On March 1, 1989, the TV show, Unsolved Mysteries, presented a segment on Billy the Kid. It was on the theory that Pat Garrett never shot Billy the Kid but shot his partner instead. Therefore Billy the Kid was assumed to be dead and he went on to live a normal life.

Is there any evidence to suggest the Unsolved Mysteries TV show was correct? After all, Legend has it that Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid were good friends.

This appears to be a myth , though in common with others of the type e.g.Anastasia surviving the massacre of the Tsar and the rest of his family or the Tichborne Claimant ( personation of an heir in C19 England ) a well -hyped one, profitable and not without some carefully presented and edited evidence, but like those failing at some inexplicable, inconvenient facts. .The claimant here was 'Brushy' Roberts who emerged from obscurity to claim to be Billy the Kid and even seek a pardon, some 70 years after his supposed death. See www.angelfire.com/ga3/tropicalguy/oldwest-billythekid.html for a summary and other links. Even without the specific points clearly made against 'Brushy', the claim appears prima facie to be just a bit odd, don't you think ?. Somehow a notorious wanted outlaw is confused in 1881 with another man, who is then buried as him, apparently without the man's own family or friends querying anything, while the outlaw survives 70 years in public without comment, and without a soul denouncing him until he decides to make claims .Add the claimants illiteracy v literacy of the outlaw, his lack of Spanish, and his sometimes striking errors of claimed recollection and the case sounds much like 'Tichborne's' and 'Anastasia's'in its particulars. ( Though it took DNA tests of a UK royal and exhumed bodies to finally disabuse her remaining fans !)

[This message was edited by FredPuli on 01-12-03 at 07:33 PM.]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/917607.asp#BODY

Here is an article discussing new interest in the death of Billy the Kid. Sheriff Tom Sullivan of Lincoln County New Mexico is re-opening the case. The plans are to use DNA evidence to see if it is actually Billy the Kid buried in his grave.