Frank Beacham's Journal

The Tragic Story of Iona Cannon

The Tragic Story of Iona Cannon

I saw Sue Cannon Hill for the first time on television. Her grief-stricken words in the documentary, The Uprising of ’34, upset me.

Teary and emotionally fragile, she told in a gripping interview how the management at the local textile mill — led by my grandfather — had nearly destroyed her family.

But when she spoke his name, she put a knife through me. I’d never heard my family name spoken that way. “Beacham,” she said, dripping with disdain.

To her, it was the name of a mass murderer, the man who killed her father, Claude Cannon, and destroyed her mother. It was a name she’d never forget...or forgive.

In late 1994, I was planning to return to South Carolina for the Christmas holidays. I wrote a letter to Sue Hill, telling her who I was. I apologized for what my grandfather had done.

I told her I had been surprised to learn what happened to her father and mother, and wanted to know more. I asked what I could do to make things right. Would she allow me to visit? Could we talk about it?

A couple of weeks went by before I heard back from her. I later learned that she, like others I had written at the time, saw the name “Beacham” in the return address of my envelope and had been unable to open the letter.

Finally, after a few days, their curiosity won out. One of her friends told Sue that my letter to her had been harmless, and it might be okay after all to read what I had sent.

A relieved, but hesitant, Sue Hill called and invited me to her home during the Christmas holiday.

As I approached the sprawling modern ranch house where Sue now lived with her husband, I couldn’t help but be surprised at how far she had come from the days of living in poverty with her mother on Chiquola’s mill hill.

Sue had married a prosperous businessman, I was told, and this home — one of the nicest in town — fronted fifty acres of land with two private ponds.

I was ushered into a huge, rectangular living room with a panoramic rear view of the extended rural landscape. Sue’s greeting was gracious, but I sensed that she was not comfortable. Neither was I. We were both walking on egg shells.

As we seated ourselves across from each other on comfortable sofas at one end of the room, the Southern tradition of beginning a visit with small talk seemed terribly inappropriate.

I knew Sue wanted to know why I was there, and decided it was best to get to the point right away.

I never knew Dan Beacham and was not there to defend him. He was a mystery to me, I told her, and she probably knew more about him than I did. I was horrified by what he had apparently done, and wanted to learn the truth about him.

I wanted her to tell me what she knew — warts and all. I wanted to record it on a tape recorder, I told her, so that I didn’t miss a word of her story.

She agreed, I clumsily set up the recorder, and we began what was to be a wrenching afternoon.

After Claude Cannon’s death at the mill, Sue’s mother, Iona Cannon, found herself with no job, six young children to raise and an eviction notice ordering her to vacate her mill-owned home. Because Honea Path was a one employer town, there was no option of finding alternative work there.

Mrs. Cannon, who had no money to relocate, had a simple choice: either lose her home, or go back to work for the very men responsible for killing her husband.

Even more humiliating, she would be allowed to resume her job at the Chiquola Mill only after she pledged to never again utter the word “union.”

The pain in Sue's face was vivid as she recalled the extraordinary grief her mother had endured and was forced to conceal throughout most of her life.

“Can you imagine waking up one day with no husband, no job and six children staring you in the face? Not knowing where your next meal is coming from. That’s what my mom faced.”

While at least one of the Chiquola widows placed her children in an orphanage, Sue said her mother chose to keep her family together.

First, that meant taking a job at the mill — and the oath of silence that came with it. “They talked to her like they wanted to. They told her to either take the job on their terms or leave.”

I asked Sue what it was like at home in those days. Did her mother ever talk about what happened to their father at the mill? No, she responded, Iona Cannon’s grief played out not in words, but in actions — sometimes bizarre actions.

One was a morbid habit. At night, Mrs. Cannon often sat quietly for hours at home clenching the blood-soaked clothes her husband wore at the time of his death. She stopped only after Sue’s brother, Marvin — who could no longer endure the routine — took his father’s tattered garments and buried them in a nearby field.

Even then, Mrs. Cannon refused to let go. She searched the ground near her home, digging in various spots in a fruitless effort to recover the clothes.

Then Sue told me about the infamous “bleeding sidewalk.”

Sue Hill’s father, Claude Canon, was killed on a Honea Path sidewalk across the street from the Chiquola Mill’s main entrance on Sept. 6, 1934.

