Infamous America - BILLY THE KID Ep. 9 | "Wanted: Dead or Alive"

Episode Date: January 1, 2020

Billy's violent end draws near. After another bloody shootout, he officially becomes "Billy the Kid" and the governor puts a price on his head. Pat Garrett becomes sheriff of Lincoln County and lures Billy into a trap. In the ensuing firefight, Billy loses another friend. For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before the Civil War, Lucian Maxwell owned the largest single land grant in American history. In the early 1840s, a French-Canadian trapper and a Mexican businessman partnered up to submit a claim to the Mexican government for 1.7 million acres of land. It encompassed the entire northeast corner of modern-day New Mexico and part of Southern Colorado. They told the local Mexican governor they'd give him a quarter interest in the land, And not surprisingly, he approved the grant almost immediately. Lucian Maxwell was a respected guide in the area who'd worked with Kit Carson and John Fremont on their expedition to California. He married the daughter of one of the two original owners of the land grant, and then spent the next two decades acquiring it all.

He eventually bought out everyone involved in the grant until he owned all 1.7 million acres, which made him the largest landowner in the country at the time. He built a ranching operation and dabbled in several other businesses with varying degrees of success. By 1870, he was ready to downsize. He sold many of his holdings and passed control of his operation to his son Pete. Then Lucian bought Fort Sumner and turned it into his residence. The fort had a dark history and had recently fallen into disrepair. For three years after the Civil War, it was a prison camp for the Navajo and Apache tribes.

Kit Carson and the United States Army had driven them off their native lands and forced them onto the grounds of Fort Sumner. When a treaty was finally signed and the tribes were allowed to return home, the army didn't have much need for the fort. So Lucian bought it and converted the officers' quarters into a grand mansion. That was in 1870. By 1880, Lucian Maxwell was dead, and his son Pete lived in the mansion. The old fort had grown into a small settlement, and it was now the home base of Billy Bonnie and his outlaw gang. Pete and Billy became friends, and Billy became even better friends with Pete's little sister,

and after angering powerful ranchers in the area and then the man whose family owned Fort Sumner, Billy's days were truly numbered. From Black Barrel Media, this is season three of infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. And this season we're telling the story of the most notorious outlaw in American history. Billy the Kid. This is Chapter 9. Wanted.

Dead or alive. By the summer of 1880, Billy had acquired some new gang members, if you want to call them that. Gangs were loose in the Old West. Members drifted in and out as it suited their purpose. But there was usually a core group at the center of the gang. For Billy, that group was Tom Ophaliard, Dave Rudebaugh, Tom Pickett, and Billy Wilson. The old regulator Charlie Bodry went on a few raids with the gang, but he now worked at a ranch near the Texas-Nemexico border,

so he was a part-time participant. During the final year of Billy's life, he became a prominent rustler. He made powerful enemies in the Texas Panhandle, and they would eventually bring him down. Billy worked a two-way rustling operation. He stole cattle and horses in eastern New Mexico around Fort Sumner and drove them over to the Texas Panhandle. In the panhandle, he stole cattle and horses and drove them back to New Mexico. On the New Mexico side, the most common target was John Chisholm's herd, of course, as always. And after more than a decade of fighting off thieves, Chisholm and his brothers were truly pissed.

They were totally fed up with the situation, and they were ready to take serious action. So were the big ranchers on the Texas side. The Texas ranchers banded together to form a cattle association that would provide the resources needed to identify and stop the rustlers. They sent an undercover detective into New Mexico to begin the investigation. While the detective began tracking cattle thieves like Billy's gang, a different investigation began in Lincoln. Someone was using counterfeit money in town.

Jimmy Dolan and several other businessmen began noticing phony $100 bills popping up in their stores. They co-signed a letter to the Treasury Department, and in response, the Secret Service sent an operative to Lincoln. The detective quickly learned that several men were suspected of using the fake bills, but the name that came up most often was Billy Wilson, one of the new men in Billy Bonnie's gang. The operative from the Secret Service was enthusiastic, to say the least.

