Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 463: Billy the Kid Part II - Regulators Gonna Regulate

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

On part two of our Billy the Kid series, the young outlaw raises hell in the Lincoln County War.Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

There's no place to escape to this is the last talk on the left That's when the cannibalism started Man all those old West stuff it's like trying to work out if I could do that old West noise It's really not for a Queens boy that's not bad from the city All right Marcus, what do you got? Can you do it? Yeah? Hell yeah fuck. Yeah, I can do it. Yeah. Yeah, okay I don't know how to feel are you gonna get kicked out of your apartment? No, you know what he owes me I had to put up with a fucking burst pipe last night, so he fucking owes me

Welcome to the last podcast on the left everyone. What a fantastic episode we have for you today We are on to Billy the kid part two and I want to preface this before Marcus even dives in This is the story that Marcus was born to tell This is the story because I didn't fully understand the lincoln county war and how badass it was until then and now now I'm I'm here. I'm here. I'm a fucking old West ad now. I grow Was a Westie good good good. No, I grew up with this story But I fucking I love the lincoln county war story Now my question is is that why and every other documentary series and these historical the series that we've been doing all summer

We've been doing history series. Why only old West historians dress like they're from the old West Because it's a style that never goes out of fashion Hello there as long as people greet one another there's gonna be Westies out there It's just a man who looks like me with an even tinier cowboy hat on and like a little neck scarf going like you wouldn't believe The type of shenanigans that Billy the kid could get himself into and out of You wait till I go through my face and don't forget about the mustache No one in this earth has a fucking better mustache than a Wild West historian It's they all are just they all want to be wired up so fucking bad. So that's all they want in this world

Well, they're like Wyatt Borp. Yes, I'm gonna curl something as they contemplate who to kill in town next All right, let's get on to part two of Billy the kid So when we last left Billy the kid He'd found himself in Lincoln County, New Mexico as a former member of a horse-thieving game called the boys and he Was about to participate in a jailbreak to free one of the leaders of the boys Jesse Evans I also didn't understand how big Lincoln County was It's really crazy just how how much area that took up it was like like I want to say a quarter of New Mexico I thought it was just like one little spot. No, it's the bottom. It's essentially the bottom right corner of New Mexico

Okay, now in 1877 Lincoln was the largest county in America territorial or otherwise Located in southeastern New Mexico and border in the Texas Panhandle this gorgeous playground of violence Spend 30,000 square miles Spread out across that land were relatively new white settlements Established Mexican towns and the many tribes who made up what was collectively known as the Apache as As such ethnic tensions were high in Lincoln County when Billy the kid arrived But as far as Billy was concerned, he was fluent in Spanish He defied quote-unquote gringo laws at every turn and he humiliated law enforcement and military officials by

Constantly escaping every single time he was arrested certain well-known gringo laws or nothing above miles No, it's illegal to serve anything above I will never forget One of my most embarrassing white man moments I walked into the dispensary that I love to go to out here. It's called roots And I asked them if they had anything in sativa form that was not jalapeno Because there was a jalapeno edible that I got literally told him it was too spicy for me And it's a it's an edible and he looked at me like I was the whitest thing He's ever seen which is accurate and I felt shame and then I ordered the jalapeno and then I got home and I ate one

And I was like it is still too hot But I was shamed into it, but you like hot food. It is just something about the weed I don't need my candy to be spicy Therefore even before the Lincoln County war to come Billy the kid was already becoming a hero to the Hispanic population in New Mexico In fact, they already had a nickname for Billy although you might debate as to whether or not it was met well meaning They called him El Chevatol Oh, I mean I take it. What does it mean? Now in Caribbean Spanish El Chevatol means snitch

But on the other hand fanny means vagina and British English and doodle is a child's way of referring to a penis in Australia So words don't always have the same meaning across the language board, you know, and they say we're American centric on this show What a wonderful Way to explain that Marcus. Thank you, of course, but with the help of my native Spanish-speaking wife We think that to the Mexican Spanish speakers of New Mexico El Chevatol is probably a combination of the word chavo, which means kid and the word chivo Which means goat or more accurately Billy goat ergo a more literal Translation of Billy the kid's nickname of El Chevatol would be goat child or Billy goat the kid

That actually makes sense though because he was a survivor He was he was one of the highly Highly adaptable could move into a lot of different scenarios made friends and enemies everywhere he went I also like the other name which was Billy to That's never saw a tin can he didn't want to eat I love Billy the goat kid. So you'd say he'd like he's like the Gabriel Iglesias of Lincoln County. Sure. Oh the fluff is I Was thinking that Russell Peters would do well given all the different sort of ethnic backgrounds Russell Peters like you gave it to a

British person again You can give this is an American story you gave it to another Fucking British Russell Peters is a man of the world doesn't do that. Oh, no, he's not British I'm thinking who's the who's the guy with the big hair. We're thinking you're thinking of Russell the guy with the big hair Oh, yeah, Russell Peters is American. I like him. Okay, very good. I don't think he is America Now concerning the violence in Lincoln County, New Mexico Drunken killings and mamings were fairly routine and when Billy the kid arrived there the largest county in America Didn't even have a jail

Hmm, but it's freedom man freedom, bro Yeah, but it's also like it's called being held hostage every time you go out to the bar at gunpoint. No doc You gotta be funny man. You know dancing aboard dude. You gotta be loved to whistle again You just saw back to the future. That is not a documentary I mean, it's really close to anarchy out there in the old west I mean New Mexico at this time like it's a territorial government. So there are government officials around but for the most part Yeah, it's it's there's a lot of anarchy happening out there There's a lot of people dying some people make it some people don't okay

But in 1877 the first jail was constructed and one of the first people to be housed within its walls was Jesse Evans of the boys who've been arrested and caged for horse theft I learned a couple of things about horse theft. Do you know that in Pennsylvania it is a customary? They made it they made it one of the main punishments for horse theft was cropping Which is they cut your ears off and nail your ears to a fucking post. I've heard of that Yeah, horse theft was very serious at least personal horse theft like what Billy the kid and all and the boys are doing like they were Stealing from you know extremely wealthy landowners. They were stealing from the military. It was business Yeah, it was but but if you stole just some dude's horse. Yeah, you get fucking killed or made

I just watched I just watched the movie seven and if you would have stolen that main enemy's horse He would have been like you want to ride the horse. Yeah, and then you gotta he put the horse shoes on you And then he made all the corn and then he'd ride you to be like which this is the sin of not taking an uber So in the wee hours of the morn on November 17th 20 members of the boys including Billy the kid entered the county seat of Lincoln County Which was not so imaginatively also called Lincoln. These people are Lincoln fans damn Now I grew up in Haskell County County seat there Haskell. It's just fucking there. That's it They just sometimes don't feel like it also

I was reading about the nature of this prison where it was just a big hole in the ground that they just put logs on top of This prison was like rough like it was a dugout prison So they had dug a big trench and then they basically stuck iron bars on a trench and then put tar covered Logs on top of it. So you're just outside the New Mexico Sun Oh, yeah, or a lot of play. Yeah, a lot of buildings around this time were dugouts My first ancestors in this area also lived in dugouts dugouts were pretty popular around then. All right Now this jail was a somewhat slapped together structure as Henry said most likely because Lincoln County Didn't take the law all that seriously from what I can tell

So after the boys and the kids showed up and stuck their guns in the face of the jailer They were able to knock down the wooden door of the cell containing Jesse Evans with little more than sacks filled with rocks You know what the main thing that I What's also was very distinctive about all of this shit. They had a lot of planning They did a lot of planning for a lot of this shit Like they really were fairly organized And I don't know if it was because a lot of them had just got done fighting the Civil War and were essentially just like trained soldiers or like But the boys literally were a bunch of children that kind of like they gave each other commands

They knew what to do like one would hold up the jail as the other would go like do the big soccer or soccer rocks and bash against the door Like it's fun. Let's not forget when one of the guys. Yeah, he went out He went a little rogue and you just yelled Leroy Jenkins and he ran in there. Everyone's like, oh god Leroy What happened that was a fantastic little yep, it's a good memory thing very funny thing for about 10 years It is an internet meme of sorts The boys like I mean they're a street gang just like any other street gang that's existed throughout human history and they have just as much as they have just as much experience putting shit together and

organizing plans as any other street gang and they have this they have the same Success and fail rate as any other street game. Okay Now once Jesse Evans was released the boys resumed stealing livestock and Billy the kid did the same except on his own He's going solo About a month after the Evans jailbreak Billy was caught stealing two horses that belonged to an Englishman named John Tunstall He will unhand those horses. Oh my god. What are you gonna do? Maybe I'll hire you Billy go to no, I don't like to be the boy anymore

