In that summer of 1881, Billy the Kid, hiding out around the hamlet of Fort Sumner in east-central New Mexico, should have known that Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett would try to hunt him down and kill him. When Pat Garrett was himself gunned down, they had to order a special coffin for him because he was so tall. He moved to Fort Sumner, in eastern New Mexico, where he would marry Elizabeth Garrett’s mother, Apolonaria Gutierrez. The Comanches had plundered his hunting camp.
The great buffalo herds of the Southern Plains had been decimated. Pat was a tall, thin angular man with prominent cheek bones, 6' 4", came west in 1869, when he was nineteen, to take part in the slaughter of the buffalo on the High Plains of Texas. The story of Garrett and Billy the Kid is, of course, classic lore of the American west, and has been frequent fodder for Hollywood movies. A huge barbecue was held at another nearby ranch, to celebrate the verdict.
#Family sought revenge against tormentor. shot trial
Brazel claimed self-defense, the trial lasted one day, and the jury deliberated for less than half an hour before finding him not guilty. Garrett then turned his back to his tenant, unzipped his pants and began urinating, and he was shot twice and killed. On 29 February 1908, in a heated discussion, Garrett is said to have told Brazel he would get him off the ranch, "one way or another". Soon, however, Garrett decided that he did not approve of the way Brazel was running the ranch, and began pressuring Brazel to leave the premises. Unable to make the ranch a profitable concern, he leased it to one Wayne Brazel. He then quit law enforcement, and lived on a ranch with his wife and nine children, where he was generally unpopular among the locals. Known as a gambler, heavy drinker, and an ornery ol' cuss, he was the frequent subject of complaints for discourteous, unfair, and impolite behavior, so he did not last long in this job either. Amid these whispers and aspersions, Garrett soon left his job as sheriff.Īfter a few years as a lawman in another county, Garrett was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to supervise the El Paso office of the Customs Department. Some hailed him as a hero for ending a famous criminal's life, but others called him a coward for the manner in which he lured and killed the fugitive. As soon as the door opened, Garrett shot Billy the Kid dead without a word. Using a mutual acquaintance to arrange a meeting on 14 July 1881, Garrett crouched in a dark room waiting for the outlaw's arrival. After a speedy trial, the eminent outlaw was ordered to hang, but escaped from jail instead, killing two guards in the process.Īnd so again the dogged Garrett set out after his former friend. Then he cornered and arrested Billy the Kid, and brought him to trial on charges of murder. Motivated by either a love of justice or the $500 bounty on Billy the Kid, Garrett tracked down two of the Kid's cohorts, Charles Bowdre and Tom O'Folliard, and killed them in Stinking Springs, New Mexico. Later, while working as a cowpoke, he became friends with Henry McCarty, but soon these two men went their separate ways, literally and figuratively: McCarty killed sheriff William Brady on 1 April 1878 and became famous as "Billy the Kid", and Garrett was briefly a Texas Ranger before coming to Roswell, New Mexico, where he was elected sheriff of Lincoln County in 1880. He had a reputation as a hot-tempered man, and in 1877 he killed a friend in a drunken brawl, but was acquitted on grounds of self-defense. Pat Garrett was raised on a prosperous pre-Civil War plantation in Louisiana, then worked as a cowboy and buffalo hunter before becoming a cop.
Sheriff Pat Garrett, the man who (probably) shot Billy the Kid.
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