The Exploits of a Band Headed by a New York Youth

[MissyS]

Thank You for posting this awesome find Oluckyman. It's truly a hidden gem, I believe that it's possible the interview and article and also the illustration of Billy and the girl on the cover had been overlooked by historians and writers. I wonder if the girl may have been Nellie Pickett?, someone had posted about her on another thread that she was said to have helped Billy and his gang, but Billy said in the interview there was no girl. That interview had to have happened just before Billy and the others were caught trying to dig their way out of the jail, and if I remember right?, they dug a good sized hole and almost did, but we're caught because they put the rocks they dug out of the wall in either their pillow case or mattress I'm not for sure which?, then Billy was put in solitary confinement in the dark until he was moved to Lincoln, so when Billy told the man they had been scrubbing up, I wonder if they had been up to digging the hole at that time? The confession of Dave Rudabaugh is interesting as well. Reading that interview makes me feel sad for Billy because he seemed genuinely ashamed of his notoriety, and he still kept a cheery attitude. I like the added descriptions of the men too, we know a little bit more of what Dave Rudabaugh looked like, Great find!

[MissyS]

Oluckyman, you may not have been the first to have discovered the article, but you still deserve credit for finding it for the board to read. Billy the Kid's jail by Lynn Michelson is an interesting little book, she examined research in Santa Fe NM to determine the exact location where the jail was, as there was other locations it was thought to have been, and her findings you may enjoy  reading. I wonder how it would have  turned out if Billy had escaped the jail in Santa Fe? as he was close to accomplishing it given a little more time, with Dave Rudabaugh escaping with him would he and the others have talked Billy into heading straight to Mexico, or would he have still headed to Fort Sumner?

[MissyS]

Apr 15, 2020 8:22:26 GMT -5 @oluckyman said:

Found the clipping about the subsequent escape attempt:

www.newspapers.com/clip/35811719/btk-gang-escape-attempt/

I wonder if there were two separate escape attempts by Billy and his cellmates? because  Paco Anaya told a different version of the escape, Billy may have told him that version? he said one day the prisoners were left alone to bathe, and Billy and the others took advantage of the opportunity and piled up mattresses and one tall prisoner stood on them while Billy climbed up on his shoulders and he cut a hole in the ceiling with a small knife, and then he attacked it more deeper with a saw smuggled in by another prisoner’s girlfriend, but was caught by the jailer before he completed the job, and Billy told Anaya or someone later that if they had gotten out of the ceiling they would have escaped into a corral full of fat government horses.