Brushy Bill, Just Another Billy the Kid Tall Tale

[Wayne Land]

OK, I've finished reading this book written by Mr. Roy Haws. Most of us who tend to believe Brushy was the real Billy The Kid have been exposed ad nauseum to all the discrepancies in his interviews with William Morrison. I have often conceded that they are indeed numerous. In fact, if one considers only the discrepancies in making a choice whether to believe Brushy was the Kid, the decision to disbelieve him is extremely obvious. Therefore, books like this one and the one by Jim Johnson are easily able to sway the individual who has studied Brushy only minimally. Without considering the reasons to believe Brushy was the Kid, most anyone would be convinced by this book.

I encourage anyone who is interested to read it. It is written by Mr. Roy Haws who is descended from the Roberts family to which Brushy was related. Actually Roy's mother was personally involved in efforts to prove Brushy really was the Kid through cooperation with Mr. William Tunstill who wrote the Book "Billy The Kid and Me Were The Same".

While there are a few obvious errors in the book, most relatively insignificant, there is also much that is based on conjecture without facts to support the conclusions. There is also much that makes a very strong case that Brushy was either prone to lying about his experiences or had a great imagination and a very poor recollection of correct dates, and places.

I personally remain unconvinced that Brushy was indeed a fraud only because there are so many reasons to believe him. I recommend the book but along with it, you should also read "Billy The Kid, An Autobiography" which is also very compelling in the support of Brushy. I still remain convinced we will never know for certain and I am still inclined to believe he really was Billy The Kid.

[Wayne Land]

Oh yes, I forgot to mention the book devotes an entire chapter to the theory there were really two Olivers and mentions me by name numerous times. Before you read that, please be aware that I have revised my ideas about that and conceded some time back that Brushy did indeed use the middle initial "P" for a time and that if there really was an Oliver L, born in 1868, Henry Oliver Roberts would not likely have been the father. I do still contend it is possible there was an Oliver L Roberts born around 1868. Possible the illegitimate child of a 13 year old Mary Ferguson or possibly a more distantly related "cousin".

[MissyS]

Does anyone know what the difference is between this new book " Just another Billy The Kid Tall Tale" by Roy Haws" and " Brushy Bill: Proof that His Claim to be Billy the Kid was a Hoax" by Roy L. Haws? Are both these books by the same author? Thanks

[Wayne Land]

That's the same book. He recently was able to sell the book to a publisher who wanted to change the title. If you ask me, the new title amounts to false advertising since they use the word "proof" and there is no proof.

[MissyS]

Thanks for clearing that up for me, In the Proof that his claim to be Billy the Kid was a hoax book, I just wanted to clear something up about the part in the book where Brushy was said to be lying about giving Deluvina a tintype photo of himself after she gave him a handmade scarf, the dispute was that he had to be lying because the famous tintype of Billy was known to be given to his friend Dan Dedrick and the chain of custody from there to where it is now is historically documented, so Brushy had to been lying, but when this photo was taken, the process by which it was produced at that time had made four duplicate photos, Billy at the time paid $.25 for four tintypes all the same, one we know he gave to Dan Dedrick , and we know he gave one to Deluvina when she gave him a handmade scarf because Paulita Maxwell said this happened in an interview many years ago, she said The Kid couldn't have given her anything better to make her more pleased because she thought so highly of the Kid, she also said that tintype Deluvina was given changed hands and eventually was destroyed in a fire. Paulita said that tintype did not do the Kid justice and commented on the way he was dressed in the tintype as well, so she must have seen a copy of this tintype at sometime?, the other two tintypes no one knows whatever happened to them? So Brushy could have told the truth about giving a tintype to Deluvina and her giving him a scarf because there was more than one tintype. After I read this part I didn't read anymore of the book, I didn't know if the other book was the same or more informative?

