LINCOLN How’d Billy get the gun?
It will be 140 years ago on Wednesday, April 28, that outlaw Billy the Kid shot jail guard J.W. Bell on a staircase in the Lincoln County Courthouse, setting in motion his escape from the gallows, and adding another layer of gloss to his legend.
Billy the Kid escaped from the old Lincoln County Courthouse, pictured here, on April 28, 1881, killing two deputies in the process.(Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)
Bell stumbled down the steps and out the courthouse’s back door before dying. Only moments before, the hapless guard and his prisoner, the Kid, had entered the building through that door after a visit to the outhouse.