Bob was a murderer...

Ameredith Robert "Bob" Olinger.

By Ben Doss

The quote, "Bob was a murderer from his cradle, and if there is a hell, I know he is there," has long been attributed to Rebecca Olinger, the mother of Bob Olinger. This attribution is so widely accepted that one might expect to find it cited in every major source on the subject. However, this is not the case. The quote is absent from the works of leading historians such as Frederick Nolan, Robert Utley, John P. Wilson, Mark Lee Gardner, Joel Jacobsen, and Maurice Garland Fulton, as well as from the Billy the Kid Encyclopedia by James B. Mills.

So, where did this quote actually originate?

The woman who made this statement was not Rebecca Olinger, but Susan McSween. Susan relayed the quote to Walter Noble Burns for his book The Saga of Billy the Kid. Although Burns quoted Susan as saying she had heard it from Bob's mother, the author's reputation for mythmaking, coupled with his frequent lack of source citations and Susan's own troubled history in Lincoln County, suggests that this was likely

Susan's personal opinion rather than a direct

quote from Rebecca. Notably, Rebecca Stafford (Bob Olinger's mother) was

never interviewed, and there is no record of her making this statement herself.

Interestingly, another notable quote about Bob Olinger was provided by Pat Garrett to his friend and author, Emerson Hough. Garrett remarked: "Olinger was a born murderer at heart, I never slept out with him that I did not watch him. After I had more of a reputation, I think Olinger would have been glad to kill me for the notoriety of it. I never gave him a chance to shoot me in the back or when I was asleep. Of course, you understand we had to use for deputies such material as we could get."

Jim East, who accompanied Garrett in the posse that captured Billy the Kid at Stinking Springs, made a similar observation about Garrett: "I camped with him and slept out alone with him and always watched him. A cold and dangerous man." The striking similarities in these statements raise the possibility that they are projections or reflections of the speakers' own fears and suspicions.

Sources:

Walter Noble Burns, The Saga of Billy the Kid

Emerson Hough, Story of the Outlaw

W.H. Hutchinson, The Life & Personal Writings of Eugene Manlove Rhodes