After being shot three times in the back and twice in the hand, he bled profusely, leaving an immense blood stain in the concrete.

Over time, Sue told me, the stain faded and was barely visible — except when the sidewalk was wet. “When it rained the blood stain would come back a dark, copper-looking color. A lot of people came to look at the ‘bleeding sidewalk’ when it rained. The neighbors complained, but the mill wouldn’t do anything.”

Then, about eight years after the shooting, the two sections of stained concrete were quietly removed. Honea Path’s legendary “bleeding sidewalk” was suddenly no more.

It didn’t matter to Iona Cannon, who, after her husband’s killing, never set foot on that sidewalk again. “We had no car and walked everywhere. Whenever we went into town, mom refused to use that sidewalk,” Sue said.

“She would take us a back way behind the mill through the weeds and we’d cross the railroad tracks to get into town. Only when I was grown did I understand that she didn’t want to walk where daddy was killed.”

Even with Iona’s mill job, the family faced years of poverty and near starvation. “I saw mom diluting a can of Carnation milk with water to make cornbread to feed six children,” Sue said, unable to hold back the tears. “It must have been hard for her knowing we were going hungry.”

At this point, Sue began to sob. Crying has always unnerved me. I felt guilt for making her tell this story. Should I leave? No, I thought, I’ll just wait.

We sat quietly. Time froze. It seemed like hours went by. When Sue recovered, I asked if she felt like going on. Yes, she said. Her mother would want this story told.

And it was only because I had apologized for the actions of my grandfather, she said, that she decided to see me at all. No one else from the side of the mill’s management had ever expressed remorse. Not in more than 60 years. She was determined to go on.

Composed for the moment, the story continued.

On rare occasions, there was unexpected help. Iona would hear a knock on the front door. When she answered, no one would be there. On the porch, however, she’d find several bags of groceries. Though the family never found out who left the food, Iona suspected it was the man witnesses said shot her husband.

“There had to be some sleepless nights for these people,” Sue said. “If there weren’t, then they didn’t have a conscience. I don’t know how these people that did the shooting — for jobs or money or whatever — lived with themselves.

“They shot people whose kids went to the same school with their kids. They shared the same benches in church with the family members of the ones they killed. They watched as the families of these workers nearly starved, living on beans and fat meat or whatever they could find. I think many of them suffered for it the rest of their lives.”

About four years after the Chiquola violence, Tom Stallcup, one of the deputized workers who shot at strikers from a mill window, visited Mrs. Cannon.

Stallcup told the widow he was ashamed of his role in the shooting and asked her for forgiveness. “He told her he couldn’t live right until he made it right with her,” Sue said.

Did Stallcup, I asked, tell Mrs. Cannon who gave the order to fire at the workers? Yes, Sue said, her mother had asked that very question.

“Dan Beacham,” Stallcup had answered. Not only did Dan Beacham give the order for the men to shoot, Stallcup said, but the mill superintendent told the deputized gunmen to kill every striker they could, no matter who it might be.

“Mr. Stallcup seemed to have a lot of trouble with this through the years,” Sue said.

Iona Cannon died at age sixty-four, never discussing the events at the mill outside of her own home.

“Some days she’d talk about it. Other days she wouldn’t. She never got over my father. Never,” Sue said. “But I never saw her show any hate…not one word against them.”

Sue Hill’s compelling story is part of my book, Whitewash: A Southern Journey through Music, Mayhem and Murder.

Sue Hill

Claude Cannon

Bleeding Sidewalk today

On this day in 1969 — 53 years ago today — students and community activists clashed with the police over a three-acre plot owned by the University of California, Berkeley

“If it takes a blood bath to silence the demonstrators,” the governor said, “let’s get it over with.”

That was Ronald Reagan, who as governor of California took a hard line on protests against the Vietnam War, which coincided with a strengthening right-wing movement in the state. As he sought re-election, a riot in Berkeley helped advance his political career.

On this day in 1969 — 53 years ago today — students and community activists clashed with the police over a three-acre plot owned by the University of California, Berkeley. What began as a disagreement over use of the land — a site known as People’s Park — resulted in the most violent confrontation in the university’s history. It was a day that became known as Bloody Thursday.

Reagan responded by sending in the National Guard.

Berkeley has long been a center of cultural disputes and civil unrest. The Free Speech Movement began there during the 1964-65 academic year, and protests erupted on its campus this year over planned appearances by the right-wing activists Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter.

