Who the heck is John Miller?

According to the history books, on July 14, 1881, Pat Garrett shot and killed Billy the Kid, a mysterious outlaw whose legend far outlasted his life. There are a number of questions about that fateful New Mexico summer night.

For example, according to Pat Garrett’s recounting of the events, when Billy encountered the two unknown deputies awaiting him on his friend Pete Maxwell’s porch, rather than leave, he backed into Maxwell’s bedroom and asked in Spanish who the strangers were. Despite being known as one of the fastest guns in the West, Billy then apparently noticed Garrett inside but hesitated and allowed Pat Garrett to shoot him twice in the chest. Also according to Garrett’s own account, the deputies thought that he had shot the wrong man – not surprising as Garrett had previously shot and killed the wrong man in ambushes on two separate occasions.

Other things to consider:

• Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid were acquaintances before Garrett had been assigned as a lawman to rid the area of the Billy the Kid menace. It has even been suggested that they were friends.
• There were many people who claimed to have seen Billy after July 14, 1881, including Max Miller, who claims to have been his adopted son and who wasn’t born until after 1881.
• On March 24, 1882, the good citizens of Las Vegas posted a notice to Billy and other unwanted undesirables that if they were found within city limits they would be invited to a “Grand Necktie Party.” It was not the only warrant for Billy’s arrest in the years after Garrett allegedly killed him.
• Three of the members of the coroner’s jury were illiterate and signed with an “X”. One claimed later that he had not seen the body. Another was Garrett’s brother-in-law. Finally, the coroner’s report was never officially filed.
• The body was hastily buried the next morning without clergy and very few in attendance.

So the question is: Did Pat Garrett kill Billy the Kid on July 14, 1881 or did he conspire to help Billy escape once more to start a new life with a new name?

In fact, did you know that the day that Billy had previously escaped from the Lincoln County jail, Garrett was conveniently away on business and some unknown person had left Billy a gun in the outhouse, a gun he used to shoot Deputy Bell? Also, that day the armory in the jailhouse had a broken lock and the armory was in the room next door to where Billy was kept. Does that sound convenient or coincidental to you?

I’ve always been a fan of Billy the Kid. There’s just so much mystery around William Bonney or Henry McCarty or Billy the Kid. The truth is that there’s so little that’s really known about him because in those days it was easy to move over a few towns and change your name and become someone else and people like Billy did that. Do I think he was all bad boy? No. I think he had a temper and had a rough side to him and he tried to straighten out but he got involved with something he just couldn’t get out of – the Lincoln County Land Wars – and things went downhill from there.

I love the mystery surrounding the story and I admit there’s a romantic appeal – cowboys, the desert, outlaws, the murky line between good and bad. But what I really love about this story is the conspiracy.

I found the one conspiracy book, Whatever Happened to Billy the Kid?, which does indeed suggest that Billy survived, moved on and changed his name to John Miller.

But enough about Billy the Kid.

What I really want to talk about is conspiracies. I brought up Billy the Kid’s mysterious death to prove that there are conspiracies everywhere throughout time even. You can probably find signs of them around every corner if you’re paranoid enough. You know the old saying, after all, “just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”

Conspiracies were going on long before Scully and Mulder were snooping around – heck, if you think about it Scooby and gang were busting a few conspirators long before The X-Files ever came to prime time. Whether you are talking about Marilyn Monroe’s death or who really killed J.F.K. or whether or not we really landed on the moon a lot of conspiring has been going on in the last century, but it didn’t start there and it certainly won’t be ending there. Heck, who’s to say that Eve and the snake weren’t doing a little conspiring against Adam where the apple’s concerned?

The best part about conspiracies – other than the mental high I personally get trying to unravel them – is that they are by nature perfect for storytelling because they are a plot in themselves. What more could a game master or storyteller ask for? It’s like winning a lifetime supply of great-tasting calorie-free chocolate.

Your games don’t have be focused merely on conspiracies but having the hint of one in the background is enough to darken a plot and get players minds spinning off in a multitude of directions. Indeed, that is part of the art of conspiracy game mastering – misdirecting players, sending them after red herrings and giving them an occasional view of the truth only to make them question that too. It doesn’t even have to be nearly as dark or surreal as The X-Files.

A conspiracy is just a plot to do something. Usually it’s an illegal something. Nevertheless, usually it’s just two or more people getting together to do something they want to keep secret. It’s a story waiting to happen. It’s a bank robbery, a drug deal, a murder, a kidnapping, a burglary, etc. Heck, if you think about it, in Monsters, Inc., Sully and Mike conspired together to hide the child while the bad guys where conspiring to use her – both were illegal. Sometimes the good guys are conspirators too.

This column in the future is going to be a discussion of conspiracies – old and new; make believe and not – with suggestions on how to incorporate them into your games. In the meantime, I hope you find the following resources to your liking:

Books:

• Airy, Hellen, Whatever Happened to Billy the Kid?, 1993
• Baur, Wolfgang with Cook, Monte, Alternity: Dark Matter, 1999
• Findley, Nigel D., GURPS: Illuminati, 1992
• Vankin, Jonathan & Whalen, John, The 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, 1995

Websites:

• Above Top Secret

 

Movies:

• All the Presidents Men
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Conspiracy Theory
• JFK
• La Femme Nikita
• The Manchurian Candidate
• The Matrix
• Men in Black
• The Philadelphia Project
• Pi

 

Television:

• Alias
• Fringe
• Law & Order
• Mission: Impossible
• The X-Files