Biographile’s This Week in History remembers events of the past, and the icons that set them in motion.

On September 23, 1875, gunman and outlaw Billy the Kid was arrested for the first time. It would not be the last.

Estimates place his birth sometime between 1859 and 1861, meaning Billy was a boy of no more than sixteen when he set foot in his first jail cell for stealing a basket of laundry. Little is known about Billy the Kid's childhood, and at the time, little could have been known that his first scuffle with the law would evolve into a short-lived joy ride of jailbreaks and showdowns.

Of the little evidence we have, we know that Billy the Kid led a vagabond childhood, skipping from state to state, fatherless by birth and motherless by 1874. Orphaned and alone, Billy the Kid, whose real name was William Henry McCarty, turned quickly to a life of crime.

Stealing horses in Arizona soon lost its thrill, and Billy the Kid eventually took to stealing lives instead. It was only a matter of time before a bounty was placed on his head. Following one miraculous escape after another, dotted by the deaths of local law enforcers, Billy the Kid was finally tracked down and fatally shot in Fort Sumner, New Mexico by Sheriff Pat Garrett in 1881. He barely passed twenty years old.

Due to his desperado-like drive, his Houdini-like jailbreaks and his wayward ways (and, no doubt, his young age), Billy the Kid's death swallowed America's collective imagination. He became a legend, first mythologized and then romanticized, ultimately dying a martyr for a lawless frontier. Today, we need only look back at the bevy of Hollywood films that honor his legacy to see how far his image has traveled from his grisly intent. Below is a trailer of "Young Guns," (1988) starring Emilio Estevez as Billy the Kid. For a harder look into the rebel's life, check out To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner.