That Billy Bonney was a killer there seems little doubt, but most of the evidence indicating he was a mental deficient seems to stem from the one extant photograph of Billy, the one where he is shown wearing a narrow-brimmed hat and holding a Winchester by the barrel. The vaccuous look in his eyes seems to belie any spark of intelligence. But consider the crude photo techniques of the time, and consider that Billy was fluent in English and Spanish, that he engineered two jail-breaks and evaded capture for 4 years in the face of a bounty on his head, and that most of his victims were on the other side of a New Mexico range war in which he had the misfortune to be on the losing side. The balance of his victims were Law Officers engaged in apprehending or holding him. In this instance, contemporary songs and stories that were sympathetic to Billy may indeed be more accurate than revisionist history that paints him as a slobbering psychopath.

In the American West of the late 1800's, the Law was rarely enforced objectively, and being an Outlaw sometimes meant you were just on the wrong side of the fence in a dispute involving land,cattle, and power.