10 WANNABE BILLY THE KIDS OPERATING IN THE OLD WEST
1 John William “Billy the Kid” Chadburn: Eager to make his reputation as a fearsome desperado, he christened himself with this nickname (see related feature stories beginning on P. 50 and P. 56).
2 William Floyd “Billy the Kid” Claiborne: One of two outlaw “Cowboys” who fled the Oct. 26, 1881, gunfight near the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, Claiborne co-opted the “Kid” moniker soon after its originator was killed in New Mexico Territory on July 14, 1881.
3 “Billy the Kid” LeRoy: LeRoy (real name Arthur Pond) was a Colorado stagecoach bandit whom dime novelists conflated with William Bonney/Henry McCarty. The Colorado “Kid” also met an outlaw’s fate—strung up by a lynch mob in Del Norte six weeks before the New Mexico Territory “Kid” was shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett.
4 Bigmouth Billy: On Oct. 19, 1893, the Norton, Kan., Champion reported, “A young man who calls himself ‘Billy the Kid,’ and whose worst offense seems to be the loose use of his voluminous mouth, was arrested at Parsons the other day.”
5 Boozehound Billy: Another Kansas newspaper, the Ellsworth Reporter, described in its July 8, 1897, issue a “perambulating nuisance known as Billy the Kid,” who’d been hauled in for being drunk and disorderly, “according to his usual custom.”
The Dec. 28, 1893, detailed a bout between boxers Dud Evans, “champion welterweight of the Pacific Coast,” and “William Vieth,
