Randomly ran into this blog that has an interesting piece from the Guardian about Billy the Kid. Apparently, the Kid may have lived longer than is originally thought and they are testing his mother's DNA to prove this.


Rumours that the Kid had survived to fight another day and had, in fact, died as an old man in Texas have circulated for years. So has the suggestion that Garrett was not really the upright lawman of his image but someone who killed an innocent man to help the Kid escape. Now plans are under way to use modern science to solve the riddle.

Claiming that he had been deceitfully promised a pardon by Governor Lew Wallace in exchange for information on other killings, Billy the Kid escaped as far as a friend's ranch at Fort Sumner, about 100 miles away. Garrett was waiting for him there. As he entered the house, Garrett shot him in the heart.

But an alternative theory suggests that it was Garrett who smuggled the gun and that the man who died was a drifter friend of the Kid's called, confusingly, Billy Barlow. This theory posits that the Kid lived long enough to return to New Mexico in 1950 under the name of Brushy Bill to demand the pardon he was denied.