The Guilty - Jason Pinter [86]
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
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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
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Jason Pinter
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