American History Hit - The Truth about Billy the Kid

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

We're heading west again, this time looking for Billy the Kid. Who was he? What crimes did he really commit? Is there any chance he survived that final ambush?Don is joined by author George R. Matthews, who went back to the sources for his book 'Billy the Kid: The Life Behind the Legend'.Edited by Hannah Feodorov. Produced by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. Lincoln County Jail in the New Mexico Territory, April 28, 1881. The prisoner swats a fly from his sweating forehead, glancing to the door.

Slightly built and barelyed in his 20s, this man has been chained and shackled here on the second floor of the jail for two weeks. By rights, it should be his final home before the news. But while he's been waiting, he's been watching for an opportunity, one that's about to arrive. At 5 p.m. each day he has brought his plate of food. At the same time, one of his two guards escorts the other prisoners in the jail across the street for their nightly vittles. But this evening will go differently. At 5, the guard will exit the building as usual, but he won't return. This evening, he and his fellow guard will have been shot dead.

And the killer who did the shooting, our prisoner, he'll be riding a stolen horse into the sunset, still alive. and still known by his now famous name, Billy the Kid. George R. Matthews is an historian and author of Billy the Kid, The Life Behind the Legend, published just last year. George Matthews, sir, glad to meet you. Thank you. Nice to be here. So much has been written about Billy the Kid. I did one special myself on television about it, and it is a world.

So many contradictory statements, so much folklore. You have dived in. What kind of sources were you using for this research? Where do you begin? And why is Billy the Kid so mythologized? Well, you begin by reading all the secondary sources that relate and tell you about all the mythology. And then you delve into all the original sources. I decided that once I had done that, that could I solve all the Billy and the Kid mythologies?

could I strip away with those layers of myth? And so I decided I would do some original research to see if I could do that. And the first area I went into was the history of Irish immigration because Billy's mother was an Irish immigrant. And that revealed a great deal of information about her coming to the United States, her occupations, her going to Indiana, and Billy's childhood. which is new information, that he was born in New York City, for example. And then the other area I decided to delve into was history of dime novels, because we know Billy was a reader of dying novels. And lo and behold, I found some original information that explains why he adopted the alias,

William H. Bonnie, for example. And then the third area was knowing that his mother was in Indiana and knowing that Billy was literate to do research in the history of Indianapolis and in particular public education in Indianapolis. And again, I found out that Billy the kid at six years old was living in Indianapolis with his mother and was in the first school district of Indianapolis. And they had a fabulous public school system in Indianapolis by the middle 1860s. That's where Billy was educated. And so those three things. And then going back to the original documents during the Lincoln County. War and comparing those, we can now safely say that we can eliminate almost all of the

mythologies around Billy the Kid. We now have a complete authentic picture. Wow. And yet I know there will be tons of people arguing with you online as they do with everything because the Billy the Kid's story has been dissected upside down. When did the storytelling begin? Billy was actually made a outlaw celebrity during his lifetime by the newspapers. And it started with New Mexico newspapers. But in January and March of 1881, while he sat in jail after his capture by Pat Garrett, two articles appeared in the Illustrated Police News.

One, in March, with a wood cut of the famous Billy the Kid Tin type photo, which is the one that exists, of course. The mythology begins during his lifetime. And it's really Pat Garrett that starts it. I mean, he publishes The Authent Life of Billy the Kid in 1882, right? Yes. Pat Garrett's book, The Authentic Life, written by a ghostwriter, by the way, was published in 1882, and that creates many of the myths, almost all. But then in 1925, there was another book published. by Walter Noble Burns. And that created even more myths about Billy the Kid. And then, of course, the movies took off from that book and created even more myths about Billy the Kid. Yeah. It's a story that becomes its own story. And that's a fascinating kind of example of the

mythologizing of the American West in general. Billy the Kid is a celebrity story in that firmament. So let's get down some biographical details to start with this. Why is Billy the kid, whose name we will now discuss in the American West in the first place? Where does he come from? Well, his mother's name was Catherine McCarty. She was an Irish immigrant, and we now know that she immigrated to the United States in 1846. She came across on an Irish immigrant ship. Every passenger was an Irish immigrant, man or woman.

