Slaughter in Seven Rivers

BILLY WILSON AND TOM PICKETT ESCAPED THE NOOSE FOR THE SENSELESS MURDERS OF FOUR HISPANOS IN LINCOLN COUNTY.

- JAMES B. MILLS

Where would we get help if it weren’t for the Mexicans!” These were the words Billy “The Kid” Bonney said to Billy Wilson, Tom Pickett, Charlie Bowdre, Tom Folliard and Dave Rudabaugh when they were being pursued by Lincoln County Sheriff-elect Pat Garrett’s posse in the winter of 1880. After Tom Folliard and Charlie Bowdre were shot and killed, the Kid and his remaining associates were taken into custody by Garrett and his posse at Stinking Spring on December 23, 1880. Pickett faced charges for rustling in Las Vegas while Bonney, Wilson and Rudabaugh were escorted to Santa Fe.

Tom Pickett was released on bonds and skinned out. Billy Wilson was convicted of counterfeiting and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. Dave Rudabaugh was convicted for the murder of jailer Antonio Lino Valdez and sentenced to death. William Bonney was sentenced to hang before famously escaping jail in Lincoln and being shot down by Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner on July 14, 1881. Dave Rudabaugh and Billy Wilson also escaped jail less than a year after their convictions, albeit in a less spectacular fashion. AlthoughRudabaugh fled the Territory, never to be seen again, Tom Pickett and Billy Wilson showed up again in Lincoln County with grievous consequences.

While their old rustling companion William Bonney remained a heroic figure among much of the Hispano populace in eastern New Mexico Territory, Billy Wilson and Tom Pickett demonstrated an egregious lack of affinity for la gente (the people) when briefly becoming a headline story themselves after participating in a shameful quadruple murder on Tuesday, January 8, 1884. “MEXICANS MASSACERED,” the Las Vegas Gazette announced two days later. It was an appropriate headline, with the newspaper accurately describing the incident as “one of the most revolting chapters in the history of New Mexico bloodshed.”