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Apr 17, 2024 · Scholarly opinion is divided over whether that or William H. Bonney, Jr. (the name he used later, as in the trial), was his true name. Another hypothesis is that Billy the Kid was in fact Ollie L. (“Brushy Bill”) Roberts, who escaped, lived in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, rode in Wild West shows, and died in 1950 in Hico, Texas .
Henry McCarty (September 17 or November 23, 1859 – July 14, 1881), alias William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid, was an American outlaw and gunfighter of the Old West who is alleged to have killed 21 men before he was shot and killed at the age of 21.
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- He was orphaned as a teen. Little is known about Billy the Kid’s early days, but he was most likely born Henry McCarty in the Irish slums of New York City sometime in late 1859.
- The Kid’s first arrest came for stealing clothes from a laundry. Henry McCarty’s first run-in with the law came in 1875 when he assisted a local street tough known as “Sombrero Jack” in stealing clothing from a Chinese laundry.
- He played a prominent role in a frontier feud. Billy the Kid first earned his reputation as a gunslinger in 1878, when he participated in a bloody frontier war in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
- The Kid never robbed a train or a bank. Billy The Kid shooting down his foe who had taken refuge behind a saloon bar. Unlike other Old West outlaws such as Jesse James, Cole Younger or Butch Cassidy, Billy the Kid didn’t make his living as a bandit.
William H. Bonney, Henry Antrim. Early Life. William was considered a very honest 14-year-old when he became an orphan. He worked for his room and board for a hotel owner who took him in after his mother died. The hotel owner was impressed with his honesty and diligence, as were others.
Writers and filmmakers have often depicted William Bonney as the personification of the "free-running reprobate" of the Old West, of the sort whom the reformed outlaw Emmett Dalton wondered if "he symbolizes the undying anarchy in the heart of every man."
- Walter Noble Burns
- 1926
Late 1877. The Kid assumes the alias William H. Bonney. He is arrested and jailed in Lincoln County for possessing horses belonging to cattleman John Tunstall.
Oct 13, 2023 · By 1877, Henry McCarty fully adopted the alias William H. Bonney. That same year, he also got into a fight with a local blacksmith and accidentally shot him in self-defense. This led Bonney to flee Arizona by stealing a horse from the Apache tribe and traveling to New Mexico, where he met a gang of cattle raiders and linked up with Jesse Evans.
