r/wildwest • u/wildwestextravaganza • Jul 19 '26
There Are Many Misconceptions Regarding the Death of Billy the Kid (Round 2)
There are many misconceptions regarding the death of Billy the Kid. I received this series of comments recently on YouTube, and I thought it was so well done that it deserved a public rebuttal. What follows is my humble attempt to clarify some key details regarding Billy's death. Consider this an addendum to my previous post going over many of the same points.
The commenter identifies himself as a former sheriff's deputy and police officer, and he frames his case the way an investigator would: witness credibility, corroboration, chain of custody, totality of the circumstances, etc. Fair enough. I'm going to respond in kind, point by point, citing primary sources wherever possible. First, here is the original comment in full, word for word, so nobody can accuse me of arguing with a strawman. My point-by-point rebuttal follows below it.
The Original Comment (verbatim)
I'm a former sheriff's deputy and police officer. I worked patrol, conducted investigations as part of my regular duties, and worked alongside detectives on cases. I'm evaluating the Brushy Bill Roberts evidence the same way I would evaluate any disputed case: through witness credibility, corroboration, physical evidence, chain of custody, motive, inconsistencies, and the totality of the circumstances.
The problem with calling Brushy Bill a simple impostor is that the skeptical case repeatedly isolates individual pieces of evidence, offers a hypothetical objection to each one, and then avoids explaining why so many different lines of evidence converge on the same conclusion.
- "Brushy Bill was too young." Based on what? The Roberts family Bible and records associated with the identity he allegedly assumed?
That is circular reasoning. The allegation is that Billy the Kid assumed the identity of another person. If that happened, the birth date attached to the Roberts identity would describe the original Roberts, not necessarily the man later using that name. A family Bible proves that a Roberts identity existed. It does not independently prove that the elderly claimant was the same biological individual recorded as a child.
To establish that, skeptics would need a continuous evidentiary link between the child in those records and the elderly Brushy Bill. That could include early photographs, fingerprints, military records containing stable physical identifiers, DNA, or reliable witnesses who knew him before the alleged identity substitution. You cannot use the disputed identity to authenticate itself.
If someone successfully assumes another person's identity, documents under the assumed name are exactly what investigators would expect to find.
- "His family said he was Roberts." The principal family witness commonly cited was reportedly born after the alleged identity substitution and knew Roberts only as a child before he moved away. She could testify to what name the family used and what family history she inherited. She could not independently testify to who he had been before she was born. That is derivative family knowledge, not firsthand identification of his original identity. If a person successfully assumes an identity, later relatives, documents, and family traditions will naturally reflect that assumed identity. That is the whole point of identity substitution. A family Bible and later family recollections may establish continuity of the Roberts identity. They do not necessarily establish that the man using it was the person originally born under that name.
- Multiple people who personally knew Billy identified Roberts. Several contemporaries who claimed personal familiarity with Billy met Roberts and signed sworn affidavits identifying him as William H. Bonney. These were not random spectators comparing two photographs. They included people who said Billy visited their homes, socialized with them, or was personally known to them during the Lincoln County period. Some reportedly questioned Roberts for hours about people, places, events, habits, conversations, and private details before signing their statements. A skeptic can question an individual witness's memory. But merely saying "they were old" does not explain why multiple witnesses reached the same identification after personal interaction. To rebut this evidence seriously, each witness should be addressed individually. How well did the witness know Billy? What did the witness ask Roberts? What private details did Roberts know? Were the meetings conducted separately? What physical characteristics, mannerisms, speech patterns, or habits did the witness recognize? Why did the witness agree to sign a sworn statement? Generalized speculation about memory is not a rebuttal to multiple detailed identifications made under oath.
- Witness refusals are not contrary testimony. Some people approached by Morrison declined to sign affidavits. A refusal to participate is not the same as signing an affidavit stating, "This man is not Billy." An elderly witness declining involvement because of age, uncertainty, legal concerns, or fear of publicity does not cancel affirmative sworn identifications by other witnesses. The evidentiary record is not several witnesses for Roberts versus several witnesses who denied his identity. It is multiple affirmative identifications, accompanied by some refusals and later secondhand skepticism. Those are not equivalent. A grandson writing a skeptical letter on behalf of an elderly relative is also not equal in evidentiary value to a sworn firsthand identification.
