Americans want to pardon Billy the Kid after 130yrs

LONDON - After 130 years, most Americans say they favour a pardon for legendary gunslinger Henry McCarty, known as Billy the Kid, a new survey has revealed.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s office had set up a website and e-mail address to take comments on a possible posthumous pardon for one of the most famous Old West outlaws.

His office received 809 e-mails and letters, and while 430 were for the Kid being pardoned, 379 opposed it.

Richardson’s term ends this week, leaving him only a few days to decide whether to pardon the Kid in the 1878 killing of Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady.

“I might not pardon him. But then I might,” the Daily Mail quoted Richardson as saying.

Billy the Kid has been described as a vicious and ruthless killer - an outlaw who died at the age of 21 having raised havoc in the New Mexico Territory.

It was said he took the lives of 21 men, one for each year of his life, the first when he was just 12, but the more likely figure was nine.

But this and many more accusations of callous acts are merely examples used to create the myth of Billy the Kid.

Relatively unknown during his own lifetime, he was catapulted into legend the year after his death in 1881 when his killer, Sheriff Pat Garrett, published a sensationalised biography ‘The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid’. (ANI)