Sunday, November 6, 2005
Billy The Kid Probe May Yield New Twist
By Rene Romo
Journal Southern Bureau
LAS CRUCES— An ongoing investigation into the fate of Henry McCarty, alias William Bonney, alias Billy the Kid, could still yield a surprising twist in the controversial case.
Without any fanfare, former Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Sullivan and Steve Sederwall last May obtained DNA from the remains of a cowboy, John Miller. Before dying in the 1930s, Miller told friends and a son that he was really Billy the Kid.
Miller's remains were exhumed from the cemetery of the Pioneer Home, a state-owned nursing home in Prescott, Ariz. His DNA is to be examined by a Dallas-based laboratory.
If Miller's DNA matches that of blood traces taken from a 19th-century bench purportedly from the Maxwell Ranch in Fort Sumner, Sederwall and Sullivan say they could have a break that upends accepted historical accounts of the Kid's life and death.
The old bench was discovered last year at the Albuquerque home of Maxwell descendants. It is believed to be the one on which the Kid's body was placed after he was shot by Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881, in a darkened bedroom of the Maxwell Ranch.
"Wouldn't it be a coincidence if someone we dug up in Arizona, and who died in 1934 and claimed to be Billy the Kid, bled on that bench? That's like winning the lottery," Sullivan said in a recent interview.
"That would be so coincidental, I would challenge anyone to prove it's not him (Billy the Kid)."
Sederwall acknowledges that what started out as an effort to defend the honor of Garrett against claims that the famous Lincoln County sheriff did not kill the Kid may have taken a new direction.
Sullivan and Sederwall began their investigation in 2003 when Sullivan was sheriff and Sederwall a reserve deputy. But they were rebuffed in their 2003 and 2004 attempts to exhume the Kid's remains in Fort Sumner and those of the outlaw's mother in Silver City.
The Lincoln County investigators wanted to use DNA from the Kid's grave, or that of his mother, to validate the widely accepted story of Garrett's killing of Billy the Kid.
But critics in Fort Sumner and Silver City, as well as history buffs around the country, lambasted Sullivan and Sederwall, saying the Kid's death and burial in DeBaca County was well established.
Fort Sumner officials, in particular, fretted that the investigation would undermine the value of the Kid's grave there as a tourist destination.
In the decades after the Kid's demise, several old men emerged claiming they were Billy the Kid. One would-be Billy was Ollie P. "Brushy Bill" Roberts of Hico, Texas. Another was John Miller, the subject of a book called "Whatever Happened to Billy the Kid" by Helen Airy.
While Sederwall and Sullivan have both been commissioned as special deputies by current Lincoln County Sheriff Rick Virden, Sederwall said their investigation does not use county funds.
Sederwall said he expected the analysis of Miller's DNA to be completed by the end of the year or January.
If Miller's DNA matches what is presumed to be the Kid's on the bench, the news will be publicized by Bill Kurtis, anchor of the A&E Network weekly series "American Justice," Sederwall said.
He said Kurtis, head of Chicago-based Kurtis Productions, has an "exclusive deal" to publicize the news because Kurtis has helped pay for some costs associated with the investigation.
Sederwall, who is also the mayor of Capitan and a history buff, said Miller's skeletal remains were intriguing. He said Miller had buck teeth, like the Kid, and an old bullet wound that entered his upper left chest and exited through the scapula.
"If that DNA matches the work bench, I think the game is over," Sederwall said.
If not, he said, investigators will try to obtain permission to exhume the remains of Roberts, who is buried in Hamilton, Texas.
