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OPE Season 3 Episode54 Offseason Off Topic: Chasing Billy Part 1
23 Plays2 days ago
Aloha and welcome to another episode of OPE! This is the first episode of a series Iowa Joe is doing for the offseason, where he will bring in someone from a different area of content creation and have a chat. This is part one of a conversation with Billy the Kid Coalition Board Member and Chasing Billy host James Townsend! Iowa Joe and James take an abridged look at the life of Billy the Kid.
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Off-Season Topics
00:00:20
Speaker
Hey everyone, this is Iowa Joe here. I just wanted to take this moment to explain what this episode is going to be about. I tried to do it in the beginning of the recording, but I don't think I got my message off too well.
00:00:34
Speaker
With this being the offseason and with stories just kind of trickling in for the Packers, I figured I would kind of reach out into different topics just for this off season. I think I'm going to title these
Launch of 'Off Season, Off Topics' Segment
00:00:49
Speaker
up.
00:00:49
Speaker
I kind of mentioned at the beginning that I'm working on titles, but I think I'm going to go with off season, off topics. And basically what I'm going to do is bring in people from different outlooks, different from different areas of podcasting history, wrestling,
00:01:09
Speaker
Movies, music, everything else. And just bring them in talk to them about such a topic and release those episodes. Don't worry. Mike and I will still be doing Packer content.
Commitment to Packers Content
00:01:23
Speaker
But when it more starts picking up and when we start getting more storylines like camp and training camp and stuff like that, Mike is not gone. We're still together. We're just trying to come up with with shows for you guys to listen to that aren't the same rehashes that every other content creator out there is making. So please enjoy this episode.
Guest: James Townsend on Western History
00:01:51
Speaker
This is the first episode of off season off topic.
00:01:54
Speaker
i I talk, you'll hear more about it when the episode plays, but it's I'm joined by James Townsend from the Billy the Kid coalition and podcast chasing Billy.
00:02:09
Speaker
James and I talked for almost, for a little over two hours. I'm going to try to do my best to break this episode up into two parts. That way you guys don't have to sit here and listen, try to listen for a two straight hour thing. So this is gonna be part one with James Townsend and then next week will be part two.
Focus on Billy the Kid
00:02:29
Speaker
like always, you know give us let us give us feedback, let us know who you'd like us to talk to what would interest you if this episode was good maybe we can bring james back in talk a little bit more about that so i hope you enjoy it go pack go hello hello hello and welcome to ope the ohana packers edition podcast i am iowa joe i have given mike kuano a vacation for the next couple of weeks
00:03:00
Speaker
I figured since we kind of struggle with the off season episodes, I would just kind of do what I wanted to do, you know, basically because since I'm the benevolent overlord of the Ohana Packers Edition podcast, I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to have the people on I want to have on.
00:03:17
Speaker
This going the first episode of a solid run of what I'm thinking of calling the Ched Talk because, you know, Packers cheddar cheese, stuff like that. so Yeah, its it's it's a work in progress.
00:03:31
Speaker
But this week I have on James Townsend of the Billy the Kid Coalition, the host of the Chasing Billy podcast. And basically, because I am what I like to consider an Old West buff myself and a Billy the Kid fan, well, I guess not really fan, but, you know, I love the history of the Billy the Kid thing because, you know, when people think fan,
00:03:57
Speaker
They think, well, you're a fan of the killer, but hopefully we can break some of them myths here and now with James. James, thank you for joining us joining me on this episode.
James Townsend's Billy the Kid Research
00:04:09
Speaker
Super excited to be here. I appreciate you having me. You said you watched the show, and just I love that anyone tunes in is and is interested in this history.
00:04:18
Speaker
It's something we all share a passion for, so I'm happy to be here. And like I told you in my email, I'm really happy that somebody is keeping this stuff going.
00:04:29
Speaker
You know, it's there's too many kids out there that, you know, let's face it, the schooling systems are failing a lot in a lot of areas. And history is one of the things that they're taking out of of schools. And you're not learning as much as you did.
00:04:45
Speaker
But you know, this is a part of history. You know, Billy the Kid obviously is a big name. You know, there's a lot of of, what do you call it? There's a lot of media that is based around Billy the Kid and the stories. And, you know, when you when you think of the Old West, there's like three names that pop up the most.
00:05:06
Speaker
Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, Billy the Kid. So, you know, and I think we're probably around the same age, depending on So, you know, I'll be 39 this year and i was obviously the big movies when we were younger were the Billy the Kid movies, which were Young Guns and Young Guns 2.
00:05:28
Speaker
And I think a lot of people got their love of that from them. But I'm going to tell you a different story of how I got into Billy of the Kid. And then I'm going to ask you how you got into into Billy of the Kid. So I know you are.
00:05:43
Speaker
a big genealogy person just like I'm a big genealogy person and there was a story that always ran through with my dad's side of the family that one of his great grandfathers actually rode with Jesse James so never found out if there was any possibilities he's not a known name among the known ones that rode with him so we don't know about that but being 10 years old and finding that out oh my god you I wanted to read everything about you know old west and gunfighters and stuff like that and of course you know billy the kid beings that you know he was a kid at that time really kind of piqued my interest in all that stuff so with that telling of that story james how is it that you found your way to billy the kid well i
00:06:35
Speaker
I had a ah very good friend in elementary school. His name was Travis. and We're still friends, actually. So it's one of those fortunate friendships that that last quite a while. And in 1990, I think, when Young Guns 2 came out, I guess his dad wanted to go see it and drug us along because neither me nor my friend.
00:06:56
Speaker
really cared or knew anything about Billy the Kid. And I wasn't interested in Westerns at that time. I grew up on Star Wars, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones. Those were all my interests.
00:07:09
Speaker
Nothing wrong there. some reason, I don't know. yeah I guess we wanted to get out of the house, so we went and saw this movie. And i had not seen Young Guns 1, didn't know anything about Billy the Kid, had never heard even his name But I was transfixed by that story. And especially the way Young Guns 2 tells it. You know, it's very archetypal. It's very hero's journey, mythological. It really grabs everything that a person loves about a good story.
