Icould sense the men following me even though I couldn't see them. I knew they carried guns, had their eyes glued to my back, and sized up every person who came within five feet of me.
I told the cops the killer had already done what he came to do, that their efforts would be better used fighting terrorism or searching for the killer himself. They disagreed. I told them the guy who cut up my hand wasn't stupid enough to go after me in broad daylight, that he had actual targets. He had a motive, a purpose, wasn't some fly-by-the-seat-of-hispants, run-of-the-mill murderer. He picked the Winchester for a reason. Stole it from that museum in Fort Sumner for a reason. Came to my apartment and tried to scare me off the story for a reason.
In the days since, I wondered why he didn't just kill me.
The man had already killed four others. He clearly wasn't averse to murder. There was a story he wanted to stay buried, and leaving me alive was just one more shovel that could keep digging. I guessed he just didn't know how driven-or stupid-I was.
To uncover more about the legacy of Brushy Bill Roberts,
I had to start at the end. Roberts had lived in Hamilton, Texas, and died in Hico. Roberts had since become Hico's only claim to fame, bringing in thousands of dollars in tourism every year. If Fort Sumner lived and breathed the legend of
Billy the Kid, Hico lived on the whiff of conspiracy brought on by their most famous former resident.
I had to get out of the office and do research away from the madness that had become the Gazette newsroom. With the increasing battles between the Gazette and the Dispatch, I could tell Hillerman had come down hard on Wallace to make sure his reporters knocked this story out of the park. And if that was the case, I was his Babe Ruth, stepping to the plate and calling my shot, hoping for a moon rocket rather than a whiff.
The New York public library was quiet, had the same
Internet resources as the Gazette, access to LexisNexis, and all the historical newspapers on microfiche I needed. I wanted to view the Roberts case from every media angle: not only Hico, but by the major metropolitan papers in Texas, New York, Los
Angeles and elsewhere. You could get a good grasp of how a story penetrated the national consciousness by how widely it was reported, and with what veracity the conspiracy was given.
It was a crisp summer day and the steps outside the library were teeming with people reading, hanging out, and even a few sleeping on the stone. The NYPL itself is a behemoth that takes up two full city blocks. The entrance is guarded by two stone lions named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after John Jacob
Astor and James Lenox, both generous patrons. In the 1930s, they were renamed Patience and Fortitude by Mayor Fiorello
La Guardia. Patience guards the south steps, Fortitude the north. As I passed them by, I hoped they'd grant me both. The three main doors are bracketed by six carved stone columns, which lead into the great reading room where I'd spent many
hours wrenching my back while poring over old texts. The massive room is lit by grand chandeliers and surrounded by thousands of volumes. I was here to use CATNYP, the online system allowing subscribers access to the library's huge collection of journals, periodicals and newspapers.
I jogged up the steps and entered, making my way to a computer stall where I took a seat, cracked my knuckles, looked to see if the two cops had followed me inside. They hadn't.
I logged on to CATNYP and ran a search for Texas newspapers containing stories pertinent to the Brushy Bill case. I typed slowly with my index fingers, my right palm aching from the stitches. Guess I'd have to settle for old-fashioned two-fingered typing for the time being.
The first article I came across was from the Austin Chroni cle, a story about one Judge Bob Hefner who, in 1986, published a booklet claiming Brushy Bill had in reality been the real Billy the Kid. The booklet gained notoriety when it was picked up by the Dallas Morning News. According to
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.
John Henry Roberts married a woman named Meryl Higgins, and in 1987 Meryl gave birth to twins: Martha James Roberts, and William Henry Roberts.
William Henry Roberts. Currently aged twenty-one. The same age Billy the Kid was when allegedly killed by Pat
Garrett.
The theories were true. William H. Bonney, known by millions as Billy the Kid, known by few as Brushy Bill
Roberts, had fathered a son.
I knew why this killer was using the Winchester rifle. Why he had chosen the weapon and bullets he did. Why he had stolen that gun from the museum in Fort Sumner. Why he had waited twenty-one years to reclaim his heritage. To continue the destiny set forth by his ancestor.
The bloodline had survived. And one hundred and thirty years after his supposed murder, Billy the Kid's greatgrandson, William Henry Roberts, had brought the lawlessness and bloodshed of the Old West here to New York City.