They were all emigrating from Ireland to the United States. She was 17 years old in 1846, making her birth year 1829. And the reason we know this is Billy the kid's mother is that when she died in 1874, she was 45 years old. And we know that to be a fact. So there's only one Catherine McCarty who immigrated from Ireland who was born in 1829. And that was Catherine McCarty in 1846. So she immigrated that year.

And that year, the New York Irish Immigration Society was warning Irish immigrants not to settle in New York. city or any other East Coast City because of disease, poor wages, discrimination. They were encouraged to, in 1846, to go by way of the Erie Canal to the interior cities, what were then the interior cities of Cleveland, Indianapolis, or Chicago. She chose Indianapolis. She got to Indianapolis and every woman on that Irish immigrant ship was coming to the United States to be a domestic servant. She was a domestic servant in Indianapolis from 1846 until 1870. She was able to save a great deal of money, obviously as she was a living in laundress is what she was and had no living expenses to speak of. So in 1870,

a new laundry technology came to Indianapolis, making Irish domestic laundresses obsolete. So she decided to move to the new frontier town of Wichita, Kansas, and took her two sons who she had that time with her. But prior to that, in 1860, while she's a domestic servant in Indianapolis, she gives birth. out of wedlock to the boy born Henry McCarty, who becomes Billy the Kid. Three years later, she gives birth again to his almost certainly half-brother, Joseph McCarty. They go in 1870 to Wichita, Kansas. She opens her own laundry business in Wichita, and that was reported in the Wichita newspaper. And with the money if she has saved over the United States, she was reported,

the years, she buys 160 acres, a quarter section of public land, and her partner who goes with her by the name of William Antrim, who will later marry Catherine, built her a house for her and her two sons on the outskirts of Wichita. George, do we have any idea of who his father was? We have no idea. I mean, we never will know. And by the way, there are birth records were not kept in Indiana until 1882. So there's no record of Billy's birth in 1860.

Gotcha. What do we know about his childhood in Wichita and beyond? Or actually it goes back to San Indiana, doesn't it? Yes. Again, in 1866, he's living in Indiana. He's six years old. and he's living with his mother and his younger brother in the Indianapolis school district that he lives just up the street from.

And he attends school in Indianapolis first four grades from 1866 until 187. We even know the name of his first and second grade teachers. But I've gotten a lot of argument from people saying, unless you have a class roster that shows his name, you can't say that he was attended school in Indianapolis, which of course is kind of silly because the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong. Billy could read and write. He was in a public school system district from the age of 6 to 10,

and it's pretty certain, pretty conclusive, that that's what he would have learned to have read, right. And what he would have been reading, I mean, the time that Henry McCarty is born in this world, we're talking about 1859 or 60, the storytelling of the American West has really begun. I mean, the media is up and running. Of course, the Civil War will be as early as part of his life. But after that, the stories are becoming published. The dime stores, the newspapers, all of this idea of imposing this idea on the West has become a well-made,

thing. And certainly that was happening in Indiana. What do we know about his personality as a kid? He was rather charming, wasn't he? He was. He was charming. He was gregarious. He was certainly a ladies man. He was well-liked by everyone, by all accounts, except for the guys he testified against in the Santa Fe Room. He liked to sing and dance, great sense of humor. Yeah, he was certainly an extrovert and a trauma to say the least. But he was bullied for being a small guy, right? Yes. That led to his first killing, of course, in Arizona.

Right. So we have this idea, this kid named Henry McCarty, who will become the guy we're talking about Billy the Kid, a whole transformation that will take place right after this break. We're back speaking with George R. Matthews, author of Billy the Kid, The Life Behind the Legend. When did Henry MacArthur eventually become William Bonney? Or was that the name at all? Yes, and that was the name. But he was born Henry McCarty. And in 1875, he was living in Silver City, New Mexico.

