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In 1899,
Garrett purchased a ranch in the
San Andres Mountains of
New Mexico
and in October, he was appointed sheriff of Dona Ana County,
New Mexico.
His family stayed on the ranch while
Pat worked in Las Cruces, Mesilla
and Dona Ana.
On December 16, 1901, President Theodore
Roosevelt, infatuated by gunfighters in the West, appointed
Pat Garrett as a United States Customs
Collector at El Paso,
Texas.
However, it was a controversial appointment and when his term was over in
1905, Roosevelt refused to reappoint him.
Garrett and
his family returned to the ranch only to find
Garrett in
the midst of financial difficulties due to back taxes and liability for a
loan he had co-signed for a friend.
Becoming increasingly morose over the
situation, he began to drink and gamble too much. However, still trying to
make a living, he started a new horse breeding operation.
To help with his financial problems,
Garrett
leased part of his land to a man named
Wayne Brazel who was to
graze cattle upon the land. However, he soon found that
Brazel had brought in
several thousand goats, which were considered to be even worse than sheep,
as far as cattlemen were concerned.
Owing money to many people in the
Roswell
area,
Garrett
desperately approached a another rancher named Carl Adamsson on in January,
1908 to see if he might be interested in buying his ranch. However, when
he neared Adam's home, Carl's wife, Amanda, ordered him from the
property at gunpoint.
However, Adamson and
Garrett met
later and agreed on the sale. But,
Wayne Brazel refused to break his
five year lease unless
Garrett
bought his goats. Brazel
and
Garrett made
the deal, but soon Brazel
wanted even more money. Though angry,
Garrett
finally agreed to Brazel's
terms.
On February 29, 1908,
Garrett and
Adamson were in a buckboard bound for Las Cruces, where they would meet
Brazel to close the deal.
On the way, Brazel caught
up with them and as words grew heated, Adamson threatened to back out of
the purchase. Afterwards,
Brazel rode on while
Garrett and
Adamson continued in the buckboard.
Just miles outside of Las Cruces, they
stopped the wagon and while Adamson was relieving himself off the back of
the buckboard, three shots rang out. Pat
Garrett lay dead. Adamson left his body in the desert and continued on
to Las Cruces. Once there, Adamson swore he never saw who shot
Garrett and
Brazel confessed to the
shooting, claiming it was self-defense.
When the body was retrieved, numerous
cigarette butts were found off the trail, indicating that someone had been
waiting for them. This led to the belief that the shooting was an obvious
conspiracy, involving two more people. Allegedly,
Brazel took the "fall" for
the murder because he was single. Also implicated in the killing was hired
assassin, Killin' Jim Miller because
Carl Adamson, who was married to a cousin of
Jim Miller's wife,
Sallie. However, most historians deem this unlikely.
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