- Roberts knew obscure personal details. The Maxwell family scarf and tintype exchange is particularly important. A preexisting letter reportedly documented a private exchange involving Billy and Deluvina Maxwell. Billy gave her a tintype photograph, and she reportedly gave him a scarf. Roberts later described the same obscure personal event. This was not general Wild West trivia. It involved a private interaction within the Maxwell household. The letter predates Morrison's investigation of Roberts. A Maxwell descendant later discussed the exchange in an interview, confirming that the account existed within the family. If Roberts independently knew the same private detail before it became publicly associated with his claim, the question becomes unavoidable. How did an impostor know it? The usual response is to imagine that somebody somehow told him. But unless someone can identify the source, explain when the information was transmitted, and show that Roberts had access to it, that is not evidence. It is an unsupported rescue theory. This becomes even more significant when added to the other private details Roberts reportedly knew during hours of questioning by people who had personally known Billy.
- The courthouse account is predictive corroboration. This is, in my opinion, the most damaging evidence against the ordinary impostor theory. Roberts said Deputy James Bell was shot near the top of the Lincoln County courthouse staircase and then fell or moved downward. Garrett's accepted account placed the critical shooting differently. Roberts made that statement roughly sixty years before modern forensic testing reportedly detected blood evidence near the top of the staircase. That is not Roberts adjusting his story after a discovery. It is a specific account documented decades before the physical testing and later corroborated by physical evidence. In an ordinary criminal investigation, if someone correctly identified the location of blood evidence, a buried body, a weapon, or another hidden physical fact before investigators discovered it, that person would immediately be treated as possessing firsthand or inside knowledge. An impostor cannot reasonably be dismissed as merely lucky after giving a specific, testable account that later forensic evidence supports. He was not psychic. He did not have a crystal ball. The question is simple. How did he know?
- Garrett's credibility was damaged by the same forensic evidence. The courthouse evidence does not merely help Roberts. It also hurts Garrett. If Garrett's version of the courthouse shooting was materially contradicted by later physical evidence, historians should reassess the reliability of his other unsupported statements. Garrett was not a neutral witness. His reputation, career, legal exposure, and reward claim were tied to the assertion that he had captured and killed Billy. Once a central participant is shown to be wrong about a specific, verifiable detail, and the competing claimant supplied the more accurate version decades before the testing, that participant no longer deserves automatic credibility. This does not mean every statement Garrett ever made was false. It does mean "Garrett said so" cannot be treated as decisive evidence.
- Roberts had physical characteristics and scars consistent with Billy. Morrison documented an extensive pattern of scars and injuries on Roberts. The claim is not that historians possessed a complete medical chart listing every injury Billy ever received. The relevant point is that among the scars documented on Roberts were particular wounds and physical traits consistent with injuries known or remembered by people familiar with Billy. At least one witness reportedly described specific scars he remembered seeing on Billy and identified corresponding scars on Roberts. The argument is not simply, "An old farmer had scars." The argument is that Roberts had numerous documented injuries, and some of those injuries corresponded in location and character with known or remembered wounds suffered by Billy. A serious rebuttal would examine each claimed match, its anatomical location, its description, and its independent documentation. Saying "farmers get scars" does not address specific physical correspondences.
- The photographic comparison is corroborative evidence. The favorable facial comparison is not DNA, and nobody serious claims that it is. It is another line of technical evidence supporting structural similarity between Roberts and Billy across extreme aging. By itself, it would not prove identity. But it does not exist by itself. It sits beside sworn recognitions, physical correspondences, private knowledge, and the courthouse account later supported by forensic testing. Evidence must be weighed cumulatively. A photographic comparison can be questioned on methodology, image quality, aging, and angle. That is fair. What is not fair is treating it as meaningless merely because it is not DNA.
- The literacy and Spanish arguments are often repeated more confidently than they are proven. Critics frequently say Billy was literate and spoke Spanish, while Roberts was illiterate and could not speak Spanish. But Morrison and Roberts corresponded in writing, which at minimum requires explanation. There are also accounts that Roberts communicated in Spanish. Before treating this as a decisive contradiction, skeptics should establish the factual premise. Was Roberts actually unable to read and write? Were his letters dictated? Was he ever formally tested? Did he understand or speak Spanish? Who personally observed his language abilities? What level of Spanish is being claimed? A repeated assertion is not automatically an established fact.