00:07:39
Speaker
You know, Young Guns 2 does that job. And so, yeah, that was the start of it. You know, and i I played Billy the Kid on the playground and with my friends and and, you know, grew up with Young Guns. ah But it was always just a...
00:07:53
Speaker
like anything else, just something you like. It wasn't something I was hugely fascinated with. And truth be told, not until the pandemic, when we all had to kind of stay in our houses, that I kind of got in my head that I wanted to write a novel.
00:08:09
Speaker
And I thought, well, how, what what topic would I write about? What things have mattered to me? What would be a good story? And so I thought, I grew up loving Young Guns Billy the Kid. I could learn the history of Billy the Kid, the real history, and do ah ah you know a more historical style novel for Billy. So I
Billy the Kid Coalition's Mission
00:08:27
Speaker
started researching the history so that I wanted to get to the point where I could tell the story, just rattle it off without consulting any books, without consulting any histories, that I would know it so well that I could just spout it off. And and once I could do that,
00:08:45
Speaker
I would be ready to write the novel. And so I studied and studied and read the books and found things in newspapers that I had not found in books.
00:08:56
Speaker
So I contacted Bob Bell and and James Mills at True West Magazine. And they they put one of my little discoveries in the 2021 issue they did about Billy the Kid. And that kind of got me into...
00:09:12
Speaker
the research in the historical field of talking to other people who who researched this and i just loved it and i i got involved with a few other people uh through facebook groups and things like that and eventually started the podcast started the youtube channel uh where i just wanted to talk about billy all the time so why not bring other folks in and and that's great because like i said it it's really keeping everything alive because you know that's how they used to do history was you just passed it down from member you know family to family person to person storytelling and stuff like that and of course things get bigger along the way you know you know the whole whopper story where the fish was like two inches and then by the time it got done it was like a four foot monster and and i feel that that happens a lot with people from the west
00:10:08
Speaker
And, you know, Billy specifically is one. Jesse James is another. And like I said, I'm from an area that is heavy with Jesse James and lore because i'm I'm in the part of Iowa that is just like right on the Iowa-Missouri border.
00:10:25
Speaker
And so it there's a bank probably an hour away from me that still has a big old placard that says Jesse James ross robbed this bank in whatever year it happened. And so, but there's all kinds of stories in that. And Billy's always interested me and young guns helped out and the books, I was hoping to find it before we recorded, but I must, I must've misplaced it in my hordes.
00:10:54
Speaker
I, one of the first books obviously for me was the Pat Garrett, Ash Upton, you know, authentic life of Billy, the kid. And you know, the,
00:11:07
Speaker
Really, the lore of it all, I didn't do the deep dive into it until later. like Kind of like you said with the pandemic with you, but mine was more like when I hit college, when i had I was living in the dorms more and I was able to read a little bit more with stuff.
00:11:28
Speaker
Where I didn't know the full story of like the Lincoln County War. And so I knew about Billy. I knew he was his involvement in there. and But a lot of my stuff either came from the authentic life or it came from Young Guns and Young Guns 2.
00:11:44
Speaker
And kind of like you were saying with your
Genealogy and Historical Preservation
00:11:46
Speaker
experience with the Young Guns 2, I didn't know there was a first one until years later and got to watch and everything. But, you know, that's great. So now you guys do have the Billy the Kid Coalition.
00:12:00
Speaker
When did that start coming around? I'm pretty sure it was established and formed in 2021. So around the time that I'm getting in into Billy the Kid and getting interested, this new group is is forming.
00:12:17
Speaker
And the nucleus of the group oh is comprised of two brothers, Josh and Jeremiah Slatton. And their idea was to take real world action and preserving this history and making sure it's handed down and to a new generation and that it's not lost. So many things about this history are already lost.
00:12:43
Speaker
And there's so many things that when we research a certain topic within this history, we find an aspect of it that we think if someone would have done this just 20 years ago,
00:13:00
Speaker
We would have been able to get information that's lost to us now because certain people have died and and things like that. So the idea behind the coalition was to form a ah nonprofit that did its best to mark these sites, to preserve the memories and the histories through academic pursuits and also real world research.
00:13:23
Speaker
stuff And so many projects include things like marking graves. A lot of these people, key players in the story of Billy the Kid, have been buried with no headstone for, you know, a century, over a century. And so that's been a big project. Marking sites. We just marked a Stinking Spring where Pat Garrett captured...
00:13:45
Speaker
Billy the Kid and and his three companions. And that that place has been lost twice to history, and it's never been marked. There's never been a marker there. So luckily, the the owner, it's on private property, and the owner was gracious enough to let us mark that. So things like that, just making sure that the sites are not lost and forgotten. And any kind of real-world work that we can do,
00:14:10
Speaker
We're not just hemmed in by marking things or and just anything that that presents itself that we can get behind, we're all about.
00:14:19
Speaker
Yeah, and that's great. I know that you guys also did the, what was it, you got a stone for Bob Ollinger. a There was, didn't you guys get like a placard for the Ellis House? No.
00:14:36
Speaker
um um one of our board members, Amy Ellis, Amy Ellis, that's funny, Amy Brochet, she just moved to Lincoln and bought the Ellis house. So one of our board members owns the Ellis house and lives there.
00:14:49
Speaker
And we are going to be marking it in September. We're having a little convention down there where we've invited all of our members to come out who are able, and we're going to have a little ceremony and market.
00:15:01
Speaker
But yeah, we're excited about that. Ollinger, don't think we've placed a stone for Bob, but the issue with Bob is that no one's really been aware of where he was buried for a long time. He was buried initially in Fort,
00:15:14
Speaker
Stanton's Cemetery, along with Charlie Crawford and Bob Beckwith. And so Bob Beckwith was shot at the burning of McSween's house.
