Billy the Kid (literally translated as "Baby Billy") is an American criminal William Henry McCarthy. The story of this killer took place at the end of the 19th century. William owes his posthumous fame to Pat Garrett, the sheriff who took care of his case to the very end and later wrote a book about the most interesting pursuit of his life.
Billy the Kid Biography
William Henry McCarthy was born November 23, 1859 in New York. Very little is known about this man's childhood and youth. Billy the Kid went down in history thanks to his own criminal career. In the 1870s, the so-called "cattle wars" were constantly fought in Lincoln. We are talking about the bloody battles of local gangs for territory and criminal authority. McCarthy was a member of the Regulators clan. According to some sources, he committed the first murder of a man at the age of 18.
In 1881, Billy the Kid stood trial and was sentenced to the death pen alty. While waiting for the execution, Billy was able to escape, committing several more murders in the process. criminalmanaged to track down, and William McCarthy was killed during the arrest.
How was the baby-faced killer caught?
Following his trial, death row inmate William McCarthy, also known as William Garrison Bonney, Henry Antrim and Billy the Kid, was taken to the newly built County Sheriff's Office in Lincoln. Sheriff Pat Garrett was personally responsible for the detention of this criminal.
One day, during a short absence from the head warden, William made a daring escape, killing two employees of the department in the process. The sheriff, struck by such audacity, promised to personally catch the criminal and avenge his dead colleagues.
Billy the Kid escaped from custody on April 28, but it was not until July 14 that he was tracked down and attempted to be arrested. The perpetrator somehow made it to the suburbs of Fort Sumner and stayed with a Mexican family. As soon as Pat Garrett was convinced that he had indeed found Billy, he decided to detain the criminal. After waiting for darkness, the sheriff personally entered the bedroom of the owner of the house. Waking him up, he asked where McCarthy was hiding. Billy himself entered the room at strange sounds. The criminal, realizing that Garrett and his assistants were going to arrest him, tried to leave. During this attempt to escape, the sheriff fired twice, one of the bullets went right into Billy's heart. At the time of William McCarthy's death, he was only 21 years old.
The criminal was buried in a military cemetery near Rio Pecos. A year after the events described, Pat Garrettpublished the book The True Life of Billy the Kid. It is believed that it was thanks to this literary work that William became one of the symbols of the Wild West.
Memories of Billy and photo of the perpetrator
After William's death, many people who knew him personally will tell you that Bill was quite handsome and charming. He always smiled, joked a lot and laughed pleasantly. Billy the Kid, whose biography terrifies any normal person, looked just like many others of his peers. A short blue-eyed young man often became the soul of the company and enjoyed success with women.
Until recently, there was only one photograph of American serial killer McCarthy believed to exist. However, more recently, it was possible to prove the authenticity of the second picture, in which Billy is present. Helped in this Randy Guijarro - a collector who accidentally bought a ferrotype, which depicts a group of people playing croquet. By conducting the most modern scientific examinations, it was possible to prove that this is really a gang of "Regulators" on vacation.
References in popular art
Today Billy the Kid is one of the symbols of the Wild West. His story formed the basis of about ten feature films. Remarkably, interest in Billy does not fade in our time, after more than a hundred years since the crimes committed and the murder of the criminal.
There are also several songs dedicated to William McCarthy. characters drawn fromBilly the Kid can be found in modern computer games. The young killer from the Wild West also entered literary history. "The Disinterested Killer Bill Harrigan" by H. L. Borges and "The Law of the Frontier" by O. Divov are books based on the true story of William Henry McCarthy.