Now after his arrest Billy was held in the same jail where the Jesse Evans jailbreak had occurred and Billy Fully expected to get the exact same treatment from the young men that he considered as pals But as the days piled up it became obvious that the boys weren't coming Why aren't they helping out Billy the kid because Billy the kid had a you know people did like him They didn't gratiate themselves to him But he also was a dude that would also very handily say like I'm gonna go do my own shit Peace so he kind of technically broke up with the boys and then kind of did the half-expecting thing of like So Billy the kid told the jailer that he would testify against the boys in exchange for his own freedom

Which put him at odds with his former gang and his former gang was also about to be at odds with Billy's new employer See Billy never testified against the boys because he didn't need to John Tunstall the wronged party in Billy's arrest not only dropped the charges But also offered Billy a job on his ranch because again the kid was just that charming He somehow talked himself out of jail into a job That is like if Richard Ramirez breaks into your house, and you're like you know what we could actually use a cleaning person That is insane the man committed a felonious act and they're like you got what we need here because he did Because that's like how the FBI hires hackers and break into their systems. It's because from my understanding

I think it's actually very difficult to steal horses It seems that it's like a you have to like kind of build yourself up to it You have to be fast you have to be decisive you have to figure out how to do it also like you have to take a horse against its Well, yeah with you someplace. I have no fucking clue how you do that besides like pull on its pecker until you become its wife You put a little carrot in your mouth, and then the horse to eat the little carrot, and then you guys kiss see that horse And it's penis No, it's not and then and then the horse says that kid's just pretty nice And then he says you know what you don't even have to take me you can have me

Well, it's funny it's Henry's is a physical affair and Ben's is an emotional. Yes I feel like my cut like cut and dry it's more transactional but he needed these guys Well, cuz also the nature of these these businesses were like it's all half legal half illegal. Yeah Now unbeknownst to Billy he'd been dropped into the middle of a feud that would three months later Arrupt into what was called the Lincoln County War which I will now do my very best to explain in the simplest way possible This is so excited for this. This is Marcus Parks's like Hall of Fame moment This is Bobby Bonilla Line and up to sign that contract to make a million dollars a year for 15 years. This is his like this is his moment

All right. No, I mean that stakes aren't that high more It's just like this is me just trying my best to not get a call from my father telling me all the things All the places where I was wrong He becomes more and more Texan as a ghost When I knew when I looked my family's history books to where my love of history comes from my father's a fucking Wild West Historian I disagree with the preface that this is not high stakes for you Marcus That's the highest stakes you've ever said on this podcast if Papa Parks gets upset This show is done. So let's make sure

He'll ground Marcus and he won't be able to leave his room. I know the Lincoln County War Let's get into that see after the Civil War. It wasn't just former Confederate soldiers who settled New Mexico The opportunities to make money also attracted men with wealth and without conscience and these men profited off the land and its people with the aid of unscrupulous bankers corrupt officials in all manner of armed men No, you can you add words like unscrupulous and corrupt and armed, but I think that if you just took all of those words away They just still imply what was in the Wild West. They are just bankers officials and men They are all unscrupulous, and they are all corrupt if you're in the Wild West

I don't know who was like like was there honest men? Of course there were they're absolute there was plenty of honest men throughout the world Most people in the Old West were honest and we're trying to just make a way for themselves and just make a living It's just the fuckers up top like the men we're about to talk about that are that were the most evil Because you know a lot of people say hope floats, but you know what else floats shit? Yes It does if you're on a healthy diet Well guys like this basically controlled everything in New Mexico and in Lincoln County There were two men who had a stranglehold on most businesses in the region and these two men were working in concert with each other

Hard-drinking aggressive Irishman both the bosses of Lincoln County were Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan I have to say this one time that is the owner of MSG the New York Knicks than the New York Rangers James Dolan is the worst owner in sports I've had to say that I won't reference it again and hate it so much, and I hope he goes away forever His band is also horrible. Oh, yeah, that's right James Dolan in the hot shots JD in the hot shots He missed the NBA draft so he could paper a fucking room that still didn't sell out so he could play his horrible rock music The man is nepotism personified and he's everything wrong with this country. I'm done with my James Dolan ran. Thank you

Now it would be somewhat of a stretch to call Murphy and Dolan organized crime figures see instead of profiting off crime They used crime as a business tool using everything from fraud to intimidation to murder to further their cattle outfit and their store Americans they are just people that decided to like that was a that there's a fun argument It was a one very dry documentary series. I watched called the war in Lincoln County. Yeah, you're like I'm wet I know I like you doctor. Oh, I do. I do. I prefer to leave a doc hard But these guys talk about these two as that because again, they're not crime figures They were these are the men that made America. Oh, yeah, and so they understood immediately like oh, you kind of have to live in the gray Yeah, very much live in the gray and you have to use guns a lot

Kill people. I guess that's the gray But when it came to ways that Murphy and Dolan could be compared to organized crime these guys were also fucking loan sharks and they would employ gangs of cattle rustlers to increase their stock from time to time and They would use these same gangs to enforce their will on the people and one of the main gangs that they would go to Was the boys the boy It's just so nice back then businessmen went to the boys and they were a gang as opposed to businessmen now Just go to boys At least they hired them. Yes, you know, it's very nice. Different different times

Where those was the term rough necks. Is that who your was is that a cattle wrangler? Is that where that term comes from? That's Teddy Roosevelt Ruff it you're thinking actually Henry you're thinking a rough rider and Ben rough neck is more of an oil worker term for all of this shit I'm a student of life I'm sorry for everything Now to the people of Lincoln County Murphy and Dolan's outfit was known simply as the house Because all of their business was done from one gigantic structure smack dab in the middle of Lincoln But the house's malfeasance wasn't limited to local government

They were also associated with a statewide organization of corrupt government officials known as the Santa Fe ring This is what we will call later on in various series that we'll do throughout the years that we hope to do be team Illuminati's yes, it's like they made a group effort knowing they made a group effort to say We're gonna control the state and then as this shit gets legitimized Like once this becomes solidified as a state it goes from a territory to being a part of the United States We'll then be the ones in charge The Santa Fe ring included the territorial governor of New Mexico the district attorney of Lincoln County a smattering of judges

Territory-wide and at the bottom the sheriff of Lincoln County William Brady Damn, so they had this thing pretty well locked up. Yeah power perspective. They thought they did yeah And since Sheriff Brady was James Dolan's man on the ground Brady had already had a run-in with Billy the kid and he had in fact Confiscated a Winchester rifle from Billy before the kid had even heard of James Dolan Lawrence Murphy John Tonstol any of this shit Now the house got a piece of everything that everyone did in Lincoln County when it came to business And if you were friendly to the house Murphy and Dolan's generosity knew no bounds But if you made yourself their enemy

They had no problem with sending a posse of potentially murderous men to change your mind But there was a bunch of which is to honestly scarier than men, which is 17 year olds Oh, absolutely. I think we referenced the movie them. Did we reference the last episode? I mean all the time being horrified by teenagers is like it is that is why the Teenagers have no scruples. Yeah, man. They have no soul. No, they have nothing to live for sometimes they come back Do you remember that fucking zombie teenagers come zombie kill everyone? Yeah, it was really scary I just remember the high school that I used to live across the street from in New York And I was always so scared because sometimes they make fun of my clothes as they walk on the street and I knew that

I have to go yes Yes, laugh along with it because if not it know when they don't sign a turn on me because they're all just all full of hormones When I was in Minneapolis, I hung out with my three-year-old goddaughter. She called me a poopie butt and dare I say it kind of hurt Honestly, yeah, she's correct. I I know Oh All right, well, it was into this power structure that we see the entrance of John Tunstall a 24-year-old well-heeled Londoner who had just arrived in New Mexico Fresh off of amicably splitting from a successful merchant family so he can make his own way in life

He's a rich boy, but still a rich boy on his own He definitely was of a mind that he's like well I'm well bred and I wear correct clothes and simply we can deal with all of this legally country Jax He is very proper like he is this idea that like we he's like I am just here as a business venture as you are new tiny young Irishman My father runs a mercantile in British Columbia perhaps he can come to the agreement here No, that's not gonna be a way you can come to some form of agreement. I just realized if I was alive back then I would have shot him I can't deal with that

