a posse captured Billy; and the judge said "string him up for what he did..." and the cowboys and their kin, like the sea came pouring in to watch the hanging of Billy the Kid.

Or so Billy Joel would have it. There's a ton of other versions too:

"It turns out that the mystery of Billy the Kid isn’t that simple: Rather, it touches upon the twists and turns of Old West history as well as the politics and economics of the New West.
Graves, along with Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Sullivan and Capitan Mayor Steve Sederwall, has petitioned New Mexico’s 6th District Court for an injunction allowing them to exhume Catherine Antrim’s remains and extract a tissue sample for DNA testing. They say the only reputed heir of Billy the Kid, self-proclaimed great-grandson Elbert Garcia, supports the request. Graves has even opened an official homicide investigation file on the death of Billy the Kid (case No. 03-06-136-01, “opened 6/7/03”).
But the mayors of Fort Sumner and Silver City say they won’t let the bodies buried in their towns be disturbed, and that sets the stage for a legal showdown in December when New Mexico District Court Judge Jim Foy is to consider the matter.
Both sides say they’ll appeal if Foy’s ruling doesn’t go their way.
“We’ll go as far as we can go with it,” Fort Sumner Mayor Raymond Lopez told MSNBC.com Tuesday. “I’ve got attorneys coming out of the woodwork on a pro bono basis.”