Another possibility is that Billy found the revolver in the outhouse. Maurice Fulton, a tireless researcher of New Mexican history during the 1920s and 1930s, liked the version in which Sam Corbet, who had been Tunstall's clerk, aided Billy. According to that version, Corbet had visited Billy every day and, despite the watchful eyes of Olinger and Bell, had managed to slip him a note on which one word was written — 'Privy.' Not much of a clue, but Billy was a sharp youth, and he somehow got the message — there would be a revolver waiting for him in the outhouse. The revolver had been wrapped in a newspaper and planted in the outhouse by another friend, José Aguayo. The outhouse was open to the public, so somebody else could have found the weapon. But nobody else did. On his trip to the outhouse in the early evening of the 28th, Billy had retrieved the gun and hid it in his clothes. Once back inside the courthouse, the Kid had then pulled the revolver from its hiding place and shot the unsuspecting Bell.

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Another version involves Billy's handcuffs and is offered by Robert M. Utley in Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life. Utley contends that 'Bell carelessly lagged behind' when he and Billy were returning from the outhouse, and that after Billy reached the top of the stairs, he slipped one hand out of his cuffs. When Bell made it up the stairs, Billy'swung the loose cuff in vicious blows that laid open two gashes on the guard's scalp' and knocked him down. Then, according to Utley's version, Billy wrestled Bell for the deputy's gun. Billy got the gun and fired it as Bell fled down the stairs. The bullet hit the mark, and Bell staggered outside before he died in Godfrey Gauss' arms. Billy, meanwhile, took Olinger's shotgun from Garrett's office and went to the window in the northeast corner room to deal with other threats. Soon, he eliminated the only immediate threat — Olinger.

Most likely the Kid would have been able to free a hand from the handcuffs. Pat Garrett said that Billy had large wrists that tapered into slender hands. And other people who knew the Kid mentioned his small, almost feminine hands. While under house arrest at the Lincoln home of Juan Patron in March 1878, Billy supposedly had greeted each visitor by slipping his hand out of the cuffs to shake hands. Garrett also learned, presumably from eyewitnesses, that Billy had removed his handcuffs in the same manner after killing Bell. According to Garrett, Billy threw the cuffs at Bell's body and said, 'Here, damn you, take these, too.'

Early in May 1881, the territorial newspapers began to receive letters regarding Billy's escape, and the handcuffs were usually mentioned. The Santa Fe Daily New Mexican printed one such letter on May 3. 'Quick as lightning he [Billy] jumped and struck Bell with his handcuffs, fracturing his skull,' said the anonymous correspondent. 'He immediately snatched Bell's revolver and shot him.'

Another letter reported, 'Bell lay dead in the back yard with two gashes on his head, apparently cut by a blow from the handcuffs.' Still another correspondent wrote, '[Billy] said he grabbed Bell's revolver and told him to hold up his hands and surrender; that Bell decided to run and he had to kill him.' The Kid himself may also have mentioned the handcuffs. Not long after escaping Lincoln, Billy spent one night at friend John P. Meadows' cabin on the Penasco River. According to Meadows, who was interviewed by Maurice Fulton in 1931, Billy told him that he had hit Bell with his handcuffs and then had shot the deputy with his own gun.

All the details of Billy's great escape will never be known, of course. Bell didn't live long enough to say anything to anyone, not even to old Godfrey Gauss. Officials could never question the Kid about it because he remained a fugitive until Garrett killed him on the night of July 13, 1881, at Fort Sumner. But every detail was not needed to stir up the newspapers and the public. If Billy had left the town of Lincoln stunned, he also left the territory in shock. The Daily New Mexican of May 3, 1881, called the April 28 killings and escape 'as bold a deed as those versed in the annals of crime can recall. It surpasses anything of which the Kid has been guilty so far that his past offenses lose much of heinousness in comparison with it, and it effectually settles the question whether the Kid is a cowardly cutthroat or a thoroughly reckless and fearless man.' Billy, according to the newspaper, had exhibited 'a coolness and steadiness of nerve in executing his plan of escape.'

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