The so-called facts     

Billy the Kid is a legendary figure, probably the most notorious and famous outlaw to emerge from the Wild West. The story of his life has been used as the basic plot for hundreds of motion pictures, novels, poems, stories, and even one ballet. With so many versions of his life around, it is difficult if not impossible to make out the "real" Billy who tends to be shrouded in mystery and romanticizing nostalgia. However, with regard to legends it is more important what people see in them than how or who they actually were. Legend generates from fact but then develops a life of its own. In Billy's case, the so-called facts (or rather: the agreed-upon facts) his legend generates from are the following ones:

- Billy the Kid was born in the Bowery slums of New York, in the fall of 1859.
- The question of his real name remains unsettled. Recent research has unearthed clues that he was probably born under the name of Henry McCarty, and that William H. Bonney, the name he used as a legal name, was an alias created by himself.
- Billy's mother was a rather mobile person. Consequently, Billy spent his childhood and teenage years in various places: Indianapolis (Indiana), Wichita (Kansas), Coffeyville (Kansas), Silver City (New Mexico). When he was fifteen, his mother died.
- As a teenager, he repeatedly came into conflict with the law over minor incidents (eg stealing garments from a Chinese laundry).
- After his mother's death, he became a drifter. He met all kinds of vagabonds and ruffians, and from these new-found buddies he learnt how to shoot, how to toss a knife, how to rustle cattle, how to survive on his own. Roaming the country brought him the name The Wandering Kid.
- After a lengthy time of drifting, Billy started to work as a drover and a bodyguard for a wealthy rancher named John Tunstall. This career-decision placed him in the middle of a conflict which would go down in history as the Lincoln County War. A politically powerful business named Lawrence Murphy controlled the law in Lincoln county and also the grazing and water rights. In exchange for these rights small farmers had to buy their supplies in Murphy's huge general store (called "The House") at excessive prices. There were of course people who were highly dissatisfied with this situation and who tried to change it, the most prominent of whom were said Tunstall, John Chisum, the owner of one of the largest ranches in New Mexico, and Alexander McSween, his lawyer.
- On February 18, 1878, John Tunstall was killed by Murphy's men through a shot in the head. He had opened a store that sold the same products as The House at cheaper prices in order to destroy Murphy's monopoly. The Lincoln County War came into full swing.
- Billy joined a group of so-called Regulators. According to Peter Watts' Dictionary of the Old West, regulators "were men who organized in committees of vigilance when regular law had broken down." The aim of these regulators in the Lincoln County War was, depending on the perspective, either to apprehend Tunstall's murderers and to protect Tunstall's and Chisum's ranches, or to seek bloody revenge.
- Small farmers found themselves taking sides, which resulted in numerous little quarrels and small encounters. The local press started to call the Lincoln County War a miniature replay of the Civil War.
- Billy gunned down two government officials (Sheriff William Brady and Deputy George Hindman) who had been instrumental in the murder of Tunstall, which put Brady's successor, George Peppin, on his heels and positioned him in the center of public attention.
- Peppin and his men had besieged McSween's ranch, the headquarters of the Regulators, for five days, when the siege ended in a showdown. By some miracle, Billy managed to escape against all odds, and the newpapers had a spectacular story. Billy the Kid benefitted from the invention of the telegraph and an East-Coast-readership that revelled in stories from the Far West.
- When Jimmy Dolan (one of the leaders of the Murphy bunch), who was in custody for murder, was likely to go scot-free because apparently no one had witnessed his crime, Billy walked into the mansion of the Governor of New Mexico, Lew Wallace (the author of Ben Hur), and proposed the following deal: he demanded full amnesty in exchange for his testimony against Dolan - Billy was the only witness to the crime. The Governor accepted. However, a short time before the trial Billy got suspicious whether the Governor would still grant him amnesty after he had got what he wanted. Billy fled from jail and was once again on the run.
- In 1881, Billy was captured by his former friend Pat Garrett, who was now the Sheriff of Lincoln County. Billy was sentenced to death, but on April 28, 10 days before his scheduled execution, he managed to escape.
- Pat Garrett had to resume the hunt, and after two months, on July 14, 1881, he managed to track the Kid down. Garrett shot the Kid in a dark room that belonged to one of Billy's friends. At the instant of his death, Billy the Kid was not carrying a gun. He died at the age of 21. In his lifetime, he killed four men, and not, as the legend goes, 21 - one for each year of his life.