00:15:26
Speaker
Crawford was shot shortly before that. They called him Lolly Cooler Crawford. He was from Iowa. and Sounds like it. Collinger, of course, was killed April 28th, 1881.
00:15:40
Speaker
So those guys were buried at Fort Stanton. And Nothing is marked. It's a it's kind of a sparse cemetery. Now, the thing is, around 1898, the army moved all of those bodies to the National Cemetery in Santa Fe.
00:15:55
Speaker
Well, in doing so, they they dug up those three guys as well who were not soldiers. And we've located them on the roster closely. they fit the descriptions, you know, because they made a ah ah roster of everyone they moved. And so see these three unknown, unknown white civilian, you know, and so comparing, comparing them with everybody else and ruling out everybody else, we found these guys plots at the Santa Fe cemetery. So one project is to, to get those graves marked as soon as possible.
00:16:26
Speaker
And that's good. That's good. yeah From a personal experience, you know, I, there's a cemetery where my mom has some relative i think it was like her two times great-grandfather and three times great-grandfather who were both civil war vets that were buried on their own property but then when the property sold to private people the stones all got knocked over and they're just a pile sitting there and it's like well you know yeah it's really sad and all that stuff so to see that you guys are able to do that work and and
00:17:00
Speaker
find that stuff and try to get, you know, give them their proper due. Although we'll get into a little bit of Olinger a little bit later, but he sounds like he was a piece of work. So. Yeah.
00:17:11
Speaker
And we'll get into it. I'm kind of on the fence about it. I'm probably the only person in Billy land that's on the fence about it, but, but yeah. And, and you mentioned genealogy and that's really one of the things that appealed to me about the coalition because genealogy for my own life in my own personal history has been almost sacred in its, you know, in how I approach it and and its rewards and just remembering my ancestors.
00:17:39
Speaker
So marking graves and visiting graves and and just researching that history has always been borderline a sacred experience for me personally. And so when I saw a group that was doing that historically, you know, in a wider on a wider platform of American history and not just personal family history, I really wanted to be a part of it because I got on board right when they were marking the grave of James Carlisle, Jim Carlisle, who was shot at the Great House Tavern.
00:18:12
Speaker
If you watch Young Guns 2, it's the guy that's pushed out of the door and then his own posse shoots him. And so that was what got me on board. But we've marked Chavez's grave. Even Jose chavezzi Chavez, who who was a prominent regulator, didn't have a headstone.
00:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's well, and you know, like you said, once people that know the stories and that start passing, then it starts getting a lost to history. And that's the sad part.
00:18:41
Speaker
You know, and I agree with you that with the genealogy stuff, I've done it for the longest time. And I've been able to trace both, you know, many branches of my family trees throughout stuff. So And you always, when you hear a name that's familiar, like, I wonder if we're related to that because i just finished James Mills Bandito Simpatico.
00:19:05
Speaker
Simpatico? On Audible. Yeah. And one of the names that kept popping up was was a LaRue. Well, my grandmother's mother, her main name was LaRue.
00:19:20
Speaker
So it's like, I wonder, you know, I just sit here wondering, you know, is is that possible? And I'm not sure. But that would be something I would have to dig down into and all that stuff because there's little maybe all over the place.
00:19:33
Speaker
And then the other one that I that jumped off the the jumped off to me was was a teacher that Billy had when he was younger that came from England whose last name was Richards.
00:19:48
Speaker
Yeah. And that my dad's grandma's maiden name was richards and they came from wales so it's like oh you know that that that makes you wonder on that stuff and and that's part of the reason why the genealogy thing and then getting into some of these people really sparked my attention with it and you know so it's great to hear that stuff but you know uh
00:20:16
Speaker
I know with your genealogy work, you've been trying to figure out the great mystery of Billy the Kid.
Challenges in Tracing Billy's Origins
00:20:24
Speaker
And that is where he came from. And I know with all the books and that that everybody has wrote and the stories that have been told, you know, ah ah they say New York and his mother was and was from Ireland.
00:20:41
Speaker
ireland and all that stuff with your research so far what have you kind of pinpointed with and obviously you're not going to get much much but what have you been able to kind of disertain with with what you've been kind of seeing well it's really it's really cool that you bring that up because the genealogy aspect of the kids origins is one of the things when i started researching for this quote novel i was gonna write the genealogy and coming across the statement that said nobody knows really where the kid is from i thought i've done a lot of genealogy and records in the 1860s are pretty good you know if you're comparing it to like the 1830s or something they've got to know where he came from there's just no way and so that moment of me saying that there's got to be a way to tell where he's from kind of flipped the switch from
00:21:41
Speaker
prospective novel writer to researcher, just avid researcher, because I just was not going to give up on this. And I still don't plan on giving up. But the answer is, after five years or so researching it and and many more years on ah on the parts of other people, that nothing definitively can be said about where he's from.
Speculations on Billy the Kid's Early Life
00:22:00
Speaker
i can tell you where I think he's from and why. And my answer is, I do think he was born in New York.
00:22:09
Speaker
I think they moved to Indiana. i think his father died in New York in around 1863. And he and his mother and his brother went to Indiana.
00:22:21
Speaker
I think that, well, I'll tell you why I think that first. First off, he had a brother. Billy the Kid had a brother named Joe. And of Joe's life, he went by Joe Antrim. So that's kind of how I refer to him, even though Billy and Henry.
00:22:35
Speaker
So Billy the Kid's real name was Henry. Now, I'll try to remember. In case I'm speaking to someone who, you know, who's listening to this that doesn't know much about Billy, I'll try to give a little backstory. Billy the Kid went by William H. Bonney.
00:22:48
Speaker
His real name was Henry McCarty that we know for sure. That's all we know. Henry McCarty. And when his mother later married a man named William Antrim, he took the name Antrim.
