New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has hinted since he was first elected in 2002 that he might posthumously pardon the controversial gunslinger, who died nearly 130 years ago.
But with only two months left in his second term -- his successor was elected on Nov 2, and takes office in January -- Richardson has yet to schedule a pardon hearing despite a campaign by supporters who consider the Kid a hero.
"The governor still has yet to decide whether he's even going to proceed with a review of the Billy the Kid issue," said gubernatorial spokesman Eric Witt. "He still has not come to a decision which direction if any he wants to go on this thing.
Ted Kwong, an aide to Richardson's successor Susana Martinez, said he does not recall the governor-elect ever making any statement about the Billy the Kid pardon debate.
The legend of Billy the Kid has inspired dozens of books and films, several impostors and attempts to exhume his grave and that of his mother for DNA testing.
The tombstone of 21-year-old William H. Bonney, also known as Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim or just "The Kid," has been stolen several times and is now encased in a metal cage near Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
Some say Territorial Governor Lew Wallace, who wrote the novel "Ben Hur" from the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, promised to pardon Bonney.
But William Wallace, the former governor's great-grandson now living in Westport, Connecticut, recently said there is no historical evidence to back that up.
In a letter from the Santa Fe jail on March 1, 1881, Bonney implored Wallace to visit him and offered to testify about a murder if Wallace would "annul" murder indictments against him for killings during the Lincoln County War.
But the next month, a judge sentenced Bonney to hang. On April 28, 1881, while awaiting his execution in Lincoln, New Mexico, "The Kid" escaped by killing two deputies with a pistol left in a privy.
By May 30, 1881, Wallace left New Mexico to accept President Ulysses Grant's appointment as minister to the court of the Turkish sultan, without ever acting on the pardon.
Opposing the pardon today are the grandchildren of Sheriff Pat Garrett, who shot down Bonney on July 14, 1881.
It would amount to painting Garrett as a cold-blooded killer, "accusing our grandfather, in national and international media, of hideous crimes," wrote Jarvis Patrick Garrett of Albuquerque and Susan Floyd Garrett of Santa Fe.
"We consider that an abomination as well as an inexcusable defamation of a great man."
Pushing for the pardon for more than a decade have been various fans of the Billy the Kid legend, including Elbert A. Garcia of Santa Rosa, New Mexico, who believes he is the great-grandson of Billy the Kid.
Garcia wrote a book in 1999 explaining how his grandfather, Patrociano Garcia, was Bonney's son -- even though there is no proof Bonney had any descendants.
Anthony M. Martinez, a former reporter who runs a website called hispanonewmexico.com from his home in Albuquerque, recently wrote an open letter urging Richardson, the son of an American father and Mexican mother, to pardon Billy the Kid.
Martinez said Bonney sided with New Mexico's Hispanic majority against the late 19th century land-grabs by the corrupt Anglo-Americans known as the "Santa Fe Ring".
He also claimed Hispanics sheltered Bonney when he was on the lam, that he may have fathered children by more than one Hispanic woman, and that he spoke fluent Spanish, down to his last words in the dark, "Quien es?" (Who is it?).
"Billy the Kid thought of the Hispano people as family and I think it was a feeling that was mutual," he said. "I think it's only appropriate that we speak up for him like a family would."