Those recent controversies have shined the spotlight on a debate over freedom of expression.

Thanks, New York Times!

In the above Associated Press photo from 53 years ago in Berkeley, National Guard troops watched from behind a fence

At Kent State University on this day in 1970 — 52 years ago — 100 National Guardsmen fired their rifles into a group of students. Four were killed and eleven wounded

At Kent State University on this day in 1970 — 52 years ago — 100 National Guardsmen fired their rifles into a group of students. Four were killed and eleven wounded.

This incident occurred in the aftermath of President Richard Nixon's April 30 announcement that U.S. and South Vietnamese forces had been ordered to execute an "incursion" into Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese bases there. In protest, a wave of demonstrations and disturbances erupted on college campuses across the country.

At Kent State University in Ohio, student protesters torched the ROTC building on campus and Ohio Governor James Rhodes responded by calling on the National Guard to restore order.

Under harassment from the demonstrators, the Guardsmen fired into the crowd, killing four and wounding eleven. The Guardsmen were later brought to trial for the shootings, but found not guilty.

President Nixon issued a statement deploring the Kent State deaths, but said that the incident should serve as a reminder that, "When dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy." The shooting sparked hundreds of protests and college shutdowns, as well as a march on Washington, D.C., by 100,000 people.

The National Student Association and former Vietnam Moratorium Committee leaders called for a national university strike of indefinite duration, beginning immediately, to protest the war. At least 100 colleges and universities pledged to strike. The presidents of 37 universities signed a letter urging President Nixon to show more clearly his determination to end the war.

Thanks History.com

Neil Young performs "Ohio," 2010

A 60 Minutes piece on the shooting at Kent State, 1977

With the Rodney King beating 31 years ago, video technology began to reveal the long and dirty history of police brutality in the United States

Rodney King is beaten by policemen

Video technology began to reveal the long and dirty history of police brutality in the United States 31 years ago today.

At 12:45 a.m. on March 3, 1991, robbery parolee Rodney G. King stopped his car after leading police on a nearly eight-mile pursuit through the streets of Los Angeles.

The chase began after King, who was intoxicated, was caught speeding on a freeway by a California Highway Patrol cruiser but refused to pull over.

Los Angeles Police Department cruisers and a police helicopter joined the pursuit, and when King was finally stopped by Hansen Dam Park, several police cars descended on his white Hyundai.

A group of LAPD officers led by Sergeant Stacey Koon ordered King and the other two occupants of the car to exit the vehicle and lie flat on the ground. King’s two friends complied, but King himself was slower to respond, getting on his hands and knees rather than lying flat.

Officers Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Ted Briseno and Roland Solano tried to force King down, but he resisted, and the officers stepped back and shot King twice with an electric stun gun known as a Taser, which fires darts carrying a charge of 50,000 volts.

At this moment, civilian George Holliday, standing on a balcony in an apartment complex across the street, focused the lens of his new video camera on the commotion unfolding by Hansen Dam Park.

In the first few seconds of what would become a very famous 89-second video, King is seen rising after the Taser shots and running in the direction of Officer Powell.

The officers alleged that King was charging Powell, while King himself later claimed that an officer told him, “We’re going to kill you, nigger. Run!” and he tried to flee. All the arresting officers were white, along with all but one of the other two dozen or so law enforcement officers present at the scene.

Unaware that the arrest was videotaped, the officers downplayed the level of violence used to arrest King and filed official reports in which they claimed he suffered only cuts and bruises “of a minor nature.”

George Holliday sold his video of the beating to the local television station, KTLA, which broadcast the footage and sold it to CNN. The widely broadcast video caused outrage around the country and triggered a national debate on police brutality.

Rodney King was released without charges, and on March 15 Sergeant Koon and officers Powell, Wind, and Briseno were indicted by a Los Angeles grand jury in connection with the beating. All four were charged with assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force by a police officer. An all white jury found the officers not guilty.

The acquittals touched off rioting and looting in Los Angeles that grew into the most destructive U.S. civil disturbance of the 20th century. In three days of violence, more than 50 people were killed, more than 2,000 were injured and nearly $1 billion in property was destroyed.

Under federal law, the officers could also be prosecuted for violating Rodney King’s constitutional rights, and on April 17, 1993, a federal jury convicted two of the officers for violating King’s rights by their unreasonable use of force under color of law.