00:23:01
Speaker
So Henry Antrim. And when he got into trouble with the law a few years down the line, he started going by William H. Bonney. And so you'll hear a lot of people say that his name was William H. Bonney.
00:23:14
Speaker
But as far as we know, his real name was Henry McCarty. So Billy had a brother named Joe, Joe McCarty. When his their mother married William Antrim, Joe kept the Antrim name the rest of his life, Joe Antrim.
00:23:29
Speaker
So... A lot of people will say that William Antrim was a bad stepfather and that he was abusive and that just say terrible things about him they have no evidence for. But I like to think that since Joe kept that Antrim name his whole life, that maybe William Antrim wasn't as bad as people say he is.
00:23:47
Speaker
But anyway, Joe Antrim on the census records throughout his life, he died in 1930, consistently stated he was born in New York. So I think that I presuppose that Henry, Billy the Kid, was older than Joe.
00:24:05
Speaker
So I believe that Henry and Joe were both born in New York. William Antrim, Billy's stepfather, tried to get a Civil War pension in around 1915. On his application, he states, I've been married just once.
00:24:22
Speaker
She died in the 1870s. but She was married once before to a husband who died in New York City who had no military service that he knew of. So I place Billy the Kid's dad as dying in New York.
00:24:39
Speaker
I say around 1863 because Billy the Kid rode with this guy who was also a regulator, part of Billy's faction in the Lincoln War.
00:24:51
Speaker
His name was George Cove. And George wrote a memoir in around nineteen late 20s, early 30s. And he was quoted in a newspaper saying that me and Billy had a lot in common.
00:25:03
Speaker
One of the things that we had in common was both our dads died when we were four. So the traditional date of birth for Billy, at least as far as the year goes, is about 1859 to 1860. That would the dad's death around 1863. And the dad military service,
00:25:20
Speaker
and if the dad had no military service then it's very possible that he may have been involved somehow in the New York draft riots, which happened in July of 1863.
00:25:33
Speaker
In one census record, Billy's brother Joe said that he was born in April of 1863, which would mean that he never met his father if his father died in the draft riots. But there's no proof that the father was in the draft riots. That's just something, a neat little kind of coincidence I've come across. And and that's all you're going to get with Billy the Kid is suppositions and and kind of like inferences. And I always like to stipulate that.
00:26:01
Speaker
But anyway, they were born in New York, in my opinion. They went to Indiana. That's fairly established that they had an Indiana presence. His mother, Catherine McCarty, shows up in 1866 in the Indianapolis City Directory.
00:26:18
Speaker
Now, and What I find interesting is a month after Billy was killed in July of 1881, in August, the sheriff in Terre Haute, Indiana, was quoted in an article saying, I remember Billy the kid when he lived here.
00:26:36
Speaker
He lived in Terre Haute, but his mother lived in Indianapolis. And I found that interesting. ah my my My companion in the coalition, Jeremiah, he disagrees with me here, but I really think that this is legitimate and that this is an authentic memory because a month out from his death is a little too quick for post-death legends to be foreman.
00:27:01
Speaker
And they hadn't even released his whole name yet. And so... This sheriff in Terre Haute had to have some idea of who Billy was before it got released in the press, because all they were saying in the press was his name was McCarthy.
00:27:14
Speaker
So this this sheriff knew it was a kid named McCarty whose mother lived in Indianapolis and who he had arrested a little bit as a young kid Terre Haute. So that's a very telling placement that we can place Billy in Terre Haute, his mom in Indianapolis,
00:27:34
Speaker
And then sometime around 1870, she hooks up with William Antrim in a platonic way. i don't mean she hooked up with him, but she aligns trajectory with William Antrim. And they move to Wichita. We really are digging into some deep dives.
00:27:52
Speaker
hes so Yeah, so they move to Wichita, Kansas, and then they take off after that, after a couple years there to New Mexico. But But yeah, so it's all circumstantial.
00:28:05
Speaker
So many people said Billy was from New York and that Billy told him that. He could have been lying for sure. But William Antrim says in 1915 that his ex her his deceased wife had a ah husband before him who died in New York. Joseph Antrim says he was born in New York in every census he gives. So like there's just just a lot of New York tossed around there for me to discredit it.
00:28:30
Speaker
And I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting because this is just all off the cuff. I don't have any records in front of me. but So yeah, New York to Indiana to Kansas to New Mexico. That's the general outline of Billy's travels.
00:28:44
Speaker
Now, I know, and for those that are listening that might not know, they really didn't keep great birth certificate records at those times. It it was it was kind of hit or miss.
00:28:58
Speaker
But beings that, and and this is from my understanding of things, and I could be, you know, talking to an expert on this, and you might know a little bit more about it than I do on it.
00:29:10
Speaker
I want to say that they said that Catherine was a bit of a religious person. Would it be possible to, that she would have had both, oh well, at the time, young Henry and Joe,
00:29:27
Speaker
you know, baptized, would it be possible to try figuring out maybe, you know, okay, well, they lived in, they could have lived in this district. This would have probably been the nearest church. Maybe there would be some kind of baptismal records for these two.
00:29:42
Speaker
yeah or is that something you've tried? Well, I haven't really tried to access the records that aren't digitally available. And and and if they were Catholic, then there would be more chance of there being some kind of digital availability.
00:30:01
Speaker
Right. But I kind of suspect that Catherine was Presbyterian. I don't know how religious she was, but I think she was a little religious enough to, uh, that right when Billy died, there was an article that popped up and it said it was written by the editor of the paper that,
00:30:20
Speaker
And he said, we still remember Billy when he was a promising young man who could, quote, recite the entire Ten Commandments and and a couple other religious things.
00:30:30
Speaker
So it kind of implied that perhaps Billy and Joe might have got some religious education in addition to going to school in Silver City. even in Terre Haute, that might have been why Billy was in Terre Haute and the mom in Indianapolis. Maybe she enrolled him in school there.
00:30:47
Speaker
But it is entirely possible.
