Im the governor, I want to see promotion, I want to see tourism go up.
Garrett wanted to be a big shot, and he wanted that reward.
(His few possessions reportedly included a pistol with 21 notches on the grip, the same as the number of killings that some accounts attribute to Billy. The story of a man named Ollie Roberts, a.k.a.
That scene was also witnessed by a U.S. marshal who filed notice of it, according to Land.
The two deputies who were waiting outside the house, John W. Poe and Thomas McKinney, hadnt met the outlaw before, so they didnt know what he looked like.
Friends of Billy the Kid went to meet with Brushy Bill Roberts and were overwhelmingly certain that Roberts was, in fact, Billy the Kid.
5 and 20.
We dont have much to live off of other than the legend, so we have to protect it..
Some believe he may have been more of a product of his times perhaps a victim of the lawless frontier world where he lived.
Then they heard voices in Spanisha language that Billy the Kid spoke as well as English and the Gaelic of his parents native country, Ireland.
Author: Asagan CC BY-SA 3.0.
In 1948, a paralegal William V. Morrison was investigating a man named Joe Hines, a survivor of the Lincoln County War, the feud that helped cement Billy the Kids name in history.
However, none of this has stopped people from being fascinated by Brushy Bill Roberts and his Billy the Kid rumors.
[1] Yet one thing stood out to me as utterly fascinating: in 1950, a man known as Brushy Bill Roberts applied for a pardon for Billy the Kid. One hearing, scheduled in December, is to determine whether Silver Citys mayor has legal standing in the matter of Catherine Antrims remains, said Sherry Tippett, the attorney representing Graves and his fellow petitioners. (LogOut/
The 2014 book, Billy the Kid: An Autobiography by Daniel A. Edwards, tells the story of how former Hico resident William H. Brushy Bill Roberts came to have his picture taken alongside his own grave..
It was based on entertaining fiction rather than hard facts. Its no different from Intel, or Sandia Labs, or Kirtland Air Force Base.
The key hearing on the exhumation is due in January. Billy the Kid realized that someone besides Maxwell was there in the darkness, and raised his pistol within a foot of Garretts chest.
Morrison was initially unsure as to the truth of the claims, but quickly began to believe them, particularly as some of the activities of Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War in which he was involved, were too in depth not to be true. Politics and the kidWhy wouldnt Lopez and his counterpart in Silver City, Terry Fortenberry, want to have the tests done, particularly if the results could well back the mainstream view that Billy the Kid was indeed killed and buried in their locale? The Brushy Bill story led to the opening of the popular Billy the Kid Museum, on North Pecan Street in downtown Hico in 1987. If Brushy Bill was not Billy the Kid, he must have been at the Kids elbow when some of these things happened, Edwards wrote in his book. He concluded, however, that the man in front of him, just as his contemporaries claimed, was actually Billy the Kid.
Author: Caknuck. [10] Hico in Texas, where Roberts retired to, openly admits his claims were true and has a Billy the Kid Museum to explain this.
As Dale L. Walker details in his book Legends and Lies: Great Mysteries of the American West, one prospective Billy was John Miller, a farmer and horse trainer who lived in a small village in New Mexico near the Arizona border and died in 1937. [2] He had heard rumours that Roberts knew the true fate of Billy the Kid and wanted to investigate more.
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He reportedly was arrested for the first time at 16 for stealing food.
He also compiled a detailed list of the witnesses who saw the outlaws body after his death and before his burial. He was buried, in Fort Sumner Cemetery, with his associates Tom OFolliard and Charlie Bowdre, with the epitaph that reads Palsthough none of them are likely directly under the tombstone there today.
Brushy Bill Roberts was a 93 percent match for Billy the Kid, which Acton and Bovik declared was clear evidence that Brushy Bill Roberts and Billy the Kid were, at the very least, extremely similar.
After receiving this information Morrison was convincedthat Brushy is, in fact, Billy the Kid. Garrett began questioning him, andMaxwelladmitted that the outlaw had been around, though he wasnt sure where he was at the moment. However, the book was more like a traditional dime novel, which often featured cowboy figures.
