Brushy Bill Roberts (allegedly December 31, 1859 – December 27, 1950, possibly 1879 – December 27, 1950), a.k.a. Ollie P. Roberts or Ollie L. Roberts, attracted attention by claiming to be the infamous western outlaw Billy the Kid. Although Roberts' claim has been rejected by almost all historians (and even some of his relatives), his argument was not entirely bereft of supporting evidence. Brushy Bill's claim is promoted by the "Billy the Kid Museum" in his hometown of Hico in Hamilton County, Texas.[1][2] His story was further promoted by the 1990 film Young Guns II. Robert Stack did a segment on Brushy Bill in early 1990 on the NBC television series Unsolved Mysteries.
Contents |
In 1949, a paralegal named William Morrison located a man in Central Texas named Ollie P. Roberts (nicknamed "Brushy Bill"), who claimed to be Billy the Kid and who challenged the popular account of McCarty as shot to death by Pat Garrett in 1881.[3][4] Allegedly, Brushy Bill Roberts never confirmed or denied his claim to be Billy the Kid until a few years before his own death. He told Morrison that he would agree to tell the "whole truth" in exchange for the full pardon he had been promised by the governor of New Mexico following the Lincoln County War, Lew Wallace. Roberts claimed that he had survived that historic day in 1881 when Pat Garrett had shot and killed the Kid. His sudden appearance and request for a pardon had a profound effect on Garrett's descendents: Did their ancestor, in the line of duty, kill a notorious outlaw? Or did he gun down an innocent man and let Billy get away?
Brushy Bill claimed to have been born on December 31, 1859, by the name of William Henry Roberts in Buffalo Gap, Texas near Abilene. Others claim that he was actually born in 1868, while United States Census records indicate that Roberts was born in 1879. Oliver P. Roberts' niece, Geneva Pittmon, was able to show that her uncle's (Oliver P., not Oliver L.) date of birth had been recorded in the Family Bible. However, the problem with her statement regarding the unknown birth date of Ollie L. Roberts is that Brushy Bill had disclosed that Oliver P. Roberts had been his distant cousin. After Oliver P. Roberts died, Brushy Bill had assumed his identity.
Because Billy the Kid was about twenty-one at the time of his death in 1881, if either of the later two birth dates are true, then it would be impossible for Brushy Bill to have been the Kid. Brushy had been living under the alias of Ollie L. Roberts, and from the time Geneva Pittmon was a little girl, she was told that Brushy Bill was her uncle Ollie. She never knew the truth of his identity, because her father, Thomas U. Roberts, had helped to hide Billy/Brushy.[5]
Ollie L. (P.?) Roberts, alias Brushy Bill Roberts, born December 31, 1859, who claimed to be Billy the Kid, could not convince his older half-sister, Martha V. Roberts that he was indeed the Kid. She was born September 3, 1873, and she always said that she knew the difference between a brother and a cousin. She said that Ollie was not her cousin but her brother. Ollie, aka "Brushy Bill" would come to her house in Jacksonville, Texas wearing his boots and cowboy hat, and he would tell everyone that he had a secret, that he was Billy the Kid, but they did not believe him.
It is worthy of note that if Brushy Bill had been born in 1859, he would have been ninety at the time of his death from a massive heart attack in Hico, Texas. Had he been born in 1879, he would have been only seventy-one at the time of his death.[6] In addition, Roberts had allegedly claimed to be a member of Jesse James' gang,[7] before deciding to come out as the "true" Billy the Kid.
It is worth noting that a number of people, who had actually known Billy the Kid, positively identified Brushy Bill as Billy the Kid, right down to the distinctive eye color. Reportedly, Brushy Bill had each and every scar that Billy had (and more).[8]
On November 29, 1950, at a meeting with then New Mexico governor, Thomas J. Mabry, Brushy Bill was unable to convince the governor that he was Billy the Kid. Brushy, who had apparently suffered a mild stroke, could not even remember Pat Garrett's name. Gov. Mabry did not believe Brushy Bill to be the Kid, and so he did not issue a pardon.[3] On December 27, 1950, When his wife said she needed to mail a package, Brushy said he would walk it down to the post-office. As he walked down the street, Brushy suffered a heart attack. He fell to the ground and died shortly afterwards.
In 1989 the Lincoln County Heritage Trust commissioned a computer study by forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow. Scanned photographs of Billy and Roberts, along with those of 150 other people, were fed into a computer utilising a "similarity index" to match 25 facial "landmarks". This resulted in Roberts' photo ranking 42nd (i.e.: 41 other people more closely resembled the tintype than Roberts). Snow indicated that if the two were the same person, then Roberts should have ranked at least 2nd. It was noted that the accuracy of facial comparisons are dependant on the position of the face in the photographs being the same.[9]
In 1990, a study utilizing photo comparison equipment in the Advanced Graphic Laboratory in the University of Texas was conducted by image-experts Scott Acton and Alan Bovik. The study corrected for the facial positioning and used the same face recognition techniques used by the FBI, CIA and Interpol which are claimed to provide a "significant level of statistical validity". Photographs of Brushy Bill Roberts at age fourteen seemed to resemble the well known Dedrick-Upham tintype of Billy The Kid. A photograph of Brushy Bill at age 90 was a 93% match. Both Acton and Bovik concluded that their result proved "beyond the shadow of a doubt" that Billy the Kid and Brushy Bill were the same person. In 1996 the results of the study were presented to Andre McNiel, chancery judge of the 12th judicial district, and a prominent Arkansas attorney Helen Grinder, who stated that based on the study and other evidence the case for Roberts being Billy The Kid was "strong and substantial".[10]
In 2003 Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Sullivan, Capitan, New Mexico Mayor Steve Sederwall, and De Baca County, New Mexico Sheriff Gary Graves began a campaign to exhume the remains of Billy the Kid and his mother, Catherine Antrim, to prove it was in fact Billy the Kid buried in Fort Sumner through DNA. The initiative hit snags from the beginning. First, there is no confirmation as to where the remains are located. Second were the legalities, with both pro-Brushy Bill Roberts and anti-Brushy Bill Roberts experts protesting the exhumation. The exhumation of both sets of remains was blocked in court in September, 2004.
At the time of his death, Brushy Bill lived on West 2nd Street in Hico. He was buried in the county seat of Hamilton, twenty miles south of Hico. Despite the discrepancies noted above, the Hico Chamber of Commerce has capitalized on his claim by opening the "Billy the Kid Museum" in the historic Western section of Hico.[1][2]
| Billy the Kid in Hico | |||||||||
|
|||||||||