Thread: Billy the Kid may be riding again

Just got this out of tonight's NY Times here. This has been going on awhile with some wanting to exhume the remains of Billy and his mom to check DNA. There is a school of thought that Pat Garret let the kid get away and someone else is in the grave. Then there is the quest to fulfill the then Governor Lew Wallace's promise to give Billy a pardon. Wallace was famed for being the author of the novel Ben Hur.

The current governor of NM is Bill Richardson, the unsuccessful presidential candidate who still has ambitions to sit in the white house. Why he would want to give a pardon to a guy who escaped from jail by killing a couple of lawmen is beyond me but the world is more like the Twilight Zone the longer I live.

Despite my vote (who cares) it's an interesting story.

I know the guys a folk hero (a bit like Ned Kelly in Australia and Dick Turpin in the UK), but government shouldnt pardon convicted criminals years down the line unless they were found to be innocent. For example, the Derek Bentley case here in England.

Pardoning a known criminal years later just because they are seen as a bit of a scallywag is just political point scoring and trying to be trendy.

New Mexico has way too many problems for the Gov to waste time on this.

People in this country seem to romanticize certain types of behavior from certain eras forgeting most of these people were just cold blooded killers.

Its like Jesse James around here, a folk hero now, thief and murderer in reality.

good people are good
bad people are bad

I never knew Billy the Kid

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

People in this country seem to romanticize certain types of behavior from certain eras forgeting most of these people were just cold blooded killers.

+1.

People seem to romanticize pirates as well, but piracy itself was brutal and ruthless. Same for the chivalrous knights who would commit the greatest atrocities in the name of the Lord, as for the era of Sherlock Holmes ... that was not too bad if you were one of the idle rich and not one of the factory workers who died at 35 or one of the serfs who did back breaking labor from dawn till dusk.

People romanticize things, and while it is true that we may have lost some things, in the end this is better than what we had then.

I'm not entirely positive, but I think the photo was discovered to be reversed because of the ejection port on the rifle appearing to be on the wrong side. They didn't make rifles with a left side ejection port, only right side.

Originally Posted by Bruno

People seem to romanticize pirates as well, but piracy itself was brutal and ruthless. Same for the chivalrous knights who would commit the greatest atrocities in the name of the Lord, as for the era of Sherlock Holmes ... that was not too bad if you were one of the idle rich and not one of the factory workers who died at 35 or one of the serfs who did back breaking labor from dawn till dusk.

People romanticize things, and while it is true that we may have lost some things, in the end this is better than what we had then.

+1 to that. People tend to forget the brutality of the past. I especially find it amusing (well, at least in a sardonic sense) when people wax nostalgic about the pre-civil rights era in the US. "Times were simpler back then" when lynching was not uncommon, teen aged girls died from botched illegal abortions, people could have their careers ended for being gay or for simply being accused of being a communist, and he police and even the national guard were used to break up labor unions.

Originally Posted by Stubear

I know the guys a folk hero (a bit like Ned Kelly in Australia and Dick Turpin in the UK), but government shouldnt pardon convicted criminals years down the line unless they were found to be innocent. For example, the Derek Bentley case here in England.

Pardoning a known criminal years later just because they are seen as a bit of a scallywag is just political point scoring and trying to be trendy.

Actually, its a bit more complicated than that. While it is true the The Kid killed a number of people (4-9, not the 21 he is usually credited with), and some of them were "lawmen", it is also true that the lawmen in question were part of a corrupt system that was acting to advance the economic interests of certain individuals over that of others. The Kid just happened to be on the other side of this corrupt system. The winners, as always, write the history and determine who are the heros an who are the villians. It is probably more accurate to say that both sides were cold blooded killers acting for economic gain and there were none without blame.