place.
In March 1878, about one month after Tunstall’s murder, the Regulators found Buck Morton, the man who shot Tunstall out of his saddle, and two other men. It’s been claimed that Morton surrendered only on the condition that his captors would promise to bring him back alive to Lincoln. Dick Brewer assured the prisoners they would reach Lincoln alive, and when other members of the posse argued in favor of killing them, one of the Regulators, William McCloskey, argued against it.
3 days later, on March 9, 1878, Morton, Baker and William McCloskey were all dead. It’s been assumed that they were shot because the Regulators assumed if they took the men to Sheriff Brady he would just let them go. The Regulators insisted that Morton and Baker had tried to escape and shot McCloskey in the process, but most were skeptical that Morton would shoot his one friend. They also figured it was no coincidence that Morton and Baker had been shot 11 times, once for each Regulator in the posse. On top of that, Tom Hill and Jesse Evans, who had also been part of Tunstall’s murder, were also shot while trying to steal sheep. Hill died and Evans was badly wounded.
The Top 5 Most Notorious Outlaws Page 5