Billy the Kid's ghost hangs over New Mexico this week as the family of the Englishman whose murder kicked off the Lincoln County War in 1878 visits the state.

Hilary Tunstall-Behrens, a professional musician from Hampstead in London, said his family seldom talked about his great uncle, John Henry Tunstall.

Their unsuccessful efforts to win damages from the United States government for Tunstall's murder "was a huge strain on the family," he said this week.

Tunstall was the son of a London cloth merchant who came to New Mexico, via British Columbia, to buy a cattle ranch and try to corner the market on beef.

He hired a young man named William H. Bonney, also known as Billy the Kid, whose career as a desperado began when Tunstall was shot dead, probably by agents of a rival mercantile group, spurring the conflict known as the Lincoln County War.

Tunstall-Behrens, with wife Tatiana, son Caedmon, 22, and daughter Sophie, 20, arrived in the state last week to tour various sites in and around Ruidoso, Lincoln, Roswell, Artesia and Fort Sumner.

He said he came to New Mexico once before, in 1974, as did other relatives in 1926. They even exhumed a grave while looking for their ancestor's remains. "They found one red-bearded body," Tunstall-Behrens said. "They think that was probably (Alex) McSween (a lawyer who helped Tunstall buy land in Lincoln County). ... They never found Tunstall's body."

On Thursday, the Tunstall-Behrens clan lunched at La Fonda's La Plazuela restaurant with Susannah Garrett of Santa Fe and Jarvis Patrick "J.P." Garrett of Albuquerque, the grandchildren of Pat Garrett, who shot Bonney dead in 1881 near Fort Sumner.

The locale has significance. La Fonda stands on the former site of the Exchange Hotel, and it was in that hotel, over dinner in 1876, that Tunstall met McSween. In his 1992 book, The Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid, Bob Boze Bell called that encounter "the handshake from hell."

The Tunstall-Behrens plan to attend the Santa Fe Opera tonight before returning to the United Kingdom.

English historian Frederick Nolan, who has written nine books about Billy the Kid and has a 10th due out soon, is accompanying the Tunstall-Behrens. He said he had been trying for decades to get Hilary Tunstall-Behrens to return to New Mexico, but "he was afraid he was going to get shot because his name was Tunstall.

"So this year, the Wild West Historical Association had this thing (a Billy the Kid roundup) in Ruidoso and I said, 'Will you ever have a better time in your life to come than right now?' and he said, 'Let's do it.' Well, she did, actually — Tatiana. She's the moving power."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.