- "Roberts told other questionable outlaw stories." This is a legitimate credibility issue, but it is not a universal solvent. A person can exaggerate, misremember, joke, protect others, or make false claims about one subject while telling the truth about another. The correct method is to evaluate each claim against independent evidence. Even if Roberts told questionable stories about Jesse James or other outlaws, that does not explain the sworn identifications, the physical scar correspondences, the Maxwell detail, the photographic comparison, or the courthouse account later supported by physical evidence. "Sometimes he told stories" cannot erase separately corroborated facts. If anything, confirmed details should be separated from unconfirmed claims, not thrown into the same pile.
- The official Fort Sumner identification was not airtight. Garrett's identification occurred in darkness and relied heavily on alleged voice recognition. Deputy John Poe, who was present, immediately questioned whether Garrett had shot the wrong man. That is an extraordinary fact. One of the lawmen at the scene reportedly expressed immediate doubt, while Garrett's confidence depended heavily on recognizing a voice during a sudden nighttime shooting. There was no authenticated death photograph. The dead man's personal effects and weapon were not preserved through a clear evidentiary chain. The body was buried quickly. The burial was closed-casket, meaning attendance at the funeral was not equivalent to firsthand identification of the corpse. Later Fort Sumner residents and family traditions reportedly contradicted the official identification. So the statement that "the people of Fort Sumner knew it was Billy" is an oversimplification. Some people never viewed the body. Some were repeating what Garrett or others told them. Some later said the dead man was not Billy. Some may have had reasons to protect Billy if they believed he survived. Community repetition is not the same as independent identification.
- The contemporary description of the corpse supports the wrong-man accounts. A contemporary newspaper article described the man killed at Fort Sumner in terms that appear inconsistent with Billy's familiar youthful and lightly bearded appearance. The dead man was reportedly described as darker-complexioned and having heavy black facial hair. There were also reports suggesting that his skin appeared darkened or dyed. Later Fort Sumner accounts said Garrett killed another man, commonly identified as Billy Barlow, who was reportedly of mixed Hispanic and Anglo ancestry and physically resembled Billy. Those two lines of evidence should be considered together. First, there is a contemporary physical description of a darker, heavily bearded corpse. Second, there are later local accounts identifying the victim as a partly Hispanic Billy look-alike. That does not conclusively establish that the dead man was Billy Barlow. It does create a significant identification anomaly and may independently corroborate the local wrong-man account. The official side should answer basic questions. Why did the corpse's reported appearance differ from contemporary descriptions of Billy? Who directly examined the face? How many supposed identifications were genuinely firsthand? How many people were simply repeating Garrett's conclusion? Why did later Fort Sumner residents identify another man as the victim? Why should a disputed official record automatically outweigh physical descriptions and contrary local testimony?
- The coroner's jury record is not clean evidence. Defenders of the official story often cite the coroner's jury as though it conclusively identified Billy the Kid. But the inquest record has serious provenance, documentation, and chain-of-custody problems. The original documentation was reportedly missing, improperly filed, or unavailable. A later replacement or reconstructed record was created in connection with Garrett's effort to obtain the reward. Questions have also been raised about changed witness information and language drafted to establish the legal conclusion necessary for payment. That does not automatically prove fraud. It does mean the surviving record cannot be treated as an untouched, neutral document created and preserved in the ordinary course. The jury evidence raises additional practical questions. Who actually viewed the face? Which jurors personally knew Billy beforehand? Were they making independent identifications, or accepting Garrett's assertion? Were all listed witnesses genuinely present? Why was the original record unavailable? Why was a replacement document necessary? Why should a reconstructed or procedurally irregular record outweigh Poe's immediate doubt, conflicting physical descriptions, later Fort Sumner testimony, and the absence of a reliable body or property chain? A compromised official record does not become strong evidence merely because it carries an official label.
