Which Billy did Pat Garrett get?

NYT via IHT ^ | Michael Janofsky

[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

[Clinging Bitterly]

>> Everytime I start to think that I know something about guns...

Actually I'm not whatcha call a true gun afficionado, I keep a couple of modern pistols - this one:

(Glock 17 9MM Pre-AWB)

And this one:

(Ruger Blackhawk S/S .357 Mag.)

I also have a couple of rather plain vanilla hnting rifles, and that's about it.

I have developed most of my interest in acquiring more guns (and RKBA / self defence issues in general) since Brady and the AWB. Since then, I buy ammo often, and I have otherwise been studying the market to decide what to add. In order of preference, my intended future purchases are:

One or two "assault rifles". Here, I'll closely watch the market and political climate. I'm not made of money, so I hope to wait out the sunset and take advantage of a bigger market and lower prices. But if it starts looking bad, I will be actively searching for pre-ban versions of whatever I determine FineSwine most despises very soon.

Two or three concealable pocket guns. Probably a .38 Spl revolver, another 9MM auto, and a .22 auto (don't laugh, if it absolutely must be hidden, a .22 is easiest to hide). We have shall issue CCW in Oregon, but I have so far resisted the temptation to ask for the state's permission to carry, so right now I go with God in that regard. I look forward to Vermont style carry here very soon. We came close to getting it a couple years ago, and it'll be coming up again.

A good 12 Ga. pump or semiauto. Home defense.

A nice 1911. Just because everybody ought to gave one.

And finally, for the sheer thrill of it, I want one each of anything chambered in .50 BMG and .500 Magnum. I don't know what I'd do with either of those, but they are in the political radar, so they natually appear in mine.

I figure after I get about halfway down that list, I'll qualify as a true gun nut. Right now, I guess I'm more of a fondler.

Dave in Eugene

[stumpy]

A secret shared by only 3? I don't think it would have been all that difficult. My great-grandfather was a big rancher in the territory. One of his sons died in New York while serving in the "rough-riders", and my mother had a letter from "Teddy Roosevelt" to my great grandfather describing his son's service and death from the "fever".

Another brother murdered her first husband at the reading of her father's will, where her then husband had been named executor of the estate. She spent her share of her inheritance on Pinkerton detectives trying to hunt down her brother for the murder. She later remarried to my paternal grandfather as a "mail order" bride.

[Shooter 2.5]

Actually, you have a Sheriff, a Deputy, an employee of the Stockmen, Maxwell and Jacobs. That's five.

Add an X number of ranch hands would be curious enough to find out who was shot and who did the shooting.

I suppose anyone can say anything and it could be possible that John Poe killed the Kid. I doubt it. I just checked the book for more details and they had an official inquest the next morning with a Coroner's jury. I don't think the people involved would lie under oath just because someone didn't want credit for killing a convicted murderer. The west had changed by then and even though they didn't have the forensics they have today, someone had to look into the shootings. Even the Earps had to face a judge for the OK Corral gunfight.

[Inyo-Mono]

Nice piece Dave! It is a collectors item. I would have responded earlier, but I was out doing some target practice with my 1860 Colt .44 revolver. Actually, according to the GCA of 1968, my pre-1898 Iver Johnson revolver is not a C&R gun, it is an antique, exempt from all Federal regs.

Curio & Relic's are guns 50 years and older made in 1899 or after. You must have a C&R license or go through a FFL to buy a C&R, but there is no waiting period to pick it up.On the other hand you can buy a gun made in 1898 or before with as little paperwork as buying a bag of groceries (except in N.Y. & N.J.), even in California.

[wardaddy]

This should be interesting.

[wardaddy]

Is it safe to shoot...and what about ammo..just curious?

Thanks.

[wardaddy]

You should check out Shooter or Eaker's video on the 50 Linebaugh shooting a few weeks ago.

[Inyo-Mono]

Yes it is safe to shoot, as long as you use the proper loads. Black powder only for my Iver Johnson, modern smokeless will ruin it and maybe you too.

