01/01/2021
Billy, ready for action, in the town of Lincoln, NM circla 1990, This passage is excerpted from Richard McCord’s article “Dead Ringer” from his book “Te Other State New Mexico
In the summer of 1989, a 22-year-old Billy Cox of Bartow Florida got a hankering to go west for the first time, looking for adventure. He got off the Grayhound bus in Roswell. NM, and wandered into the local museum. The historian there, Ken Hobbs took one look. gasped and pronounced Cox a Dead Ringer for the most famous outlaw ever to pass through these parts: Billy The Kid. For Cox, it was the start of something ... well. peciiar.
A few days later Jeb Gibbs drive Billy Cox to the nearby town of Lincoln where The Kid killed several men before he was gunned down 100 miles away in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, in 1881 by Sheriff Pat Garrett, at the age of 21. "This is Billy The Kid" from Florida, Hobbs said to his friend Jack Rigney, the ranger
running the state historical monument about those wild days in Lincoln. Rigney could not believe his eyes.
Only one authenticated photo of The Kid was known to exist. In it he wears a crumpled hat, a low-slung gunbelt, a bandanna, and holds a Wi******er rifle at his site. The camera captures his face straight-on. The face in that photograph and Billy Cox's were identical.
After the ranger caught his breath, he and Cox struck a quick rapport. They stayed in touch after Billy took the bus home a few days later and resumed his work as a busboy in a local restaurant. Rigney visits relatives in Florida that winter and stopped by to see Billy, who had rounded up some clothes such as the Kid wore in the old tintype photo, and had been practicing the same pose.
As soon as Rigney saw Billy Cox intentionally impersonating Billy the Kid, he began seeing possibilities. So he suggested that Cox spend the summer in Lincoln to see what would happen. "Jack even said there could be a 'financial supplement' to this," Cox said later. "But I wasn't sure what that meant."
Billy returned to Lincoln in July 1990 and stayed in a room in Rigney's house. As he walked through the town packing a C**t .45 pistol and a Wi******er, both unloaded, tourists pointed to him in astonishment.
Then they wanted for him to pose for pictures, and paid him $5 or $10 without him having to ask. When there was a crowd, he could pick up $30 or $40 at a time. At daily presentations at the state monument, Rigney would tell the story of Billy The Kid then asked if anyone believed in ghosts. On cue, Cox would
walk around and strike the pose. The tourists would gasp, grab for their cameras - and leave a donation.
In his spare time, Cox tried to do things that the first Billy would have done. The Kid had done in Lincoln County, more than 100 years ago. He borrowed horses and rode them in the open country. He slept out under the stars. He did od jobs on area ranches, and accepted handouts at many of them. He went to saloons in the old village of White Oaks where senoritas would dance with him and call him "Billito" - or Little Billy. Yet Cox held on to his own identity, he insisted later. He never felt he was mystically bonded with The Kid, much less a reincarnation. "I was always William H. Cox, not William H. Bonney," he said. "There were never any spirits in the night."
In this fashion, the summer passed. capitalizing on New Mexico's endless fascination with its most notorious son, Cox portrayed Billy not only in Lincoln but also at festivals in the southern towns of Truth or Consequences and Taiban. He won look-alike contests, staged shootouts with "Pat Garret's Gang", was featured on local television and in national magazines, even had video made about him. "The money was always chancy but enough to keep him in canned pork and beans.
But the tourist season finally ended - and in October, Cox realized that things were changing. Rigney, in whose house he had lived all summer, started dropping hints about Florida. Then the deputy sheriff of Lincoln County drove up one day and asked him outright: "When are you going back home again, Billy?" Sone cattle on nearby ranches had been shot, it seemed, and people suspected him. "The deputy thought I was getting lost in the character," Cox explained, "He said he had seen it before."
Protesting his innocence, Cox nevertheless left town. Until the end of the year, he stayed in the area, taking hospitality from friends in Roswell, Carrizozo, and other places. Then he went home to Florida for two months. But next March, he returned to Lincoln. This time, however he could not tell if he was really welcome.
Jack Rigney seemed glad to see him, and talked of reviving the Billy the Kid act in July and August. But there was no invitation to stay in Rigney's house in the meantime. And though the deputy sheriff was friendly at first, he soon returned to inquire about an apparent break-in at a Lincoln hotel, in a room once occupied by The Kid.
Not quite knowing what to make of all of this Cod fled to Albuquerque for several weeks, to figure out what to do. He really was wanting to go back to Lincoln in the summer and portray The Kid one more season before leaving the legendary gunfighter behind and getting on with his life. Yet if the atmosphere did not seem right, he was ready with a backup plan. "If worse comes to worse I'll go to Fort Sumner" he said.