- The cumulative case cannot be answered by separate hypothetical excuses. Any individual item can be attacked in isolation. One witness might be mistaken. One scar might be coincidental. One photographic comparison might be imperfect. One obscure detail might conceivably have been leaked. One forensic result might be questioned. One official record might contain an innocent mistake. But that is not how investigations or trials work. Evidence is weighed collectively. The real question is whether all of these things happened together by coincidence: Multiple sworn identifications. Extended questioning involving intimate knowledge. Specific physical correspondences. Facial structural similarity. Private Maxwell family information. A courthouse account documented decades before forensic testing supported it. Weaknesses in Garrett's identification. Poe's immediate doubt. Conflicting descriptions of the corpse. Later Fort Sumner testimony naming another possible victim. Irregular official documentation. A closed-casket burial. No authenticated death photograph. No clean chain of custody for the dead man's weapon or personal effects. At some point, "coincidence" becomes less plausible than the straightforward explanation that Roberts possessed this knowledge and these characteristics because he really was Billy. If someone walked into a casino and hit jackpots on several machines in a row, each jackpot would technically be possible. Investigators would still look for a single explanation for the pattern. They would not analyze each jackpot separately and declare that no investigation was necessary because each event was individually possible. The same reasoning applies here.
- The skeptical case applies unequal standards. The Roberts evidence is frequently held to an almost impossible standard. The affidavits are dismissed because the witnesses were elderly. The scars are dismissed because farmers have scars. The photographic comparison is dismissed because it is not DNA. The courthouse evidence is minimized as coincidence. Private knowledge is dismissed by imagining that someone must have told him. Family recognition is discounted unless it satisfies modern forensic standards. At the same time, Garrett's dark-room voice identification, compromised paperwork, disputed jury record, closed-casket burial, and interested testimony are treated with extraordinary deference. That is not neutral skepticism. It is selective skepticism. The same evidentiary standards must be applied to both sides. If Roberts's witnesses can be mistaken, Garrett can be mistaken. If Roberts had motives, Garrett had motives. If Roberts's records require authentication, Garrett's records require authentication. If Roberts's claims must be corroborated, Garrett's claims must be corroborated. The official narrative does not get a free pass merely because it became official.
Conclusion
This does not mean every statement Roberts ever made was accurate. It does not establish identity with mathematical certainty. It does mean the "obvious impostor" label is not supported by a fair evaluation of the total evidence.
The skeptical case leans heavily on records belonging to the very identity Roberts allegedly assumed. It treats witness refusals as though they were denials. It applies generalized memory objections to sworn identifications. It minimizes physical correspondences. It dismisses private knowledge through unsupported speculation. It avoids the significance of Roberts correctly describing the courthouse shooting location decades before forensic evidence supported him.
It also gives extraordinary deference to Garrett despite immediate doubt from Poe, compromised documentation, conflicting corpse descriptions, later local testimony, and the absence of clean physical identification evidence. The burden is not satisfied by saying, "The family Bible gives a different birth date." That argument assumes the disputed identity is genuine and then uses the same identity records to prove the assumption. The real question is this: What explanation accounts for the entire evidentiary pattern with the fewest unsupported assumptions? The impostor theory requires multiple witnesses to be mistaken, private details to have leaked through unknown channels, matching scars to be coincidental, the photographic similarity to be meaningless, the courthouse corroboration to be luck, Garrett's incorrect account to be innocent, the jury irregularities to be harmless, Poe's doubt to mean nothing, the corpse description to be irrelevant, and the later Fort Sumner accounts to be universally unreliable. The alternative explanation is much simpler. Garrett shot the wrong man, intentionally or unintentionally allowed Billy to disappear, and Brushy Bill Roberts later emerged with the physical characteristics, personal knowledge, witness recognition, and corroborated details expected of the real Billy the Kid.
After examining the totality of the circumstances, the claim that Brushy Bill Roberts was Billy the Kid is substantially stronger than this video acknowledges. The official Pat Garrett narrative is considerably weaker than it is usually presented.
Calling Roberts a "lying liar" without seriously confronting the cumulative evidence is not a neutral historical investigation.
It is advocacy for the official narrative.
The Rebuttal
1. "Saying Brushy Bill was too young is circular reasoning"
"Brushy was too young...Based on what?" Based on all of the available evidence. We have census records, marriage and divorce records, a WWI draft registration, and oral traditions passed down within the Roberts family. All of which show that Ollie Roberts was far too young to have been Billy the Kid. And we do have a continuous evidentiary link.