00:30:51
Speaker
Is it possible maybe that they had some kind of family down in Terre Haute that, you know, while Catherine was trying to get established that they could have, you know, said, hey, can you watch the kids while I try setting up house up here?
00:31:05
Speaker
Absolutely. And i've I've scoured the records for McCarty's. I did find one that was really interesting. There's a guy named, I think it's, Jeremiah McCarty or James J. McCarty, who is on the 1860 census or 1870 census. He's married to a woman named Cornelia McCarthy, right, or McCarty.
00:31:29
Speaker
And the answer interesting thing is this James McCarty was born in Indiana and had lived in Indiana. i mean, born in Indiana, census locations in Indiana.
00:31:42
Speaker
But Cornelia and her son Henry only show up on this one census and she's married to this James McCarty. And it says that she was born in New York and Henry was born in New York.
00:31:56
Speaker
And so if if James is in born in Indiana and on every census in Indiana, how did this New York born mother and son end up there living with him? And this is in the area of Terre Haute and Vigo County.
00:32:10
Speaker
So it's very interesting, but it seems... like according to all the records i've looked at that this cornelia died just a few years after that census right and so and this henry might be one that pops up uh in further subsequent sense since the size since i how would you pluralize census but anyway i just throw the extra s's on there so i've kind of ruled them out but it's still It's always a puzzle in my head. Like, are they connected somehow? You know, did Catherine have these McCarty connections from New York to Indiana?
00:32:47
Speaker
It's fascinating. And and I know a lot of listeners might not know anything about Billy and we kind of get into the weeds. And it's so easy for me to forget, like, hey, let me just dive into this, like, you know, seven years of research and with all the basics for these listeners who might not know. But, it and you know, are you going to do?
00:33:05
Speaker
Like Tony Soprano says. well i will almost say that you know most of the listeners of this show usually are just uh nfl fans football fans green bay packer fans so i'm hoping to give them at least a little education on stuff because like i said this is the off season there's not much to talk about so so now there's there's obviously the elephant in the room with bonnie and i know when i was i was listening to this this simpatico that
00:33:38
Speaker
Was it Nolan that came up with the theory that Bonnie could possibly be Catherine's maiden name?
00:33:50
Speaker
And that they supposedly found a couple of Bonneys over in Ireland. And obviously there's the famous pirate Anne Bonny that was Irish. and all that but is that is that a possibility or do you are you of the opinion that that was just a uh like a pin name that the kid was kind of trying to take so again there's no really way to be aggressively right or wrong about this
00:34:22
Speaker
but I've seen no evidence to indicate that Bonnie was in any way a family name. So the only time Catherine shows up on record, she's Catherine McCarty, widow of Michael.
00:34:32
Speaker
And so we just don't know what her maiden name was. I lean in the direction of Billy just taking Bonnie because he liked it or saw it somewhere.
00:34:43
Speaker
But I could be wrong. And it could be Catherine's maiden name. There's just no records that tell us one way or the other. So you just kind of Got to pick which one you want to lean towards and and hope you have some good reasons why.
00:34:55
Speaker
In this case, I don't really have any good reasons other than I haven't seen anything, any reason to suspect it's a family name. But there's very little out there.
00:35:06
Speaker
Right. And you know, this is all guesswork. And until that day that somebody invents a time machine and we can actually go back and and visit some of these spots, you know, that's that's where we're at. It just, yeah you know, like you said, they don't just pop out of nowhere. Somebody's, you know, there's information somewhere that, you know, maybe one of these days the coalition can fund the trip to Ireland and you guys can scour the the stuff over there for it. But because you got to think that there's at least a county over there that that lays claim to well you know maybe this is our the we were the county that popped out you know billy the kid or whatever yeah um and and so mean that's the problem i mean it's just the amount of funding this stuff takes because that's why when i when you asked me about the the one thing i was like well only digitally have i looked at these records because
00:36:04
Speaker
There's even digitally, you know, the memberships that we have to pay to sites like Ancestry and newspapers and all these archives. It's it's absurd, honestly. And then when when it comes to all of the real world travel that would need to be done, you know, the answer to these questions might be in a library somewhere in in a collection of interviews that researchers have already done on Billy the Kid and just nobody's looked at Because it's like these researchers from the forties and fifties, they die and they, they leave all of their collections to these libraries.
00:36:41
Speaker
And, you know, one researcher will go in there and maybe the sixties and get the info they want. And then that research is just copied and copied and copied. And nobody goes back to the original documents and sir looks through every box, you know, and that's just, that's how it is. and, and so the answer may already have been discovered and just lost again. and And let's face it, we're in the day and age where unless you can type it into Google search bar and pop it up nobody wants to do the legwork with it. And and yeah that that's the hard part about it.
00:37:18
Speaker
So Billy and family end up in in
Billy the Kid's Early Troubles
00:37:24
Speaker
New Mexico. Mm-hmm. They, you know, obviously Catherine dies of at the time it's called consumption, but we know it as as tuberculosis, which is, you know, horrible. You know, if anybody is an old west fan that they know that's the the famous disease that Doc Holliday was suffering through and all that stuff.
00:37:45
Speaker
And so, you know, you got to believe that hit the family hard. And we know that you know William Antrim, Billy and Joe's stepfather said, you know I don't want to deal with the kids, so I'm going to leave them you know with people that Catherine kind of had been friendly with down there. and Billy is pretty much left to his own devices.
00:38:17
Speaker
But it sounded like that he at least got along with the people that he was supposed to live with. It wasn't until he started kind of getting in trouble that they said, all right, well, you got to you got to move on because we're not kind of going to deal with that stuff.
00:38:33
Speaker
But, you know, and really, this is just a quick overview of years of stuff with Billy that, you know, or not years, but at least hundreds of stories that can be told with him.
