Billy the Kid and Lincoln County War: Economics of Gunslinging : History: New Mexico violence grew out of official corruption, says author–a prosecutor who takes a lawyerly look at what triggered the infamous blood bath.

By Richard Benke
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Take a corrupt chain of command–ranging from governor to Army officers, judges, prosecutors, sheriffs and Indian agents–add land grabbers, muster out seething Civil War malcontents, stir in Billy the Kid.

The Lincoln County War was a textbook worst-case scenario, one that could be taught in law schools. And now a state prosecutor has taken a dispassionate, lawyerly look at what triggered New Mexico’s most infamous blood bath.

Joel Jacobsen, an assistant state attorney general, has written “Such Men as Billy the Kid.” It is an unofficial indictment against several key players in the conflict.

Jacobsen studies the economics and politics, not just the shooting.

Lincoln County’s troubles began in the mid-1870s after the Army’s focus shifted from the Civil War to the Mescalero Apache Reservation just south of Lincoln.

A monopolistic Lincoln commodities brokerage, “the House,” held government contracts to supply horses, cattle and grain to the reservation through the Indian agent and to the Army through the Ft. Stanton commander. The House also lent money to ranchers, paid them criminally low prices and regularly foreclosed on them.

“It was a pattern. I think it was amply racketeering,” Jacobsen said during an interview at his Albuquerque office.

The House was founded by retired Union Army quartermaster Lawrence Murphy, who also was county probate judge.

That meant, Jacobsen said, that Murphy oversaw trade with the Mescaleros, putting himself in charge of making sure his own firm lived up to its obligations. The probate judge also controlled the county treasury, including the sheriff’s payroll. Rulings by the county’s five justices of the peace were appealed to the probate judge.

Murphy had Lincoln County locked down. And in Santa Fe, U.S. Atty. Thomas B. Catron, a major investor in the House, had the entire territory in his control.

It looked, said Jacobsen, “like the goose that laid the golden egg.”

That was about to change. The first harbinger came when Murphy, already suffering from the cancer that would shortly claim his life, lost his reelection bid as probate judge.

“The monopoly power of the House was only possible when the economy was small,” Jacobsen said.

As people moved in and the economy grew, the House couldn’t maintain control, he said.

Competition came from an adventurous 24-year-old Englishman named John Tunstall.

“He wanted to live in the rough outdoors,” said Jacobsen. “He thought about going to Alaska before coming here, so I think he was a very rugged sort of person, and he was tough.”

Tunstall opened a store that posed a direct threat to the House and to the dying Murphy’s successors–John Riley and James Dolan. The threat was heightened by Tunstall’s alignment with cattleman John Chisum. If Chisum began supplying stock to the Army and the Indians, the House would be dead–and so would Tom Catron’s $25,000 investment.

The book shows how Catron and the House carried out an illegal scheme to attach Tunstall’s assets, closing his store and seizing his livestock. It required cooperation from the governor, a district judge, the district attorney, Sheriff William Brady and a posse of deputized criminals, many of them ex-Army comrades.

But Tunstall wouldn’t go away and refused to be drawn into violence despite repeated provocations, Jacobsen said.

“He was complying with the attachment order even though it was very abusive,” said the author. “He was killed when he was leaving his ranch . . . tracked down and killed.” Jacobsen believes the decision to kill Tunstall was made by posse members.

Others aligned with Tunstall also were killed during the war, leaving the Tunstall faction rudderless, Jacobsen said.

Tunstall ranch hand William Bonney–Billy the Kid–and his trail-mates, “the Regulators,” staged counterattacks, killing several House partisans, including Sheriff Brady.

“As things escalated, the white hats became grayer, and by the end the Regulators were as ruthless and as deadly as their enemies,” said Jacobsen.

Bonney’s death at the hands of Sheriff Pat Garrett came after the war had ended.

Jacobsen, who says the book took 12 years to complete, recalls becoming enthralled with the legend of Billy the Kid as a boy of 11 when he stopped on a summer vacation at a museum in Ft. Sumner. Billy the Kid’s grave is behind the museum.