They were sentenced to two and half years in prison and King received $3.8 million in a civil suit against the Los Angeles police department.

Since the King attack, video has been used to reveal dozens of unwarranted police attacks. With the advent of the iPhone, now it is hard not have some video of police beatings.

The Orangeburg Massacre in Orangeburg, South Carolina resulted in three black college students and 27 being wounded by white highway patrolmen in South Carolina. The state covered up the crime and to this day it has not been investigated. No doubt, had there been video, the white highway patrolmen would not have gotten away with murder.

Thanks History.com

The Orangeburg Massacre happened 54 years ago today

White highway patrolmen take aim at black college students in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Feb. 8, 1968 — 54 years ago today

Racism is a very ugly thing. It escalated in the era of Trump, usually disguised as a public safety issue against immigrants or open prejudice against countries that the president deemed inferior. It will take a long time to undo the damage.

In the 1950s and 60s, racism took another form. Jim Crow laws were openly defended in the South and those demanding civil rights for all citizens were despised, beaten and arrested.

Today, the only difference is that police and racial beatings are often caught on video made by bystanders with iPhones. Law enforcement can’t deny the video, and more and more policemen are brought to justice.

The federal government — though on-board to stop racism in the late 1960s — still played catch-up in going to court to address the many civil rights violations in every aspect of life. For years, there were glitches in civil rights enforcement all over the nation.

One of those glitches — this time over a segregated bowling alley — happened in 1968 in Orangeburg, South Carolina, a town founded on slavery 400 years ago. The Ku Klux Klan and lynchings prevailed there during the Jim Crow years. But in 1968, before Kent State, there was the Orangeburg Massacre, the first mass police shooting on a U.S. college campus.

On February 8, 1968 — 54 years ago today — white highway patrolmen killed three black college students and wounded 27 others at South Carolina State College. It was state-sanctioned murder and the cover-up still continues.

In 1968, a loophole in the Civil Rights Act passed four years earlier led to some delay in forcing All Star Bowling Lanes to admit blacks. With two black colleges in Orangeburg and nowhere else to bowl, the bowling alley became a target for civil rights advocates. The black students at the colleges wanted to bowl there and staged a demonstration.

A conservative Southern governor, wanting to appear tough to his white constituents, overreacted to the civil rights protest ordering a massive show of armed force. As emotions frayed and the situation veered out of control, nine white highway patrolmen opened gunfire onto the campus of South Carolina State College.

All the students were unarmed and in retreat from the highway patrolmen at the time of the shooting. Yet, without warning, they were shot in their backs with deadly buckshot.

Until the shooting, South Carolina was a southern state that had proudly celebrated a record of nonviolence during the turbulent civil rights years. It was all really a charade. Nonviolence in South Carolina was equated with racial harmony in a white community with a paternalistic attitude toward its poorer black citizens. Equal rights were another thing.

To help protect its “progressive” self-image on racial issues, a web of official deceptions was created by South Carolina’s young governor — Robert McNair — and his administration to distort the facts and conceal the truth about what happened in Orangeburg.

The state claimed the deaths were the result of a two-way gun battle between students and lawmen at the college. The highway patrolmen insisted their shooting was done in self-defense in order to protect themselves from a attacking mob of students.

To bolster that claim and deflect responsibility from its own actions, the state hastily devised a media campaign to blame the riot on Cleveland Sellers, a young black activist working to organize area college students.

Time would prove none of it was true. At first, the state’s cover-up worked. Later, upon outside scrutiny, it began to unravel. Then, with his legacy threatened, McNair broke nearly forty years of silence in 2006 in an attempt to put the pieces back together.

Ignoring facts proven over the years in court cases and through the first person accounts of eyewitnesses, McNair used local media and friendly “historians” as a tool to help members of his community lie to themselves about their own history.

In the last year of his life, he deliberately fogged and distorted the story of the Orangeburg Massacre.

Ramsey Clark, who was U.S. Attorney General in 1968, knew the truth and minced no words in an interview with me about what happened there.

“They committed murder. Murder…that’s a harsh thing to say, but they did it,” said Clark. “The police lost their self control. They just started shooting. It was a slaughter. Double ought buckshot is what you use for deer. It’s meant to kill. One guy emptied his service revolver. That takes a lot of shooting. The (students) are running away. Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow! My God, there’s a murderous intent there. We are lucky more weren’t killed.”

