Sunday, February 18, 2001

Outlaw’s bid for a pardon is DOA

By Bill Whitaker

Democrats aren’t the only ones smarting over the reprehensible behavior and possibly illegal shenanigans of Bill Clinton in the twilight of his presidency.

Outlaw Billy the Kid isn’t happy, either.

Granted, some Democrats and even President Bush have downplayed many of the charges leveled at Clinton, his wife Hillary and their minions, including untrue allegations the Clinton staff trashed Air Force One before giving it up.

But sticking in the craw of loyal Democrats is Clinton’s last-minute pardon of billionaire financier and fugitive Marc Rich — and the likelihood it may have been “bought” through $1.5 million in contributions from Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, to Clinton-related endeavors.

Clinton has made the word “pardon” dirty again — and that’s likely what irks descendants of the American Southwest’s most famous outlaw. New Mexico legislators just tabled a resolution encouraging the pardon of Henry McCarty, alias William Bonney, alias Billy the Kid.

These days, nobody wants to talk about pardons for outlaws, even when they’ve entered genial American folklore. And at least Billy the Kid never made anything like the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, as Rich did upon fleeing our country amid charges of the biggest tax evasion in U.S. history.

Fallout over Clinton’s escapades is anything but good news for Texas Democrats, frantically trying to repair a party in tatters. Party loyalists such as Taylor County chairman Ken Leggett won’t defend Clinton’s pardon, but they do blame an obsessed news media for many of their woes.

“A lot of us would just prefer to look ahead to the 2002 elections,” he said.

How extensive is the Clinton fallout? Consider New Mexico Rep. Benjamin B. Rios, a Democrat whose resolution encouraging a pardon of America’s most celebrated gunslinger was just tabled by the legislative Judiciary Committee.

Rios, who insists the Kid’s death at the hands of Sheriff Pat Garrett in 1881 “should have healed many of the wounds left in his wake,” concedes his resolution is as dead as the outlaw buried — reportedly — at Fort Sumner, possibly thanks to the reigning stigma over pardons of any kind.

Of course, Billy’s past is as murky as Marc Rich’s. For instance, Abilene-based historian William Tunstill spent many years trying to prove the Kid was born in our own Buffalo Gap in 1859, lived a life of obscurity in Hico as “Brushy Bill” Roberts, and died in 1950.

Rios says the pardon he’s pushing is not for the character known as Brushy Bill but the gunman deep-sixed in New Mexico 120 years ago.

“You know, I’m not sure any of this will really help Billy,” Democratic firebrand and West Texas writer Sam Pendergrast said, referring to the outlaw, not our past president.

“There’s a good chance he’s not buried at Fort Sumner. They’d probably just be pardoning the wrong bones.”

Contact associate editor Bill Whitaker at 676-6732 or whitakerb@abinews.com. Check out Bill’s previous columns at www.brazosbill.com. And check out our latest Web site, www.oldwildwest.com.