Remember John Tunstall. He's only 24 years old. He's like, you know, maybe six years older than Billy the kid John Tunstall is always portrayed and for some reason every single Billy the kid movie He's always portrayed as this, you know, I know a man old man Like an old man in young guns where he's just been like Billy. I sometimes look at you as my son That is the American fetishization of the British male. It's just another boy. Yeah. Yeah Now Tunstall's goal was to start a cattle outfit of his own and to open a mercantile store in Lincoln County So with the help of an attorney named Alexander McSween and a cattleman named Chisholm John Tunstall went into direct competition with the house and the house. Remember, that's Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan

Now at this point the house was on shaky financial ground and half of the house Lawrence Murphy was dying of cancer But even in a weakened state the house was still a dangerous animal, perhaps even more so So do you think dying of cancer in the old west like what that must have been like that must have been fucking horrible It's probably similar to now just leaking. It's like shivering and stuff where they just keep pouring bourbon on you Yeah, and the fuck of the tumors start forming themselves underneath the skin and they start getting bigger and bigger Look, look, look kind of looks like a dog It's got the ears and it's got the long snout of us. Where's he go back here? You got puppy cancer my friend. That's the cutest kind of cancer you can possibly have

So John Tunstall, he knew that he had to protect himself from potentially violent business rivals The reputation of the house was well known So John Tunstall specifically hired ranch hands that were as good with the gun as they were with a rope And that's not all that uncommon for the time and place. Oh, yeah But since Tunstall hired young men who were willing to kill or be killed as a part of their everyday duties His employees were a little rough around the edges Which meant that Billy the kid fit in perfectly with John Tunstall's outfit And honestly, he it's an incredible tapestry. Emilio Estevez. Matt Dillon. You've got the other guy

I remember Matt Dillon. Yeah, I'm Tom Matt Dillon. It's Dermot Mulroney I thought Matt Dillon's not in that too. Matt Dillon's not in it. No, it's it's Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Lou Diamond Phillips Lou Diamond Phillips. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I place Chavez each Chavez. Yeah. All right. And that's another reference to young guns I need this is what I have from the early 90s Yeah, I mean if it if it helps I can also I can attach certain people when we talk about them I can attach a fucking late 80s heartthrob to that person if it helps our listeners. Thank you Now the thing about Billy the kid is that when John Tunstall dropped the horse theft charges and offered him a job on his ranch Billy took the chance to go straight

Because he like almost everyone in Lincoln County liked and trusted John Tunstall immediately Hmm. Well, see Tunstall was the first person to give Billy and the rest of these juvenile delinquents a future Although the Tunstall ranch wasn't quite as lost boyish as one might think from watching some of its cinematic interpretations Whatever Oh, no, it was difficult work. It was like you had to do all the horse wrestling and it was horrible Well, that's what I mean. Well, what I mean is that it's not all juvenile delinquents It's not like it's not like it is like these young men are all running from something here and we needed Yeah, everybody has to come together and read and write like it's not that like quite like that

Teran stamp has that it's that whole scene in young guns, right? It's been like now we do our reading lessons Like no, he's teaching them all to read and be like that did not happen. It definitely did not happen lost boys That's Peter Pan Remember the movie hook They were all fantasizing and then they had food appear on the table and not one of them fantasized about someone Carving up a ham or a roast beef the food they fantasized about sucked. It was for kids tacos. Where's the pizza? It's kids. They don't know it was pudding But they could have fantasized any food and then you put any naked woman in there

Or one naked man they could all suck on if they wanted to you know, I mean perverted it I'm just saying if you're gonna put a lot of things in this scenario you cast it I was tempted to make more of a reference to pizzas or tacos and you brought up Young boys suckie pudding. I kept I was on your side, Vin. I stay stuck with pudding. Thank you. Although it is a very sexual food All right, can we go on? It's disgusting. The little in this is like we get into your love life. This is the day quill talking so gross Either way Tunstall's employees learned how to be proper cowboys together

They formed a strong bond both between each other and with john tunstall and john tunstall piece by piece managed to acquire 4,000 acres of land on the Rio Feliz first catalog fit 4,000 acres. They ain't you know, that's not a fucking That's not a small plot. Think of this one one acre is about uh, 1.3 football fields. So it's Pretty big huge breath. Yeah. Well, he came for money. So this was like his father gave him money It seems to like that was like the seed money He had to come and basically because of the famous sentence He says that every wild west historian says being like I plan to make 50 cents on every dollar made in lincoln county father

Yeah, well, of course John tunstall getting a foothold here in lincoln county This was unacceptable to james dolin and loren smurphy Aka the house because james dolin was five foot two of pure rage. He was five foot two as well Well, yeah, very scary. I don't mess with the little ones. No because he would pop off. Exactly Now besides just the threat tunstall's outfit was to the house's business There were also old world grudges playing out right here in america See murphy and dolin were perhaps not surprisingly

irish catholics who'd made their fortunes in america through grit determination and violence And john tunstall was a newly arrived englishman who'd been born wealthy Now tunstall saw this whole thing as regular business competition. It's healthy It's healthy as a market. Everybody should love his diversity. Yeah fair is fair But to murphy and dolin this was just another example of the englishman coming to take the irishman's land And grind them under his boot hill like he'd been doing for centuries I won't stand for it. I won't stand for it man Yeah

That's typical. That is a typical irish English feud. I like it See like billy the kid's mother murphy and dolin had grown up in rural ireland during the great famine And we can't get into the history of the fucking potato famine. All right, but all you need to know Can I tell you the only thing I know about it? What? The only thing they had to eat was potatoes That's not actually true. It was all right. Holy fucking shit down. We gotta leave. How many emails I'm gonna leave it in I'm gonna leave it in to say we need to leave it in but just the emails we're gonna

There was a blight. There was a blight on potatoes. So that's the whole thing about it being uh They actually had nothing to eat by potatoes. That was people that were trying to Muddy up history. Um, it's one of those things. It worked. Yeah, it worked because they did it was a potato blight That can't that's why I brought it up All you need to know is that the potato famine was made much worse than it had to be by british policies Therefore murphy and dolin were what were what you might call a little oversensitive to an englishman gaining a foothold in their backyard And their actions leading up to the lincoln county war would reflect that animosity Now the opening salvo of the lincoln county war is by far the most complicated because murphy and dolin tried to bury

John tungstall and his associates with shady legal maneuvering before they resorted to murder and for that I give him credit I mean that was they didn't go right to the gun. I guess it is still all highly illegal It's all highly shady and it's all highly corrupt, but yeah to their credit They didn't just go and shoot him in the fucking head. No, yeah, it's jurisprudence jurisprudence Basically james dolin wanted his hands on an insurance policy payout that had been set up by local attorney alexander mcsween and remember mcsween was a close friend of john tungstall's He was one of two guys who'd helped john tungstall get started in new mexico and remember that name alexander mcsween He's gonna be a very important figure in all this. Yes, and alexander mcsween was he's a lawyer

He's a normal guy pacifist. He didn't have a gun or anything. He didn't like the fight That wasn't his shit, but he had a personal beef against james dolin speaking of beef It's kind of funny because they're in the beef business But um, he saw he knew he had worked he had worked for james dolin for a period of time And he knew the whole inner workings of the house. So he was helping Uh tungstall to with inside information to help him out maneuver the house. All right So to get ahold of this insurance money james dolin got a corrupt judge to issue a sham warrant For alexander mcsween's arrest on charges of embezzlement

Which was dolin's first step towards quote-unquote legally seizing everything mcsween owned And since the lincoln county sheriff william brady was a pawn of the house mcsween was arrested in jail in las vegas new mexico Now john tungstall and alexander mcsween were not business partners, but they were certainly friends So when mcsween was arrested tungstall came to his defense I shall write a strongly-worded letter Yeah tungstall wrote an open letter in the local paper accusing james dolin and sheriff brady of embezzlement themselves Whoa

And no one he just bought a newspaper. He put a reflective thing in it. It was just a mirror and he's like Hmm the criminal north see himself in the advertisement doesn't he? And he's in the embarrassment alone punishment. It kind of is man. I remember when time made you the person of the year With the mirror I don't feel like it. No definitely not Well people didn't come out in public against the house They were just too fucking powerful and tungstall taken out this newspaper article One it was an affront to their power and two he was placing himself right in the middle of the fight

