Midnight at the gravesite

FORT SUMNER - You visit the moonlit gravesite of an infamous outlaw at midnight on the anniversary of his violent death, you do well to expect about anything.

So if you visited the Fort Sumner burial ground purporting to hold the remains of "Billy the Kid," shot dead just before midnight on July 14, 1881, in a house on a property adjoining that site, you could be forgiven a few goosebumps.

Maybe there won't be something as dramatic as a spectral vision or a rattling on the bars of the cage enclosing the tombstone, but what was that sound, and what are those strange lights in the distance?

That sound is a birdsong - interpret that as you will - and those three new lights in a row out yonder are probably a new fixture by the farmers that live out there.

Apart from a storm flashing distantly in the north, it was a calm summer evening lit by a near full moon Sunday when a small cohort gathered to commemorate the 138th anniversary of The Kid's killing and herald a new film examining his life.

"Strangely enough, it wasn't as spooky as I thought. It was more peaceful than I thought it would be," said filmmaker Michael Anthony Giudicissi. "So many years later, I can see why Billy would have gone and gravitated to that. It was so remote, he probably felt really, really safe there."

Giudicissi told The News he wanted to do something unique for announcing the debut of the trailer for his forthcoming independent production, "In Their Own Words, Billy the Kid & The Lincoln County War." Hence the internet livestream starting at 11:30 p.m. Sunday, which was about the time Sheriff Pat Garrett encountered William Bonney, who was born Henry McCarty around 1860 and later dubbed "Billy the Kid" by a newspaper editor as his exploits reached a pitch.

"Alright Kid, if you're ever going to make an appearance, now's the time," Giudicissi said at the start of the livestream.

No reply from the Kid. Black flies buzzed on the lamp in front of his grave and beetles rummaged around the earth below.

Giudicissi continued. He talked briefly about the Kid's biography and the fascination that has endured since his death and makes his gravesite still "a really special place for Old West history."

"This was the mortal end of Billy the Kid," he said of the night in 1881, "but the immortal legend sprang from that night."

Fort Sumner City Councilor Gerald Cline spoke during the broadcast as to the Kid's significance in the community to this day, and shared his own thoughts on who the ill-fated renegade really was.

It would be hard to find a person in Fort Sumner today, young or old, who isn't familiar with the Kid's story and many will have their own spin on it, Cline said. As for the historical personage, Cline maintains he was a "product of his environment," brought up under difficult circumstances and unfortunately in league at a young age with the wrong crowd of people.

For William Bonney - the name the Kid assumed for himself around 1877 - his mother died three years earlier, when he was still a child and the family had just moved from Indianapolis to Silver City. His stepfather placed him and his brother "with local families so that they could earn their room and board," according to the town's "condensed history," and within a year he was arrested for thieving. By 1876 he fell in with "a well-known horse thief" named John Mackie, and things only escalated from there.

When you adjust for differences in the ages, it's a timeless kind of story of a wayward youth with a gun digging himself into an ever deeper and desperate pit with every misstep.

"Then and now, it's not much different," Cline said.

With that said, Cline said he still considers the Kid more of a killer than a misunderstood miscreant. By the time the Kid was killed in 1881, he was on the run after killing two deputies while escaping from his pending execution for his role in the slaying of Sheriff William Brady and Deputy George Hindman in April 1878 with his posse of "Regulators."

The Kid was on the run for less than three months after escaping the Lincoln County Courthouse, and many believe he returned to Fort Sumner out of a sense of familiarity.

There is still some debate as to whether the Kid really died on that day in 1881. Cline said he is "absolutely" sure of it, and Giudicissi said it was likely.

"In my mind the law of probability says the most likely thing is he was shot and killed by Pat Garrett. A bunch of his friends saw and buried him," he said. "And I won't give away the end of the movie (slated to premier this year in Fort Sumner), but there were a few twists and turns."

If he's not buried there, that could explain the absence of any supernatural apparitions at Sunday's gathering. It could also be that the Kid is simply enjoying his rest in his favorite isolated corner of eastern New Mexico.