Billy the Kid Letters Found

The originals of two Billy the Kid's letters to Gov. Lew Wallace have been located and now are on display at the state History Library in Santa Fe. The Kid wrote the first letter, probably in 1879, proposing to trade testimony for freedom and the second asking the governor to uphold his end of the bargain, as Billy lay manacled in a Santa Fe jail cell three blocks from the Palace of the Governors. Not much survives from The Kid's era 130 years ago. These letters reveal more about the real Billy than anything else we have. They reveal that he was not a homicidal moron as he is often envisioned. The letters are polite, literate and well reasoned. The penmanship was the flowing and formal Spenserian style of that era. The two letters were purchased by the Lincoln County Heritage Trust from the Wallace family many years ago. The letters were displayed in the Trust's museum in Lincoln until the Trust went out of business in 1999 and R.D. Hubbard, of Ruidoso Downs, took over the property, including the two letters. Evidently they were put in a safe and not were displayed after that. By the time Hubbard turned all the Lincoln property over to the state, in 2006, the letters had been forgotten. A chance conversation between noted Western collector Bob McCubbin, of Santa Fe, and head librarian Tomas Juehn indicated the new History Museum was trying to get a Billy letter from Indiana to display. McCubbin suggested the state use its own letters that should still be in Lincoln. A search was made and the letters were found, still in good condition. By the way, McCubbin's impressive collection includes the kitchen knife Billy was carrying when Sheriff Pat Garrett shot him...InsideTheCapitol