And it opened himself to attack from dolin's outfit Now dolin and his dirty little judge were under the false assumption that tungstall and mcsween were business partners So the judge took the whole thing a step further by issuing a writ of attachment that included both mcsween and tungstall And essentially this writ demanded that all of mcsween's and tungstall's property including mcsween's law office and tungstall's Cattle and store be turned over to the county where it would no doubt Magically somehow end up in the hands of james dolin. Wow But so dolin formed a posse to enforce this bogus writ and he recruited corrupt law enforcement officials Including sheriff brady as well as local gang members like billy the kids former pal jesse evans

That's gotta be fun Like the day that you get to be you're you're in an informal gang And then you get to be turned into an official police officer That's a good day Like because we're gonna see this come up with the main crew whether we're gonna be talking about But that's gotta be like because then you're just like man. I can legally shoot people. Well, then you say i'm bona fide i'm bona fide i'm bona fide And the day is leading up to the first shot of lincoln county war

The dolin faction and the tungstall faction had a few small skirmishes Including one where billy stood outside of the seas tungstall store and called every man inside a cowardly son of a bitch You all suck And you're dumb and your boss is short and you smell How about that? It's a good time to be in the corner of the bar sipping your whiskey, but like it's gonna be an interesting day today Yeah, this is a good time for town gossips, too But the true start of the lincoln county war was february 18th

1878 when tungstall and some of his crew including billy the kid Took nine horses to lincoln to sell them before the bogus posse snatched them up And as it turned out They were right to try and sell that same day dolin's posse about 40 strong Arrived at the tungstall ranch for those nine horses and when they found tungstall and the horses already gone About 14 men peeled off to run him down Later that day tungstall billy and the rest of the crew were making their way down a narrow canyon when tungstall's boys Spotted a flock of wild turkeys

Unable to resist chasing them Which is which is it's a lot of fun to chase wild turkeys are they marmaduke? Unable to resist chasing the turkey like He is billy the kid. You know what I mean? Like he still wants to chase the turkey. He's got the chance to And it's all of them. It's the dog from up It's all it's a lot of fun to chase wild turkeys because they look funny when they're running away And they run but they can run pretty fast and it's really fun to chase maron I just love that you you frame it like charlie sheen in a harrow and den try not to get high

But you know because of the wild turkeys billy and the rest they took off and they left tungstall all alone It's like when I'm in the car as we were driving through Nebraska. I'm like horses Like it's horses. It is exciting And in a cruel twist of fate dolan's posse caught up to tungstall Just as tungstall's only means of protection wrote off to play grab ass with a bunch of wild turkeys Oh, no And so after a short argument about the nine horses the foreman of dolan's ranch buck morton pulled his rifle

He then shot john tungstall squarely in the chest causing him to fall out of the saddle Another member of the posse then got off his horse and shot john tungstall in the head just to make goddamn sure He wasn't alive, but you know what in the old west. That's how you've officially become an american citizen Double tap didn't he die an american man? When you shoot a british man in the head or when you if you get shot in america You are officially a united states citizen No one that they were outgunned billy and the rest wrote off to fight another day While dolan's men killed tungstall's horse and carefully arranged the corpses of the animal and the man

To appear as if they were taking a nap together because they thought it was funny Now if they I feel like in a way if this was a fair fight There was a way they maybe could have ordered the following war right the way that they could have fun But they made it personal. Yeah, it seems very personal. It got very very personal And when it comes down to it billy the kid in a way and these guys they had affection for tungstall Like they like tungstall and then they desecrated his corpse which at the time still I remember like We're all eight times were ancient until 1975 They could have gone with a tungstall duncan a tungstall duncan

And carved up the horse's stomach and then placed him inside of there if this was saw if this was saw Back to the future three like mix up And it was with the murder of john tungstall that the lincoln county war began Or sad Now billy the kid had only known john tungstall for about three months But tungstall was also the first person who'd ever placed any faith in billy So at tungstall's wake as billy looked down at the body He swore that he was going to get at least some of tungstall's killers before he himself died

And it was a promise that billy the kid was very quickly going to keep You really see in this story because the first episode was definitely billy the kid as a scamp And he is kind of like lovable rogue That's kind of these starts like his origin story. It means a super slippery little baby criminal But this is when he becomes a fucking desperado and like billy the kid like it's kind of of surprising to me how dangerous he would become and how good of a fighter He would become he has a little righteous indignation at this point. So he feels validated, right? That he feels extremely righteous in what he's about to do

Because he for him he places loyalty above all and the man who the the first man who ever reciprocated that loyalty john tungstall had been killed unjustly Right, so therefore all of the rage and the violence that is within billy the kid He now has permission to let him loose and nothing's like a child Who has like that because kids have that sociopathic? Like version of idealism. Yeah, it's like in his mind because now it's like now This war is going now we're doing this shit and because he feels validated now He feels permission to do all sorts of fucked up shit

And there's a reason why we send 18 year olds out to war. Yeah, billy the kid's 17. I have to push back a little bit Markets. I don't think he held the loyalty above all. I think just above loyalty was chasing them turkeys Oh, he seems like it because he left his post for a second. Yeah one second I don't know man. You just got to play grab ass sometimes. I know it's it's I got yelled at it All the fucking time when I was a kid quit playing grab ass. God damn it Stop being so goddamn cute to stop playing fucking grab ass and I know No, but that's the things that you're supposed to fucking play grab ass sometimes in life. Sometimes you got to do it Yeah, 16 year old. Does it need to be like a stern fatherlike figure on a horse?

You know what I mean? If they could you can still play but child Billy the child, I mean it was before pokemon go They really did have to find turkeys and turkeys are kind of mythical creatures. This is really before pokemon Yes, it was all right Now the posse that had killed john tungstall had done so on orders that had come from sheriff brady But sheriff brady himself was not present on the day that john tungstall was murdered Nor was james dolin present these were men like these men gave orders and had the lower downs

Do their dirty work? Oh, yeah But since the sheriff was the one who gave the direct order to kill an innocent man And since most officials in lincoln county were in dolin's pocket Trying to get justice for tungstall's murder through regular means was out of the question But luckily for the tungstall crew there was still one government official in the town of lincoln who wasn't allied with james dolin That was the justice of the peace And he quickly formed a panel that delivered a verdict of homicide for the posse who killed john tungstall But the warrants themselves were useless if there was no one to serve them

And sheriff brady sure as hell wasn't going to do it himself So the justice of the peace turned to dick brewer the foreman for john tungstall's ranch The jp deputized brewer and brewer in turn deputized 15 other men who were also former employees of john tungstall Including billy the kid these former cowboys then dubbed themselves the regulator Oh That is amazing. It's like a it's like um

A pyramid scheme of power Honestly, it's kind of weird. It's also a formation vaguely of the form of like an old west version of the avengers These guys are ready to go. No, that's what it is. They took their name the regulator They didn't come up with regulators themselves They took the name regulators from like the popular dime novels of the day It would be like if a modern gang today like named themselves the x-men Cool, that would be cool And they were all like one was psychic and but sensitive and one man could make ice

And the other man couldn't open his eyes It's too dangerous. That would be fun No matter where the name came from the regulators wearing badges one and all They said about the task of finding justice for their former boss And honestly, there's tall their tale is also told completely and accurately and billy joe's ballad of uh billy the kid And um, but I will say according to some of these youtube comments billy joe's piano is a certified illegal weapon of mass destruction The destruction of war and violence billy joe has brought so much happiness into my life And without them I would still be in a horrible the dark horrible place I was in billy

You are a god in every way. Wow billy joe saving lives Now the regulators were led in the field by tungstall ranch foreman dick brewer And if it makes you if it keeps it straight in your head dick brewer was played by charlie sheen in young guns He's the older one the wisened one who's now he's he's a little bit aged beyond his years He's 23. So he's been a regulator for he was a ranch hand for a period of time. Yes. He's one. It's a ballet Yeah, he comes from a long line of dick brewers, which is a horrible way to make beer. Yeah Very very salty Alexander McSween and if you want to use that, you know, if you want to keep that straight in your head That's uh, terrio quinn, you know, john lock from lost. Yes. He plays alexander McSween in the movie

alexander McSween whose false embezzlement charge started this whole affair. He was still in the mix as well It's pretty much dick brewer and alexander McSween given all the orders here McSween became sort of the de facto boss when tungstall was murdered Yeah, see McSween had fled town soon after tungstall's death fear and the same fate might befall him But he always stayed close enough to Lincoln to give his input as to how this war might be brought to an end And McSween would indeed see the last day of the Lincoln County war Now the regulators soon picked up more men for their cowboy army because everyone hated james dolan and everyone liked john tungstall So by july of 1887 the regulators had 60 men at their command