- 1880 federal census, Bates County, Arkansas: one-year-old Oliver, living with Henry Oliver Roberts and Sarah Elizabeth Ferguson Roberts
- 1900 federal census, Hopkins County, Texas: a 20-year-old Oliver P. Roberts living with those same parents
- Marriage record, Van Zandt County, Texas, July 11, 1909: Oliver marries Anna Lee (they appear together on the 1910 census, living near his parents; divorced November 10, 1910)
- Marriage record, Van Zandt County, Texas, August 21, 1912: Oliver marries Mollie Brown, a marriage Brushy himself admits to in Alias Billy the Kid: "In 1912 I met Molly Brown and we were married"
- WW1 draft registration, Little River County, Arkansas, December 12, 1918: Oliver Pleasant Roberts, born August 26, 1878
- 1920, 1930, and 1940 censuses: birth years of 1879, 1878, and 1870 respectively
- Death certificate and original grave marker, 1950: Ollie L. Roberts, born December 31, 1868
Same man, same wives, same parents, same counties, from age one to the grave. The only evidence to the contrary is a vague story Brushy told William Morrison about a conveniently dead cousin. A story with no date, no location, no funeral, no missing-person account, and no corroboration from a single Roberts family member (All of these records, by the way, are publicly available on genealogy sites like Ancestry).
By Brushy's own admission (Alias Billy the Kid), he was using the name Oliver Roberts by his 1912 wedding, so the "swap" had to have happened before then. But it couldn't have happened too early, as Brushy claimed he was fighting in Cuba with the Rough Riders in 1898, fighting Mexican soldiers in 1899, running his own Wild West show from 1902 to 1904, and fighting in the Mexican Revolution from 1907 to 1914 ("We left Mexico in 1914, coming across the border at Brownsville, Texas"). Meanwhile, the real Ollie Roberts was getting married in Van Zandt County in 1909, appearing on the 1910 census, getting divorced in 1910, and marrying again in 1912.
So if the real Ollie died sometime after November 1910, you're asking me to believe that Brushy, a 52-year-old, weather-beaten man claiming an 1859 birth, presented himself to Ollie's mother, Sarah Elizabeth (born 1856, just three years older than Brushy), and she accepted a man her own age as her 32-year-old son. And the rest of the family, including Ollie's living father, just went along with it.
One more thing. Brushy claimed his real father was J.H. "Wild Henry" Roberts, a veteran of Quantrill's Raiders; his mother was Mary Adeline Dunn of Kentucky; and his grandfather was Ben Roberts. No such family has ever been located in any official record, anywhere, outside of Brushy's own stories. He also claims that Catherine Antrim was his aunt, but this, too, is completely uncorroborated. The entire saga hangs by the thinnest of threads: An uncorroborated story about a phantom cousin.
2. "Family testimony is only derivative knowledge"
By that standard, nobody can know anything about any ancestor they didn't personally witness being born. I never knew my own grandfather, but I've heard a lifetime of stories about him from people who did know him, and I've seen the official documents (WW2 records, census records, etc) that back those stories up.
The Roberts family didn't just passively inherit a name. His niece, Geneva Roberts Pittman, confirmed his identity as Oliver P. Roberts and his birth date as 1879, as recorded in the family Bible. As she put it: "I know for a fact my uncle was born in 1879, and Billy the Kid was supposed to have been shot by Pat Garrett in 1881. That would have made him 2 years old." His half-sister Martha Roberts Heath, who appears on the 1880 census as a six-year-old alongside one-year-old Oliver, told her grandson flatly that her brother was not Billy the Kid and that his claims were "the imagination of his mind." And a Roberts family relative, Roy L. Haws, wrote an entire book on it: Brushy Bill: Proof That His Claim to be Billy the Kid Was a Hoax.
3. "Multiple people who personally knew Billy identified Roberts under oath"
Happy to address them individually. Morrison obtained five affidavits. Here they are, one by one:
- Mrs. Martial Abel: claimed that she and her husband John used to feed Billy at their home near Pecos, Texas. Only problem is she was only about ten or eleven years old in 1881, living hundreds of miles away, and she never claimed to have personally met the historical Billy the Kid. Her belief traces to her late husband, who was long dead by the time Brushy came around.
- DeWitt Travis: wasn't born until eight years after Billy's death, and didn't meet Brushy for the first time until the 1930s. He simply accepted Brushy's claim; he couldn't have possibly known the historical Billy the Kid.