He said, In my candid judgment, I have struck the worst nest of counterfeiters in the United States, States. That was probably hyperbolic, but it would lead to trouble for the kid either way. The Secret Service detective thought Billy Wilson was the leader of a gang that was not only running the largest counterfeiting operation in the country, but was also responsible for much of the cattle rustling in the area. In the detective's mind, he had a big case on his hands, and the leader of the gang was Billy Wilson. Of course, the detective was wrong about Wilson's leadership, but he was also wrong about Wilson's involvement with counterfeiting. Wilson had recently

sold a livery stable, and the men who bought it had used counterfeit money. When Wilson then spent their money in Lincoln, he had no idea he was passing phony bills, and he was accused of the crime. It was a crazy way for Billy Bonnie's gang to get caught in another shootout, but that's what happened. The detective was wrong about a couple things, but he was right about one. There was a gang of outlaws in the area, and they needed to be stopped. By mid-October, the Secret Service operative had identified several members of the old regulators and passed their names to his superiors, even though half of them weren't involved with Billy's gang anymore. The agent named Billy, Tom, Charlie, Doc Scurlock, Henry Brown, and Jim French.

But Doc, Henry, and Jim were out of the game. Either way, the detective was on the right trail. And like every outsider who came to Lincoln, he was appalled by the lack of law enforcement. The U.S. Marshal and the Sheriff of Lincoln had done nothing to stop the gang. And the agent now believed that a secret posse should be organized to stop the outfit that was believed to be responsible for murder, counterfeiting, rustling, and theft of a United States mail.

A month later, the posse would be responsible. corner Billy and his gang, and by that point, a new sheriff would be in charge of Lincoln. While the Secret Service agent closed in on Billy's gang, the detective for the cattle association in Texas reached the same conclusion. There was an outfit in eastern New Mexico that was responsible for much of the rustling between the two states. It was loosely captained by a young man who sometimes went by the name Antrim, and sometimes Billy or William Bonnie, and was known as the kid. It was late October 1880, and an election was just days away.

John Chisholm and the New Mexico Cattleman, with the support of the Texas Cattle Association, put forward a new candidate to unseat Sheriff Kimball in Lincoln. The ranchers nominated a 6-5 Alabama native named Pat Garrett. On November 2, 1880, Garrett was elected sheriff of Lincoln County. He wouldn't officially take office until January 1st, so Sheriff Kimball made him a deputy. But from that point forward, Kimball was sheriff in name only. Garrett was the real power. And at the same time, he added another title to his roster, U.S. Deputy Marshall.

The Secret Service agent had successfully lobbied for two new deputies to be commissioned to help him track down Billy's gang. The agent made Pat Garrett one of the two deputies, which gave him the authority to hunt down the gang outside Lincoln County, if need be. Pat Garrett was now legally and officially on the trail of Billy Bonnie. And unlike other lawmen who pursued the kid in the past, Garrett knew exactly what Billy looked like. Garrett had moved to Fort Sumner a year earlier and had worked in the same saloon where Billy briefly dealt cards. He had also done ranch work for Pete Maxwell, and he was well respected in the area, though he had somewhat of a checkered past himself.

He was too young to fight in the Civil War, and when it ended, he drifted west to Texas like so many other young men of the era. He worked on farms for a couple years in the Dallas area before moving north with the Great Texas Cattle Drives. He was a cowboy in Kansas during the peak years of the cattle drives, and he got to to know a lawman in Dodge City named Wyatt Earp. He was also a buffalo hunter, and in one shady incident, he killed one of his buffalo hunter friends. They got into a fight around a campfire. The other man reached for an axe, and Garrett reached for a gun. Garrett won the fight, but it was

said he was wracked with guilt afterward. By 1878, the cattle drives in Kansas were winding down and Garrett moved on. He landed in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where he quickly impressed the local power brokers. They handed him a sheriff's badge and a deputy marshal commission and gave him one job. Stop Billy Bonnie. About three weeks after Pat Garrett was elected sheriff,

Billy's gang was surrounded at a small ranch outside Lincoln. But it wasn't the work of Pat Garrett in the enthusiastic Secret Service agent. It was actually a citizen posse organized by a local shopkeeper that found the kid. The kid, Dave Rudabaw, Billy Wilson, and a few others

stole some horses in the area of White Oaks, a village about 25 miles northwest of Lincoln. It was late November, and snow was thick on the ground. After a brief shootout with the posse at Coyote Springs, the gang sought shelter at Jim Great House's ranch north of White Oaks. As Billy and four of his men kept warm in the ranch house, the posse arrived late in the night and surrounded the building. The posse had at least a dozen men,

and they would have spent a long, cold night outside making sure the gang did not escape. The next morning, a cook who worked at the ranch was the first one to get up and go outside. The posse immediately grabbed him. He confirmed that the gang was in the ranch. He confirmed that the gang was in inside, and then the posse sent him in with a note for Billy. The note informed Billy that he was surrounded, and it demanded his surrender. He reportedly laughed at the idea. He sent his own note in return. It informed the posse that its leader should come inside so they could talk about the situation. The leader was a man named Jim Carlyle. He wasn't crazy enough to walk into a den of thieves and killers without some insurance.

He said he would come inside under one condition. The gang had to send out one of their own as a hostage. Billy agreed to the prisoner exchange. He sent out the man who owned the ranch, Jim Greathouse. At that point, Carlisle laid down his guns and went into the house to try to negotiate the surrender of the most wanted outlaws in New Mexico. Carlisle was inside the small house all morning and halfway through the afternoon.

For hours, the two sides traded notes with no change in their circumstances. By 2 p.m., the posse outside was growing restless. They were worried about Jim Carlyle. He had been inside with the outlaw gang for most of the day, and the situation should not have taken this long to resolve. The posse was nervous and agitated. and then someone fired a shot. It was probably an accidental discharge due to anxiety,

but it started the ball. Inside the house, Billy and the gang thought their man Jim Greathouse had been killed by the posse. Jim Carlyle probably thought the same thing. As the leader of the posse, he probably thought he was about to be executed in retaliation. He jumped up and ran toward the window.

He crashed through the glass and tumbled into the snow. The outlaws fired through the window at the escaping man. They shot Carlisle three times in the back, and he slumped to the ground, dead. The posse watched Jim Carlyle bleed in the snow for only a moment. Then they pulled every gun at their disposal and blazed away at the ranch house. By one estimation, they blasted 60 to 70 shots into the structure as the gang took cover. inside. After the explosion of gunfire passed, the men in the posse settled down. With their leader dead in the snow, they lost the heart to continue the siege. They quietly abandoned the house and

rode back to White Oaks to meet up with reinforcements that were supposed to be on the way. When Billy and the gang believed the scene was safe outside, they left the house that was pockmarked with bullet holes. They scrambled onto their horses and began the trip back to the Fort Sumner area. Most people believe the three shots that killed Jim Carlyle were fired by Billy, Dave Rudabaw, and Billy Wilson. But the men of the posse said, Billy alone killed Jim Carlyle.

They said that when Carlisle escaped from the house, Billy lunged into the broken window and fired all the fatal shots. It will never be proven conclusively, but it was another murder credited to Billy the kid. and that name, the name that would pass in the legend, appeared in print for the first time, four days later. Billy's version of the shootout at the Great House ranch was a little different from the men of the posse, as you might imagine.

Billy said the posse sent in a note that gave him an ultimatum. He should surrender in five minutes, or Jim Great House would be executed. When an errant gunshot rang out a few minutes later, everyone inside the house thought the posse had kept its promise and killed Great House. At that point, Jim Carlyle panicked. He feared for his life and he dove through the window. Outside, the posse thought Carlyle was actually Billy trying to escape. They opened fire and killed their own man. Billy and his gang were completely innocent. No one believed Billy's story, as you'd probably also expect.

