In Rudy Wurlitzer's script for Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, he has a ghost-like voice appear to the Kid in a livery and talk about the time he and Black Jack Ketchum tied rocks to two women and threw them in the Rio Grande. Ketchum was a real person. This is his story:

Wurlitzer got the story from Eve Ball's book Ma'am Jones of the Pecos, where he got much of the material in his script. The book is about the Jones family's recollections of their time running a trading post in the Pecos and the historical figures they meet.

One of whom was Billy the Kid. It's a good historical resource but murky because these are passed down stories and it's almost written like a novel. Wurlitzer based the film's ginger Horrell family on the Jones clan. But back to Ketchum.

In the book, a 15 yr old Nib Jones goes on a trail drive and Ketchum is among the cowboys. At one point Ketchum gets drunk, finds on old mother dog and her 6 pups that belonged to a sheep outfit (cowboys hated sheepmen) and cuts their throats. Then Ketchum starts bragging...

Nib is sickened by the sight and asks Ketchum how he could do something like that. Ketchum replies, "That's nothin'. Billy Morgan and me killed two women. Tied rocks to 'em and threw them in the Rio Grande" Morgan finds out and beats the shit out of Ketchum for his big mouth.

Historians are split on whether they were actually responsible or if Ketchum was just taking credit for someone else's crime. Others think the event never happened at all. Here are some things that we know for certain about Ketchum's time on earth.

Ketchum was born in San Saba County, Texas. He worked as a cowboy but quickly started robbing trains with a gang that included his brother Sam. Eventually Tom (or Sam) was accused of murdering their neighbor John Powers and had to go on the run. They continued their train robbing

At one point Ketchum joined Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch but it was short-lived. No one liked Ketchum all that much. He was a braggart and an all around asshole. He joined up with Sam and a few others for various robberies, two of which resulted in the deaths of multiple possemen.

Unfortunately, during one gunfight, Sam was shot in the arm and captured, along with the rest of the gang members, save Black Jack. Sam succumbed to gangrene in jail and died. Without his gang, Black Jack did the logical thing: tried to rob a train by himself...

On Aug 16 1899, Ketchum boarded a train near Folsom. His plan was to stop the train at gunpoint and disconnect the mail and express cars. He crawled to the engine and pulled his pistol on the engineer and fireman who both complied. He had successfully stopped the train...

Unfortunately Black Jack Ketchum miscalculated the stopping point, which was on a curve, which cramped up the train and made it impossible to disconnect the mail and express cars...

Conductor Frank Harrington had recently been robbed 3 separate times and was sick of this shit. He went for his shotgun and a startled Ketchum quickly fired at him, barely missing. Harrington's shotgun blast found its way to Ketchum's elbow though...

The blast nearly severed Ketchum's arm and it blew him out of the train, where he rolled down the bank. Harrington had the engineer and fireman start the train as quickly as possible and they stopped at each subsequent station to report the robber still on the loose.