I was watching Young Guns and Young Guns 2 yesterday and realized that I never read up about Brushy Bill Roberts' claim that he was Billy the Kid. Has anyone on this board followed this? There seems to be some compelling evidence that makes it worth looking into. I'll copy some excerpts from Wikipedia for those who are in the dark like me.

quote:
Brushy Bill Roberts (August 26, 1879[1] – December 27, 1950; claimed date of birth December 31, 1859) also known as William Henry Roberts,[2] Ollie Partridge William Roberts, Ollie N. Roberts or Ollie L. Roberts, attracted attention by claiming to be the western outlaw William H. Bonney, also known as Billy the Kid.

quote:
In 1948, a probate investigator from St. Louis, William V. Morrison, located an elderly man named Joe Hines, who had claimed the lands of his deceased brother. Hines told Morrison of his experiences in the Lincoln County War and surprised him by claiming that Billy the Kid was still alive, but refused to reveal the name he had assumed or exactly where he was living.[4] Morrison continued his search for the man who claimed to be Billy the Kid, and in 1948 an elderly man named Frank J. Dalton in Lawton, Oklahoma claimed to be Jesse James, and said Billy the Kid was still alive in Hamilton Texas, where he was known as O. L. Roberts.[5]

Morrison then began a correspondence with Roberts, who eventually "confessed" to being the Kid, and detailed his supposed exploits as an outlaw. He told anecdotes that if true would fill in undocumented gaps in many aspects of the life of Billy the Kid, and asked for Morrison's help in acquiring the full pardon he said he had been promised by New Mexico Governor Lew Wallace in 1879 but which was subsequently withdrawn. He showed his ability to slip out of handcuffs, and said that Garrett had actually shot and killed another gunslinger named Billy Barlow and had passed his body off as the Kid's, which had allowed the Kid to vanish and escape to Mexico.[6] There were only three witnesses to the alleged killing of the Kid by Pat Garrett: Garrett himself and Deputies John W. Poe and Thomas McKinney. While McKinney claimed to slightly know the Kid, Poe had never previously laid eyes on him. Within moments after the shooting by Garrett, Poe told Garrett he had "shot the wrong man"; since it was too dark in the room for a visual identification, Garrett claimed he knew it was the Kid by his voice – even though all present had only heard whispers. Ultimately both Poe and McKinney agreed with Garrett, but McKinney recanted years later and claimed – like Poe before him – that Garrett had killed someone else. Local residents of Fort Sumner also immediately disputed the death of the Kid. Garrett hastily assembled an official inquest by political cronies and clinched his claim to the killing and all outstanding rewards. The body was quickly buried the following day in a grave that vanished in floods over the years; the grave as marked today likely contains no remains at all and requests for an exhumation have been officially denied.

Roberts told Morrison that he would agree to tell the "whole truth" in exchange for the full pardon that Billy the Kid had been promised by Wallace following the Lincoln County War. His sudden appearance and request for a pardon had a profound effect on Garrett's descendants. Brushy Bill claimed to have been born William Henry Roberts in Buffalo Gap, Texas, near Abilene, on December 31, 1859 but was known to use several other aliases during his life.

Marshall Trimble, the official historian of Arizona, cites Frederick Nolan, an authority on the life and times of Billy the Kid, who refers to a letter sent in 1987 by Mrs. Geneva Pittmon to Joe Bowlin, the founder of a history buff group called the "Billy the Kid Gang, Inc.", in which she stated that her uncle, the man known as "Brushy Bill", was named Oliver P. Roberts, and that he was born August 26, 1879, according to the family Bible.[1][7][8]

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In 1989 the Lincoln County Heritage Trust commissioned a computer study by Robert L. Har and Dr. Thomas G. Kyle, who used an analytical process of his own creation instead of established protocols used by law enforcement. Scanned photographs of Billy the Kid 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 dependent on the position of the face in the photographs being the same.[21] But Kyle's own results were contradicted by himself as he attempted to justify his conclusions.

In 1990, a study using photo comparison equipment at the Laboratory for Vision Studies and 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 71 was a 93% match. Both Acton and Bovik concluded that this result "irrefutably shows that Roberts and the Kid are a very close match". However, these findings would have to be replicated to be scientifically conclusive (which to date has not occurred), and in that case would still not prove that Roberts and Billy the Kid were the same person. In 1996 the results of the study were presented to Andre McNeil, 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", "substantial", and "excellent".[22]