And his mother had married William Antrim on March 1st, 1873 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And then they came to Silver City. And in 1875, Billy was arrested in Silver City for as an accessory to a robbery. Put in jail, he escaped from Silver City, went to Arizona to be with his stepfather, William Antrim. And there in Arizona, he adopted the name from Henry McCarty to Henry Antrim, taking his stepfather's name. We've skipped once. One thing is important. They moved to the Southwest because of his mom. She had a case of tuberculosis, right? And this was for the climate reasons and the advantages of that. That's how he ends up in the Southwest, in New Mexico. But I'm curious how this kid who's been well-educated,

who's got a family, and is reading books, how does he choose a life? I mean, why juvenile delinquency? Why does he choose this life of crime? Well, he begins with that. accessory to a robbery, so it was a very mild thing. He had a tendency to be a thief. He had stolen some butter in Silver City earlier in 1875 and was just given a warning by the sheriff. And then he was found to be an accessory to hiding the goods from a robbery and put in jail for that. And his delinquency was pretty mild. I mean, it wasn't any big deal. If he had stayed in Silver City, he probably would have been exonerated as an accessory to a robbery and would have been fine. But he chose to escape and go to Arizona, where again he took that name, Henry Antrim.

And does this identity, is it part of the mythology that this comes from dime novels? I mean, he was such a reader and such a fan of this kind of storytelling in the American West. Does he name himself, Billy the Kid, as a result of that kind of, is he a fan of that sort of novel? when he comes back to New Mexico from Arizona to Lincoln County in the fall of 1877, he is known as Henry Antrim or Kid Antrim. And at that time, he has killed his first man. So he adopts the alias in the fall of 1877 in Lincoln County as William H. Bonnie. Okay. Now, the question is, why did he become? William H. Bonnie. And he probably adopts an alias because he's killed a man in Arizona and wants to adopt another identity. Plus, he had also ridden with the Jesse Evans gang for a short time.

And once he's hired in New Mexico, Lincoln Pounty, with John Tunstall, John Henry tungstle, he may have wanted to adopt an alias for that reason. he was a reader of dime novels, and one of the best-selling dime novels of the day called Banditti of the Prairies was written by one Edward Bonnie. And it is likely, his mother's maiden name was not Bonnie, by the way. It's likely that Billy the kid took to name Bonnie from that dime novel. And of course, William would have been adopted from his stepfather, who, William Antrim, and he kept the H as his middle admission for Henry. So he was not Billy the kid at this time. He was William H. Bonnie or the kid, simply the kid. It wasn't until December

of 1880 that a newspaper in New Mexico gave William H. Bonnie the moniker Billy the Kid. He did not adopt the name. They gave it to him. George, this first murder of Francis W.E. Wendy Cahill, August 1877, he was a blacksmith shot following a dispute. Was this in self-defense, this crime? Yes. It was in self-defense. What happened was they got into a row. Well, first of all, when Billy first arrived in Arizona at Fort Grant, he was bullied from the very beginning. And he arrived there in 1876, early 1876. And he had a career. there. They was there about 18 months. And then in August of 1877, Wendy Cahill continued his bullying, and they were in a saloon, and we have an eyewitness account of what happened.

Wendy Cahill was giving a hard time, caught him a temp, et cetera. Billy caught him a son of a bitch. Wendy Cahill, he was short, but he was stocky, and he was about 33 years old. Billy at this time August 1877 is 17. So you've got an older adult and Billy is slight of build to begin with. And so the blacksmith throws him on the floor, starts slapping him.

Billy has a pistol in his pocket. He doesn't have a holster, has it in his pocket, gets free, gets his hand free, grabs the pistol and shoots Wendy Cahill in the stomach. So this happens in Arizona. He returns to New Mexico and becomes involved in what is called the Lincoln County War. And this is really the centerpiece of this story, isn't it? Where is Lincoln County and what was the war?

Lincoln County at that time encompassed the entire southeast corner of New Mexico. It was the largest county in New Mexico. and was probably almost a quarter of the state. I mean, it was huge. But the Lincoln County War began in 1876 when an Englishman came to Lincoln County and started to a mercantile business in the town of Lincoln. The Santa Fe Ring was the,

the dominant mercantile power in New Mexico. They own the judiciary or political system. They had a monopoly on the mercantile system. So John Henry Tonsel, the Englishman, comes to Lincoln, and he starts another store. And the local population loves it because they were being overcharged by the Santa Fe ring. And at this time, it's led by James Dolan. was a prominent figure later, of course, in Billy's story. And so they have this mercantile war, and they go back and forth. And John Henry Tustle has his father's, his rich father's support,

financial support from London, England. So he's able to compete. And actually, he becomes the dominant mercantile businessman in Lincoln County. And as a result, the Santa Fe Ring has John Henry Tunstall brutally murdered. And that begins the actual fighting Lincoln County War. And that happened on February 18, 1878. On what side of this conflict was Billy the kid? Who was he loyal to? He was employed by John Henry Tunstall. So he fought against the Santa Fe ring and for John Henry Tunstall. What's the conflict about? The conflict is over a monopoly business. The Santa Fe Ring wants to continue their monopoly on the cattle trade, supplying cattle to the army.

They want to continue their monopoly operating the store in Lincoln. And John Henry's tungstle buys land and purchases cattle to put on his ranch to counter the Santa Fe Rings cattle operation. And so they're in direct conflict. It's a mercantile war, and they're in conflict with the two stores in Lincoln, and people are not going to the Santa Fe Ring store. They're going to John Henry Tunstall store. And then John Henry Thompson is a partner with Alex McSween, an attorney in Lincoln. And Alex McSweene has worked for, the Santa Fe Ring before Tunstall arrives, but has a falling out with the Santa Fe Ring when he is representing one of the original Santa Fe Ring members' life insurance policies, and he cheats the Santa Fe Ring

out of that life insurance money. So the basics are that James Dolan and the County Sheriff and the Jesse Evans gang, that grout, is against the Tunstall McSull. Sween faction. And then in between this is what's called the Lincoln County regulators. We haven't mentioned this before. A posse of armed men and the town constable brewer with the U.S. Marshall Winderman. All of this is this kind of classic Western faction thing that's happening over the market that you're talking about. This dry goods and cattle market that's being argued over, just making money. It all culminates in violence in what's called the Lincoln County War, which is essentially a five-day gunfight, right?

A little bit more than that. What happens is because of this conflict, the Lincoln County War begins with the killing of John Henry Thompson. So it's a factional conflict over the market that is represented in this area. But what occurs is the Lincoln County War. Take me through the chronology of that war. The Lincoln County War begins with the killing of John Henry Thompson, on February 18th, 1878. after he's killed, Alexander McSweene, his partner, has Dick Brewer commissioned as the constable of Lincoln. And Dick Brewer and the other deputies, including Billy the Kid, Billy the Kid becomes a deputy constable. They are lawmen, officially appointed by the Justice of the Peace in Lincoln. They go after the killers of John Henry Tunstall.

and that's when they come across Billy Morton and Frank Baker, who had been involved in the killing of John Henry Tunstall. That's when they are not regulators at this point. They are constables and deputy constables, and they, on the way back, they capture Morton and Baker, and on the way back, they assassinate both men because they know that Morton and Baker will not be held in jail, they'll be released by the corrupt William H. Brady Sheriff. That's why they killed it, too.

So Billy the Kid is one of these regulators, which is led by a guy named John Middleton. Billy was not the leader. In the end, Billy testifies against Jimmy Nolan, and from then on, Dolan pinned all the crimes on him. That's kind of how it lays out, right? Yes, absolutely. Was he the ruthless, bloodthirsty killer we think of him as Billy the Kid? No, he was not. The myth, of course, that he killed 21 men, isn't even close. He kills, we know he kills two men in self-defense. Wendy Cahill was talked about and Joe Grant later in Fort Sumner. There are deaths during the Lincoln County War, but both sides are shooting during that.

And Dilley was involved in the, well, the assassination of William Brady, for example. There are five people firing bullets. and we don't know if Billy's bullet hit him or not. So, no, he was not, a short answer. Right. I mean, but if you listen to Billy Joel's song, Ballad of the Billy the Kid, he says he kills a 21 men. He sings it.

He killed probably between four and nine, you're saying. More like four and seven, yes. Okay, good. So his crimes really could boil down mostly to theft and horse rustling. Fair to say? Yeah, he was. He decided to be. A horse and cattle thief.

That is correct. Sheriff William Brady and Deputy George Hindham, 1878, are killed in an ambush in retaliation for the murder of John Tunstall, who we will remind was Billy's boss. This whole thing is playing out like a loyalty thing, right? I mean, this is a vengeance for the wrong done to someone he cared about. They were killed because William Brady, the sheriff and his deputies. He had four other deputies with him, by the way, were going down to arrest Alexander McSweene. And at this time, McSweene's people, including the people that became the regulators, they're not the regulators at this point.