Those that liked him (Billy) helped him get out of town, Land said. That man, Edwards concluded, was the infamous wild West character Billy the Kid.
In November 1950, Morrison filed a petition on behalf of Brushy Bill.
Brushy Bill Roberts did not want money or fame; all he wanted in his old age was the pardon for his crimes that he was promised 70 years before by Governor Thomas Mabry. In 2011, an episode of Brad Meltzers Decoded investigated Robertss claims, as did a 1990 episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
The man who believed himself to be him left the room without any hope of attaining the pardon, and, perhaps worse, any chance of proving his alleged identity.
But lacking a pronouncement from the grave, the showdown over Billy the Kid wont be over soon.
Nobody questioned the newspaper description, Land said.
One medical gentleman has persuaded credulous idiots that he has all the bones strung upon wires, Garrett wrote with distain. Brushy Bill was 90 three days shy of turning 91. He has since been romanticized in print, and on stage, television, and film as a symbol of the lawless West. In 1990, the University of Texas, with scientists Scott Acton and Alan Bovik, used facial recognition techniques frequently used by the FBI to see how closely Brushy Bill Roberts and Billy the Kid resembled each other.
In his book, Edwards described the Lincoln County War as the bloodiest cattle war in western history., Edwards wrote that the conflict was between a group known as the Murphy-Dolan faction and an Englishman named John Tunstall and his allies one of whom was Billy the Kid.. [11] Patrolling the Bandit Belt, T. F. Dawson Scrapbooks cited in Prassel, F. R., The Great American Outlaw, p. 152.
Im rooting for the 14-year-old kid. Billy the Kid played a key role in the Lincoln County War, which began in Lincoln County, N.M. in 1878. The grave in Fort Sumner has no body.. [9] He also died of a heart attack in December 1950 after his attempt of a pardon was unsuccessful.
Tunstall gave him a job as a cowboy.
https://www.history.com/news/billy-the-kid-death-theories, End of 2021 Thanks and Update Voyager of History.
[5] This, alongside rumours spread by locals who lived near the ranch, meant some had begun to believe that it was someone else who had been killed that day. And if it means New Mexico gets a little attention, so be it.
[10] Jameson, W. C., Billy the Kid: Beyond the Grave, p. 7. View all posts by voyagerofhistory. [12] Jameson, W. C., Billy the Kid: Beyond the Grave, p. 20.
There was no doubt in Morrisons mind that he was talking to arguably the most famous gunslinger of the Old West, and he was determined to help him gain his long-awaited pardon.
15-16.
Weve really only heard the tourism/boosterism aspects of this whole procedure, She said.
As Motavalli explains, People are always willing to believe alternative theories.. I believe if Miss Antrim were alive, she would state, Ill gladly donate my DNA because I want you to prove that that is my son.. I have no problem with the DNA bit, said El Paso historian Leon Metz, who wrote a biography of Sheriff Pat Garrett.
Among those who signed affidavits were Jim McDaniels of the Evans Gang, Severo Gallegos, Martile Able, and Jose Montoya.
Things like this typically start out as bar stories, Motavalli says.
We want to get to the bottom of it, Richardson said in a Voice of America report. A BA History and MA Public History and Heritage graduate from the University of Derby. Hico had its first Billy the Kid Film Festival in 2015, and plans are in the works to bring it back this fall. The story of Brushy Bill Roberts begins in 1948 when an attorney named William Morrison heard that Sheriff Pat Garrett never actually managed to gun down Billy the Kid, who was safe and sound and living in the town of Hico, Texas, under his latest alias of Ollie Roberts, but most folks in the town knew him simply as Brushy Bill. [2] Jameson, W. C., Billy the Kid: Beyond the Grave (Lanham, Maryland: Taylor Trade Publishers, 2005), pp. Join 1000s of subscribers and receive the best Vintage News in your mailbox for FREE, Wuzhen: The Ancient Chinese Water Town with a history of more than 7,000 years, Before establishing Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard claimed to be a decorated WWII hero, Police arrest a 72-year-old suburban grandfather suspected of being the Golden State Killer, Im not dead yet: some Buddhist monks followed self-mummification, Project Azorian: Howard Hughes secret mission, 1960s U.S. satellite that started transmitting again in 2013, The Walk of Shame in Game of Thrones historical inspiration, The only unsolved skyjacking case in U.S. history might have a break, Kurt Gdel became too paranoid to eat and died of starvation, Little Ease: One of the most feared torture devices in the Tower of London, The humble English girl who became Cora Pearl, Walt Disney softened the original Snow White story.
