With quotes from witnesses and newspapers, this episode focuses on the last year of Billy The Kid's life, his capture, escape from prison, and tragic death at the hands of Pat Garrett in 1881. 

Music:

Gid Tanner And Riley Puckett - Sourwood Mountain/Cumberland Gap (1924)

Cripple Creek and Sourwood Mountain - Stove Pipe #1 (Sam Jones) (1924)

Arkansaw Traveler - Henry C Gilliland and A C (Eck) Robertson (1922)

Bob Olinger was and still is one of the most hated figures in all of old west history, the despicable villain in Billy The Kid's story. Olinger was a strange character, a crooked cop who rustled cattle in his free time, who dressed like he was doing Wild Bill cosplay and performed knife and gun tricks for anyone who would watch. Was Olinger really a "damned rascal", a "murderer from the cradle" like some said? Or was he unfairly slandered by later dime novel authors, like others said? 

The Seven Rivers Cemetery was always known as a boot hill graveyard full of bad men and outlaws "buried with their boots on" like William Johnson, who lost his head at dinner, along with other troublemakers, rustlers, desperadoes, gunslingers, Seven Rivers Warriors gang members, and all manner of other lost souls. But the reality was a lot more complicated. So join me for the sad story of a small town that rose and fell in Southeast New Mexico one hundred and fifty years ago.