Pat Garrett reported killing Billy the Kid at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, on July 14, 1881. More than a century later, investigators exhumed the grave of a man named John Miller, hoping DNA might prove the famous outlaw had somehow survived the shooting. The attempt did not produce the clean answer many expected. What emerged instead was a tangled forensic case involving disputed skeletons, a bloodstained wooden bench, and the enduring mystery of who actually lies in Billy the Kid’s grave.
Most historians identify Billy the Kid as Henry McCarty, also known as Henry Antrim and, during his outlaw years, William H. Bonney. Born in New York City around 1859 or 1860, he was essentially on his own after his mother Catherine died in New Mexico in 1874. His early criminal trouble involved theft, and in 1877, while still a teenager, he killed Frank Cahill during a fight in Arizona.
His reputation grew rapidly when he became involved in the Lincoln County War in New Mexico. Billy worked for English rancher John Tunstall, who was killed in February 1878 during a violent business conflict. Afterward, Billy joined a group known as the Regulators and took part in several deadly encounters. Popular legend later credited him with killing 21 men, but modern historians generally reject that number.
The evidence supports a far smaller total. By 1880, Billy was a wanted outlaw across the territory, placing him directly in the path of newly elected Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett. Garrett, a former buffalo hunter and rancher, knew the area and the people Billy associated with. In December 1880, his posse closed in.
After a gunfight at Stinking Springs, Billy surrendered and was taken into custody. He was convicted of the 1878 murder of Sheriff William Brady and sentenced to hang. The story took a dramatic turn on April 28, 1881. While held in the Lincoln County Courthouse, Billy overpowered his guards, killing Deputy James Bell inside the building and Deputy Robert Olinger outside.
He escaped on horseback, turning a local case into national news. For Garrett, the escape was a serious problem. The prisoner he had captured had killed two lawmen and was free again. Garrett resumed the hunt and tracked Billy to Fort Sumner, where the outlaw had friends and apparently felt comfortable enough to return.
On July 14, 1881, Garrett arrived at the home of Pete Maxwell, whose family occupied part of the old military post. According to the traditional account, Billy entered Maxwell’s dark bedroom around midnight. Garrett recognized his voice and fired twice, striking Billy once in the chest. The following morning, a coroner’s jury examined the body and identified the dead man as William H.
Bonney, the name Billy commonly used. The jury found he had died from a gunshot fired by Garrett while acting as sheriff. Billy was buried the next day at the Fort Sumner cemetery. People in the community knew Billy personally, and contemporary newspapers reported his death as an established event.
Garrett published his own detailed account, The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, in 1882, with journalist Marshall Ashmun Upson helping to write it. Historians still examine the account critically because Garrett had an obvious personal interest in explaining the shooting. The killing occurred in darkness, and 19th-century identification lacked fingerprints, photographs of the corpse, or modern forensic testing. Those gaps eventually became the foundation for stories that Billy had somehow survived.
Questions about Billy’s death did not begin with DNA testing. Over the decades, the Fort Sumner cemetery suffered flooding that disturbed grave markers and made the exact location of old graves difficult to establish. Then came men who claimed to be the outlaw. The best known was Ollie Roberts, commonly called Brushy Bill Roberts, who publicly argued in the late 1940s that he was Billy the Kid.
Another was John Miller, whose case attracted attention for an unusual reason. Miller did not spend his later years publicly claiming to be the famous outlaw. He was a rancher and skilled horseman who lived for decades in New Mexico and later Arizona. Most of the story about his alleged identity came from people who said they knew him.
Researchers reported that a man named John Miller married a woman named Isidora in Las Vegas, New Mexico, on August 8, 1881 — less than a month after Billy was reported killed. Some accounts described Miller carrying what looked like a recent wound around that time. People who knew Miller later described him as highly capable with firearms and unusually interested in stories about Billy the Kid. Some acquaintances claimed he occasionally suggested he knew much more than an ordinary rancher should have.
Others said Isidora told people her husband actually was Billy the Kid. But much of this material was recorded decades later, long after the events it supposedly described. Records associated with the Arizona Pioneers Home posed a serious problem for the theory. Miller’s recorded age suggested he had been born around 1850, making him roughly nine or ten years older than Billy.
Old records can contain mistakes, especially when birth documentation is weak, so the age difference did not solve the case by itself. But it meant the theory could not rely only on similarities. Miller entered the Arizona Pioneers Home in Prescott in 1937 and died there on November 7 of that year. He was buried in the home cemetery.
For decades, the grave remained mostly a local historical curiosity. Then investigators decided the bones beneath it might provide a scientific answer. Supporters of the Miller theory pointed to several details. Photographs of the older Miller were compared with the famous tintype of Billy, and some viewers believed the facial structure looked similar.
Investigators also noted dental characteristics in one skeleton that seemed to match Billy’s prominent front teeth. Some supporters focused on reports that Miller carried an old wound around the shoulder area, which mattered because Garrett said his bullet struck Billy in the upper chest. Later accounts contained conflicting versions. One had Miller saying Garrett shot him at Fort Sumner but failed to kill him, with Billy remaining still, being carried away, and later recovering.
