The notorious Henry McCarty, most popularly known as Billy the Kid, died on this day in 1881 from a gunshot wound at just 21 years old. After being orphaned six years earlier, he committed his first robbery in 1875 and fled across the border from the New Mexico Territory to the Arizona Territory, becoming a fugitive.
In 1877 he was arrested for murder but quickly escaped, nearly dying on his journey back to New Mexico. He began working for a businessman named John Tunstall in Lincoln County as a ranch-hand until his boss was killed by a legally organized posse seeking to seize some of his property. McCarty joined a large revenge posse known as the Regulators to avenge the murder. After several months of shootouts between the Regulators and other posses in a conflict now called the Lincoln County War, the U.S. cavalry intervened and the Regulators disbanded.
Everyone who participated in the “war” was pardoned except for McCarty, who testified as a witness to another murder in exchange for amnesty. But the authorities refused to let him go, so he escaped from jail, was caught again, escaped again, and was shot and killed by a sheriff while on the lam.
There’s an in-depth timeline of Billy the Kid’s life on the PBS website.
