Morrison approached Roberts who, perhaps sensing the end of his life was near (if he had been Billy, he’d have been 90 at the time), made a confession. Hines told him a whopper of a tale: Billy the Kid had not been killed in New Mexico but was alive and well and living in a town called Hico in Hamilton County, Texas, as one Ollie “Brushy Bill” Roberts. ![]() Morrison was investigating a man named Joe Hines, a survivor of the Lincoln County War, the feud that helped make Billy the Kid’s name. Billy Hathorn / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) Sign for the Billy the Kid Museum in Hico, Texas. People in Hico, Texas-population 1,780 and home to the Billy the Kid Museum-tell a slightly different version. Whether his story actually ended in 1881, however, is another matter. “He is either a folk hero that single-handedly stood up against a corrupt government system, or he is a ruthless outlaw and cop killer that left a wake of terror in his path.” Edwards, author of Billy the Kid: An Autobiography. “As a society back then, people were tough, strong, and fearless, and yet this little guy is known as the most deadly outlaw of them all,” says Daniel A. He’s since been romanticized in print, and on stage, television, and film as an emblem of the lawless West. He was buried, it is said, in Fort Sumner Cemetery, with his “associates” Tom O’Folliard and Charlie Bowdre, and the epitaph “Pals”-though none of them are likely directly under the tombstone there today. ![]() ![]() History tells us that the outlaw known as Billy the Kid (aka Henry McCarty, aka William Bonney) was gunned down-at the ripe old age of 21-by Sheriff Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881, in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
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