I get my black powder ammo from these guys:

http://slickaz.tripod.com/amopist.htm

[wardaddy]

Thanks...bookmarking!

[Shooter 2.5]

It was my shooting of the video of fiveshooter shooting the .500 Limbaugh. Click on the last two images for the video.

http://www.imageevent.com/fiveshooter/clements

[wardaddy]

I'm gonna bookmark it now....I saw it before...great shooting and pretty serious recoil in that vid.

Thanks Shooter!

[Clinging Bitterly]

I hope the shooter had a mouthguard in place (note to self - be ready for that when you get your hands on one of those)!

But that's sorta what I had in mind with the .50 and .500, the thrill. Can't think of a thing I'd use it for - well maybe, it'd be fun to see a carjacker or kick burglar crap his drawers on sight of such a thing. That is a fine looking weapon, and scary looking all at the same time.

Excellent.

[Clinging Bitterly]

Thanks for the info, and the compliment on the piece. I had no idea that Iver Johnson revolvers were at ubiquitous as they seem to have been, or that mine was uncommon among them. I guess that makes them not terribly valuable, but the value I place on mine is not measured in Dollars.

I would like to find a nice old leather holster for mine. The one that it has always been carried in is not a good fit, and it, unlike the pistol, doesn't have a lot of sentimental value since it never belonged to my dad.

[Shooter 2.5]

Wardaddy, I still don't understand how he can shoot so many rounds out of those. I would be through after one or two shots.

Dave, the only area that seems to bother him is the middle finger that gets hit with the trigger guard. He has a leather ring that he wears in addition to the gloves. He likes custom grips that are smooth. He mentioned a couple of times that no gloves and rubber grips are horrendous on the shooter's hands.

He ordered a .500 Smith and Wesson. I'm hoping he will take it to New Braunfels when we meet Eaker, Texas Cowboy and it think, Humble gunner. He's bringing a video camera and he wants muzzle blasts and some stills. I think I'm going to be the photographer because I know I'm not going to be the guy shooting. The shoot will be in about four weeks. We'll keep you posted for the videos and stills.

[stainlessbanner]

Good post!

[wardaddy]

I have never shot anything beyond 44 mag admittedly. I do love wheelguns as I've gotten older. When I was a boy, I loved 1911s and M39/59s.....there wasn't much besides those back then really(ok HPs and Berettas and 1911 knockoffs from Spain)...early 70s.

Anyhow....the sharpest kicker my family has now is oddly my wife's SW titanium lightweight 38+P.....that little bugger hops and will blister a lady's small hands quickly.

I look forward to your next pics on the new SW 50

Thanks.

[Clinging Bitterly]

Bare hands & rubber grips, yeah, I can see problems with that setup if one is going through lots of rounds. I really like hardwood on a revolver, but methinks it probably wouldn't hold up well behind that kind of power.

>> He ordered a .500 Smith and Wesson.

That's the one I'd be real tempted to order if I had the scratch in hand & somebody else promised to pay for the kids' groceries for a couple months. Not sure how S-W is getting on with the gun grabbers these days, but I seem to recall the situation improving. Ruger & Glock have been in the media recently and things have been attributed to them that I find somewhat disturbing, but I'm not getting rid of my Ruger or Glock anytime soon. And I have seen pictures of that S-W .500 Magnum, and it looks almost as fine as Halle Berry.

Lemme know when you have the pix & video of that.

Dave in Eugene

[Shooter 2.5]

I know if we go to New Braunfels we can get the videos of that. fiveshooter and I have no idea when he'll get the .500. It could take a while.

We'll let you know. fiveshooter is a lurker but I think he can be asked to help make a thread about shooting it.

[Mystic_Pixie_Maiden]

Actually, being related to Billy the Kid, I know for a fact that he was ambidextrous, but primarily right-handed. Due to the reverse image of the only known photograph of Billy the Kid, it gave the incorrect impression that he was left-handed because his revolver is positioned on the left side. Someone finally realized the imaged was flipped by looking at the Winchester rifle.