The hunt for BTK goes on

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Bitterroot man hopes to uncover the truth about Billy the Kid
By Robert Struckman - Missoulian - 03/13/06
FLORENCE (LEE) — Blowing snow cast a pall over a small horse pasture outside the kitchen window of Dale Tunnell’s rural home. In the distance, a line of traffic crawled south on U.S. Highway 93.

Tunnell flipped through a box of papers on a small table in the kitchen, choosing a copy of a letter dated March 27, 1881, from W. Bonney to the governor of New Mexico Territory.

“Dear Sir: For the last time I ask, will you keep your promise? I start below tomorrow. Send answer by bearer.”

Soon after sending the letter, for which he received no reply, Bonney better known as Billy the Kid killed two deputies in his escape from the Lincoln County (N.M.) Courthouse. Had he remained in custody, Bonney would likely have been hanged for murder. Instead, he was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett that July.

The piece of correspondence is one small part of a historical puzzle that Tunnell, a retired federal investigator, has been attempting to solve with a former sheriff, a mayor and others, all from New Mexico.

The group has uncovered new physical evidence, Tunnell said recently, and has even exhumed the body of a man who died in 1937 and who claimed to be Billy the Kid. DNA samples from the body are being compared with samples taken from blood stains on a carpenter’s bench that supposedly held Bonney’s body after he was shot by Garrett.

 
“I want to set the record straight. If Billy the Kid, from 1881 to 1937, lived the life of an honest man, a hardworking fool, then I say he paid his debt to society,” Tunnell said.

Tunnell knows quite a bit about honest men, debts to society and crime. He had a long and varied law enforcement career, starting as a deputy sheriff in Lincoln County in 1974. He was also an internal affairs investigator with the Arizona Department of Corrections. In 1996, he retired from his tenure as a federal agent with the U.S. Department of Interior.

Tunnell also earned a Ph.D. in forensic criminology and is pursing a second doctorate in general psychology.

About four years ago, he founded Forensitec LLC. Six months ago, he moved to the Bitterroot Valley. The small firm’s main business is training; its clients include the Missoula Police Department. Tunnell also consults with police departments on active investigations. He recently helped solve a New Mexico homicide investigation by studying statements given by suspects and witnesses.

That’s his day job. Then there’s that box of Billy the Kid artifacts.

Tunnell’s interest in the famous outlaw was piqued when he read a 1993 book by Helen Airy entitled, “Whatever Happened to Billy the Kid: Did He Really Die? Maybe Not!”

According to Airy, Billy the Kid, who had several aliases, survived the 1881 shootout with Garrett and traveled west to Arizona to become a rancher near Zuni Pueblo, using the name John Miller. He died in 1937. Friends and family said he maintained and they agree that he was Billy the Kid.

Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Sullivan and Capitan Mayor Steven Sederwall also found the story intriguing. In 2003, Sullivan officially reopened the case of Billy the Kid’s escape from the courthouse. An official investigation had never been conducted into the deaths of the two deputies, J.W. Bell and Robert Olinger.

“I just decided to use modern-day technology to find out what happened,” said Sullivan, who has since retired.

Working in their spare time and with their own resources, Sullivan, Sederwall and Tunnell tracked down documents and materials.

Sederwall did most of the legwork. He used census and genealogy records to find the descendants of the people who lived in Fort Sumner when Garrett shot Billy at the home of Pete Maxwell. Sederwall found a washbasin with a bullet hole made by Garrett’s second shot, which went wide. He found the carpenter’s bench where Billy was taken after the shooting.

The investigators also found the burial plots of the two deputies.

“It’s just good police work,” Sullivan said.

Then they started looking into John Miller’s story.

After getting permission to exhume Miller’s body, DNA samples were taken. The DNA analysis will be done by Dr. Henry Lee, founder of the forensic science program at the University of New Haven and chief emeritus of the Connecticut State Police, Sullivan said.

What if the DNA from Miller matches the wooden bench?

“We’ll change history. I don’t know. Arizona would have the real Billy the Kid,” Sullivan said.

“If it’s a match, it’s a done deal,” Tunnell said.

If not, there’s more work to do, he said. It could mean that Miller was not Billy the Kid. Or that the body exhumed was not Billy’s.

“Even if it comes back positive, there will be more work to do,” Tunnell added. He hopes to find conclusive documentation placing Miller at or near Fort Sumner in July of 1881 or connecting his wife, Isadora, to a relationship there.

Airy asserted, and Tunnell believes, that Billy the Kid left Fort Sumner in the months after the shooting with Isadora and that the two married in a small town nearby. Tunnell has found records of a priest with a name very similar to the one Airy collected from oral histories by Miller’s family and friends. He has requested marriage records from the priest but has not yet received them.

Tunnell has found enough material to poke holes in the official histories, he said. Once one point has been debunked, the whole house of cards begins to look flimsy, he said.

“A lot of it is the basis for concluding that the whole episode at Pete Maxwell’s house was fabricated,” he said.

It’s possible, Tunnell said, that Garrett conspired with Billy to fake the death. Maybe Billy never laid, wounded, on the carpenter’s bench. Maybe another body was buried in Billy’s place.

Tunnell has another motive for his research. He would like to confirm the story put forth by Airy. Like him, she was an amateur historian who bucked the official story. Academics scoffed at her account.

“I’d like to prove her correct,” he said.

Every few years, the story of Billy the Kid rears its head, said Don Bullis, a volunteer at the New Mexico Office of the State Historian. Bullis has written several books on New Mexico history, teaches adult education classes on the subject, writes a weekly local history column and edits an online history magazine. He also spent a career in law enforcement as a deputy sheriff and detective.

Bullis tends to believe the historical record of Billy the Kid’s death. Conspiracies are impractical and don’t hold up over time, he said. Sixteen known witnesses attended Billy’s funeral.

“Not one of those people ever recanted. What motive would the community have had to enter into this vast conspiracy? Billy had no money. There was no payoff. He wasn’t all that popular. There’s no sense in the notion that he was not actually killed that night,” Bullis said.

A few items are continually dredged up to support the conspiracy theorists, Bullis said. One of the deputies with Garrett reportedly said he killed the wrong guy. Also, the coroner’s report into the death of William Bonney was never properly filed in Santa Fe.

As for the procedural omission in the coroner’s report, it was no oddity, considering the corruption of the territory, Bullis said.

He also objects to romanticizing Billy the Kid, who he considers a psychopath. By a quirk of history and popular culture, a minor outlaw has enjoyed far more than his share of attention, all unearned, Bullis said.

“This isn’t criminal justice. This is history,” he said.

Tunnell laughed at the notion that he is a Billy the Kid apologist. At the same time, he acknowledged that it’s probably true.

Neither he nor Sullivan condone the murdering of deputies by escaping felons, but Billy the Kid lived in a different time under decidedly different circumstances, they said. New Mexico Territory in the 1870s and 1880s had nothing like the rule of law. The highest ranking territorial officials were corrupt. Deputized one day, Billy was shot at the next by a posse of deputized gunmen.

In the Old West, Billy the Kid might just have been a decent guy with a ready trigger finger.

Or not.

Tunnell doesn’t mind spending the time and effort it takes to find out.

[olbiffer]

very interesting info. we'll have to see how this investigation proceeds.i'm kinda split on the two theories. part of me wants to believe billy survived to live to a ripe old age, but why would garrett take the chance of getting credit for the kill if he didnt shoot billy? anyway, again very interesting, please keep us updated as you hear anything.