I am about to make a claim that is rather embarrassing as a background screening professional. My childhood hero was the famous outlaw, Billy the Kid. I grew up on horseback, I competed in cowboy style competitions at a very young age and always had the famous Billy Joel song, “The Ballad of Billy the Kid” playing in my head! I was excited (yet still embarrassed) today when I saw that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is considering a posthumous pardon for this western legend!
According to Wikipedia:
Henry McCarty, better known as Billy the Kid, but also known by the aliases Henry Antrim and William H. Bonney (reportedly November 23, 1859 – July 14, 1881), was a 19th century American frontier outlaw and gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War. According to legend, he killed 21 men, but he is generally accepted to have killed four. Pat Garrett shot Billy the Kid down on July 14, 1881. Garrett tracked him after the outlaw escaped from the Lincoln County jail in a famous gunbattle that left two deputies dead.
Billy’s background check would look rather interesting with all the alias names he has gone by. His criminal record is arguable at best and his death has been debated by historians for years. According to a recent article:
The pardon dispute is the latest in a long-running fight over whether Garrett shot the real Kid or someone else and then lied about it. Some history buffs claim Billy the Kid didn’t die in the shootout with Garrett and landed in Texas, where he went by “Brushy Bill” Roberts and died of a heart attack at age 90 in 1950.
If I can have it my way, I’ll stick with Billy Joel’s version:
Well one cold day a posse captured Billy
And the judge said “String him up for what he did.”
And the cowboys and their kin
Like the sea, came pouring in
To watch the hanging of Billy the kid.
billy the kid should be recognized as a criminal…