Clark told me the student deaths were caused by police criminal acts. “The provocation for the incident was an absurd, provocative display of force,” he said.

Gov. McNair responded to Orangeburg with excessive police power because that was the politically expedient thing to do in 1968, the former attorney general said.

“Fear, anger, a sense of self-righteousness to justify hating began to be seen as successful politics.” When the tactic backfired, Clark added, state officials fabricated stories that many South Carolinians believe to this day.

So, after 54 years, the story of the Orangeburg Massacre still simmers, unresolved. It is the chilling saga of the horrors of law enforcement motivated by racism and hatred — and the inability of a Southern state to admit the truth.

The central theme is “mendacity,” the web of lies a community spins in a desperate attempt to maintain it’s self-image and dignity when confronted by its own prejudice. It’s a culture where words are constantly being redefined in order that a people can more comfortably deceive themselves.

Today, racism has been dressed up and made more sophisticated by the policies of a Republican-controlled legislature that still refuses to even investigate the massacre. The sad story is after a half a century, the state of South Carolina will not admit it committed murder in the shootings at Orangeburg.

The complete story of the Orangeburg shooting is in my book, “Whitewash: A Southern Journey Through Music, Mayhem and Murder.” 

Photo by Bill Barley

Ramsey Clark, U.S. Attorney General in the turbulent 60s, was born 94 years ago today

Ramsey Clark, U.S. Attorney General in the turbulent 60s, was born 94 years ago today.

Clark was a progressive. After leaving senior positions under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, he became an attorney and activist. He was attorney general from 1967 to 1969.

As Attorney General, Clark was known for his vigorous opposition to the death penalty, his aggressive support of civil liberties and civil rights and his dedication in enforcing antitrust provisions.

Clark supervised the drafting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1968. Since leaving public office, Clark led many progressive activism campaigns, including opposition to the War on Terror.

When I was working on the legacy of the Orangeburg Massacre — the killing of seven college students in South Carolina by white state officials — Clark broke the story open for me during a visit to his office in New York City.

He didn’t buy S.C. Gov. Robert McNair’s story at all. Over time, he learned that FBI agents purposely misled the Justice Department about important details in the Orangeburg case; that key evidence was severely compromised by FBI agents friendly with South Carolina’s corrupt head cop, Pete Strom, and his men; and that his own U.S. Attorney, based in Columbia, would not cooperate with the investigation.

Then Clark cut to the chase about the governor and his friends in South Carolina.

“They committed murder. Murder...that’s a harsh thing to say, but they did it. The police lost their self control. They just started shooting. It was a slaughter. Double-ought buckshot is what you use for deer. It’s meant to kill. One guy emptied his service revolver. That takes a lot of shooting. The [students] are running away. Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow! My God, there’s a murderous intent there. We are lucky more weren’t killed.”

Clark minced no words when he described what happened in Orangeburg. He helped me nail the story, like no former public official had before.

Lenny Bruce was born 96 years ago today

Lenny Bruce at airport, New York City

Photo by John Lindsay

Lenny Bruce was born 96 years ago today.

A comedian, social critic and satirist, Bruce was renowned for his open, free-style, dangerous and critical form of comedy which integrated politics, religion and sex.

His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous pardon, the first in New York state history.

His tumultuous private life marked by substance abuse, promiscuity — as well as his efforts to prevent his wife from working as a stripper — made him a compelling figure.

Bruce paved the way for future outspoken comedians, and his trial for obscenity, in which — after being forced into bankruptcy — he was eventually found not guilty is seen as a landmark trial for freedom of speech.

On August 3, 1966, Bruce was found dead in the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home at 8825 W. Hollywood Blvd. The official photo, taken at the scene, showed Bruce lying naked on the floor, a syringe and burned bottle cap nearby, along with various other narcotics paraphernalia.

The official cause of death was "acute morphine poisoning caused by an accidental overdose." He was 40.

On December 23, 2003, 37 years after his death, New York Governor George Pataki granted Bruce a posthumous pardon for his obscenity conviction.

Bruce was the subject of the 1974 biographical film, Lenny, directed by Bob Fosse and starring Dustin Hoffman in an Academy Award-nominated Best Actor role. It was based on the Broadway stage play of the same name written by Julian Barry and starring Cliff Gorman in his 1972 Tony Award winning role.

