New Mexico Governor Considers Pardon for Billy the Kid

Fox News ^

[Blue Turtle]

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is considering granting a posthumous pardon to Billy the Kid, angering descendants of Garrett who call it an insult to recognize such a violent outlaw.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Love Billy or hate him, he still murdered two people while escaping from the Lincoln jail.

[crghill]

I was at Texas Tech when Pat was there. We were both on the 9 year plan but we aren’t doctors.

Good times!

[doodad]

Pat? I thought we were quoting Joe Ely, LOL.

[crghill]

That’s right...I forgot he did that song first. Hat tip to Joe.

[Blackyce]

Regardles of the truth of that, that’s not what he was convicted of and wouldn’t be the subject of the pardon.

[Borges]

It wasn’t supposed to. It was meant to be an exercise in self mythology.

[bcsco]

Four confirmed personal kills. Frank "Windy" Cahill at Ft. Grant, AZ. Cahill was known to bully the kid and the kid, after one incident, took retribution. Joe Grant in Ft. Sumner, NM. Supposedly, playing poker with the Kid (unknowingly), Grant boasted he'd kill the Kid on sight. The kid asked to look at Grant's revolver, using the ruse to move the cylinder to it would fire on an empty chamber. It did, the Kid's didn't. James Bell and Robert Ollinger, the two deputies assigned to guard the Kid at the Lincoln County Jail (the former Murphy/Dolan store) in Lincoln. The Kid acquired a pistol, or got hold of Bell's pistol, and shot him in the back stairwell. He then got hold of Ollinger's shotgun (which Ollinger had left at the jail while taking other prisoners across the street for a meal), and shot him from an upstairs window as Ollinger ran to see why the shot had been fired. There were other shootings, to be sure, in which he was involved, and in which he likely was at least partly the cause of someone's death. Bill Morton & Frank Baker, Sheriff William Brady & deputy George Hinman, possibly Buckshot Roberts. But these are the four directly attributable to him. If there were others, and there may have been, they're not part of the record...

[bcsco]

Why is Richardson doing this?

The current (or very recent) sheriff of Lincoln County, along with another individual, have gotten Richardson's ear on this. They've tried to get the body exhumed so a DNA analysis could be taken.

The idea is that "Brushy" Bill Roberts, or one of the other claimants to the Kid's identity, may well have been the Kid, which would prove he wasn't killed in Ft. Sumner in July, 1881.

True West Magazine did a piece on this recently. There are a lot of questions from both sides of the fence, and Richardson, should have thought twice, IMO.