Billy Claiborne, a member of the notorious Clanton Gang of Tombstone, Arizona was an outlaw cowboy, miner, and gunfighter. He was killed in a gunfight with “Buckskin Frank” Leslie.
William “Billy” Floyd Claiborne was born in Yazoo County, Mississippi on October 21, 1860, and as a young man, worked as a cowhand John Slaughter, driving cattle from Texas to the Arizona Territory in 1879. Later he was working in the mines around Tombstone.
After William Bonney’s death in 1881, he insisted that he too, be called Billy the Kid. He claimed to have killed three men who laughed at this demand, though newspapers report that he only shot one man. Billy was arrested after having killed a man named James Hickey but was found not guilty and released.
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