They've been stripped of their lawman status, but they're not regulators yet. They become regulator with the killing of Brady, but they are defending Alex McSween from being arrested by William Brady because they know that William Brady has made comments that Alex McSween will not survive being in jail in Lincoln after he's arrested by himself. So it is not in revenge for the murder of Tunstall. It is to protect Alex McSween. much of this story, so much of this legend comes from the famous escape he makes. He's finally captured by Sheriff Pat Garrett, who he mentioned, ends up writing a very early version of this story in December of 1880. He captures him. This becomes a story of the lawlessness of the American West. The bounty is put out for Billy the Kid by Governor Wallace. For what crime exactly?

The reward is for the killing of William Brady. Okay, Sheriff Brady. The last escape is what he's most famous for, George. Tell me about that story. Okay, the last escape was from the jail in Lincoln. And that occurred on April 28, 1871. Billy has been confined on the second floor of the Lincoln County Courthouse in just a regular room. It's not a jail cell.

And he is in handcuffs and leg irons, by the way. And the story is not told until the 1920s of how he escaped. And that story is that one of his friends in Lincoln, Sam Corbord, has a young boy place a gun in the outhouse behind the Lincoln County Jail, Lincoln County Courthouse. Billy is in the jail on April 28th, and he is visited by Sam Corbett. Pat Garrett has left town the day before, and Sam Corbett comes to visit, and the story goes, he slipped a piece of paper to Billy that simply said privy, and that Billy realized a gun

had been placed in the outhouse behind the jail, asked the deputy, who's in charge of him, if he can go to the outhouse. And he's taken to the outhouse, goes into the outhouse, grabs the gun, tucks it in under his outer garments, and he's returning to the jail. He's walking into the courthouse. He's walking up the stairs, turns against the deputy, and the deputy starts to run, and Billy shoots the deputy. He then goes to the jail office where he grabs the other deputies by the deputy's.

Bob Olinger's shot gun and hobbles, he's still in leg irons, hobbles to that window you talked about in the courthouse. In the meantime, the shot has been heard by the deputy across the street in Lincoln. He comes running across the street to see what's going on. And when he gets to just under the window, Billy takes a shotgun and kills the second deputy. And that's how he makes his escape from Lincoln. You know, I got to wonder why he wasn't in a proper jail cell if he was so famous for escaping from imprisonment. No jail cell in Lincoln. It was the county seat. So all they had was the courthouse and just the room. He was basically locked to the floor. There was a set of leg irons. It's just like a classic thing. He escapes on April 28, 1881, having killed those two deputies. Next up, we'll be talking about what eventually brought Billy the kid down.

We're back with author George R. Matthews. talking about the fate of Billy the Kid. His ambush and death, July 14th, explain Pat Garrett and how he hunts him down. Pat Garrett, he becomes sheriff of Lincoln County in January of 1880. And he has no jurisdiction outside of Lincoln County with that. However, he was a putting on a deputy U.S. Marshal in 1881 to go after a number of outlaws, not just Billy the Kid. So after Billy escapes from Pat Garrett's jail in Lincoln, Pat Garrett goes to get him outside of Lincoln County as a U.S. Deputy Marshal. And he delays three months. Billy escapes the end of April. And Pat Garrett doesn't go to Fort Sumner until July, July 14, 1881, in pursuit of Billy the Kid. He takes his time.

But when he gets there, it's completely by accident. It's coincidental that they run into each other. Pat Garrett is searching for Billy the Kid, and he has his two deputies with him. And they go into town, Lincoln, on the surrounding area, and nobody will tell him where Billy the kid is. So Pat Garrett decides on the night of July 14th to go to the home of Pete Maxwell. who was the prominent figurehead in Fort Sumner. And he is in Maxwell's bedroom asking Maxwell, and this is about midnight, a little before midnight,

where is Billy the kid? Is he here in Fort Sumner? And Maxwell says, yeah, he's here. I don't know where, blah, blah, blah. At that time, a figure backs into Pete Maxwell's bedroom. and he's carrying a butcher knife. And we're talking in a minute about why he backs into the bedroom. But he backs into the bedroom and Pete Maxwell says, that's him.

