Billy the Kid: The Story - The Trial [Paperback]

Randy Russell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1995

The Story of the Lincoln County War and the part Billy the Kid played in it. The book not only contains the story of the conflict but also copies of the original court documents pertaining to his trial in Mesilla in 1881. The author discovered these documents in 1969 stored in a small, dusty cardboard box at the Doa Ana County Court Clerk's office in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where they had been misplaced since the 1881 trial. This book isn't like any of the other Billy the Kid books. The court records record a much different story than most of the other books on the subject. It includes a index of dates which allow a person to better understand how the many dfferent stories fit into a saga that lasted for over five years. It has been voted as being the best place to start when attempting to study the life and times of Billy the Kid.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Russell's book is factual, brief and given to a minimum of embellishment or interpretation. Armchair historians and Billy aficionados will find it a welcome addition to their bookshelves. It contains copies of the original court documents which record some of the important events during the Lincoln County War, discovered by the author in 1969 stored in a cardboard box at the Dona Ana County Court Clerk's office. The story surrounding the discovery and preservation of these documents as told by the author is perhaps as interesting as the information they contain, and certainly more reflective of contempary times. Also worth noting is its chronology of known events in the life of Billy and an epilogue that sets forth -- Book Description

About the Author

Randy Russell was raised in New Mexico and graduated from high school in Ruidoso, New Mexico, a small mountain community located in Lincoln County, approximately 20 miles southwest of the village of Lincoln. His writings on the subject of Billy the Kid have been described as authoritative, unembellished, and educational. Having lived most of his life in the area where the Kid actually roamed, his perspective is much different than most other authors on the subject.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Crystal Pr (March 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0964447630
• ISBN-13: 978-0964447639
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,147,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Randy Russell has believed in ghosts since having to take the trash out at night when he was 12 and being chased back to the house by "something" in the darkness.

The Edgar-nominated author of five published novels for adults, two books of short stories about ghosts, and two volumes of Southern Appalachia folklore, Randy's first paranormal novel, Dead Rules , will be released in hardcover by HarperTeen on June 21, 2011.

Randy is an academically trained folklorist who has collected hundreds of first-person accounts of ghost experiences from across the South. He presents regularly on "True Ghost Stories of the South" based on his interviews of people who have encountered ghosts.

" I know what a ghost encounter is like for the people who have experienced them," Randy said in a recent interview. "But I have always wondered what the experience is like for the ghost and what it is like to be a ghost.

"By far, the most common ghost a person is likely to encounter is that of a loved one. Love is the binding element, in the main, that keeps a person hanging around after death. I wrote Dead Rules so I could learn what being a ghost might be like. I set it in a high school for the dead, because high school is when most of us are learning what love is... what it can be... and what it isn't. It seems so unfair to die in high school."

"I write ghosts and dead people," Randy said, "but my overriding concern in fiction is coming to an understanding of love. I figure each of us will fully understand what love is about 100 years after we're dead. In that case, ghosts know. And I want to know what they know. "

Randy lives outside Asheville, North Carolina, near the end of a shady mountain cove road marked by a sign that reads "No Exit." Randy thinks this means he will live forever.