Photograph of Charlie Bowdre and His Wife Manuela Stained With His Blood, 1880

Here’s an 1878 tintype portrait of Wild West outlaw Charlie Bowdre alongside with his wife, Manuela Herrera. Taken in Las Vegas, New Mexico, this photograph captures a rare moment of domestic peace for a couple deeply entangled in the lawless violence of the frontier.

Born in Georgia around 1848, Charlie Bowdre moved west to New Mexico in the 1870s and worked as a cowboy and farmer. He became drawn into the violent Lincoln County War (1878), aligning himself with John Tunstall and the Regulators alongside his close friend, Billy the Kid. Following the defeat of the Regulators, Bowdre joined Billy the Kid’s gang, often referred to as “The Rustlers” or “The Regulators,” engaging in cattle rustling across New Mexico.

Bowdre married Manuela Herrera (sister of Antonia Herrera, who was married to fellow Regulator Dirty Steve Stephens) around 1879/1880. This portrait is one of the very few surviving authenticated images showing a prominent Old West Regulator posing with his spouse. Just months after this photo was taken, Sheriff Pat Garrett and his posse tracked Billy the Kid and his gang to a abandoned stone house at Stinking Springs, New Mexico.

On the morning of December 23, 1880, Bowdre stepped outside at dawn to feed the horses, wearing a hat similar to Billy the Kid’s. Garrett and his men mistook Bowdre for the Kid and opened fire, shooting him through the chest. At the time of the shooting, he was carrying this exact photograph of himself and Manuela in his breast coat pocket. The dark, heavy discoloration and staining visible across the lower portion and edges of the image are widely believed by historians to be Bowdre’s own bloodstains, which soaked through his clothing as he fell fatally wounded.

Following the shootout, Sheriff Pat Garrett took the blood-stained memento off Bowdre’s body. It was passed down through generations of Garrett’s family before eventually being sold to a private historical collector.

Bowdre was buried in the Old Fort Sumner Cemetery next to his fellow gang members, Tom O'Folliard and Billy the Kid (who was killed by Pat Garrett half a year later in July 1881).