Posted on 06/14/2003 1:46:40 PM PDT by Sir Gawain
| Which Billy did Pat Garrett get? |
| Michael Janofsky/NYT The New York Times Thursday, June 5, 2003 |
DNA tests may show Old West hero killed the wrong man
LINCOLN, New Mexico For more than 120 years, Pat Garrett has enjoyed legendary status in the American West, a lawman on a par with Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, even Matt Dillon. As sheriff here in Lincoln County in 1881, Garrett is credited with shooting to death the notorious outlaw known as Billy the Kid, a killing that made Garrett a hero. For years, a patch bearing Garrett's likeness has adorned uniforms worn by sheriff's deputies here.
But now, modern science is about to touch Garrett's fame in a way that some say could expose him as a liar who covered up a murder to save his reputation.
Officials in New Mexico and Texas are developing plans to exhume and conduct genetic tests on the bodies of a woman buried in New Mexico who was believed to be the Kid's mother and a Texas man known as Brushy Bill Roberts who claimed to be the Kid and died in 1950 at the age of 90. If test results suggest that the two were related, it would add new evidence to a long-held alternative theory that Garrett shot someone other than the Kid and led a conspiracy to cover up his crime.
Such skepticism is hardly uncommon. Disputes over major events in the Old West have engaged historians almost since they happened. The saga of Billy the Kid is one of the longest-running.
Beyond renewing interest in the Kid saga, the possibility that testing could enlarge Garrett's reputation or destroy it has even caught the fancy of Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who has offered state aid for the investigation and a possible pardon that an earlier New Mexico governor had once promised to the Kid for a murder he committed.
"The problem is, there's so much fairy tale with this story that it's hard to nail down the facts," said Steve Sederwall, the mayor of Capitan, New Mexico, who is working with Lincoln County's current sheriff, Tom Sullivan, to resolve the matter. "All we want is the truth, whatever it is. If the guy Garrett killed was Billy the Kid, that makes him a hero. If it wasn't, Garrett was a murderer, and we have egg on our face."
No matter what genetic testing may show - and it might not show much - it is hard to overstate the prominence of Garrett and the Kid in Western lore, especially here in southeastern New Mexico, where their lives converged during and after the gun battles for financial control of the region that became known as the Lincoln County War.
The Kid's notoriety grew after he and friends on one side of the conflict killed several men in an ambush, including Garrett's predecessor, Sheriff William Brady. For that, the Kid was hunted down, captured by Garrett, convicted of murder and taken to the Lincoln jail to await hanging. He was about 21.
Today, the tiny town of Lincoln, population 38, is a memorial to what happened next. More than a dozen buildings, including one that housed the jail, have been preserved as a state monument that attracts as many as 35,000 visitors a year.
Historians generally agree that the Kid, born Henry McCarty and known at times as William H. Bonney, among other names, escaped from the Lincoln County jail after it became apparent that Governor Lew Wallace had reneged on a promise to pardon him in exchange for information about other killings during the county war.
On April 28, 1881, the Kid managed to obtain a gun, kill the two deputies guarding him and leave the area on horseback. But then, stories diverge.
The version embraced here and supported by numerous books and Garrett relatives is that the Kid made his way to a friend's ranch in Fort Sumner, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northeast of Lincoln. The ranch owner, Pete Maxwell, was also a friend of Garrett's and somehow got word to Garrett that the Kid was in the area.
After arriving, Garrett posted two deputies at the door. As the Kid approached on the night of July 13, he spoke a few words in Spanish to the deputies, who did not recognize him. But Garrett, waiting inside, knew the voice. When the Kid walked in, Garrett turned and shot him in the heart.
William Garrett, a retired lighting engineer living in Alamogordo, New Mexico, who is Garrett's great-nephew, said that years of research, including conversations with his cousin Jarvis, the last of Garrett's eight children, who convinced him there was "no question about it" that his great-uncle killed Billy the Kid at Maxwell's. Jarvis died in 1991 at the age of 86.