Garrett had shot a man who had been speaking Spanish in a darkened room of the ranch house of Pete Maxwell, a friend of Billy the Kid.
Billy the Kid survived the Lincoln County War, but Tunstall was among those who did not. A struggle or two, a little strangling sound as he gasped for breath, and The Kid was with his many victims.. And maybe thats not such a bad thing.
1-2.
He said, Im not rooting for the man. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account.
The sheriff said there was too much at stake not to do the testing.
03-06-136-01, opened 6/7/03). The Billy the Kid Museum opened in Hico nearly 40 years after Robertss death, and the city actively celebrates the connection.
The other, a resident of Hico, Texas named Ollie Brushy Bill Roberts, actually managed to get a meeting with the governor of New Mexico in 1950, in which he unsuccessfully sought a pardon for Billys murders.
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Being English, I assumed that this was because we have our own outlaws, rather than the cowboys of the American West.
Edwards richly detailed book about Billy the Kid is full of fascinating information uncovered by Edwards.
[6] The body was buried that same day and was fully intact, despite later claims by various people to have kept body parts as relics. Little did he know exactly what hed find. Billy the Kids headstone in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
The only thing that worries me is that I have been to Catherines grave, and she has a nice marker on her grave, and I assume thats her grave but is it?, Over the decades, remains have been moved and gravestones have been shuffled to such an extent that its not crystal-clear that Antrim is buried precisely where her markers now stands.
The tests proposed for Antrim and her purported progeny would analyze mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down virtually intact from a mother to her children. A more recent stone marker has been placed in the graveyard but its uncertain whether it lies anywhere near the original grave location. That was the third person Garrett shot (that) he thought was Billy the Kid, Land said. One of them, from the United Kingdom, told her why he was so interested in learning more about Billy the Kids legend.
2022 A&E Television Networks, LLC. To add to the confusion, the actual facts about Billy the Kid havent been easy to come by. Billys headstone was washed away as a result of the flood, and, even though a new one was erected in 1932, there is no way to know for certain the location of his original grave in the cemetery.
This is a very, very hot issue, in which New Mexico is losing a lot of tax dollars, tourist income, the sheriff said. Saunders, who lives in Seattle, said she became involved in the controversy because she was enthralled by the unspoiled charms of the Old West and worried that the campaign to dig up the old cemeteries would backfire.
Billy the Kid has beenpromiseda pardonby New Mexico Governor Lew Wallace in 1879, but the governor didnt keephis end of the bargain.
When you listen to his real story, he talks about how he wasnt an outlaw, how he never robbed banks or stagecoaches, how he resented the fact that Governor Lew Wallace reneged on his promise of a pardon in 1879 and left him to die, Edwards says. Now these are strange things for someone that is a fraud to focus on.
By solidifying its claim on the Billy the Kid story, Fort Sumner and New Mexico could give their tourism trade a boost, Graves said. We get e-mail almost every day: people from Brazil, Argentina, throughout the United States, Trisha Saunders, one of the groups co-founders, told MSNBC.com.
William H. Bonney, Henry McCarty, Kid Antrim) was killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett back in 1881 and buried in Fort Sumner, N.M.
The stories told byBrushy Bill seemed quite convincing to the intrigued investigator.
He tried to convince him to admit the fact and Brushy reluctantly did that after some time.
In researching his book, Edwards analyzed photosof Billy the Kid and Roberts, and dug into the details of Robertss account of his life and comparing them with known facts about Billy the Kid. I dont believe that were the only town in the world, and the world is very interested in this, he said. 
