 When he was still alive, "Billy the Kid" had already become a nationally known figure whose exploits, real and imaginary, were reported in the National Police Gazette and the large newspapers of the eastern United States.After his death on July 14, 1881, all of New York City's papers ran his obituary, and within days, newspapers around the United States were printing exaggerated and romanticized accounts of Billy the Kid's short career.In the fifteen or so dime novels about his criminal career published between 1881 and 1906, the Kid was an outlaw antihero, customarily depicted as a badman with superior gunslinging skills, or even as a demonic agent of Satan who delighted in murder.