Questions of Mystery - Susan Horsnell

Unsolved mysteries of the Wild West

Did Sheriff Pat Garrett Really Kill Billy the Kid in 1881?



Sheriff Pat Garrett

'Billy the Kid'

After William H. Bonney escaped from Lincoln County Jail in New Mexico while awaiting hanging for the murder of Sheriff William Brady, the record will tell you that Sheriff Pat Garrett tracked the outlaw, better known as Billy the Kid (above, right), to a residence in Fort Sumner where he shot and killed him. Questions abound, however, as to Garrett’s trustworthiness and the reasons for the prompt disposal of the victim’s body. Even one of his deputies present for the shooting said that the man Garrett shot was not the fugitive they had been looking for.

When a man going by the name Brushy Bill Roberts (above, left) surfaced in Texas in 1950 seeking pardon for the crimes of Billy the Kid, the media took notice. His case was eventually thrown out by the governor of New Mexico, who agreed to meet with him. The Governor did not believe Roberts was Billy the Kid. Roberts died a short time later, reportedly ashamed by the media circus that followed his confession.


Brushy Bill Roberts

Jameson, however, is one of many convinced that Roberts was the real deal. “We started out trying to prove Roberts was lying,” he says of his investigation. One by one, though, all of Roberts’ claims were eventually verified. A statistical facial recognition analysis comparing Roberts to known images of The Kid suggested that the two men were actually one and the same. Jameson says that he’s challenged the so-called “traditionalist academics” that hold to Garrett’s official account of The Kid’s death to debate him on the subject, but none have accepted thus far.

Did Butch Cassidy Return to the United States?

'Butch Cassidy'

It has been said that Butch Cassidy and his accomplice Henry Alonzo Longabaugh ("the Sundance Kid") were the only outlaws who lived to see themselves portrayed on film. Though the record states—and Hollywood would have you believe—that the famous bank robbers were killed in a gunfight with the Bolivian military after fleeing the U.S., many of Cassidy’s friends and family members report that he actually visited them several times after he was said to have been killed.

'The Sundance Kid'

To complicate matters, the man responsible for identifying the two victims of the shootout in South America was a loyal friend of Cassidy’s—perhaps loyal enough to bolster Cassidy’s odds of a successful escape by falsifying the ID. Another of Cassidy’s friends was asked to look at photographs of the bodies in question and confirmed the death of Longabaugh, but said the body previously identified as Cassidy was someone else entirely.



 

Did Outlaw Bill Longley Elude Execution?

 

 

Bloody Bill Longley had more than 30 killings to his name before he was hanged at the age of 27, suggesting that Longley was one of the most prolific and psychopathic gunslingers in the Wild West. But was he successfully executed and buried in Texas?

Longley’s acquaintances held that Bloody Bill escaped from prison before being hanged and lived out the remainder of his days as a Louisiana cotton farmer under the name John Calhoun Brown. Longley had escaped prison twice before his recorded execution in 1878. Did a third escape keep this notorious killer from the gallows indefinitely?

Although Smithsonian anthropologist Douglas Owsley claims to have proven through DNA analysis that the body buried in Giddings, Texas did in fact belong to the notorious outlaw, Jameson says “all that (DNA) proves is that (the body) was a Longley relative.” Skeptics are quick to point out that a number of Longley relatives are buried in the same cemetery and that poor records make accurate identification of the body in question difficult.

I hope you have enjoyed this look at just a snippet of Mysteries.

Until next time - stay safe.

Sue

Susan Horsnell 

Western Romance Writer  

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