Damn, but the only person out of those 60 who was involved in every major battle skirmish or gunfight from beginning to end Was billy the kid Now what made the lincoln county war particularly violent was that both sides believed themselves to be the law And technically both sides actually were the law. It is very confusing Because anybody could be the law if you have a badge at this time period. It seems like lanyards have always been very important I know the power of a lanyard On one side you had sheriff brady who was an elected official who deputized men himself He was backed by james dolan

On the other side you had the regulators and you had billy the kid They were also legally deputized, but they were deputized by justice of the peace who had just as much power as the fucking sheriff And really all this tells you is just how vague of a concept the law really was in the old west Especially in a place like new mexico because new mexico at this point It's still a territory under united states jurisdiction, but not yet a state. Hmm. It's like a being a fiance Don't count unless you're married. You know what comes down to it. You got to get through that period It's it's called the chapel perilous. Mm-hmm new mexico not not a girl not yet a woman That's great

right there Well as a result of this vagueness The law itself completely broke down in lincoln county during the war and the only thing anyone with a badge concerned themselves with Was killing other people who were also wearing badges. Oh No, ostensibly the regulators existed solely to arrest and incarcerate the men who had directly participated in the murder of john tunstall So they started with the man who had fired the first shot into john tunstall's chest That man was buck morton

On march 6th 11 regulators encountered five riders that included buck morton and members of the boys And after the regulators chased morton and his cohorts for miles firing over a hundred rounds of ammunition without hitting anything morton's horse gave out Exhausted the horse tripped and took down the horse of a boy's gang member as well Oh, no After morton and his cohorts surrendered billy the kid Immediately wanted to kill them both because he knew the corrupt sheriff brady would just set them free It was a scene out of a movie where he like pulled the gun. They were there

They they got them they were about to like attach them to the horses However, they were going to transport them and he pulls out his gun and they all grab him. They're like no billy. No, no And it's been like he killed my english father. He killed my english father, and they're like no billy. No We're regulators now, bro. We got to do this on the legal side, bro No, it's dick brewer like dick brewer says uh billy. We're the law now You know and he took his deputation very seriously He insisted we're the law and we should act as such therefore Dick brewer said our only job is to take morton and this other guy back to lincoln

And then the system's going to take over from there and then our job is done But he will miss his time. My day will come. Yeah Wow, this is scary stuff now billy acquiesced in the argument eventually But while the regulators were on their way to lincoln with these two prisoners in tow The posse was joined by a man named bill mcloskey bill mcloskey. He had worked for john tungstall briefly But he was also friends with buck morton the man who had shot john tungstall There's a lot of people stuck in the middle in the lincoln county war because there's a lot of grays in new mexico There's a lot of people working on various sides because everyone like you said in the beginning are like they're just trying to make it

So it's hard because you have personal alliances and then you have business alliances And you have to try to see when your business alliances turn deadly Are you willing to stake your personal alliances on the grounds for money on this counts for money on the counts for holdings Or is it about brotherhood? Also, it was kind of cool. You said the sentence. There's a lot of grays in new mexico and this is not a ufo episode See, you know, honestly, I will bring that up again. No later in the future It's pretty good. New mexico the land of enchantment. It is what they call it the land of enchantment hufflepuff Now there are conflicting stories as to what happened next

But according to what dick brewer later said buck morton managed to grab mcloskey's pistol Then buck morton used that pistol to shoot his friend before he tried riding off with the other prisoner Buck morton and the other prisoner made it about 400 yards before the regulators Cut down both men shooting buck morton nine times and the other prisoner five Then as buck morton lay dying Billy the kid got off his horse to watch the light go out of buck's eyes up close you killed my english father Now watch you turn into shit. Yes, indeed

Now afterward billy couldn't have been happier. He was quoted as saying that he never meant to let them birds reach Lincoln alive And that statement was the beginning of billy the kid's reputation as a cold-blooded killer who never took prisoners Damn. All right. He sounds like a really cool character. Don't take so little shit from anybody. No Now this double killing of two murderers came to be known somewhat dramatically as the blackwater massacre It was no doubt inflated by newspapermen who were in the pocket of james dolin Yeah, I don't think you can't have a two. It was just two people just two people. Yeah, that ain't a massacre Not by american standards

One of these chapters of this work had blown up because you have all of these people are also fighting Through mass media as well. Yes through the print and press Notice it also be the beginning of the end of the regulator's legitimate authority. It did not last long Damn, no see james dolin began calling in favors from new mexico territory governor samuel axtole Who is said to be both dimwitted and pompous? Yeah, you could do whatever you like mr. Dolan and I appreciate that um, we have this meeting and um, actually Oh, i'm not wearing any pants That's a perfect impression of a shitty politician

But following dolin's request governor axtole voided both the deputizations of the regulators And the warrants issued for the men who had assassinated john tunstall In other words the regulators no longer had any official authority. And so they Respecting authority. Yeah, they dropped all their guns. Sure. Um billy kid actually would go on to become a maid of a house He had a lovely maid these two families. There's a father with three kids Yeah, and he got divorced from the mother died and then he got married to another woman. She had three daughters She had three daughters and they all moved in together and then he became sort of a fun sassy maid And I think that they were all having sex with him. Isn't that wild?

No crazy losing their lawful status didn't change a goddamn thing They still had a stack of warrants to serve and they were gonna serve them come hell or high water But it seems like this removal of legitimacy pushed some of the regulators including billy the kid Into even more lawless territory. Oh, yeah, because we don't gotta be we don't gotta pretend to be cops no more They're untethered. They're free. Yeah, I mean, it's not like the regulators were a military unit who moved as one single organism These guys split up and reunited again and again And it was during one of these periods when billy the kid was split off from the more level headed dick brewer That billy made a decision that changed the tenor of the lincoln county war

Now it was billy's opinion that ultimately the man who should pay the price for john tungstall's death Was the man who gave the direct order So billy and five other regulators went about the business of taking out sheriff william brady Damn now, we're not sure if billy and the others were planning to kill brady on the day They attacked or if this was a spur of the moment decision But what we do know is that when the opportunity presented itself billy and the others struck Would I have come to know about billy the kid of the watching the documentaries and reading the two books? It seems to be billy the kid

Was not a necessarily great planner, but he was one of the The smartest off-the-cuff criminals at the time sounds like a doer. Maybe not a planner, but a doer He was a leader. He was a leader and he saw opportunities and he took them whenever he could a lot of like lee roy jenkins That was actually staged It turned out all of that was re it was reproduced Well on april 1st 1878 in the middle of the day sheriff brady and four of his deputies were walking past john tunstall's old store Unbeknownst to them six regulators including billy the kid

We're in a corral out back hiding behind an adobe wall mount up Yeah, yeah, that's actually from young guns. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can't be no geek off the street What i'm not a geek. Yeah. I gotta know get clean gotta know you still know what i mean earn you keep You gotta keep don't worry at some point there's gonna be a whole geek squad And then we're really gonna be cool. We'll be cool geeks and people are gonna call us They would want us to come over each one systematically shot in the head by billy the kid That's not right now these six regulators have been given explicit instructions to not touch serif brady

Whatever you do don't fuck with brady because if they killed an elected official all of their credibility would melt away But as we know billy the kid never much cared for credibility and also He's a 17 year old kid with a gun and a righteous cause Many guns not just a gun. There's a lot of guns. Yeah, many many many many guns He could use that gun rack that wanes girlfriend game in wanes worlds Yeah So when brady and his four deputies walked down the street past the corral The regulators stuck their rifles through the gunports built into the adobe wall and open fire

Wait, hold on a second. They just had holes in the wall so you could put guns in them It was their windows. No, it was windows for the adobe. They would build houses out of adobe They were specifically gunports, you know in case Okay, this happened a lot Well, yeah, you might have I mean you might have a raid you might you might have a A Native American tribe coming in and trying to fucking murder all of you because you murdered a lot of them And so they're now trying to come and murder you I just feel like if I was there and everyone was drilling holes in the wall to place guns in I would also say

But then they can put the guns in too and then we're just going to be sitting in here Like it's difficult to shoot through not a lot of people had a accuracy Yeah, and also like, you know, this is not that long after, you know, like the texas war for independence Like this is a time when, you know, you could conceivably think like a war might break out here any fucking moment It might have nothing to do with me, but god damn it. I gotta be I gotta be ready to defend what's mine Kind of um, it seems to explain The mentality going forth, doesn't it? Yeah, it's the mentality of everyone trying to fight for a seat on southwest airlines Oh, no the entire the entire southwest and texas in particular are still living their lives by old west

