Amager Bryghus Billy the Kid

Amager Bryghus – Billy The Kid: Patrick Henry McCarty, or Simon H. Bonney, or simply Billy the Kid was one of the most notorious gunslinging outlaws of the Old West. He claimed to have killed 21 people before his early death at only 21 years of age. Born in New York in 1859 to an Irish ancestry, Billy became an orphan already at the age of 14 when his family had moved west to Kansas and then on to Silver City, New Mexico. At 15 he was caught stealing bread, ten days later he robbed a Chinese laundry, and after escaping jail he became a fugitive from the law while still a teenager. The rest of Billy’s life was one long series of shootouts and gunfights which would be too tireless to mention in detail. But Billy’s short life was literally a life soaked in blood. Sometimes fighting for what could be considered the right side of the law, but most of the time simply killing for greed or for his own definition of honor. In a December 1880 he was captured by Sheriff Pat Garrett and stood trial for murder in Mesilla, New Mexico, in April 1881. He was found guilty by the jury and sentenced to hang. However, he again escaped jail, killing two deputies in the process, and remained at large until tracked down and ambushed by Garrett, who shot him dead on the evening of July 14, 1881. Billy the Kid’s grave is in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.