Although no one can say definitively if Brushy Bill Roberts was truly Billy the Kid, this did not stop the town of Hico from creating a Billy the Kid Museum to remember him and, of course, bring in tourists.
Moreover, there is no DNA support. He was given a chance to start over..
The passage of time, along with blurred lines between the good guys and bad guys, may have contributed to the conflicting stories about cattle ranchers, lawmen and real-life cowboys in the old West. These guys were cowboys. He spent most of his latter years in the territory that eventually became the state of New Mexico.
He never robbed a bank, or stage coaches or trains..
The mayor has complained that Sheriff Graves was wasting public resources on a publicity stunt for other personal gain. The consensus seems to be that Billy the Kid died at age 21 on July 14, 1881 in the town of Fort Sumner in New Mexico Territory, shot dead by Garrett.
But the mayors of Fort Sumner and Silver City say they wont let the bodies buried in their towns be disturbed, and that sets the stage for a legal showdown this winter in New Mexicos 6th District Court. Unfortunately, the body isnt available for exhumation and DNA comparison with Billy the Kids mother Catherine Antrim, who is buried in Silver City, New Mexico. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness.
Billy the Kid went by several other names, includingHenry McCarty and William Henry Bonney, but in 1949 another name was added to the long list of his aliases: Brushy Bill Roberts.
Just then, a figure appeared in the door, carrying a gun and a butcher knife, and asked in Spanish who was there. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Sixty miles from Fort Sumner, someone else is going to say, Well, Billy the Kid was buried here. And 60 miles from there, someone will say, Hes buried here. Theres nothing good that can come out of this., Lopez said hes already satisfied with the evidence backing Fort Sumners claim, and contends that most of the town is with him on this: If anybody else wants to say they have Billy the Kid, thats fine let them prove it.. I would suggest that as its a fascinating topic. Who is it, Pete? Garrett whispered to Maxwell.
Billy couldnt grow a beard, said Land, who at first had worked at the museum but took over as director in 2009 to prevent it from shutting down. Land said Billy went to Mexico for about three years, then lived in Texas for three years. Now her doubts are gone, and she is confident that Brushy Bill was Billy the Kid. When Garrett and the deputies examined Billy the Kids gun, they found that he had five cartridges and one shell in the chamber, with the hammer resting on it.
Hines told Morrisona whopper of a tale: Billy the Kid had not been killed in New Mexico. I have a wide interest in history ranging from Wars of the Roses, country houses, Stuarts, Georgians, Louis XIV, Napoleon and criminals. The plaque below the statue states: Ollie L. Brushy Bill Roberts, alias Billy the Kid, died in Hico, Texas on December 27, 1950. But up to the day of his death, Brushy Bill said that he was Billy the Kid.
Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. More than a century after Billy the Kids heyday, the Old West outlaw is still stirring up trouble but this time the showdown is over DNA testing. We believe his story and pray to God for the forgiveness he solemnly asked for.. I have purposefully not gone into the full ins and outs of the case for Brushy Bill Roberts either being or not being Billy the Kid, in the hopes that you will investigate it and make up your own mind. Museum director Sue Land admits that the towns efforts to document Roberts and his claims came too late. [12], [1] Kiger, P. J., How Did Billy the Kid Die?, History, 14 May 2020, https://www.history.com/news/billy-the-kid-death-theories.
In terms of Brushy Bill, as has been said, if he wasnt Billy the Kid, then who was he and how did he know so much about the outlaw and the Lincoln County War?
For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. [8] This has meant that any calls for DNA evidence to be analysed has been impossible. Evans Gang members and others who knew The Kid signed affidavits declaring Brushy Bill Roberts was indeed Billy the Kid.
I believe he lived, had many more adventures before he finally died in Hico in 1950. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
This year entries will be open to films that include a general outlaw theme, Vasquez said.
They all say the same thing: We come to see gravesites that are undisturbed, we dont want to see sites that are pulled apart..
He was a gunman.
Also, because of how old Billys remains would be, it is unlikely that they could be used for DNA testing.
