50 Fun Facts About Billy the Kid

A disputed image bought in a memorabilia shop in 2010 may show Billy the Kid playing which genteel lawn game?

Croquet is the game being played in the picture. If genuine, it would be the only image of the outlaw with his gang, but historians remain split on whether it shows him at all.

The long-held belief that Billy the Kid was left-handed came from which misleading source?

A tintype photograph made the outlaw look left-handed: the process produces mirror images, so the Colt that seems to hang on his left hip was really worn on his right.

The only authenticated portrait of Billy the Kid sold at a 2011 auction for roughly how much?

$2.3 million was the winning bid from businessman William Koch. The 2-by-3-inch plate survived only because a friend of the outlaw kept it after his death.

Which Lincoln County sheriff shot Billy the Kid dead in a darkened room in July 1881?

Pat Garrett fired twice in the dark and hit the 21-year-old outlaw just above the heart. He later had a book ghostwritten to answer claims that he had ambushed his target.

Billy the Kid, the most famous outlaw of the New Mexico frontier, is believed to have been born where?

New York is the birthplace most historians accept, in 1859. His widowed mother then took her two sons west through Indiana and Kansas before settling in New Mexico.

The governor who promised Billy the Kid a pardon, Lew Wallace, also wrote which bestselling novel?

Ben-Hur was completed in 1880 in the governor's palace in Santa Fe, and went on to become the best-selling American novel of the 19th century.

Billy the Kid's reported last words, asking who was there in the dark, were spoken in which language?

Spanish was the language of his final question, which translates as "Who is it?". The lawman waiting in the dark knew the voice and fired before any answer came.

In which 1989 film do two slacker teenagers recruit Billy the Kid to help them pass a history class?

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure has the pair befriend the outlaw in the Wild West, then pick up Socrates in ancient Greece. Dan Shor played the gunslinger.

Which Brat Pack actor played Billy the Kid in the 1988 hit Young Guns and its 1990 sequel?

Emilio Estevez talked his way into the lead: the director first wanted Kiefer Sutherland for the part. The film opened at number one at the US box office.

A 1966 low-budget horror western pits Billy the Kid against which classic monster, played by John Carradine?

Dracula is the villain of the 1966 double-feature oddity, which Carradine counted as his least favourite of all the films he ever acted in.

Billy the Kid, who used the alias William H. Bonney, was born with which name?

Henry McCarty was his birth name, unknown to the public for decades until a historian uncovered it in the mid-20th century. He adopted the Bonney alias in 1877.

In which New Mexico village was Billy the Kid killed and then buried beside two of his friends?

Fort Sumner, a former army post, is where he was shot at a friend's home. He was given a candlelit wake and buried the next day under a wooden marker.

Billy the Kid was shot around midnight after walking into which room of rancher Pete Maxwell's home?

The bedroom was dark, and the sheriff was already sitting inside questioning Maxwell when the outlaw walked in unexpectedly and failed to recognise the visitor.

During the Lincoln County War, Billy the Kid rode with which deputized posse of ranch hands?

The Regulators formed to avenge their murdered employer and at first carried legal warrants, so the gang that made the outlaw famous began on the right side of the law.

The murder of which young English rancher, Billy the Kid's employer, ignited the Lincoln County War in 1878?

John Tunstall was only 24 when members of a sheriff's posse shot him. Two of his ranch hands swore affidavits against the killers and obtained murder warrants.

Billy the Kid's only murder conviction was for the 1878 ambush killing of which Lincoln County sheriff?

William Brady was gunned down from ambush alongside a deputy. The guilty verdict was the only conviction secured against any fighter in the Lincoln County War.

After his 1881 murder conviction in New Mexico, Billy the Kid was sentenced to which punishment?

Death by hanging was set for 13 May 1881, but he never kept the date: about two weeks before it, he killed both of his guards and rode out of town.

Billy the Kid's most famous escape, in April 1881, was from the upper floor of which kind of building?

A courthouse in the town of Lincoln held him under guard on its top floor. He slipped his handcuffs on the stairs and used the loose end to club his guard.

During his 1881 jailbreak, Billy the Kid killed deputy Robert Olinger with which weapon, the lawman's own?

A shotgun that Olinger had left loaded in the sheriff's office was fired at its owner from an upstairs window as he came running towards the sound of gunfire.

Billy the Kid surrendered to a posse in December 1880 at which vividly named New Mexico hideout?

Stinking Springs is where a posse's siege killed gang member Charlie Bowdre and ended with four outlaws in shackles, met by curious crowds a few days later.

Billy the Kid was left an orphan in his mid-teens when his mother Catherine died of which disease?

Tuberculosis killed her in 1874, soon after the family settled in New Mexico. His stepfather had already walked out, and a year later to the day the boy was caught stealing food.

In which New Mexico town did Billy the Kid spend his early teens, lose his mother and commit his first thefts?

Silver City is where he was first jailed, and the local Herald's report of his escape two days later was the first story ever published about him.

Ten days after his first arrest for stealing food, the teenage Billy the Kid helped rob which business?

A Chinese laundry lost clothing and two pistols in the raid. Jailed for it, the boy escaped within two days and was soon a fugitive in the neighbouring territory.

The first man Billy the Kid killed, in an 1877 saloon brawl in Arizona, followed which trade?

A blacksmith named Frank "Windy" Cahill had bullied the teenager and threw him to the floor. The two wrestled for a revolver, and Cahill died of his wound the next day.

Before he became Billy the Kid, the young outlaw went by which nickname borrowed from his stepfather's surname?

Kid Antrim was the name he picked up as a teenage horse thief, thanks to his youth, slight build and clean-shaven face.

In the one authenticated portrait of Billy the Kid, the outlaw stands holding which make of rifle?