Another version suggested Garrett shot someone else while Billy escaped. These versions cannot both describe the same event, and the changing details weaken their value as evidence. In 2003, Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Sullivan and investigator Steve Sederwall became central figures in a new attempt to use modern forensic methods. Investigators considered testing remains believed to be Billy’s as well as people claiming to be him, including Brushy Bill Roberts and John Miller.
They also looked into recovering DNA from Catherine Antrim’s grave in Silver City, New Mexico, since a verified maternal relationship would provide a much stronger test. Then investigators found another possible source. They located an old wooden bench connected to the Maxwell family, said to have been used when Billy’s body was laid out after Garrett shot him. Investigators reported blood staining on the wood, and forensic scientist Dr.
Henry Lee examined material associated with the bench. DNA material was recovered for possible comparison. This seemed to offer a shortcut. Instead of proving exactly which body lay beneath the Fort Sumner grave marker, investigators hoped to compare a Billy claimant directly with biological material from an object allegedly connected to Billy’s corpse.
But the word allegedly was crucial. Reports indicated more than one blood source may have been present on the bench, and its history alone could not prove whose blood it was. On May 19, 2005, investigators exhumed the grave believed to contain John Miller at the cemetery associated with the Arizona Pioneers Home in Prescott. The operation was supervised by forensic anthropologist Dr.
Laura Fulginiti, with DNA specialist Dr. Rick Staub also involved. The excavation immediately demonstrated why old grave investigations become complicated. Miller’s grave did not have a clear headstone identifying the exact spot.
Investigators relied on cemetery information to estimate the location. When the excavation began, they did not find one simple isolated set of remains. They found two male skeletons in neighboring grave areas. Before the investigation could even reach the question of Billy the Kid, it had to determine which skeleton was John Miller.
One set of remains drew attention because of the front teeth and trauma around the shoulder blade. Investigators interested in the Billy theory saw similarities with details associated with the outlaw. Fulginiti was more cautious, saying there was evidence of trauma on the shoulder blade but she could not determine it came from a gunshot. The second skeleton showed a hip injury that was still healing when the man died, which mattered because Miller was known to have suffered a serious injury before or during his final months.
Fulginiti considered the skeleton with the hip injury the more likely candidate for Miller. Sullivan favored the other set of remains. That disagreement became a major problem. Staub reportedly could not obtain useful DNA from the skeleton with the hip injury, while usable genetic material was recovered from the other skeleton.
In other words, the remains that produced usable DNA were not necessarily the remains the forensic anthropologist thought were John Miller. The popular version of this story is often reduced to a simple sentence: scientists dug up John Miller and tested his DNA to find out whether he was Billy the Kid. The real situation was far more complicated. Investigators first had to know which skeleton belonged to Miller, and that was disputed.
They then needed a reliable comparison sample from Billy. The bench could only serve that purpose if the blood on it actually came from Billy, and a wooden object kept for more than a century could have been exposed to different people and different biological material. The laboratory story also failed to deliver the decisive public result many people expected. In 2007 and 2008, disputes grew over records connected to the investigation.
Author Gale Cooper and newspaper publisher Scott Stinnett sought records involving the forensic work and DNA results, leading to litigation under New Mexico’s public records law. Years later, documents became available, but they did not produce a clear scientific demonstration that John Miller was Billy the Kid. A 2015 Washington Post review described the laboratory comparison as essentially useless. PBS also noted that no test result establishing Miller as Billy has been made public.
There was an exhumation, DNA was recovered from at least one set of remains, and material from a bloodstained bench was investigated. Those things actually happened. But none of them equals a verified DNA identification of John Miller as Billy the Kid. The John Miller case remains interesting because it contains real forensic work mixed with much older stories that cannot all be independently verified.
The strongest point on the Miller side is not that DNA proved anything. It did not. The stronger point is that Miller was a real Old West rancher whose identity became connected to Billy the Kid through people who said they knew him, and investigators later took the claim seriously enough to open his grave. The Arizona Pioneers Home itself lists John Miller among its notable residents and acknowledges his connection to the Billy the Kid question.
On the other side is the historical record from July 1881. Garrett said he shot Billy at Pete Maxwell’s home. People who knew Billy were present in Fort Sumner. A coroner’s jury examined the body, identified it as William H.
Bonney, and ruled on the shooting. Billy was buried the next day, and contemporary reporting treated his death as an established event. John Miller’s story depends heavily on later testimony and recollections rather than comparable documentation from July 1881. His recorded age also creates a conflict with Billy’s expected age.
Modern testing has not produced the kind of verified genetic comparison that could independently identify the Fort Sumner victim or Miller. A much stronger DNA study would require securely identified remains, a reliable biological sample from Billy, a confirmed sample from Miller, and preferably genetic material from a known close relative such as Catherine Antrim. Without that chain, the DNA evidence from the 2000s cannot establish that John Miller was Billy the Kid, and it also cannot be used as a scientific demonstration that he was not.
What exists is an unresolved forensic comparison attached to a historical case in which the main documentary evidence still places Billy the Kid’s death at Fort Sumner on July 14, 1881.