Billy the Kid had no idea that Garrett was there. Garrett had no idea that Billy the Kid would be coming in. Pat Garrett takes out his pistol, fires two shots. The first one hits Billy the kid a little above the heart. He dies instantaneously. The second shot goes astray. And that's how he's killed. He wasn't ambushed. It was a coincidence that they met up in that bedroom. Why was Billy the kid carrying a knife in the bedroom? Okay. Before Pat Garrett goes to Pete Maxwell's bedroom, he's in the, and again, this is, you know, 1130 or so at night. He's in the peach tree orchard outside of Fort Sumner. And he sees this. figure in the orchard a good distance away and this figure gets up from the ground, hops over the fence and walks back down toward the Fort Sunder community.

He later said that he found out that that figure was Billy the kid. Probably the implication is Billy the kid was having sex in the orchard with some young lady and he found that out later. Well, this figure goes back into the community of Fort Sumner, and he goes to a home, and it's around midnight again, and he takes off his boots, takes off his hat, and he grabs a knife or is giving a butcher knife by the lady of the house that he's visiting, and he's hungry, and he's going to get a midnight snack, and he's going to cut a side of beef from. outside Pete Maxwell's house. That's why he leaves that residence with a butcher knife to cut this piece of beef, and he's walking toward Pete Maxwell's home. And as he approaches the porch, Pat Garrett's two deputies are outside in total darkness,

outside the fence around Pete Maxwell's house. Billy sees two figures and he says, KNS, who is it in Spanish? And he backs up onto the porch and that's when he backs into Pete Maxwell's bedroom. He is carrying the butcher knife from that. I might quickly add that Pat Garrett claimed in his official report that Billy had the butcher knife, but he also had a pistol. That is wrong. He did not have a pistol only the gun.

He probably died. It's questionable, but around the age of 21, right? This life has not gone on long. He remains the kid right to the end. Any myths about his survival? I mean, there's all kinds of stories about this, isn't there? Oh, absolutely. Brushy Bill, Jim Miller, or the two prominent guys that are claimed to have been Billy the kid. What we know for a fact is that they both could not have been Billy the kid. That's indisputable. So, what? One of them has to be lied. And the evidence is overwhelming that Brushy Bill was not Billy the Kid. Number one, the guy, by his own family records, was born in 1879.

You know, obviously he's going to be two years old when Billy the kid is killed. There's much more information. Did the guy speak fluent Spanish? Billy did. Did Brushy Bill. All kinds of stuff. And yet there's books written about that side of it. is a story that's been told through books and movies and TV shows like one I even did, you know,

that all grab this or that thread and follow that one through. It's amazing how how versatile this story really has become. And it's emblematic really of how the American West's story has been told in so many different versions, isn't it? Yes, absolutely. Young Guns 3, by the way, is going to mythologize the Brushy Bill. He's going to meet Poncho V, I understand. There you go. So it should be a very entertaining movie. Well, that's the end of it, really, is that, and that's the good or bad of this whole idea of how the West was won and then told through the stories of sensationalism and so forth. Listen, at the end of a week of shooting a TV special, I stood at the gravestone of Billy the Kid, feeling like I finally understood the story. At least here he was buried, only to read the epitaph and someone told me, oh, that's not Billy the Billy the Kid.

after all of a set and done, it's in a freaking, you know, cage. It's got a cage built around it. You know, the story is still filled with so much apocryphal detail and so many different threads. Thank you for sharing your version of this. Where did you land at the end of this? I mean, after years of study and writing, did you feel like you'd finally told the story of Billy Kid once and for all? Yes, very much so.

I think the missing pieces to the puzzle are now known. And we can pretty much, as I said earlier, strip away the layers of mythology that shroud Billy the Kid. What we really need to have done now, there really needs to be a film, a documentary first, about Billy the Kid's true story. It's pretty well documented at this point. I encourage folks to get your book. It's called Billy the Kid, Life Behind the Legend. The author is George R. Matthews, and it came out just last year. Is that right?

Correct. March of 2025. Okay. Find it where you buy your books. Thank you so much, George Matthews. I appreciate it. Thank you. Hello, folks.

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