In 2003, a man named Homer Overton came forward with a startling claim: that he had been told by Pat Garrett’s widow, Apollina, that her husband had not actually killed Billy the Kid. Overton, then in his seventies, said he was nine years old inthe summer of 1940 when he and a friend visited Apollina Garrett, who died in 1920, and that she told them the man shot dead in Fort Sumner in 1881 was an innocent drunk, killed in a cover-up engineered by Sheriff Pat Garrett and the legendary gunfighter himself. Overton’s sworn affidavit was filed in a New Mexico court in January 2004 as part of a petition to exume the body of Billy the Kid’s mother, Catherine Antrim, to compare her DNA with that of a Texas man named Brushy Bill Roberts, who claimed until his death in 1950 that he was the real William Bonnie. The exumation was sought by authorities in Lincoln County, New Mexico, where the kid had been convicted of killing a sheriff inthe 1870s.
A hearing was set for January 27, 2004, in Silver City, where Catherine Antrim was buried. Town officials opposed disturbing the grave. The effort was ultimately unsuccessful, and neither Antrim’s remains nor those of Billy the Kid or Brushy Bill Roberts have ever been exumed. Overton’s statement remains uncorroborated, and it contradicts multiple eyewitness accounts from the night of the shooting.
Another circulating rumor claims that Pat Garrett’s own daughter, Elizabeth, said ina 1983 interview that her father did not kill Billy the Kid. But Elizabeth Garrett died in 1947, making such an interview impossible. The claim appears to originate from an article on historyoldction. org written by Patrick Lynch, which cited a since-deleted Voices of America piece from 2003.
An old Angel Fire website also repeated the claim, attributing it to an interviewer named Paul Kaine, but no source or further information has ever surfaced. No evidence exists that anyone named Paul Kaine was ever involved in Billy the Kid or Brushy Bill Roberts history, and the story appears to bea circular rumor repeated across websites and forums with no verifiable foundation. A related false claim involves Deputy John W. Poe, one of Garrett’s officers at Fort Sumner.
Critics have long quoted Poe as saying, "You shot the wrong man," immediately after the killing. But inthe book Poe co-wrote, The Death of Billy the Kid, that quote appears in context of Poe’s earlier skepticism: both he and Garrett believed the trip was a wild goose chase and that Billy would not dare hide out at Pete Maxwell’s house. Poe wrote that Garrett seemed to have little confidence intheir ability to accomplish anything. After examining the body, however, Poe confirmed it was Billy the Kid, writing:"Upon examining the body, we found it to be that of Billy the Kid.
" Poe’s statements, taken fully, actually affirm that Garrett killed the right man. A similar third-hand story involves outlaw Abraham Graham, known as Shotgun John Collins, who died in 1922. Years later, Collins’s son claimed his father had said Garrett killed the wrong man and passed the body off as Billy the Kid. But there is zero evidence Collins was at Fort Sumner on July 14, 1881.
His name appears in no contemporary articles or eyewitness accounts. The historical record is overwhelmingly consistent. Multiple eyewitnesses at Fort Sumner that night—including Jesus Silva, Frank Labato, Pete Maxwell, and Delvina Maxwell—described seeing Billy’s body, attending the wake, and burying him the next day. A coroner’s inquest jury declared that Garrett killed William H.
Bonnie inthe discharge of his official duty and that the homicide was justifiable. Garrett collected the bounty placed on the kid’s head. And Billy the Kid was never seen again. Brushy Bill Roberts, meanwhile, appears on every census from 1880 to 1950, with marriage certificates, a family bible, and even a nephew’s book all showing he was a toddler in 1881.
There is no evidence he had scars matching Billy’s known injuries, and none of Billy’s former associates ever vouched for him. The only supposed witnesses were two elderly men who may have known the kid as children, and one of them initially said Brushy was far too young to be Billy. Billy’s actual acquaintances, such as Bill and Sam Jones, refused to sign affidavits supporting Brushy’s claim because they knew he was not the kid. There is also no autopsy report for Brushy Bill Roberts, contrary to popular claim.
And the notion that Garrett had Billy’s body buried before anyone could view it is disproven by multiple accounts of the wake and burial. Jesus Silva described measuring Billy’s body and building a rough coffin, and the next day digging his grave and burying him inthe old graveyard. Delvina Maxwell said she was the first to discover they shot her "little boy," and she cursed Garrett even as she wept. Pete Maxwell, the only other eyewitness to the shooting itself, gave a sworn account describing Billy entering his room, asking "Who is it?
" and Garrett firing two shots. While historians acknowledge issues with certain details of Garrett’s own account, there is no serious historical dispute that Billy the Kid was killed at Fort Sumner on July 14, 1881. The death is one of the best-documented events inthe Old West. A claim that he escaped and lived as Brushy Bill Roberts contradicts all contemporary evidence, eyewitness testimony, and documented records.
As one researcher noted, the kid led a charmed life—charismatic, intelligent, and elusive—but he wasn’t bulletproof. He got complacent, and then he got got.