00:38:45
Speaker
But no let's let's go up to Billy's first crime. When do we start finding out Billy you know it let's not say troublemaker because you know like i said he's had some stuff with him but you know when does billy start towing the the unlawful line right well you know i'll say this that pretty much everybody who knew billy personally liked him you you will rarely find any first-hand account of people that knew billy
00:39:19
Speaker
that say that they didn't like him or that he wasn't a charming, almost good person, which is really odd for an outlaw. Even Pat Garrett, when he killed him, seemed really, really sorry about it and and spoke up for his good character. It was really weird.
00:39:36
Speaker
So it's odd. You kind of think of this kid who Catherine, his mother died in 1874.
00:39:45
Speaker
He was about 14, you know, and it the the frontier world of the 1800s, it's merciless. and William Antrim, I can't say if he was a good man or a bad man, but he was certainly ill-suited to be a stepfather.
00:40:05
Speaker
And he certainly farmed his kids out, Joe and Henry, to whoever would take him in town.
Billy's First Crime and Escape
00:40:12
Speaker
And the people that took him, have good memories of Billy. the The one guy, it may have been Richard Knight or the Truesdells, they said he was a good worker, that all the other boys stole, but Henry never stole, and things like that. But somehow Billy got tied up with this guy named George Schaefer, who went by the name of Sombrero Jack.
00:40:33
Speaker
And this is a year after his mother died in Silver City. And Sombrero Jack stole some laundry and a couple revolvers from this Chinese laundry.
00:40:45
Speaker
you know and And there was a lot of Chinese immigration in the area. And so a lot of people looked at Chinese folks as kind of like second class citizens at the time.
00:40:58
Speaker
And if you read the newspaper article, It indicates that this guy, Charlie Sun, was a kind of like one of the Chinese immigrants who had assimilated into Western culture. He'd lost his, you know, his Asian wardrobe and things like that. So so they they stole this this laundry and these guns from Charlie Sun, this Chinese immigrant launderer.
00:41:20
Speaker
And. It doesn't sound like a lot now, but back then, that's a lot of money. These fine clothes, these shirts, the revolvers alone were probably worth a pretty penny. And apparently, George Schaefer just asked Billy to stash some of the loot.
00:41:34
Speaker
So Billy was living with a woman named Mrs. Brown at the time. She was running a boarding house, and he just put them in his trunk in his room. And Snoopy Mrs. Brown came in one day and found them, just opened the trunk and saw...
00:41:50
Speaker
saw the guns and everything, or he may have been wearing a new shirt. Who knows? Maybe she got suspicious. But anyway, Sombrero Jack took off. He left town. So that just left Billy with the stolen laundry. So Billy's first real crime on on record is stealing laundry.
00:42:07
Speaker
And the sheriff at the time was a guy named Harvey Whitehill. And he took Henry and he put him in the Silver City Jail, which... you know, it's not this huge penitentiary. It's just a ah ah small jail, couple cells, a hallway to walk down, sturdy door that they, they put in and bragged about that no one was escaping from this, this little jail they built.
Life as an Outlaw Begins
00:42:31
Speaker
and White Hill even said he had gotten onto Henry and Billy before for stealing butter. So, so Billy was showing some signs of petty theft, but nothing too bad. But, uh,
00:42:42
Speaker
Whitehill later said he put Henry in jail for stealing the laundry just to scare him. But in Henry's mind, in Billy the Kid's young mind, he's he's in jail for for theft. And the district court is coming to town soon. So he's got maybe a month or so to just languish in jail, which is not a good prospect. And then once they come, once court is held, you're you're looking at maybe maybe they'll send you to the penitentiary in Leavenworth or something. You just don't know and what's going on in his head. So Billy is a small kid. he He's always remarked upon as being very small for for whatever age he is.
00:43:20
Speaker
So he turns on his charm and he convinces the Sheriff Whitehill to let him, you know, when Whitehill leaves for the day, he asks him just to lock the door, unlock Billy's cell and let him walk the hallway so Billy can get some exercise.
00:43:34
Speaker
So... Whitehill agrees. Whitehill doesn't think, you know, you can't escape through this, this door, this huge door we've got put in here, the bars on the window, there's no way the kid's getting out.
00:43:45
Speaker
So, uh, he agrees. He unlocks the cell that Billy's in and says, okay, once I shut this front door, you can walk the hallway or whatever. So, and there's a fireplace there in the jail.
00:43:58
Speaker
And so, uh, you know, night comes on and Billy squirms his way up that fireplace. And, one when, when, when white Hill and his jailer come back the next day and see Billy gone, uh, they're looking around outside and there's this Mexican, you know, sheep herder or something. He's like, who are you looking for?
00:44:21
Speaker
White Hill says, uh, this kid escaped. He said, yeah, he climbed through the chimney. He was covered in soot and he took off that way. So, uh, It was a small chimney, according to Whitehill, but the kid was wiry enough to get up it.
00:44:34
Speaker
And that was his first entry into crime. And he probably still would have been all right. But in his young mind, you know, that was a serious offense. He was now a jailbreak a kid. He was ah ah a convict on the run and he took off to Arizona.
00:44:50
Speaker
And that was the start of his journey into outlawry. Just stealing some clothes. crazy. Well, and he didn't even really steal him. It was the other guy that stole him, and he was just aiding and betting.
00:45:04
Speaker
That's exactly what the paper said. that Even the newspapers knew it. When they reported it, they said it was Jack that done the stealing, and the kid was just holding it. and And Jack is skinned out, is what they said.
00:45:16
Speaker
So, yeah, he was just a but dumb kid accomplice, and and White Hill's probably telling the truth. He was probably just going to scare the kid straight, but billy was like you know they're gonna hang me i gotta to get out of here well and i'm sure hanging around the guy like sombrero jack really didn't help him in that sense because you know hey we can't get caught with this because this is going to happen so you know make sure you're hiding this good and but it also you know not to get into the psychology of things too much because obviously i'm not a psychologist or anything but
00:45:51
Speaker
you know looking through a lot of the kids history just looks like he's looking for that that i don't want to say father figure but that that figure in his life that he can he can pattern himself after and you know it just it it just seems like he ran into the wrong you know instead of shadowing white hill he shadows jack so you know it it's one of those things that what's the poem the two roads diverge and and you know which one are you going to take and he just ended up taking the wrong one so you know we know that's a good observation if you if you look at the the the rest of his life he seems to be doing that his whole life yeah and still he's just left alone because the next guy he pals up with is johnny mackie
00:46:45
Speaker
who's a horse thief. And then, and then he he gets scared out of Arizona and he teams up with Jesse Evans and then that goes sour. And then he finally teams up with someone who, who could teach him a thing or two, uh, John Tunstall and Tunstall gets killed. And then from then on out, you know, he's
Seeking Help from Stepfather Antrim
00:47:04
Speaker
just on his own. So that, yeah, that's a good analogy.
00:47:08
Speaker
So now I'm kind of jumping around here because, like I said, this is just going to be an abridged a version of events. But we know his first kill is Wendy Cahill, who is a bully.
00:47:21
Speaker
And that that's really what sent him down the road. How old is Billy at the time of his his first kill? He's about 16. ye And this is in Camp Grant, Arizona. It's near... a military post, and he's a known horse thief at this time.
00:47:40
Speaker
Him and his pal Johnny Mackey have been stealing horses, and he's gotten in trouble a couple times. So he's he's definitely an outlaw. He's a horse thief and a gambler. And there's this place called Atkins Cantina.
00:47:55
Speaker
And the kid would go there and deal money and, you know, just have a good time. And there was this guy named Frank Cahill, apparently he was called Wendy Cahill for just running his mouth.
00:48:09
Speaker
And he was a big, blustery kind of guy. And there's a few different variations in the story, but basically, you know, Cahill just comes in and is messing with Billy and and just bullying him physically.
00:48:23
Speaker
And they they get into it, call each other names, and then and they they take it outside. And then right outside of Atkins Cantina, Cahill just pins Billy to the ground and just starts beating him.
00:48:36
Speaker
And Billy pulls his gun and shoots Cahill in the gut and takes off, just runs. And so Cahill dies the next day.
00:48:47
Speaker
So he's got time to tell folks what happened, talk about it, dictate his will and all that. But they seem to blame Billy. You know, the newspapers say there was a coroner's jury called and it was determined to be unjustified homicide, which is odd because it's clearly in in nearly all accounts, all accounts, basically it's self-defense.
00:49:08
Speaker
So right it's odd. You have to kind of surmise maybe they had something against Billy or maybe he ran prematurely and would have got off. But it's it's just hard to say. And you never know back then, you know, the right people could get into, you know,
00:49:23
Speaker
the right friends of Cahill could have said this or, you know, hey, the it wasn't like it is now where we have, you know, there'd have been a half a dozen people with their camera phones out recording the whole situation.
00:49:39
Speaker
and that's that's the thing. In 1875, two years before that, Billy's friend Johnny Mackey, this is a guy, Billy's partner in crime with this Johnny Mackey guy. Johnny Mackey was playing poker in 1875.
00:49:52
Speaker
And this this much larger guy started running his mouth at Johnny. And they got into it. And the guy stood up from the poker table and approached Johnny.
00:50:04
Speaker
And Johnny pulled his pistol and shot the guy through the throat. And fairly certain the guy survived, but Johnny was arrested and went to trial for it.
00:50:15
Speaker
And they let him off. And the judge said, even though the other bigger guy was unarmed and Johnny shot him in the throat, the guy was so much bigger and so much of a threat to Johnny that it was self-defense.
00:50:28
Speaker
And if you it's almost the exact same situation Billy went through two years later. But for some reason, in Billy's case, it was determined to be just unjust you know murder.
00:50:39
Speaker
And you have to wonder, was Cahill just really respected by the right people in town? you know right and that's another thing that seems to go against billy's favor later on in life too is that you know the right people were in the right power that that really hindered him so kind of jumping ahead here we know well just to go back a little bit uh after if if i remember right from the simpatico uh billy actually goes to find his stepfather in arizona and tells him what happens
00:51:14
Speaker
and antram's like no get hell away from me you know you've got too much heat on you so you wonder about the the relationship there where okay well you know there might have been that strain of a relationship where you know most of time if there was a good relationship okay you did maybe we need to get you hit out here or go to mexico or go here or go here you know he was just playing like no get tell away from me there's too much heat on you this is actually a great illustration of what it's like to do Billy history because number one, we we don't know for sure that he visited Antrim.
Joining John Tunstall in Lincoln County
00:51:48
Speaker
So even hacks up in the air, but but if he did, there are two versions of how that went down. So in the one version, Billy visits him like in Georgetown or something. And Antrim says, well, if that's the kind of boy you are, I don't want anything to do with you. Get out of here. And in another version,
00:52:04
Speaker
Antrim gives him some cash and says, this is all I have. You know, good luck to you. So like, you've got an event that you don't even know happened. But if it did, you've got two outcomes. And that basically sums up all of Billy history when you try to study it.
00:52:19
Speaker
okay well and see you just gave me a little bit more information to it so you know that's you know that that helps my case with it too so but you know that's still kind of interesting that either if you go by either story it's still all right well just get the hell away from me i think yeah antrum was such a bad stepdad why did billy go to him in the first place that's interesting too right and it might have been just that he was hoping to find a place to lay low for a while right you know that would have been You know, I think at the time they said Antrim was mining.
00:52:52
Speaker
So, you know, a miner's camp is kind of an easy way to get lost in because everybody's... So we jump ahead a little bit and Billy's just kind of doing his thing, you know, with the horse Steven and powing around and all that.
00:53:06
Speaker
And you mentioned that he kind of teams up or gets involved with this John Tunstall. And... i what's I'm going to let you tell it.
00:53:17
Speaker
What's the biggest myth about the John Tunstall-Billy the Kid relationship? Well, it's always a mentor, all older mentor, young you know mentee, young student.