Mentalities that do not apply to the modern world and that's partly why they're so fucked up But that's just me. That's just a native's opinion. That's that's his opinion. That's his opinion Now since these boys were aiming specifically for brady He was the first to go down and deputy george henman went down with him The other three deputies however fled for cover in nearby houses Now sheriff brady attempted to rise from the ground after he was wounded multiple times But before he could get on his feet the regulators Pumped him full of lead and they ended the life of the man

They blamed for the death of their beloved boss with 12 bullets Just cut to the other sheriff deputies one with the little lamp shade over his head standing really still One guy just on all four has been like, do I look like a table? There's gonna be a lot of that But that's not to say this is a clear cut cinematic moment where the evil villain dies and the hero rides away clean So at this point deputy henman was still alive And when a saloon owner named Ike Stockton tried pulling him into safety just because it was the right thing to do Stockton was shot and killed by one of the regulators for helping the enemy Oh, you can't kill the bar keep regulators gonna regulate man

We've come down to the genies out of the fucking lamp the dick is out of the pants These guys are doing whatever it takes now. It's they're only they're desparados. All right Yeah, the gunplay was so intense that in a crazy coincidence The justice of the peace who had deputized the regulators in the first place was shot in the ass sideways through both cheeks As he was bent over working in his garden that is Ziggy stardust. It was his ass I don't know, but he definitely got turned into a periscope. It's weird. I like you could give him a little look finder between his butchicks You would not believe what happened today, honey

Look just blow through this hole comes out the other side What a crappy day But the point here is that just like gang warfare today Innocent people got caught in the crossfire again and again in the old west and they especially got caught During the Lincoln County war. Oh, yeah, this is about to get fucking crazy Geez But once the gunshots died down Billy and another regulator walked over to Brady's body So Billy could replace the Winchester rifle that Brady confiscated during their first encounter

And he did this knowing that three other deputies were still out there This arrogance was met with more gunfire And while Billy was lucky to have just been nipped on his side with a flesh wound The first of five bullet wounds by the way that he'd get throughout his short life Another regulator was seriously wounded in the thigh Once the kid and his compatriot limped back to the corral five out of the six regulators jumped on their horses And rode out of town amidst a hail of bullets while the wounded regulator Unable to ride hid underneath the floorboards of John Tunstall's former store until the coast was clear

He was there for like two days bleeding from a major wound on his thigh, but he got away alive Damn, it reminds me a little bit of obviously Bonnie and Bonnie and Clyde It's very simple people can take body take people can take bullets during this time Yes, because I'm remembering all the horrible things that happened to poor Bonnie And of course Clyde as well I do think if Billy the Clayton Clyde got together, that's a super team One day when we go through the next couple of years when we've covered many of these people because we're going to do a lot more gangster Coverage we're going to do a lot more old west uh, desperado coverage like all of these stuff. It's so interesting

We'll put together the super tape. Yes Yeah, I would actually say Billy the kid was smarter than Clyde Barrow. Oh very much so Clyde Barrow was uh He was not that effective of a criminal. It was way more But it Billy the kid though is he became a legend for a reason All right But also like Billy the kid also found a niche and he stuck to it Yeah Up to this point the regulators were looked upon favorably by white new mexicans because everyone knew what it's like to be under the thumb

of people like James Dolan But after they effectively killed a cop in broad daylight in the middle of the street The white people of new mexico turned against them the mexicans however Loved the regulators and they especially loved Billy the kid more than ever After he was responsible for the murder of an official that they all knew was a piece of shit Nice They saw Billy specifically as the person who was fighting against their enemies in ways that they couldn't

And therefore it was often mexicans who gave Billy and the regulators refuge But even though the regulators were no longer deputized and even though six of them had murdered an elected official They still considered themselves to be deputized. Amen. It's about frame of mind, man. It really is They don't even need Tony robin cd perception is reality man. You got a badge, dude. Yeah So dick brewer and the regulators continued the process of serving warrants for the murder of John Tunstall That's kind of almost like It's kind of badass I mean, obviously these guys are all criminals

We're celebrating these guys because they're not serial killers and this happened fucking 200 years ago But when it comes down to it like this is one of those things the idea of like having that warrant still and they're like We still have the charges right here in our millions like there's something about that just like using it almost like a sigil Absolutely It's a gray area, you know, because because there really are there there are two sides here Like you I wouldn't necessarily I mean, I guess the regulators like, you know, you get dick brewer on one side Uh, that is like we are still like damn the fucking law damn governor axel We're gonna do whatever the fuck we need to do to bring justice to this man because that's what's right

And the other side you got billy the kid who's like, uh, all these fuckers need to die and they need to die at my hands And they all need to die as soon as possible who gives a shit how it happens Billy the kid was the chaos agent But also when it comes down to this whole scenario is the way the old west kind of worked too is that if they had won The lincoln county war like let's say they did round it all mull up Eventually enough time would pass where they would be legitimized, you know anything where like yeah We're still in this place where these states are being made So if they do win this quote-unquote war, they're the ones in charge. Yeah

Well next up with alleged tungsten murder posse member andrew buckshot roberts Buckshot roberts had already figured out the deputization or no the regulators were still coming to kill him So he sold his ranch and went to a location called blazers mills to wait for a payment to come by mail So he could leave new mexico forever this guy fucked up And he's interesting. This is an interesting. I love this story I this is my this is my favorite part of the lincoln county war is the buckshot roberts fight Now there's actually debate as to whether buckshot roberts was actually in the posse that killed john tunstall Or whether he just worked for james dolin and had nothing to do with it

Yeah, there's one group that says that he was just there He wasn't there as a part of it that he was just an employee and he was just he did the clerks defense of like I'm just working. I'm like i'm not supposed to be here today Yeah, or that he wasn't even there at all that he wasn't he had some people said that actually there's three camps So some people that say he was just there in the posse and did nothing to stop it. So therefore, he's guilty There's others that say he participated in the shooting therefore He's guilty And then there's others that say like no he was just an employee of james dolin

And somehow the regulators got it in their head that buckshot roberts needed to fucking die Okay, but whether or not he was actually involved It's never a good idea to fuck with a guy who has a gun themed nickname. Yeah, definitely not Unless it's nowadays because most of the time it just means you fart a lot Ah buckshot zebrowski In 1877 you don't definitely don't want to fuck with a guy He got the name buckshot because he got shot. He still had a huge load of buckshot in his fucking shoulder And he was known as like a grumpy loner

He was kind of a you know, buffalo hunter a bit of a mountain man or at least a like a lonely type of guy Uh, but he was also just known buckshot more than you don't fuck with him It sounds kind of cool. Yes. Yeah, and the regulators were about to find out that fact for themselves At great cost. Uh-oh Now from what I can tell as it's a little hazy I think that the confrontation between the regulators and buckshot roberts was actually a bit of a coincidence From what regulators said afterward dick brewers saw buckshot roberts approach brewers mills So dick sent out a few of his men to convince buckshot to surrender

But when buckshot saw that there was a fucking group of heavily armed cowboys waiting for him He refused to surrender because he knew all about the regulators And he knew that billy the kid was riding with him And he knew billy the kid's reputation for shooting and killing anyone who had anything to do with the murder of john tunstall This is like john wick. It is It's very similar But buckshot roger buckshot roberts also like it's such a human thing because he was supposed to have already been out of town But he came back looking for a check that was supposed to show up for him

So that's the whole thing like he was already supposed to be gone But he was waiting on that freelancers check and if you are a freelancer, you know how hard it is to get an invoice Fulfilled and he was waiting on it and he's like, maybe I'll sneak in and get my shit No, it was the check for the sale of his ranch like this is his entire fucking livelihood And it's at this point on the porch of blazer's mills that buckshot roberts raised his rifle He and regulator charlie bowdry fired at the same time and while bowdry's bullet hit buckshot in the gut buckshot's bullet according to legend ricocheted off bowdry's belt buckle and accidentally blew off another regulator's trigger finger

That's such a fun moment Now this is the only finger I needed I mean, we definitely know it ricocheted off his belt It's the legend part is that it blew off another regulator's trigger finger Although we do know another regulator definitely lost his trigger finger in the fight We just don't know if it was quite as fucking, you know, three stooges as it's portrayed here Mortally gutshot roberts then retreated to a nearby adobe house Where he dragged a mattress to the doorway for cover from that vantage point

