(CNN) -- Billy the Kid is dead and probably doesn't care, but a pardon for the cold-blooded killer may be in the offing.
Gov. Bill Richardson, called a "Billy the Kid buff," is looking at an old promise by another governor, and not the Kid's reputation, in deciding whether to issue a posthumous pardon, a spokeswoman said Thursday.
No matter that Billy the Kid has been in the ground since 1881. That hasn't dimmed interest in the cattle-rustling outlaw. Tourists, especially from Europe, are fascinated with Billy the Kid, born Henry McCarty, but also known as William H. Bonney and Henry Antrim. He died at the hands of Sheriff Pat Garrett when he was only 21.
New Mexico's tourism website even has a travel guide to Billy the Kid territory.
"His nickname carries a lyrical quality that still gallops across the high plains of our imagination," according to the text next to the only known photograph of Bonney.
"If he does anything, [Richardson] will review the promise made by Lew Wallace to Billy the Kid," Alarie Ray-Garcia, Richardson's communications director, said Thursday, a day after the governor met with descendants of Garrett.
The Garrett family and others oppose the pardon. Besides arguing that Billy the Kid was an incorrigible killer, they want to make sure Pat Garrett is absolved of wrongdoing related to the killing and a Bonney jail escape.
Jarvis Patrick Garrett, 51, two other grandchildren and two great-grandchildren of Pat Garrett met for an hour with Richardson. CNN