00:53:32
Speaker
And and it that's just not the case. Tunstall was in his 20s. So when when Billy got hooked up with Tunstall, he was not in his 40s or 50s, like you'll see in shows and movies.
00:53:47
Speaker
Tunstall was a guy from England,
Tunstall's Influence and Intentions
00:53:49
Speaker
big businessman. He had a rich dad who funded all of his stuff, and he came over, essentially ended up in Lincoln, New Mexico. His goal was to start a ranch, a store, a bank, and basically gain a monopoly on Lincoln County.
00:54:05
Speaker
That put him in direct opposition to a guy named Lawrence Murphy and his Padawan, Jimmy Dolan. and so it basically, Jimmy Dolan and and Lawrence Murphy already had a monopoly on the county.
00:54:22
Speaker
And so here comes this Englishman who wants to get his own hand on it. So that's where the conflict comes in. The the issue is Murphy and Dolan were crooks. they They were cruel holders of monopoly. They they It sounds like I'm talking about the game. they They were cruel. They had a tight grip on Lincoln, right?
00:54:45
Speaker
Tunstall would have started a monopoly. He was a... I got to saying that word. It starts to sound weird the more you say it. But Tunstall was... He was not a noble guy. a lot of times in the movie, he's painted as just an honest, good old businessman. And in a sense... Typical English gentleman.
00:55:04
Speaker
Yeah, but in another sense, he was a capitalist. He came here to make money. and make as much as he could at the expense of other people. He still would have exploited people. just He would have exploited them within the law, which was a huge progression in the right direction from Murphy.
00:55:23
Speaker
So he wasn't like an altruistic, compassionate savior of Lincoln County. he would have He once told his dad, I want to make 50 cents off of every dollar spent in Lincoln.
00:55:34
Speaker
So like, that's quite a profit. I mean, this guy wanted to make money, but he would not have been sinister like Murphy was. Murphy conned the people out of money and was the he skirted the law. He was the law. you know So there's there's
Media's Role in Billy's Legend
00:55:51
Speaker
that.
00:55:52
Speaker
the the The myth that Tunstall was this benevolent chap who came in and was just going to set things decent, but the then also the the myth that he was this older mentor.
00:56:05
Speaker
He never mentions Billy in his letters back home, even though he mentions tons of other people. So we don't even know how often or how close he and Billy were. But at the very least, Billy had found some honest work.
00:56:18
Speaker
And he definitely found some good friends in Dick Brewer and Fred Waite and other people who became regulators along with him. So he did have good influences. He had good mentors who were showing him the ropes. And he may have gone straight if things had turned out different.
00:56:36
Speaker
And pretty much what happens is, you know, it... This is where I say that the reason I like Young Guns and Young Guns 2 a lot more is they stuck to the story a little bit more often.
00:56:50
Speaker
Yeah, things got a little out there with the way they did it, but you know the next thing we know, Tunstall's getting murdered by a posse of men that were basically...
00:57:03
Speaker
working for murphy and dolan and all those and i appreciate you throwing out the padawan there for dolan you know so ah let talking do um so now we get into really the big lore of of billy the kid because this is pretty much what makes and really he's not going as billy the kid at this time that becomes but let's Would you say it it was more of a literary thing that that Billy the Kid was? Because he tended to be going more like Kid Antrim or just the kid.
00:57:42
Speaker
It wasn't until like more towards the end of his life that he was known as, quote, Billy the Kid. Well, what's funny is I don't I would wager that he was never known as Billy the Kid to to his friends or himself.
00:57:57
Speaker
And Yes, you're correct. When he first came to town, he was Kid Antrim. And that's what he was called in Arizona, Kid Antrim. And then as he assumed his William H. Bonney name, it became the Kid.
00:58:12
Speaker
You know, people just called him Kid. and And when they started calling him Billy, i i think, you know, it's my claim. And I think I can back this up.
00:58:24
Speaker
Actually, explicitly back this up with the conversation that's recorded. But I think people called him Billy Kidd. What's up, Billy Kidd? There is no the. It's just Billy Kidd.
00:58:35
Speaker
So much so that I think some people misidentified his last name as Kidd, K-I-D-D. But but possible there's actually, and I'm jumping ahead in the story, but they have this military inquiry where they they look into the actions of this guy named Colonel Dudley.
00:58:54
Speaker
And they call all these witnesses and they call everybody that was in the Lincoln War to to give testimony. And they call William H. Bonney. And so we have on record transcribed the conversation between Bonney and Dudley and others when he's on the stand.
00:59:12
Speaker
And Colonel Dudley asked him, are you known as Billy Kidd? And he said, yeah. And then like two questions later, he says, are you known as Billy the Kid? And he said, I've already answered this. I'm known as Billy the Kid, but not Billy the Kid. And so he spells it out crystal clear right there in his own words. So that's actually something we have from the the lips of the kid himself, you know, about what he's called and and how he's addressed.
00:59:38
Speaker
But Billy the Kid was basically a creation of the press around 1880, you know, when he started getting headlines and they started sensationalizing his story.
00:59:49
Speaker
They dubbed him Billy the Kid and it stuck and it's still still with us. Do you think possibly that if he was going by Billy Kid,
01:00:00
Speaker
that could fit into the whole pirate motif with the william bonnie you know billy kidd type thing i' wondered because captain kidd i think was a big yeah i think even people remember him reading captain kidd dime novels and so uh i think it definitely there could be some crossover there that maybe he was going by billy kidd and it became the kid it's really hard to say Because I do remember from the simpatico that, you know, one of his favorite things to do when he was a kid was play pirates.
01:00:32
Speaker
Yes. And it would just make sense that he just started pulling these pirate names out. I mean, these are two names. You've got the pirate and Bonnie, and then you've got Captain Kidd.
01:00:44
Speaker
you've got William H. Bonnie, the kid. It's like, come on.