ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) – An Italian-born nun who once challenged Billy the Kid, calmed angry mobs, opened hospitals and schools in the American Southwest and is now on a path toward possible Sainthood soon will be the subject of a TV series.
Saint Hood Productions based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is scheduled Wednesday to announce a new project around Sister Blandina Segale – a 19th-Century nun whose clashes with Old West outlaws and work with immigrants has been the stuff of legend.
“At the End of the Santa Fe Trail” aims to be a fictional account based on Segale’s life and largely will use material from her 1932 book with the same name. That book consisted of Segale’s letters she wrote to her sister about the lawlessness in Trinidad, Colorado, and in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico. She also discussed working with immigrants and prisoners.
Her encounters with Old West outlaws later became the subject of an episode of the CBS series “Death Valley Days,” titled “The Fastest Nun in the West.”
According to one story, she received a tip that Billy the Kid was coming to her town to scalp four doctors who refused to treat his friend’s gunshot wound. Segale nursed the friend to health, and when Billy went to Trinidad to thank her, she convinced him to abandon his violent plan.