He hit one regulator in the lung Seriously wounded another in the leg and even managed to graze billy the kids arm gunshot wound number two And that's when dick brewer leader of the regulators from the beginning Decided that it was his time to shine He took a position 125 yards away hoping for a vantage point to take out buckshot roberts once and for all What dick didn't know. However, was that buckshot saw him coming Again, both men fired at the same time once dick came out from behind cover But while brewer shot totally missed

Buckshot's bullet hit the leader of the regulators directly in the left eye blowing out the back of his skull Whoa, the presidential death Yeah So figuring So the regulators figuring that they'd already lost enough and knowing that buckshot's gut wound would most likely kill him anyway They rode off leaving behind the body of dick brewer at blazers mills Where buckshot roberts would also die from his gutshot the following day If you ever read to hell on a fast horse the breakdown of this fight is also really cool because like billy the kid

was Such a daring motherfucker because buckshot roberts obviously knew what the hell he was doing. I guess they would go They would go on to call him that they said that he was the bravest man that anybody had ever seen like this This moment where it's like he just took him say like he took on the regulators alone So he has lore around himself as well because of this fight Well, the ball of blazers mill is actually some people say that this is the like when you think of the wild west This is the only time the wild west actually happened Yes, where it was like this where it was people hiding around covered billy the kid running around trying to get angles and the other dude

They're all like it's it's why it's cool. It's actually interesting Now after the battle at blazers mills a grand jury indicted four regulators including billy the kid for the murder of sheriff brady And they indicted six regulators including billy for the murder of buckshot roberts The same time though the scales of justice were beginning to balance or at least we're trying to So we're just covering the main battles here But by this point well over a dozen men had been killed in gunfights small and large As a result of the lincoln county war because the regulators went full guerrilla style And they would just go and pick off people whoever they could get and billy

This is where billy the kid's body count would rise where it's just like he we don't know it's all that thing We don't know how you attribute who did what to who yes, but he was an aggressor Like you know that billy the kid was an aggressive person. So he would point dude out being like that's a guy helped saddle for downtown jimmy Yeah, I mean because the billy the kid's provable body count is four Uh, but you know in these fucking gun battles. Who knows he gets the fucking final shot like who knows It's all a mess. It's the same thing. It's just because it happens so fast. Just pop up up up up Yeah, and so jesse evans of the boys and james dullan were indicted for the murder of john tungstall

But by this point neither side really cared For months gun battles between the warring factions erupted time and again And both sides forced settlers to shelter and feed them between fights Eventually the guy who replaced dick brewer as the leader of the regulators frank mcnaab that guy was also killed Yep, by the time the lincoln county war was coming to a close Billy the kid was in charge. Yeah, he was the kiefer southerland Damn, the kiefer southerland played doc spurlocking young guns. Yes, but i'm talking i'm talking about the kiefer southerland Vehicle in the movies where I think he was like the department in the tv show

Where he was the department of the treasurer You're talking about that Wait, yeah, but you can't mix up your kiefer's here because we have kiefer's in both stories I'm talking about kiefer southerland when he was hammered to that hotel intact. Oh, yeah That's my favorite key for something. See it's an interesting one Well, as we said, billy was involved in every major battle and he just kept getting better at fighting Every single time in addition Billy's friends kept getting killed and the more of his friends that died the harder billy would fight

And really billy became the leader of the regulators just by virtue of staying alive Oh By the time billy the kid got to be in charge though Events were already set in motion that were bringing the lincoln county war to an end See by july of 1878 five months after the war started Alexander McSween remember the lawyer from the beginning. He was tired of running and tired of fighting See, he'd gotten word that two puppets of james dolin the district attorney and the territorial governor were being removed from office So McSween figured now was as good a time as any to return to lincoln to make a final stand

But as it was McSween jumped the gun Because his enemy james dolin still had friends in high places And that indictment that james dolin had for the murder of john tungstall symbolic at best Now alexander McSween who remember was a friend of john tungstall and had been participating in the war as an advisor from the beginning He arrived in the town of lincoln with 60 regulators including billy the kid On dolin side, there were 40 members of his faction already in lincoln because it was also at nighttime, right? They rolled in they rolled in and it was nobody was there yet So they all shouldn't took their positions and it wasn't until the morning like they were like this is it

This is because this is the last big one. Yeah, man closing the doors Yeah, like look this is like it is it's this is the what the movies are all based on get the boys inside get inside get inside Yeah, so both factions settled into buildings that were friendly towards their side And so began the five day battle that would end the lincoln county war for good It's not like in the movies where it's just like, you know a bunch of people firing at one house I mean, this is fucking gorilla. It's it's urban warfare right the old west because the goal was in their minds They're like we'll take it this town house by house by house Like what we'll do is we'll just kill and move kill and move

Find out who our allies are as we're going and build up and so that eventually like literally we will just occupy enough homes In this town where we will be in charge just cut to the one guy being like I just moved out here So I could have a bakery This is different than I expected it to be I was going to actually specialize in croissant Because I didn't think there was enough croissant around. Yes. It was a dearth of croissant, but now apparently I am a corpse Actually, there is going to be one of those guys so fucking sad Now for the first four days the two warring factions exchanged sporadic gunfire from their fortifications And they only managed to hit men on the opposing sides a couple of times. This isn't these are amateur armies

These are guys with training not really In other words, it was somewhat of a stalemate But Dolan's men knew they were outnumbered So it was only a matter of time before the regulators figured out a way to overtake them So James Dolan contacted an army colonel he knew of named Nathan gold lace Dudley So named because he was overly fond of accessorizing his uniforms. Yeah, he's calling in the fucking army He's like we're gonna have the army colonel the fashion police It is they do look like the fashion police when they show up and the pictures of gold lice are really really funny because he does look

He looks like louis the 14th It is really weird like soldiers don't get enough respect for love and flair. Some of them Texans as well and New mexicans, there's a lot of flair. It is interesting because it's such a I just love the fucking Personality is really shine through during this time period like it is weird. There's a lot of individuality Absolutely, you see like well, that's one of the good things about America. Mm-hmm. Yeah But getting the army out to Lincoln wasn't an easy sell So remember this is the end of post civil war reconstruction in America And congress had just passed the posse comatatus act

Ben would you like to tell me what the posse comatatus act is? Yeah, if you see a posse, you got to jerk it off I'm assuming I'm assuming it's something to do with not recognizing posse's as legal And uh probably deputizing or creating more of a federal government like an FBI type situation But I don't really know it was actually used uh quite a bit or cited quite a bit last summer It prevents the use of soldiers for law enforcement purposes interesting. Well, that didn't that didn't work out No, yeah, and you still got to jerk those guys off. Yeah, 10 33. Be careful. Yeah, if a militia just shows up honestly It'd be better to try to pleasure them until a lull of excitement And they just like get one guy out there who's willing to suck as many dicks as possible

Whoever wants to suck as many dicks as possible get him in there calm them Kill them in their sleep. Isn't that something? Well, that was fun. Yeah, they got they got today marcus Oh, of course, but no they of course got around that by militarizing the police instead Very easy. Oh, yeah, it's a new military new occupying force. It's like it's like we have five armies all at once It is one of the worst Things that has ever happened to the country. Yeah, we just now covered the one of the worst things about our country Well gold lace Dudley found a loophole in the posse cometatus act and he agreed to come to Lincoln under the idea We're here only here to protect the women and children. We're not here to participate

We're just here to make sure that women and children are safe And if we should maybe do a couple of things in the pursuit of protecting those women and children Then so be it Especially when we bring heavy artillery. Yeah to protect the women and children Dudley arrived with four officers 11 mounted buffalo soldiers 24 Infantry men a 12 pound howitzer and a fucking gatling gun Yeah, and the regulators it's really from the inside of these adobe huts where they've been now for days, right?