[Wayne Land]

Yes, I follow his Facebook page and he posted recently that the book was now available from a publisher and they had changed the title. The existence of at least two copies of that tintype is pretty much beyond question. This is just one example of how you can't read any book and just take it at face value. To the person who is not as well informed as you, that bit about the scarf would be very strong evidence against Brushy. In the larger view of the book's premise, Roy's primary point seems to be that his mother was more or less lied to by William Tunstill in convincing her to support his theories about Brushy and that is suppose to "prove" Brushy was a fraud. But if you look beyond his (I believe, prejudiced) view of things and start to ask questions and dig deeper into it, his premise doesn't hold up. Roy's mother was in a position to be very close to relatives including her own mother who would have been in the position to be able to definitively answer the questions about Brushy. So I ask, when she was helping Tunstill do his research did she not ask her own relatives what they knew and would they not have confided the truth to her. Yet it appears not only was she convinced at one time that Brushy was the real Billy The Kid but she also died believing that. Roy wants us to believe she only thought so because Tunstill talked her into believing it and she wanted to believe she was related to someone famous. This suggests his mother had no reasonable ability to discern for herself and that she just bought into everything Tunstill said, without doing any real research of her own. I don't buy it. Not even close.

Of course he recites all the other discrepancies in Brushy's narrative that we've all heard before. And his final chapter distorts a theory I proposed which I never said was fact and makes that his final reason to believe Brushy was a fraud. You're suppose to accept that as the final nail in the coffin. Little old me suggested a theory that when presented in a prejudiced light makes me out to be rather ridiculous and that in turn makes Brushy look ridiculous. Sorry, that dog don't bark either.

[jgaines]

I've posted this elsewhere, but there is further proof that Billy did give his tintype to Deluvina: Lawman Jim East who escorted Billy to Santa Fe after captured, wrote the exact story Brushy gave about the exchange of the tintype for the scarf. This information was in a letter written around 1920 to fellow lawman Charlie Siringo. East was right there with Billy in Fort Sumner and saw this happen. To my knowledge nothing was ever written about the Jim East letter until after Brushy's death, making it almost impossible for Brushy to know about this unless he was Billy the Kid. The contents of the East letter were likely not in print before the 1956 book "The tragic Days of Billy the Kid " but I could be wrong . As .44 Colt has said, evidence will continue to pop up based on the seemingly insignificant things Brushy said. I intend to read over all the books written by J. Evatts Haley - he probably recorded more first hand experiences of the Texas Panhandle than anyone else, having interviewed many people who knew or at least had encountered Billy including Charles Goodnight, John Chisum, Jim East, and also recorded activities around Tascosa at the time Billy was hanging around there.

[MissyS]

I didn't know about Jim East telling of the same story that's amazing! it pretty much makes it iron clad proof that the exchange of a tintype for a scarf involving the Kid and Deluvina did happen when two eyewitnesses seen it happen and told about it or wrote about it. The book to me honestly made me believe there was much effort to dig for ANYTHING that would discredit Brushy. There was also a discredit about Brushy's claim of running away from his father because Brushy said his father warned him about the Texas Rangers finding him and bringing him home as an effort to keep him from running away couldnt be true , the discredit was due to the fact that the Texas Rangers wouldn't bother with hunting down a 13 yr. old runaway because they were too busy trailing Sam Bass and fighting Apaches, and other groups of Indians, and the Mason County War, the Texas Rangers may have been a smaller group in 1873?, but to say they wouldn't bother with trailing a 13 yr. old boy from dangerous circumstances is a stretch, if there were attacking Indians in the territory it would seem to make sense to me that the Texas Rangers would want to make an effort to find the boy, even if it was true that the Texas Rangers wouldn't bother with a runaway teen at the time it's not proof Brushy's father didn't tell him that to scare him. Would a family member really have wanted to be related to a famous person if that person were an outlaw or a wanted felon?, even someone as likeable as Billy the Kid?, I may be wrong about this?, but I think back in the day people worried more about family reputations than today, family secrets were kept shushed even divorce was something families shied away from talking about back then, so wouldn't Brushy being Billy the Kid be hard to accept from Tunstill unless there was proof? Im just asking the question because it doesn't seem logical to me. Im going to check out that author J. Evatts Haley, and I want to recommend the author Emerson Hough, he wrote books on the old west and at one time was a lawman in White Oaks N.M., and was friends with Pat Garrett, he wrote a book " Story of the Outlaw" good book.

[mckinley412]

One of the photos Garrett had and was gonna use it for his book. He mailed it to Chicago and it never came back. Somebody probably kept it and saved it somewhere. I believe Garrett was able to obtain another one for the book but I don't remember. I think there might even be a book out just on the tintype.