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From the Telegraph, London (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...ly21.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/06/21/ixworld.html):
The sheriff who's still on trail of Billy the Kid
By Marcus Warren in Lincoln
(Filed: 21/06/2003)
The Sheriff of Lincoln County is after Billy the Kid again. And this time he is determined to track the outlaw down and bury him once and for all.
Sheriff Pat Garrett shot and killed the young gunslinger after surprising his former friend in a darkened bedroom one summer's night in 1881, or so most history books relate. But did he really?
Sheriff Tom Sullivan, the county's top lawman today, believes he did and, to prove it, he is investigating the Kid's death with DNA tests and other forensic evidence, as though the blood from the corpse had still to dry.
The attempt to clear up a mystery that most people in New Mexico assumed had been solved decades ago has won enthusiastic endorsement from the state's governor but historians are bewildered.
Instead of dispelling doubts, exhuming Billy the Kid's mother next month and later digging up the body of a Texan who claimed that he was the real Billy the Kid for DNA samples will only deepen confusion, they argue.
Nevertheless, Sheriff Sullivan, who wears a Stetson hat, purple shirt and pistol in a holster with pride, is on the case.
The idea that Lincoln County's 10th sheriff killed someone other than Billy the Kid and then passed off his victim as the buck-toothed desperado clearly outrages the county's 37th and current sheriff.
"Any attack on Pat Garrett is an attack on this sheriff's office," he said, a statement given greater weight now that Garrett graces the department's badge, designed by Sheriff Sullivan himself.
"To me, Billy the Kid is nothing but a glorified cop-killer," he added. "Everyone says he was just a young kid having a good time. I don't think so."
Shooting the 21-year-old dead in cold blood was quite in order. "If someone had killed four of my deputies and I cornered him somewhere, don't you think I'd be ready to blow him away in a heartbeat if he made even the slightest move?"
What began as a quixotic campaign by a sheriff to defend a predecessor's good name attracted national attention when New Mexico's governor, Bill Richardson, voiced his support for the investigation.
"I admit there's a little bit of hokeyness in these things," he said. "But you've got to have fun sometimes."
His sense of humour is not shared by Frederick Nolan, a British writer who chronicles the Wild West from the notorious frontier town of Chalfont St Giles. "My feeling is that this is a farrago of nonsense," he said.
It is no laughing matter in Lincoln, population 38, a key shrine for the Billy the Kid cult, either. Here the outlaw escaped from the courthouse days before he was due to hang, killing two deputies in the process.
Halfway between Roswell, where a UFO allegedly crashed in 1947, and the spot where the first atom bomb was exploded, Lincoln is an open-air monument to the region's bloody past. Now it is to turn into a scene-of-crime site.
Never investigated at the time, the Kid's double homicide and escape are the crimes which Sheriff Sullivan is now officially trying to crack. This week his men inspected the courthouse walls in a search for bullet fragments.
The investigation will also take the sheriff to Silver City, where the Kid's mother is buried, and possibly to Fort Sumner, where the Kid shares a grave with two of his pals.
A priority for the investigators will be testing DNA samples from the body of Brushy Bill Roberts, dead since 1950, in Texas. Often dismissed as a fraud, his claim that he was Billy the Kid still enjoys support.
However well meant, the sheriff's efforts threaten to encourage wild theories about Garrett and the Kid, among them that the sheriff helped Billy to escape, said Drew Gomber, a local historian.
"What they will unearth will be so vague that they will prove nothing whatsoever," he said.
The sheriff who's still on trail of Billy the Kid
By Marcus Warren in Lincoln
(Filed: 21/06/2003)
The Sheriff of Lincoln County is after Billy the Kid again. And this time he is determined to track the outlaw down and bury him once and for all.
Sheriff Pat Garrett shot and killed the young gunslinger after surprising his former friend in a darkened bedroom one summer's night in 1881, or so most history books relate. But did he really?
Sheriff Tom Sullivan, the county's top lawman today, believes he did and, to prove it, he is investigating the Kid's death with DNA tests and other forensic evidence, as though the blood from the corpse had still to dry.
The attempt to clear up a mystery that most people in New Mexico assumed had been solved decades ago has won enthusiastic endorsement from the state's governor but historians are bewildered.
Instead of dispelling doubts, exhuming Billy the Kid's mother next month and later digging up the body of a Texan who claimed that he was the real Billy the Kid for DNA samples will only deepen confusion, they argue.
Nevertheless, Sheriff Sullivan, who wears a Stetson hat, purple shirt and pistol in a holster with pride, is on the case.
The idea that Lincoln County's 10th sheriff killed someone other than Billy the Kid and then passed off his victim as the buck-toothed desperado clearly outrages the county's 37th and current sheriff.
"Any attack on Pat Garrett is an attack on this sheriff's office," he said, a statement given greater weight now that Garrett graces the department's badge, designed by Sheriff Sullivan himself.
"To me, Billy the Kid is nothing but a glorified cop-killer," he added. "Everyone says he was just a young kid having a good time. I don't think so."
Shooting the 21-year-old dead in cold blood was quite in order. "If someone had killed four of my deputies and I cornered him somewhere, don't you think I'd be ready to blow him away in a heartbeat if he made even the slightest move?"
What began as a quixotic campaign by a sheriff to defend a predecessor's good name attracted national attention when New Mexico's governor, Bill Richardson, voiced his support for the investigation.
"I admit there's a little bit of hokeyness in these things," he said. "But you've got to have fun sometimes."
His sense of humour is not shared by Frederick Nolan, a British writer who chronicles the Wild West from the notorious frontier town of Chalfont St Giles. "My feeling is that this is a farrago of nonsense," he said.
It is no laughing matter in Lincoln, population 38, a key shrine for the Billy the Kid cult, either. Here the outlaw escaped from the courthouse days before he was due to hang, killing two deputies in the process.
Halfway between Roswell, where a UFO allegedly crashed in 1947, and the spot where the first atom bomb was exploded, Lincoln is an open-air monument to the region's bloody past. Now it is to turn into a scene-of-crime site.
Never investigated at the time, the Kid's double homicide and escape are the crimes which Sheriff Sullivan is now officially trying to crack. This week his men inspected the courthouse walls in a search for bullet fragments.
The investigation will also take the sheriff to Silver City, where the Kid's mother is buried, and possibly to Fort Sumner, where the Kid shares a grave with two of his pals.
A priority for the investigators will be testing DNA samples from the body of Brushy Bill Roberts, dead since 1950, in Texas. Often dismissed as a fraud, his claim that he was Billy the Kid still enjoys support.
However well meant, the sheriff's efforts threaten to encourage wild theories about Garrett and the Kid, among them that the sheriff helped Billy to escape, said Drew Gomber, a local historian.
"What they will unearth will be so vague that they will prove nothing whatsoever," he said.