In the aftermath of Jim Carlyle's murder, a new voice was added to the chorus that resounded throughout the Old West. In towns throughout the West, from Tombstone to Deadwood to Silver City where Billy grew up, newspaper publishers railed against the violence they saw around them. In Las Vegas, New Mexico, the new voice belonged to J. H. Cougler,

the publisher of the Las Vegas Gazette. On December 3rd, 1880, four days after the shootout, he published a long editorial that said Eastern New Mexico was being terrorized by a gang of outlaws, 40 to 50 men, hard cases all of them. And he excoriated local law enforcement for its inability or unwillingness to stop the gang. And he stated, for the first time in print, verbatim, the gang is under the leadership of Billy the Kid, a desperate cuss. This one line had a staggering impact. The young man who had been called Antrim or Kid Antrim or William H. Bonnie or Billy Bonnie, or even Billy Kid, was now Billy the kid. He was a tangible, identifiable entity.

He was given weight and mass as an outlaw captain. And because he was named above all others, all the criminal activity in the area was, was dumped onto his shoulders, whether he had a hand in it or not. He had worked with a small group of loyal followers, but now he was the outlaw captain of a huge gang that was responsible for all the rustling and killing in eastern New Mexico. Public opinion of the kid had already soured after he was blamed for the murder of Jim Carlyle, and now it flatly turned against him.

Any hope he might have had that he could still get a pardon from Governor Wallace was gone. There was no way Wallace could make a deal now that Billy had become the face of crime in the territory. But that didn't stop Billy from trying. Billy wrote a letter to Wallace where he outlined his version of the shootout

that killed Jim Carlyle. He claimed he was innocent and that the posse had killed Carlisle with friendly fire. He disputed the article in the Las Vegas Gazette saying no such gang was in existence. He said he'd been making a living playing cards in Fort Sumner, and that this whole story was concocted by John Chisholm. Billy portrayed himself as an innocent small-timer who was being persecuted by a powerful rancher.

Wallace was unmoved. Ten days after the article appeared in the paper, Wallace issued the first reward for a person named Billy the Kid. It offered $500 for the capture of William Bonney, alias the kid, to be delivered to any sheriff in New Mexico. The notice said capture, but in the three years Billy had been back in New Mexico, very few outlaws had been captured to stand trial. In Lincoln County, a reward for capture meant wanted, dead or alive.

Following the Great House shootout and the newspaper article and the governor's reward, the heat was truly on the kid. He had worn out his welcome in virtually every familiar town with the exception of Fort Sumner. Pat Garrett and the Secret Service operative had assembled a posse of Texas and New Mexico Cowboys to scour the land until they found the gang. And now, Billy was on the verge of losing his two closest friends,

Charlie Bodry and Tom Ophaliard. Charlie had moved his wife, Manuela, up to Fort Sumner, and they had living quarters in the old hospital it had been converted into something like an apartment building. Charlie worked on Thomas Yerby's ranch several miles outside town, and when he wasn't working, he went on raids with Billy's gang. But with a wife and a job, he wasn't a full-time gang member or rustler. And with the tide turning against Billy,

Charlie decided it was time to leave the outlaw part of his life behind for good. Two days after the newspaper article named Billy the Kid as the premier outlaw in the southwest, Charlie met with Pat Garrett. Two miles outside Fort Sumner, Charlie reportedly told Pat that he was thinking very seriously of leaving New Mexico that winter. He did not want to keep fighting. This wasn't the same fight as the Lincoln County War. The things happening now were just banditry, pure and simple. Pat told Charlie that if he didn't leave or quit his outlaw ways, he'd get killed or captured soon. Pat and the posse were on the trail of Billy's gang, and they weren't going to stop until the gang was destroyed.

