Scholars uncover answers and create more questions on the outlaw’s life and family from New York to New Mexico.This past year has been a watershed in terms of new scholarship on Billy the Kid. Here, in a True West exclusive, are the new finds you need to know about.
True West Magazine
A gunfight at the OK Hotel spurs a controversy.
Rose of Cimarron was first introduced to readers in 1915 in a little red paper-covered book titled
Oklahoma Outlaws.
The book was prepared by a newspaperman using information supplied by Bill Tilghman, a respected lawman in Oklahoma Territory in the 1890s. It was sold at showings of the photodrama,
Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws, which was scripted primarily by Tilghman. In the book and movie portrayal of the Ingalls battle between 13 lawmen and six members of Bill Doolin’s gang, Rose of Cimarron makes a dramatic exit from the hotel, carrying a rifle through a hail of bullets to her wounded lover, outlaw Bitter Creek Newcomb.
Hudson Reporter
Patricia G. Horan, 80, who made her mark in publishing, writing and editing, died on Dec. 30, in Asheville, N.C. The cause of death was complications related to Covid-19. Known as Patsy, she was a 45-year veteran of the publishing industry, including roles as founding editor of a Crown/Random House division, and as editor of books and magazines for Time-Life, Grove, Viking, Penguin, Murdock and other groups. She also created her own independent publishing imprint, The Round House Press, which featured a range of nonfiction titles. Born in Hoboken, she spent her formative years in Weehawken before moving to New York City in 1962. Over the past decade she lived in Kent, CT, before moving to Asheville. A graduate of the Academy of Saint Aloysius in Jersey City and Marymount Manhattan College, she grew up in a literary household as the daughter of James D. Horan, a noted novelist and historian who also was part of a team of reporters that won the Pulitzer Prize. Ear