They're in there like it's a hard time. They have supply lines running it out But they're getting kind of haggard and then they the scene of them Watching these soldiers march through because are they on buffalo back? Are they riding? No, but no buffalo soldiers It's black soldiers. So there were black soldiers Buffalo soldiers a term for uh black, uh army soldiers like specifically cavalrymen And they were just known to be like the badasses of the badasses Special ops. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but they would come in. That's when buffalo soldier, you know, I got it I didn't expect you to do that. I actually like that though. Thank you for the rendition

But because they were from gold place They were all duded up So he they're watching this fancy-ass army Roll into town with a gatling gun behind them and they're all just like well This is a chain It's a boss battle, man Yeah, I mean the gala and gun wasn't used in the civil war quite as often as the movies portray But gala and gun still had a fearsome reputation

Especially if you were a former confederate soldier gala and gun was a union weapon I mean, basically this is an early machine gun. This thing is capable of firing 3000 rounds per minute and the army had brought 2000 rounds. Yeah, so Yeah, yeah, yeah, so when the army showed up with a gatling gun in tow and aimed it toward the main regulator stronghold 40 of the 60 regulators fled. Yeah Immediately they've hid themselves under blankets and just ran away

Why do I think that most old west historians would marry a gatling gun before? And of course this left only the most loyal people and that included billy the kid Now alexander mcqueen stayed behind too because the main stronghold was his home and this was mcqueen's fight From begin from start to finish. Yeah, it's a good thing that billy didn't see any turkeys out the window His wife susan alexander mcqueen's wife susan even tried going out and talking some sense into gold lace But there wasn't anything she could say to make him back off He refused to talk to her because she was a woman every time she tried saying something to him He'd say I don't know what a woman would be doing talking to me in this situation

But I believe you should probably even go back to a kitchen send a boy. Yes. It's so he's so much of a man He's so straight and man. Oh, yeah Talk to a woman. No, I only talked to other big men. Yes in a shower. I'm so straight I am. Oh business is done in the bath Well, susan mcqueen returned in failure and soon after dolens men went on the offensive They lit mcqueen's house on fire using coal oil as an accelerant and the regulators They you know, they managed to put out the flames a few times, but it finally got to be too much to handle Yeah

Finally the house caught fire for good and the remaining regulators were forced to move from room to room in the mcqueen house to escape the flames And while the women and children were finally let go mcqueen the kid and less than a dozen regulators were left to burn or surrender And there was like a moment There's a very cinematic moment too because the gatling gun had to be like smoothed around and like maybe you have like action movies set pieces where this idea of like because billy the kid is watching this gatling gun get repositioned again and again and he's just like oh they now are now i'm they're coming for me now

I'm gonna get the galley now they're aiming at me Oh, no Now mcqueen at this point had lost all nerve I mean his entire life is going up in flames. His wife and kids are gone. He doesn't know where the fuck they are Like it said that he just sat there and said billy. I have lost my I have lost my mind And so as fucking mcqueen panicked billy the kid 18 years old at most Took charge and came up with an escape plan Two groups would leave under the cover of night with billy leading the first and mcqueen following with the second

The first group also included a law clerk named harvey morris who had moved to new mexico for his health And it got caught up in the war through simple bad luck And harvey morris is actually the great great great grandfather of slow talking morris Yes, the whole the mcnealy the whole the mcnealy fantastic character that he does uh just Wanted to

bake some bread All right, very good. Absolutely fantastic. What did the doctor recommend to harvey go where there's more dust? Why on earth would anyone go to new mexico for their health to clean out in air to burculosis, ma'am? Yeah, you get right. That's they had said dry dry mountain air TB and really the dust didn't get too bad until the dust bowl, which was that would be 1877 60 years after this

And now you can get a dust bowl in uh west hollywood. It's actually keto. Oh, isn't that nice having fun? Well ironically when billy's group burst out of the burning house Harvey morris the man who moved out west for his health was the only one Shot and killed it's kind of like the idea. I know it will uh go To Have

on Maybe don't just don't talk. Just just die already Just want you to die Well, the rest of the people in the first group including billy they returned fire Fled into the darkness and escaped both the army and dolens men Which is cool. He was hard, man They were on the heels of gatling gunfire like they ran it was he said he said it was a daring escape Yeah, but it sounds like it, but the second group which included McSween

They waited too long to make their move. Oh, and they were forced to take cover in the yard At that point a deputy named robert beckwith Stepped forward and told the remaining regulators that he was prepared to receive their surrender And instead somebody we don't know who Shot him in the fucking eye. Yeah Well, that is gonna hurt our chances of survival Oh, yeah, and after beckwith was killed the army and dolens men fucking everyone opened fire And alexander mcsween was gunned down as the physical representation of his dreams

Went up in flames behind him. He was the 25th and last fatality in the five month long Lincoln county war But for billy the kid while the lincoln county war was over So too was any hope he might have had for a normal life Remember he's indicted for two murders at this point. Oh, yeah buckshot roberts But on the other hand Seems like billy the kid didn't want a normal life anymore. No, man. This was the origin story He was begging for he wanted this. This is what I really do think now. We'll see billy. They're true billy the kid

I don't want your life. I had to do it. Yeah, he did though. He did. He did want that life But I think really like billy the kids But what he does next tells you everything about what billy how billy the kid wanted to be perceived While the other regulators who escaped they let out for pastors where they didn't have to fucking worry about murder warrants but billy the kid He stayed in new mexico for the rest of his short life His role in the lincoln county war had propelled him to celebrity status And over the next couple of years, he would become the outlaws outlaw

By the time of his death billy the kid would be an american legend And that's where we'll pick back up for the conclusion to our series on billy the kid Dammit, I get to think of a series that has been more in its informative The information is absolutely fantastic in this though. Very interesting. It's real thick but in new formative Yeah, I talked for a living informative If you want to read more about the lincoln county warской In deep in more detail and inco and also in wonderful comic book form

This the story of the lincoln county war by rick gary is fucking great those of you who loved like the big book series out there Rick Geary did something like every single one of them he's fucking fantastic I met the guy at Comic Con a couple of years ago and bought it directly from him and he I talked to him about his research process dude lives in New Mexico and it's a very very well researched anything young man he was kind of surprised to get the the questions he was getting at New York Comic Con we're not the kinds that he was expecting that

seriously next episode we are we're really getting into the the actual that even though we've done two episodes this is a real meat of the Billy the Kid story and what we'd all come to know about Billy the Kid Pat Garrett we're gonna run into him this is it's a fascinating part of history I want to thank everybody who have shown us fucking awesome support for our historical summers we have this theme summer we've been doing history all summer it's really fun we got one more historical series that we're gonna do after this and then we're getting right back in the fucking mojito yeah I got

the yeah did the the say ends last night for our patreon members and our discord server and like everyone was so insanely sweet about how much they've been loving the history stuff so thank you everybody very much for all your kind words on that we've been having a fucking blast with it I know you got me man you poison history and a fucking yeah that's been my whole fucking goal this whole time is to trick people in the learning history whoa oh don't expose it but yo we do but listen we're still we got weirdo topics coming up to you in the mix is a little tiny little palette cleansers all kind of stuff we're

really excited for we got coming up we got live shows in Detroit Columbus and Cincinnati that's right check that fucking bullshit out come on out and see our fucking see his dance and strut and fret absolutely get those tickets also thanks to everyone who came out in Milwaukee Des Moines Omaha and Minneapolis that was just such a fantastic group and we're really enjoying it is unfortunate we can't hug and touch because of the predicament the pickle we're all currently in but the questions that have been asked at the Q&A have been so wonderful really cool everyone is so sweet and so I just want to thank

we want we want to thank everyone for being so thoughtful and for the audiences they could not have been better people really are super excited to see you all as we continue on the road this year people have really been responsible and cool and we're just doing we're doing our thing man I'm so glad that we could still live a semblance of normal life during this time period while it is difficult to do I also want to say don't sleep on no dogs and spawn someplace underneath there are some shows like right now because someplace underneath is doing an incredible series right now about

human trafficking in Ohio and they've been doing really honestly some incredible work like so go check it out they're really awesome in and but listen to all the other fucking shows absolutely check check everything out here on the last podcast network you know your favorite shows keep on supporting them and of course buy the coffee get some big news coming up here relatively near future stuff alright everyone will thank you oh don't forget don't forget don't forget don't forget to go to your local comic book store and a request soul plumber issue one yeah cut off day for that is coming

up fairly soon so go right now as the now I asked your local home yes and if you get if you live too far away from a comic book store that's okay but you can read it digitally but if you can go to your local comic book store and support your local comic book store go and get to know your local comic book guy or gal there's a lot of really little bit of distance there's a lot of really really fucking awesome books going to go out right now like Department of Truth and Ice Cream Man and Immortal Hulk so go check out some shit at your local comic book store yes I'm so endlessly impressed with everything as far as that

comic book you guys are going to love it I promise you all right everyone hope everyone is healthy and happy out there hail yourselves hail Satan, hail Geen, magoos to Lations, hail me and I tell you what I'd certainly be quite the desperado you'd be like you'd be known as peach fuzz Zabrowski if you were in the west oh human vagina human vagina human vagina Henry Zabrowski you are it's a good thing we're ending the episode I've been I was in Poland my family was in Poland at the time I got a good old West Nickname for you park but you know why if you have to treat the meat especially yeah my nickname is tenderizer this show is

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