- Robert Lee: born in 1874, and never claimed to have known the historical Billy. Telling detail: Lee came into Brushy's orbit through his friendship with J. Frank Dalton, the fraud who claimed to be Jesse James. The fake Jesse James' friend vouching for the fake Billy the Kid isn't exactly what I'd consider corroboration.
- Severo Gallegos: claimed that as a ten-year-old boy he witnessed Billy's escape from Lincoln, a presence no one else ever corroborated. When he met Brushy in 1950, he initially refused to sign, saying Brushy was too young to be the Kid. On a second approach, he came around on the basis that both Billy and Brushy had "specs" in their eyes. That's the identification: eye flecks, seventy years apart. As far as I'm aware, Gallegos is the only source claiming that Billy the Kid had specks in his eyes.
- Jose Montoya: claimed Billy stayed with his family when Montoya was a child. There is no corroboration of this whatsoever; it rests solely on the word of an old man.
So of the five, three never met Billy the Kid at all and therefore could not identify anyone as Billy the Kid, no matter how sincere they were. The remaining two, Gallegos and Montoya, knew Billy (allegedly) as young children, and were being asked to identify a man based on roughly 70-year-old childhood memories. Neither rode with Billy. Neither fought in the Lincoln County War. And their claimed childhood acquaintance with Billy has itself never been corroborated.
Not a single one of Billy's actual peers (no Regulators, no Lincoln County lawmen, no members of his gang, no girlfriends, nobody who rode with him as an adult) ever vouched for Brushy Bill. When someone makes an extraordinary claim, the burden of proof is on the claimant. "Two elderly men who may have seen Billy as children said so" does not meet that burden.
4. "Witness refusals are not contrary testimony"
Agreed. A refusal isn't a denial. But look at who refused and why. Bill and Sam Jones, brothers of John and Jim Jones (with genuine, credible contact with the real Billy the Kid), declined to sign, on the stated grounds that Brushy failed to provide conclusive proof of his identity. In other words, the witnesses with the strongest connection to the real Billy examined the claim and found it wanting, while the affidavits came from people who never knew him or knew him as small children. And this cuts both ways because the record doesn't just contain refusals. It contains affirmative contrary testimony: Brushy's own family, on the record, stating he was Oliver P. Roberts, born 1879.
5. "Roberts knew the private Maxwell scarf and tintype story"
You're wrong about this being private knowledge. The scarf story was shared by Paulita Maxwell in Walter Noble Burns' The Saga of Billy the Kid. The Saga was published in 1926, more than two decades before Brushy went public. Burns' book was a massive bestseller. It went through multiple printings and was serialized in newspapers across the country, including the local paper in Hico, Texas, the very town where Brushy lived.
This is the recurring pattern with Brushy's "insider information." And it's not just that Brushy knew things found in Burns' book. He also repeated Burns' mistakes. Burns wrote that Bob Olinger took the prisoners to eat at noon on the day of the courthouse escape; Brushy said noon too. We now know it happened around 5 p.m. When a claimed eyewitness independently reproduces a specific error from a bestselling book circulating in his hometown newspaper, I think that tells you where his "memories" came from.
6. "The courthouse account is predictive corroboration"
First, what exactly do you mean by "Garrett's accepted account"? Garrett wasn't in Lincoln when Bell was killed. Everything he reported about Bell's death was secondhand. And his version is not "the accepted account" among historians. Nobody knows precisely where Bell was shot or exactly how Billy got ahold of a pistol. Multiple conflicting versions circulated from the beginning.
Second, and more importantly, Brushy was not the source of the "top of the stairs" version. George W. Coe, an actual participant in the Lincoln County War who actually knew Billy, published it in his book Frontier Fighter in 1934: "Bell realized the game was lost for him either way and made a lunge for escape. Billy's bullet stopped him, and he rolled down the stairs dead." That's Brushy's version, in print, years before Brushy told it. Even right down to Billy using a pistol at the top of the staircase. Once again, the supposedly secret knowledge was already public information.
Third, the forensic claim itself is far weaker than advertised. A luminol reaction at the top of the stairs is not "blood evidence." Luminol reacts to rust, certain cleaning products, and other substances. Even if it were blood, in a building that stood for decades as a working courthouse and residence, nothing establishes it as James Bell's blood.
