Henry McCarty was born in an Irish slum in New York City in 1859. By the time he died from a lawman’s bullet twenty-one years later in New Mexico, he was notorious throughout the world under a different name: Billy the Kid.

Born to a single, loving mother, young Henry was smart, charming and polite. But he soon faced tragic, devastating setbacks that sent him on a path from robbery to murder. Orphaned at 15, Henry was forced to survive on the western frontier, an unforgiving place where life was cheap. And he would soon become one of the most infamous outlaws in American history.

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