John Kinney (1847-25 August 1919) was an American Wild West outlaw and bounty hunter.
Biography[]
John Kinney was born in Hampshire County, Massachusetts in 1847, and his family later moved to Iowa. Kinney joined the US Army at the start of the American Civil War, and he was mustered out of service in 1873. He then settled in Dona Ana County, New Mexico, and he raised a gang that committed robberies and cattle rustling. In 1875, the gang killed two soldiers and one civilian at a Las Cruces saloon, and, in 1878, Kinney was hired to claim the $200 bounty on Billy the Kid's head during the Lincoln County War. Kinney and his men tracked down the Lincoln County Regulators to the Mexican border, but they were held back by brush as the Regulators fled down a stream. Kinney and his gang later took part in the Battle of Lincoln against the Regulators, during which Kinney was shot several times, but he survived. From 1883 to 1886, he was in prison for cattle rustling, and he went on to serve in the Army during the Spanish-American War and worked as a miner in Chaparral Gulch. He died in 1919.