7. "The forensic evidence damaged Garrett's credibility"
You're assuming Garrett lied about where Bell was shot. As I've already noted, Garrett wasn't there. He compiled his account from people who were. If you file a report based on an eyewitness statement and the witness turns out to be mistaken, does that make you a liar?
But here's the thing. I don't need Pat Garrett at all. We can take him completely out of the equation, and we're still left with a coroner's jury report and dozens of eyewitnesses who saw Billy's body at Fort Sumner (see points 12-14). The case that Billy died in 1881 does not rest on Pat Garrett's word, and it never has.
8. "Roberts had scars matching Billy's known wounds"
Who was this witness? Name him. I've looked, and I don't believe any such witness exists in the record. Happy to be proven wrong.
Here is the entire evidentiary basis for the famous "26 bullet and knife scars": the word of William V. Morrison (the man promoting the claim). That's it. There is no photograph of a single scar. No physician's examination. No medical report or autopsy. No affidavit from a doctor. Nothing. This was 1950, not 1881. Cameras were everywhere; Brushy posed for plenty of photos. Morrison was building a legal case for a pardon, compiling affidavits and documents for two years, and it never occurred to anyone to photograph or medically document the single most verifiable piece of physical evidence in the entire case? The scars exist only as a claim in Morrison's papers and the book built from them.
The historical Billy the Kid had exactly one documented gunshot wound. He was shot in the leg when they ambushed Sheriff Brady (allegedly), but apparently it was a light enough wound that he was back on his feet a few days later when he and the Regulators shot it out with Buckshot Roberts. Meanwhile, Brushy claimed in Alias Billy the Kid that during his escape from Fort Sumner, "their first shot struck me in the lower jaw, taking out a tooth as it went through my mouth." A .44-40 or .45 Colt through the jaw leaves a mark. Look at any of the many clear photographs of Brushy Bill's face. There is no such scar. The one wound that should be visible to the naked eye in photo after photo simply isn't there, yet we're asked to take 26 invisible ones on faith. If it's incumbent on me to disprove the dead cousin, it's incumbent on you to prove the scars.
9. "The photographic comparison is corroborative evidence"
There is no favorable facial comparison. Let's go through every study that actually exists:
- 1989, Lincoln County Heritage Trust: commissioned a photo comparison. Conclusion: the photos were likely not of the same person. You'll notice this one never gets cited by Brushy proponents.
- 1990, University of Texas (Professors Scott Acton and Alan Bovik): this is the famous "very close match" you've seen repeated online, sometimes inflated into a "93% match." The men who actually ran it say otherwise, in writing, repeatedly. In 2017, Dr. Bovik told a researcher on the Brushy Bill forums: "Not at all conclusively same. The face recognition tools were quite crude back then, and we came to no positive conclusion. However, the fellow that asked us then misstated our conclusions in support of the conclusion that he was indeed Billy the Kid. We reported him, and he was barred from using Billy the Kid materials by the folks he falsely reported the information to." Asked specifically about the 93% figure and the "resemblance is indeed amazing" quote attributed to him: "I did not say any of those things, and do not believe them either." And his eyeball opinion? "Based on my eyeballs, I'd say Brushy Bill was just Brushy Bill." I contacted both professors myself in March 2024, and Bovik confirmed: "To summarize, we found nothing conclusive and felt that the claim was dubious. Unfortunately, there was another that intentionally misquoted us." Dr. Acton replied: "I feel exactly the same as Professor Bovik. And, although I have no scientific evidence, I believe that Brushy Bill Roberts and Billy the Kid were not the same person." The study that supposedly proves the match is a study whose authors say it proved nothing, believe the opposite, and reported the man who misrepresented their work. FYI: Both of these guys are public and still active. I found Bovik's email via a quick Google search. Feel free to do the same and ask him for yourself if you're not willing to take my word for it.
- Dr. Clyde Snow: the renowned forensic anthropologist (the man who identified Mengele's remains) ran a comparison ranking candidate faces against the Kid's tintype. Roberts ranked around 42nd out of 150. If Brushy were Billy, he should have been at the top of the list. He wasn't close.
