Pat Garrett (full name Patrick Floyd Garrett) was born June 5, 1850, on a farm in Chambers County, Alabama. He was one of seven children of John Lumpkin Garrett and Elizabeth Ann Jarvis Garrett. At age 19 he left his family to become a buffalo hunter in Texas. In 1878, after the buffalo business had become unprofitable, he went to Fort Summer in New Mexico. Here he met Apolinaria Gutierrez, whom he married in early 1880.

In November that year Garrett is elected sheriff of Lincoln County, and shortly after, the New Mexico Governor, Lew Wallace, puts a $500 reward on Billy the Kid's head. Only a week after, Pat and his posse captures Billy the Kid and some of his friends in a house in Stinking Springs, and they surrendered the same afternoon.

Four months later, in April, Billy the Kid manages to escape, but Garrett hunts him down, and July 13, 1881, he shoots and kills him. Some controvery arose, and it was rumored that Billy the Kid only had a knife when he was killed.

After having lost the election for sheriff in Chaves County, he leaves New Mexico, and heads back to Texas with his family. In 1899 he moves to the San Andres mountains where he buys a ranch. He leaves his ranch two years later, and after having spent four years as a customs collector in El Paso, he returns. Following a disagreement with Wayne Brazel who leased the ranch while he was away, Garrett is shot and murdered. Brazel confessed to the murder, was tried, but acquitted.

His grave can be visited at the Masonic Cemetery in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Primary source: "Pat Garrett - Story of a Western Lawman", by Leon Metz

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