The Murder That Made Billy the Kid - February 18, 1878

On February 18, 1878, a sheriff's posse murdered British rancher John Tunstall on a lonely road in Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory. The killers were acting under legal warrants, carrying badges, technically operating under color of law yet everyone recognized it as murder. Among the witnesses was eighteen-year-old William Bonney, who would transform into Billy the Kid and wage a five-month war of vengeance. The Lincoln County War demonstrated how completely the law itself could become corrupted when economic power captured legal institutions, turning badges and warrants into weapons of a business monopoly. Nineteen men died before federal intervention ended the violence.