Winchester is the make: an 1873 model, held with its butt resting on the floor. He once boasted that with that rifle he could have beaten a whole armed crowd.

Which single word heads the stone memorial that Billy the Kid shares with two fellow outlaws?

Pals is carved above the three names and their death dates. An unofficial cemetery tour guide campaigned to pay for the stone in 1931, fifty years after the burials.

Billy the Kid's grave marker was stolen in 1981 and recovered days later in which distant state?

California is where it turned up, in Huntington Beach. New Mexico's governor had a county sheriff fly out to bring it home, and the grave sits behind iron fencing.

In December 1880, Governor Lew Wallace offered a bounty of how much for the capture of Billy the Kid?

$500 was all the territory put up, and the acting governor at first refused to pay it. Townspeople across New Mexico then raised over $7,000 for the sheriff themselves.

In 1879 Billy the Kid let himself be arrested as part of a deal with the governor to do what?

Testify about a murder he had witnessed: that was his side of the bargain, and he kept it. No pardon followed, so he slipped out of jail and went back on the run.

Which future Hollywood legend played Billy the Kid in the 1958 western The Left Handed Gun?

Paul Newman had already played the outlaw on live television in 1955, in the Gore Vidal teleplay that the film was based on.

Which singer-songwriter scored Sam Peckinpah's 1973 Billy the Kid western and acted in it as Alias?

Bob Dylan was hired only to write a title song, then scored the whole film and took a small role. The soundtrack gave the world Knockin' on Heaven's Door.

Which country singer played Billy the Kid opposite James Coburn in Sam Peckinpah's 1973 western?

Kris Kristofferson was 36 when he played the 21-year-old gunslinger, and it was he who brought the film's eventual composer onto the project.

Which rock star wrote the number-one hit Blaze of Glory for the Billy the Kid sequel Young Guns II?

Jon Bon Jovi was only asked to license an older song, wrote a new one instead and scored his sole solo chart-topper. He also has a brief cameo as a prisoner.

Which Hollywood star played the cattle baron in Chisum, a 1970 western about Billy the Kid's range war?

John Wayne played John Chisum, a real cattle baron of the Lincoln County War. President Richard Nixon cited the film at a 1970 press conference to explain his views on law and order.

Which American composer wrote the 1938 ballet Billy the Kid, famous for its borrowed cowboy tunes?

Aaron Copland wove real cowboy songs into the score, which ranks with Rodeo and Appalachian Spring among his most widely performed pieces.

Which millionaire producer directed The Outlaw, the censor-baiting 1943 Billy the Kid western starring Jane Russell?

Howard Hughes replaced the original director with himself, then spent years battling Hollywood's censors over how the camera lingered on his leading lady.

Which actor, later Doc Holliday in Tombstone, played Billy the Kid in a 1989 TNT television film?

Val Kilmer starred in a script by Gore Vidal, who was revisiting a story he had first dramatised for television back in the 1950s.

Which decorated World War II hero played Billy the Kid in the 1950 western The Kid from Texas?

Audie Murphy won the part after playing a juvenile delinquent in Bad Boy, and the film became the first Technicolor western of his long career in the saddle.

Which English actor plays the title outlaw in the television drama Billy the Kid, first shown in 2022?

Tom Blyth led all three seasons of the series, which was created by Michael Hirst, the writer behind Vikings and The Tudors.

Which New Mexico governor weighed a posthumous pardon for Billy the Kid in 2010 before turning it down?

Bill Richardson announced the refusal on his very last day in office, citing historical ambiguity over the clemency promised to the outlaw back in 1879.

Which elderly Texan claimed to be a surviving Billy the Kid and went to New Mexico's governor seeking a pardon?

Brushy Bill Roberts fared badly at the meeting, unable to recall key names and places, and died within weeks. His Texas hometown later opened a museum backing his story.

Which US president later gave the sheriff who shot Billy the Kid a customs post in El Paso?

Theodore Roosevelt stood by the old lawman through a stormy term, then dropped him after he passed off a saloon owner as a cattleman at a Rough Riders reunion.

Billy the Kid's parents shared which ancestry with the rival store owners he fought in the Lincoln County War?

Irish roots ran through both sides of the feud: the store owners he fought were Irish-American, while the employer he sided with was an Englishman.

How were Billy the Kid and his allies finally driven out of the McSween house in the 1878 Battle of Lincoln?

It was set on fire by the rival faction, and the defenders ran for it once all but one room was burning. McSween himself was shot dead in the confusion.

Before a fatal saloon showdown in 1880, Billy the Kid reportedly admired Joe Grant's revolver and secretly did what?

Set it to an empty chamber: he turned the cylinder so the next pull would only click. Grant then aimed at his face, the hammer fell on nothing, and the outlaw shot him.

Which New Mexico town's Gazette newspaper helped make Billy the Kid nationally notorious in December 1880?

Las Vegas, New Mexico, is also where curious crowds turned out to see him in shackles after his capture, and where an armed mob met the prisoners' train a day later.

Which author of The English Patient wrote the 1970 verse novel The Collected Works of Billy the Kid?

Michael Ondaatje, who first fell for westerns as a child in Ceylon, won one of Canada's top poetry prizes for the book, much of it told in the outlaw's own voice.

Billy the Kid stood trial for murder in April 1881 in which southern New Mexico town?

Mesilla hosted the two-day trial. The record shows the prisoner said nothing when sentenced; his famous defiant retort to the judge was invented later by a journalist.

Which close friend of Billy the Kid was shot dead when a waiting posse ambushed the gang in December 1880?

Tom O'Folliard was the only rider hit when the posse started shooting. He had been at his friend's side since the Lincoln County War, and the two now lie side by side.