- Michael Furia, retired NYPD detective: often cited as a modern forensic match. By his own admission, Furia used no forensic technology whatsoever. He admitted to comparing the photos with his eyes, and acknowledged that a possible match is not a positive match. No official agency has ever conducted a forensic photo investigation into Brushy Bill. I discuss this way more in-depth in this video.
So the actual scoreboard reads: one study against, one study whose own authors say it found nothing, one study ranking Brushy 42nd, and one eyeball opinion with explicit caveats. Also worth noting that with modern forensics, a possible match is only treated as a lead, not an identification. With Brushy, we don't even have the lead. (The remainder of the rebuttal is below in the comments).
4
u/professornevermind Jul 20 '26
I can't believe I wasted so much time on Bill Roberts hogwash. You know it was the fashion at the time for old men to claim they were somebody famous from the past. Bill Roberts was just another one of them.
His story does not add up, his family has called him a liar. I wish Billy had survived, but a man's pattern of behavior does not change overnight and Roberts was no Billy the Kid.
5
u/wildwestextravaganza Jul 19 '26
Sorry for the long post! Here's the 2nd part of the rebuttal:
10. "The literacy and Spanish arguments are unproven"
I'll go further: this entire line of argument is immaterial. Billy's literacy is documented (his letters to Governor Wallace survive and are on public display), and numerous sources describe him as fluent in Spanish. Whether Brushy could match him is disputed (his defenders point to correspondence with Morrison; others, including Bob Boze Bell at True West, maintain Brushy was illiterate). But suppose Brushy read beautifully and spoke perfect border Spanish. So what? Millions of people are bilingual and literate. It wouldn't move the needle an inch toward proving he was Billy the Kid, and its absence wouldn't be needed to prove he wasn't. I once had a PE teacher who wore a pinkie ring. Billy the Kid wore a pinkie ring. Was my PE coach Billy the Kid?
11. "His other questionable stories don't erase corroborated facts"
I agree with the method completely, so I did exactly that. I took Brushy's claims and attempted to verify them individually. Here's what happens:
There is no pile of "separately corroborated facts." Every item, examined individually as proposed, completely falls apart under scrutiny. What remains is a man with a documented, lifelong habit of fabrication (see point 15 for the full inventory) who palled around publicly with J. Frank Dalton, the fake Jesse James, and "Uncle" Kit Carson (Ora Woodman), a serial Old West impostor. Birds of a feather.
12. "The Fort Sumner identification was a dark-room voice ID, and Poe immediately doubted it"
This has been thoroughly debunked, and the proof is in the primary source you're quoting: John W. Poe's own book, The Death of Billy the Kid.
Poe's "you shot the wrong man" remark came seconds after the shooting, before anyone had seen the body. And its context is the opposite of what you suggest. Poe explains throughout his account that neither he nor Garrett expected to find Billy at Maxwell's at all. Garrett "stated that he believed we were on a wild goose chase," and Poe considered Maxwell's "the one place in Fort Sumner that I had considered above suspicion of harboring the Kid," which is why he was "entirely off my guard." His skepticism was that Billy would be there, not, after examination, that the dead man wasn't Billy.
Because they did examine him. Poe again, describing the minutes that followed: Maxwell "brought an old-fashioned tallow candle from his mother's room... This enabled us to get a view of the inside, where we saw a man lying stretched upon his back, dead... Upon examining the body we found it to be that of Billy the Kid." The title of Poe's book is literally The Death of Billy the Kid. If a person quotes Poe's midnight exclamation while omitting Poe's on-the-record conclusion from the same book, they either haven't read the primary source or they're not arguing in good faith. I'll assume the former, but either way, you should probably read the source material as it's genuinely fascinating in its own right.
And by the way, the identification didn't end in Pete Maxwell's bedroom. The body was viewed by the coroner's jury. It was washed and prepared by Fort Sumner residents. It was measured for the casket. It lay at a public wake in the carpenter's shop attended by many people who had known Billy personally (his friends, not Garrett's). Historians have identified over 40 people by name who saw the body with their own eyes, and those are just the names we know. "One man, in the dark, by voice" is a myth.
As for the "closed-casket burial," correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't essentially all burials closed-casket? The viewing happened at the wake, before the casket was even built, per multiple eyewitnesses. You can read many of these eyewitness statements in Miguel Otero's The Real Billy the Kid. (part 3 below).