Billy the Kid legend lives on as team drops plans for DNA test

HIS life became one of the most enduring legends of the Wild West, inspiring countless books and films.

But Billy the Kid’s death remains shrouded in uncertainty, with many people remaining unconvinced the outlaw was sent to his grave by his nemesis, Sheriff Pat Garrett.

Officials in the United States had hoped to clear up the doubts once and for all by exhuming the body in the grave and conducting DNA tests to establish its true identity. But the long-standing question looks set to remain unanswered for the time being after the lawmen involved dropped their request to dig up the remains.

Billy the Kid is believed to have been hunted down and shot by Garrett, a reformed outlaw turned sheriff, in 1881.

But in the following years at least two men emerged claiming to be the outlaw, casting doubt on Garrett’s claim that he had got his man.

Doubters suggest that Garrett killed the wrong man and lied about it to protect his reputation.

The notion has gathered so much momentum that last year three officials in New Mexico launched an investigation in an attempt to discover the truth.

Sheriffs Tom Sullivan and Gary Graves, and the mayor of Capitan and sheriff’s deputy, Steve Sederwall,

hoped to clear up persistent questions about the fate of the Kid.

The three lawmen filed a petition in a New Mexico district court this year, seeking exhumation.

But at the end of last week, their attorneys filed to withdraw the request. Mr Sullivan and the attorneys did not return phone calls to explain their decision.

The court filing does not mean the hunt for answers is over, according to a spokesman for New Mexico’s governor, Bill Richardson.

The governor has supported the investigation, saying it is time the truth is known now that DNA technology is available.

"The investigation is moving in a different direction, toward discovering documents and anecdotal evidence of what occurred around Billy the Kid’s death - and his life," Mr Richardson’s spokesman, Billy Sparks, said.

"Digging is not necessary, so the governor is pleased that the case was dismissed."

Forensic experts have been busy this summer performing tests on a bench that Mr Sederwall believes to be the one where the Kid’s body was laid after Garrett gunned him down.

They have also examined a washstand that purportedly was struck by a bullet when Garrett shot the Kid.

Henry Lee, who worked on the OJ Simpson trial, has examined the trajectory of the bullet that killed the Kid and then smashed into the washstand. Calvin Ostler, a medical investigator who worked alongside Mr Lee, said their research suggested Garrett might have been fleeing when he shot the outlaw but that the sheriff had omitted that detail in his telling of the story.

Mr Sparks said a strong interest in the outlaw remained. "It’s the tale of the West," he said.

The Kid, whose real name was William Bonney, has inspired more than 50 films and television movies, most famously Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 classic western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, starring Kris Kristofferson, and the 1988 Brat Pack vehicle Young Guns, starring Emilio Estevez.

Bonney is thought to have been born around 1860, possibly in New York, before the family moved to Silver City in New Mexico where, following his mother’s death, he was put into foster care.

He first killed a man, Frank "Windy" Cahill, at the age of 16 following an argument in a saloon in Arizona and fled back to New Mexico, where he joined a gang of rustlers called the Boys.

The gang became involved in a feud with a local entrepreneur that was to escalate into the Lincoln County War, during which the Kid switched sides and ended up leading a band of vigilantes.

But the band was slaughtered at the end of the war and the Kid became a fugitive as well as an outlaw, making his living by gambling and rustling cattle.

Tired of running, the Kid handed himself in to testify against his rivals in exchange for having a murder charge against him dropped. But later he made his escape from jail.

On the run again, the Kid was blamed for several more murders before Garrett was elected sheriff and made a US marshal to hunt the outlaw down.

Garrett killed two of the Kid’s gang members before trapping the outlaw and forcing him to surrender.

The Kid was tried on murder charges and sentenced to hang, but managed to make a daring last-minute escape by overpowering his guards and fleeing to Fort Sumner in New Mexico, where he attempted to lie low.

Several months later Garrett got a tip-off about the Kid’s whereabouts and rode to Fort Sumner with two deputies.

Garrett was waiting for him when the Kid walked into a house in the town, clutching a knife and a gun.

Recognising the outlaw’s voice, the sheriff turned and fired, his bullet piercing the Kid’s heart.

On 15 July, 1881, the outlaw was buried at the Fort Sumner cemetery.

He is thought to have been about 20 when he died.

What has not died are doubts about whether the man Garrett shot was the infamous outlaw.