When I was first diving deep into all the Billy the Kid scholarship back in the last century doesn’t that sound ridiculous? much heavy lifting had already been done by my go-to researchers, Philip J. Rasch, Nora True Henn, William A. Kelleher and Frederick Nolan. Even then folks thought there was little more to find out.
LINCOLN How’d Billy get the gun?
It will be 140 years ago on Wednesday, April 28, that outlaw Billy the Kid shot jail guard J.W. Bell on a staircase in the Lincoln County Courthouse, setting in motion his escape from the gallows, and adding another layer of gloss to his legend.
Billy the Kid escaped from the old Lincoln County Courthouse, pictured here, on April 28, 1881, killing two deputies in the process.(Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)
Bell stumbled down the steps and out the courthouse’s back door before dying. Only moments before, the hapless guard and his prisoner, the Kid, had entered the building through that door after a visit to the outhouse.