Billy the Kid never married, but he was young and charming, and by most accounts, the girls of Fort Sumner enjoyed his company. Which raises a question: did Billy leave any children behind?
Probably not, but there are a couple of stories worth sharing. And one of them may have actually led to the Kid’s death.
The Paulita rumor
The best-documented sweetheart candidate is Paulita Maxwell, the teenage sister of Pete Maxwell, the man whose bedroom Billy walked into on the night of July 14th, 1881. Per historian Frederick Nolan, gossip was going around that Paulita was carrying Billy’s child, and that talk reportedly made its way to Garrett.
If true, it might help explain how Garrett knew to look for Billy at Fort Sumner. Vincent Otero would later claim, “Maxwell didn’t want his sister to marry Billy; that’s why he told Garrett that Billy was hiding in Fort Sumner.”
But was she really pregnant? Probably not. Paulita married a man named Jose Jaramillo after Billy’s death, and her first known child, Rita Adelina Jaramillo, was born in 1884 (or 1885 depending on the source). If Paulita delivered a baby in late 1881 or early 1882, in a town that small where everybody knew everybody’s business, there’d be some type of record.
Paulita, when interviewed by Walter Noble Burns in the 1920s, waved off the entire romance.
“Billy the Kid and I were good friends, and that is all.”
Paulita was a grandmother by then, so take her denial for what it is. A lady in her position had every reason to keep an old outlaw romance to herself. Either way, though, there’s just no real evidence that she carried Billy’s child.
But what about Paulita’s son, Telesofor?
This photo has led many to conclude that Telesofor was Billy’s son due to perceived similarities. The only problem is that Telesofor was born in 1893. He shows up on every census from 1900 to 1950, and we’ve even got his WWI draft registration. So unless Billy figured out a way to freeze his sperm decades before science, there’s just no way that he was Telesofor’s father.
The Garcia claim
In 1999, Elbert Garcia published Billy the Kid’s Kid: The Hispanic Connection, in which he argued that Billy fathered a son with Fort Sumner resident Abrana Garcia. Their son, Jose Patrocinio Garcia, was Elbert’s grandfather. In other words, Elbert was claiming to be Billy’s great-grandson.
The baptismal record shows that Jose was born in 1886, five years after Billy’s death. The family’s explanation, however, is that the record was forged to hide his paternity, and that he was really born around 1876.
Wait. 1876?
Billy would have been 14 or 15 at the time of conception, which is certainly possible. But what about the timeline? We know that Billy was in Silver City, New Mexico, when his mother died in September of 1874. And he remained in Silver City until he got in trouble in September of the following year and skipped town. He then drifted to Arizona, where he killed Windy Cahill in August of 1877. Considering this timeline, there’s really not much room for a Fort Sumner romance.
Full disclosure: I’ve never read Billy the Kid’s Kid. Perhaps there’s more to the story that I’m not aware of. But as things currently stand, there’s really no evidence the Kid left behind any Billy bastards other than unsubstantiated rumors.
That said, Billy did get around quite a bit, so you never know.
Sources:
Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (University of Oklahoma Press, 1998)
Albuquerque Journal. Sun, Feb 09, 1958. Page 4
Walter Noble Burns, The Saga of Billy the Kid (1926)
Elbert A. Garcia, Billy the Kid’s Kid, 1875-1964: The Hispanic Connection (Los Products Press, Santa Rosa, N.M., 1999)
Chasing Billy, Billy the Kid’s Kid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUtkoukgVw&t=2305s