Hefner's story, "Brushy Bill had no children and was at the end of his life. Fame and fortune were not a consideration for the old man."
Hefner continued, saying that Roberts desired only to be granted the pardon promised by Governor Lewis Wallace to the Kid years before. Hefner claimed that Pat Garrett had actually killed a friend of Billy the Kid's that night in 1881, solely for the purpose of collecting the five-hundred-dollar bounty on Bonney's head.
It seemed strange that Brushy Bill Roberts would suddenly decide, after years in hiding, that he wanted to be pardoned for crimes committed in the 1880s. I noted that Hefner currently ran the Billy the Kid museum in Hico, making it two different states with two different museums claiming to be the final resting place for Billy the Kid. Of course he had financial motivation for keeping the theory alive. But that didn't make him a liar.
I then found an article published by the New York Times in
1950, concerning the spectacle surrounding a man who claimed to be the real-life Jesse James. James had been assumed murdered by two brothers named Bob and Charley
Ford back in 1882, but in 1950 a man named J. Frank Dalton claimed to be the real James. After a media carnival descended upon the 102-year-old man during a hospital stay,
Dalton died. Yet the rumors persisted. Finally in 1995, the body of Jesse James was exhumed from its grave in Missouri and the DNA was found to match 99.7 to that of James's family. Supporters of the Dalton theory did not give up hope, and in 2000 a court order was granted to exhume the body of
J. Frank Dalton to end the speculation. Unfortunately the wrong body was exhumed, and attempts to discredit Dalton were halted. Dalton's actual body was never exhumed nor tested. I wondered if this botched exhumation was part of the reason Largo Vance was unable to do the same for William
H. Bonney.
The article was accompanied by a photo of an elderly man with a long, scruffy beard lying in a hospital bed with two men standing by his side. When I saw the attribution given to the second of the two men, my heart nearly skipped a beat. He was wearing a leather jacket and bore a look of concern on his face. He was identified as one Brushy Bill Roberts, ninety years old, at the deathbed of J. Frank Dalton. The man thought to be the real Billy the Kid next to the man suspected of being the real Jesse James.
I ran another search, this time to determine whether Jesse
James and William H. Bonney knew each other. According to news reports, Jesse James and Billy the Kid had met only once, at the Old Adobe Springs Hotel near Las Vegas in July of 1879. The two were seen having dinner by an associate of
Bonney's, though the witness's story was widely discredited.
People simply couldn't believe history's two most famous outlaws had ever crossed paths, let alone met for a friendly dinner.
The Austin Chronicle, in a later story, said this "chance" meeting was even more unlikely considering James's daughter had been born merely ten days earlier.
I kept searching, and soon discovered another photograph, dated 1942, again of Brushy Bill Roberts and J. Frank Dalton, this time of the two men standing side by side. The picture clearly identified the two men by the names they went by at the time-Brushy Bill and Frank Dalton. According to records, it was not until after Dalton's one hundred and second birthday that he claimed to be Jesse James. Additionally, Roberts denied that he was Billy the Kid at first, only admitting to it after being confronted.
There were a slew of websites and conspiracy theory pamphlets printed and posted on the web, many claiming that Roberts and Dalton were two con artists looking to make a buck and gain notoriety. What made no sense is why the two men would wait until their deathbeds to claim this "notoriety."
Both Roberts and Dalton died within a few years of their confessions, and neither made any sort of profit from their claims.
According to another report, a man named Homer Overton claimed that Pat Garrett's widow told him that the Kid's death was a sham, a ruse concocted by Garrett and the Kid to allow the outlaw safe passage into Mexico. Overton's testimony was entered into the record during Vance's attempt to convince lawmakers to exhume the body of Catherine Antrim. Lincoln
County sheriffs made a point of noting that Pat Garrett's likeness is featured on the logo of the Lincoln County Sheriff's
Department. The man was an icon. If it were proven that
Garrett did not, in fact, kill William H. Bonney, it would throw the entire county into upheaval.
I allowed this information to digest. For years Brushy Bill
Roberts's story had been considered fraudulent. The ramblings of an old, broke man. Even an attempt to put the case to rest by comparing Billy the Kid's DNA to that of his mother never came to fruition. Likewise, J. Frank Dalton's DNA was never compared to that of Jesse James's family.
Two legends with cracks in their facade. Two legends protected either by governmental incompetence, or institutions with reasons to hide the truth. Without the prosperity of those legends to harvest from, several towns in the Southwest would shrivel up and die. And a large part of this country's history would be rent to pieces. If Oliver P. Roberts truly was Billy the Kid, there were many people who had clear motivations to keep that secret locked away.
I could see the connections between the legend of Billy the
Kid and the man responsible for murdering Athena Paradis,
Joe Mauser, Jeffrey Lourdes and David Loverne.
William H. Bonney was a Regulator, sworn to bring to justice those who had wronged him, wronged society and threatened to disrupt the very fabric of the land he was trying to protect. Using some twisted logic, the psychopath who went
Mario Batali on my hand felt he was also bringing justice to the guilty.
I brought up the photo of J. Frank Dalton on his deathbed.
Thought about the alleged report of Jesse James and William
H. Bonney meeting near Las Vegas in 1879. Ten days after the birth of James's daughter.
Daughter. That word stuck in my throat. Mary Susan
James. Born just three years before her father was allegedly killed.
On a whim, I checked to see if there were any records of
Billy the Kid having children, a wife, any trace of a bloodline. According to the records, Bonney never married and it was unclear whether he had any children.
I looked up the family tree of Brushy Bill Roberts. Roberts had apparently married a woman named Melinda. Records showed that Roberts had one son, Jesse William Roberts, who was born in Hamilton, Texas, in 1897.
Jesse William Roberts. I looked at the photos featuring
Brushy Bill and Frank Dalton together. Added that to the alleged meeting between the outlaws in 1879. It would be a mighty big coincidence-or a case of damn good foresight-for the man who'd later claim to be Billy the Kid to name his only son after Jesse James. Either that, or Jesse
James and Billy the Kid were better acquaintances than people thought.
My fingers flew as I typed more searches into the machine, my mind ignoring the pain from my stitched-up hand. I couldn't stop. The spool was unraveling and I couldn't slow down. I knew I had stumbled upon something, a story that drove to the very heart of a century-old legend.
I looked for lineage records pertaining to Jesse William
Roberts, son of Brushy Bill Roberts. Jesse had married a woman named Lucy Barnett. Lucy gave birth to two of Jesse's children: James and Catherine.
Catherine Roberts. Brushy Bill's granddaughter. Who shared the same name as Billy the Kid's mother, Catherine Antrim.
Catherine Roberts died of tuberculosis in 1927 at just three years of age. James Roberts, Brushy's grandson, eventually moved to New Mexico, where he married Lucinda Walther.
In 1957 she gave birth to a son named John Henry Roberts.