The documentary, Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth, directed by Robert B. Weide and narrated by Robert De Niro, was released in 1998.

In 2004, Comedy Central listed Bruce at #3 on its list of the 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All-Time, placing above Woody Allen and below George Carlin.

Here, Bruce performs “The Meaning of Obscenity”

Lenny Bruce on Southerners, Religion, Racism, Obscenity, Law, Police, Politics, 1966

Miles Davis: Police Brutality Victim

Police brutality, especially against people with dark skin, is nothing new. It has happened for many years. Only the recent emergence of smartphones has revealed its frequency.

The great musician, Miles Davis, was a victim of police brutality.

In this photo, Davis rides in an ambulance to St. Clare’s Hospital with Patrolman Gerald Kildduff on August 25, 1959. Davis was given ten stitches in his scalp at the hospital.

Davis was standing outside of Birdland, the jazz club, where he was performing, when Kilduff told him to move along.

A scuffle ensued, and a passing plainclothes detective hit Davis with his blackjack, dropping him to the ground. Davis was charged with disorderly conduct and assault.

His arrest was later ruled illegal and a “travesty of justice” by a three-judge panel.

The trial for eight antiwar activists charged with violent demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago on this day in 1969 — 52 years ago today

Photo by Richard Avedon

The trial for eight antiwar activists charged with the responsibility for the violent demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago on this day in 1969 — 52 years ago today.

The defendants included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party ("Yippies"); and two lesser known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines.

Bobby Seale, the eighth man charged, had his trial severed during the proceedings, lowering the number of defendants from eight to seven. The group was charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to incite a riot. All but Seale were represented by attorneys William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass.

The trial, presided over by Judge Julius Hoffman, turned into a circus as the defendants and their attorneys used the court as a platform to attack Nixon, the war, racism and oppression. Their tactics were so disruptive that at one point, Judge Hoffman ordered Seale gagged and strapped to his chair.

The Chicago Seven were indicted for violating the Rap Brown law, which had been tagged onto the Civil Rights Bill earlier that year by conservative senators. The law made it illegal to cross state lines in order to riot or to conspire to use interstate commerce to incite rioting. President Johnson's attorney general, Ramsey Clark, refused to prosecute the case.

When the trial ended in February, 1970, Hoffman found the defendants and their attorneys guilty of 175 counts of contempt of court and sentenced them to terms between two to four years. Although declaring the defendants not guilty of conspiracy, the jury found all but Froines and Weiner guilty of intent to riot. The others were each sentenced to five years and fined $5,000.

However, none served time because in 1972, a Court of Appeal overturned the criminal convictions and eventually most of the contempt charges were dropped as well.

Crosby, Stills and Nash perform "Chicago"

On this day in 1881 — 140 years ago — Sheriff Pat Garrett shot and killed Henry McCarty, popularly known as Billy the Kid, at the Maxwell Ranch in New Mexico

On this day in 1881 — 140 years ago — Sheriff Pat Garrett shot and killed Henry McCarty, popularly known as Billy the Kid, at the Maxwell Ranch in New Mexico.

Garrett, who had been tracking the Kid for three months after the gunslinger had escaped from prison only days before his scheduled execution, got a tip that Billy was holed up with friends. While Billy was gone, Garrett waited in the dark in his bedroom. When Billy entered, Garrett shot him to death.

Back on April 1, 1878, Billy the Kid ambushed Sheriff William Brady and one deputy in Lincoln, New Mexico, after ranch owner John Tunstall had been murdered. Billy had worked at Tunstall’s ranch and was outraged by his employer’s slaying, vowing to hunt down every man responsible.

Sheriff Brady and his men, who had been affiliated with rival ranchers, were involved with the gang that killed Tunstall on February 18. Billy’s retaliatory attack left Brady and Deputy George Hindman dead. Although only 18 years old at the time, Billy had now committed as many as 17 murders.

Following his indictment for the murder of Sheriff Brady, Billy the Kid was the most wanted man in the West.

In 1973, film director Sam Peckinpah, made Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which starred James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan. The film was about an aging Garrett, hired as a lawman by a group of wealthy New Mexico cattle barons to bring down the Kid. Dylan composed several songs for the film's score and soundtrack album, which was released the same year.