Pat was right, and Charlie waited too long to get out. But before Billy lost one of his oldest friends, he lost his best friend. After staying on the move for several weeks and out of reach of Pat Garrett's posse, Billy and the gang returned to Fort Sumner, as they always did. In mid-December, through driving snowstorms, Pat and his posse of Texas Cowboys closed in on the town. They stopped for the night at a ranch about 25 miles north of Fort Sumner, and Garrett sent a local recruit into town to scout for Billy and the gang. The man hurried back up to the ranch and reported that Billy and the others were, in fact, in Fort Sumner that night.

Pat and another man rushed to town to see the situation for themselves. But by the time they got there, Billy and the gang were gone. No doubt they'd heard through their network of friends that the posse was in the neighborhood. Billy's gang escaped to a ranch about 20 miles east of Fort Sumner. At that point, Pat Garrett changed his tactic. He'd been chasing Billy all over eastern New Mexico and had never come close to catching him. Now, instead of staying one step behind, he would entice Billy to come to him. Pat brought the rest of his posse into Fort Sumner.

They took up positions inside town, and Pat paid a local man to go out to the ranch where Billy was hiding and tell him that the posse was gone. It was safe to come back to town. The man did his job well. At about 11 o'clock that night, one of Pat's lookouts rushed up to him with urgent news. Billy and his gang were coming in. A thick fog draped itself over Fort Sumner that night in December 1880. The men of Pat Garrett's posse grabbed their guns and waited anxiously for Billy and his gang to arrive.

The outlaws rode slowly into town. Their horses' hoofbeats were muffled by the snow. They would have looked like dark shapes in the mist, more like ghosts than men. There were six of them. Billy, Charlie, Tom, Dave Rudebaugh, Tom Pickett, and Billy Wilson. When they were about ten yards from the posse men hidden around the fort, Pat Garrett shouted at the gang. He told them to throw their hands up, and the shooting began. At the sound of Garrett's command, the outlaws pulled their guns and fired into the darkness.

The posse responded, and for a moment, the scene took on a fantastical look. Through the darkness and the fog, flashes of light and fire from pistols and rifles burst in all directions. It would have had a strobing effect. The fighters would have caught glimpses of each other, like snapshots and a lightning strike. The outlaws wrenched their horses around and stampeded out of the ambush. They thundered out of Fort Sumner and retreated to the safety of the ranch outside town where they'd been hiding before they'd been lured into the trap. When the gunfire died down, there was a deep silence for several moments. Then a lone horse walked through the fog toward the posse.

Its rider sagged to one side in the saddle. The posse surrounded the animal and the rider slid off the horse. It was Tom Ophaliard. He had ridden away with the rest of the gang, but he had been shot in the chest near the heart. As the life drained out of him, his horse turned. around and carried him back to Fort Sumner. The posseman took Tom inside one of the buildings and laid him down. They gave him some water.

He remained conscious and alert for 30 minutes, during which time he cursed at Pat Garrett. Tom Ophalier died December 19, 1880. He was Billy's steadfast friend and loyal partner. Billy had escaped yet another ambush, but he was down to just four men. Five days later, he would lose his oldest remaining friend. Next time on Infamous America, Billy's gang crumbles,

and he finally surrenders to Pat Garrett's posse. Billy stands trial for crimes committed during the Lincoln County War and receives a death sentence. One more jailbreak saves him from the noose, but it only succeeds in setting up the final confrontation with Pat Garrett in a darkened room in Fort Sumner. The saga of Billy the Kid ends next week on Infamous America. As the story of one outlaw ends next week, another begins.

If you've enjoyed the story of the most infamous outlaw in the Old West, I invite you to check out our other show, Legends of the Old West. Next week, the story of the most famous outlaw in the American West begins. Jesse James. All the bank robberies, train robbery, shootouts, and epic escapes unfold week by week as you hear about the life of a man who was truly a legend in his own time. Join us on the Legends of the Old West podcast next week for the story of Jesse James. Research assistance for this season was provided by Aaron Alesworth. Original music by Rob Valier.

Editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your writer and host, Chris Wimmer. If you've enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Please visit our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details, and join us on social media.

We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrel Media on Twitter. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.