Pat Garrett, The Famous Wild West Lawman Who Took Down Billy The Kid
Public DomainThe Wild West lawman Pat Garrett.
Pat Garrett is best known for taking down the notorious outlaw Billy the Kid in 1881, but that fateful encounter was not their first.
Born on June 5, 1850 in Chambers County, Alabama, Garrett was one of seven children in a prosperous family who eventually purchased a plantation in Louisiana. Following the economic downturn after the Civil War and the death of his father, Garrett eventually ventured westward in 1869.
Initially, he worked as a cowboy and buffalo hunter in Texas, but by 1878, he had relocated to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where he worked as a rancher and bartender. It was here that Garrett would first become acquainted with Henry McCarty, who was better known as Billy the Kid. While the exact nature of their relationship during this time is debated, Garrett’s own account described it as casual. Others, though, have suggested they may have once been very close friends who regularly gambled together.
Public DomainHenry McCarty, the outlaw better known as Billy the Kid.
After Garrett was elected the sheriff of Lincoln County in 1880, however, his relationship with Billy the Kid soon turned hostile.
Garrett was determined to restore law and order to the region as sheriff, and that meant bringing Billy to justice. He apprehended Billy in December 1880, and Billy was sentenced to death after being found guilty of murder, but the outlaw managed to escape from jail in April 1881 — and killed two guards in the process. Garrett wasn’t about to let him get away, though.
He eventually tracked Billy to Fort Sumner in July 1881. On the 14th, shortly after midnight, he snuck into a ranch house where Billy had been staying and asked the rancher, Pete Maxwell, where the Kid was. Maxwell said he didn’t know, and at that moment, someone entered the room holding “a revolver in his right hand and a butcher knife in his left,” as Garrett later described.
Garrett quickly fired his gun in response. What followed, according to Garrett, was “a struggle or two, a little strangling sound as he gasped for breath, and the Kid was with his many victims.”
The reaction was mixed, though. Some people viewed Garrett as a hero, while others criticized him for killing Billy the Kid — especially in the dark, when he may have been unsure if Billy was armed. Garrett then lost the next election for sheriff, wrote a biography on Billy the Kid, and struggled to get by. He was appointed as a customs collector by Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, but then not reappointed due to the controversy that his presence caused.
And things only got worse for him.
After leasing some of his land to a man named Wayne Brazel, Garrett was disappointed to find that Brazel intended to graze goats, not cattle. This led to growing tension between the men, and it came to a head on Feb. 29, 1908, when Brazel killed Garrett near Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Brazel claimed that it was self-defense, and he was ultimately acquitted, but to this day, there is speculation that it was outright murder, especially since Garrett had been shot in the back of the head.