"He was hired to get the Kid, and he got the Kid," Garrett said. "Uncle Pat was a person of integrity who did his job. He was a law abider, not a law-breaker."
But just as the story of Garrett as hero has flourished over the years, so have others, including the tale of Brushy Bill of Hico, Texas. His trip to New Mexico in 1950 to seek the pardon he claimed to have been denied nearly 70 years earlier gave new life to an alternative possibility - that Garrett had not killed the Kid at all, but a drifter friend of the Kid's named Billy Barlow.
This story holds that Garrett and the Kid may have been in cahoots for some reason and that Garrett had stashed a gun in the outhouse at the jail that the Kid used to kill the deputies and escape. Even if only part of that is true, it would strongly suggest that Garrett killed the wrong man.
Jannay Valdez, curator of the Billy the Kid Museum of Canton, Texas, said he had no doubt that Garrett killed someone else and that Brushy Bill was the Kid.
"I'm absolutely convinced," he said after meeting with Sederwall, Capitan's mayor. "I'd bank everything I have on it."
Sederwall and Sullivan, the sheriff, decided to try to settle the matter once and for all but could do so only through scientific analysis. To justify an effort that would require much of their time and, perhaps at some point, taxpayer money, they needed an official reason. So in April, they opened the first-ever investigation into the murders of the two deputies shot at the jail during the Kid's escape, James Bell and Robert Olinger.
As Sederwall said, "There's no statute of limitations on murder."
The goal now, he said, is to compare genetic evidence of Catherine Antrim - the woman believed to be the Kid's mother, who died in 1874 and is buried in Silver City, New Mexico - and of Brushy Bill, who is buried in Hamilton, Texas.
The Kid - or the man said to have been the Kid - was buried at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, although the whereabouts of the grave are uncertain. The Kid has no known living relatives.
But solving the mystery might not be so simple. For one thing, Valdez said he was certain that the woman buried in Silver City was not the Kid's mother but "a half aunt." And even if tests disqualify Brushy Bill as the Kid, other "Kids" have emerged over the years, including a man named John Miller, who died in 1937 and is buried in Prescott, Arizona. Sederwall said efforts would be made to exhume his body, as well.
The New York Times
My thoughts,exactly. Does the N.Y. Times reporter think Matt Dillon of "Gunsmoke" TV fame was a real western hero?
What I've learned of his life makes it easy to believe that he wasn't really named William Bonney - but if he ever boarded or fostered with the Bonneys it doesn't show up in any history of the period I've ever read.
(The Bonneys were Mayflower descendents and early travellers on the Oregon Trail.)
With the longer barrel and grips, yours was a custom order piece. Mine is the standard model of 1897 and is in near mint condition. It shoots quite well. If you want to find out what year your Iver Johnson was made, copy and paste the following url into your browser.
http://www2.arkansas.net/~sws1/ij-antiq.htm
Thanks for that!
It's a third model for sure, has the coil mainspring with the adjustment notches, so is supposedly "okay" for smokeless powder. The picture here is of a .32, mine is, of course, a .38, and the grip is somewhat different, it goes all the way around the grip frame, and each half is a solid piece of dark walnut. The finish is in a lot better condition on mine, probably 90% of the blueing remains so it shines up pretty nice. The bore has no pitting, but it seems to have a lot of wear. Makes me wonder what kind of ammo was used in it. I know my dad used it to shoot yard deer (never had to wait for a particular season and "go hunting" out on the farm), along with an old Stevens Favorite .22 rifle I also posess.
From what I can tell it was made before 1915, but I'll have to find the serial number info to be sure.
I think the biggest problem with the way mine shoots is that the the cylinder isn't held in a precisely timed position. When the little tang is fully engaged, looking at it from the top with the frame open, it almost looks bent. I don't know if it's worth trying to get that fixed or not, since I don't plan on firing it much at all.
Dave in Eugene
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