A couple of books about real crimes and criminals.
THE AUTHENTIC LIFE OF BILLY THE KID by Pat F. Garrett
I have had a fascination with the Old West outlaw Billy the Kid ever since I was a child, and it’s primarily thanks to the 1987 film Young Guns, which starred Emilio Estevez as the Kid. I have memories of watching that movie multiple times at a very young age, and by the time I was ten I was calling Young Guns my favorite movie. Along the way, I also read the Larry McMurtry novel Anything for Billy, which was (like Young Guns) a fictionalized take on the Kid’s life, and I think I also read another book about the Kid that was aimed at younger readers and was included in my school library. As the decades have gone by, I have continued watching Young Guns now and then... and occasionally its sequel, Young Guns II, which I was always less enamored with. Billy the Kid has always lingered in my mind to some degree. So I figured, why not read an account of the Kid’s life that was written by the man who killed him?
Pat F. Garrett was serving as the sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico when he tracked Billy the Kid down in the summer of 1881 and killed him with a shot to the chest. Unfortunately for him, Billy was seen as a folk hero to many, so Garrett’s brand of justice didn’t sit well with a lot of people. The following year, he decided to work with postmaster and journalist Marshall Ashmun "Ash" Upson to write The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, a book that was meant to serve as both a biography of the outlaw and an explanation of what happened between him and Garrett at the end of his life. Basically, he had to clear his own name.
Despite the title, The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid isn’t exactly authentic. Garrett left the writing of the first several chapters of the book, those that cover the Kid’s life up to the point when Garrett because sheriff of Lincoln County, up to Upson, and Upson mixed the facts of the Kid’s life with a healthy dose of fiction. Portions of those early chapters read much like your average Western adventure novel, with the Kid committing crimes and sometimes killing people in cold blood, but at other times coming off like an Old West hero. The segments that have the Kid fighting off attacking Native Americans (paired with some sarcastic descriptions from the author that imply some racism on their part) read like cowboy fantasy. Eventually, we reach the events of the Lincoln County War, which were covered in Young Guns. The time when many of the Kid’s actions seemed righteous and justified.
But a criminal he was, overall, so Sheriff Garrett was sent on his trail. And for that portion of the book, Garrett took the lead on the writing. Here it is, the story of tracking and killing the Kid in Garrett’s own words.
This book may not be providing the cold, hard facts all the way through, but I still found it to be an interesting read – because I have always been interested in Billy the Kid, and I guess I always will be. Anytime I came across the name of a well-liked supporting character from a Young Guns movie while reading this book, it was like I was reading about an old friend.
IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote
Toward the end of 1959, a crime was committed in Kansas that shocked the nation: a home invasion that ended with the murders of Herb and Bonnie Clutter and their teenage children Nancy and Kenyon. Six weeks after the murders, the killers were caught. They were recently paroled ex-cons Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, who had broke into the Clutter house searching for a safe that didn’t exist, having been told of the Clutter family wealth by a fellow inmate who had previously worked on the Clutter farm.
Author Truman Capote was so intrigued by this crime, he travelled to Kansas with his friend Harper Lee (author of To Kill a Mockingbird) and started doing research and carrying out interviews. Capote then spent several years compiling all of the information that was gathered into a book called In Cold Blood, and in doing so basically created the true crime genre. Although it’s not all true. Like Pat Garrett and Ash Upson writing The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, Capote decided to add in dashes of fiction along the way... and this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has read the book, because there are scenes and character interactions in In Cold Blood that Capote couldn’t have possibly known about, especially not in such detail.
Still, he crafted an incredibly popular novel about a shocking, disgusting case. He spends a lot of time digging into the lives of Hickock and Smith and seems to have been fascinated by them, despite the fact that they were a pair of losers who had plenty of emotion to display when it came time for them to wallow in their self-pity and whine, but showed little to no remorse over taking the lives of the adults and children in the Clutter house. I was not fascinated by these two, to put it mildly, so I wasn’t into the story Capote was telling me all of the time, or even most of the time. I did think the book was interesting overall, though. Even if it’s over-written (Capote was aiming to win a Pulitzer, not at the average reader) and, at well over 300 pages, a bit too long.
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