“Billy the Kid, An Autobiography” An objective review of new and old information.
FRONT COVER:
“An Autobiography”. Misleading. The author was not Billy the Kid.
“The Kid’s Identity Revealed”. An assumption not supported by facts.
PREFACE:
“In 1948 when the brother of Jesse Evans passed away and his estate needed to be settled, Jesse Evans reappeared and revealed he had been living in Florida under the alias of Joe Hines.”
An assumption not supported by references, sources, or facts. No copies of relevant North Dakota probate records, or Morrison’s case file records, were provided to support the assertion that Joe Hines was Jesse Evans.
“He had many aliases over the years, but his Christian name was William H. Roberts, and he had the family Bible to prove it.”
Or did he?
W. C. Jameson reported that a Roberts’ family Bible was found in 1989 in the possession of William Allison of Temple, Texas, a grandson of Melinda Allison Roberts.
Had the family Bible belonged to Melinda Allison or Brushy Bill?
Who entered the information in the Bible?
When was the information recorded in the Bible?
If it was a Roberts’ family Bible, how did Brushy Bill, after he left his father’s house in Carlton, Texas, in May, 1874, retain possession of the Bible as he traveled to three foreign countries, ten states, fought two wars, endured two imprisonments, escaped from two prisons, and lived with the Indians?
If it was a Roberts’ family Bible, why did Brushy Bill not identify his paternal grandmother when he described his ancestry to Morrison?
“With Morrison’s help, he was even able to procure signed affidavits from surviving witnesses who personally knew Billy the Kid that supported his claim.”
An exaggeration.
DeWitt Travis, Robert E. Lee, and Martile Able all signed affidavits that they believed Brushy Bill was Billy the Kid. None of them had met Billy the Kid before his reported death in 1881.
DeWitt Travis, born about 1890 about 9 years after the reported death of Billy the Kid, knew Brushy Bill, but never saw Billy the Kid.
Robert E. Lee knew Brushy Bill, but not Billy the Kid. Robert E Lee, in his affidavit, said he first met Billy the Kid in 1889, 8 years after his reported death..
Martile Able (Martelia Bilberry Abel) met Brushy Bill, but never knew Billy the Kid. She was born about 1872 in Cooke County, Texas, and lived in Lampasas County, Texas, in 1880.
Lee, Travis, and Able may have believed Brushy Bill’s claim that he was Billy the Kid.
CHAPTER 8
”Unfortunately, there are not any individual photos attributed to be of William S. Murphy, but in Theodore Roosevelt’s 1899 book: “The Rough Riders” there is as group photo of “Five Bronc Busters” and one of these men, the man 4th from the left, looks surprisingly like Billy.”
The author went to great lengths to explain why William S. Murphy might be an alias of Billy the Kid, patching together random bits of information to support Brushy Bill’s claim that he had joined the Rough Riders.
William S. Murphy was mustered out of the Rough Riders as William S. Murphy, Caddo, I. T. William S. Murphy and his wife Emma lived in Bryan County in the 1920 census. He was a lawyer (1920 OK census, Bryan Co, microfilm page 35, line 01). William S. Murphy, was born 26 January 1866 in Mississippi. He died 10 February 1928 in Bennington, Bryan County, Oklahoma. He and his wife, Emma, are buried in Bennington Cemetery (FAG #107537122). William had been a soldier, and applied for a pension 23 Oct 1926 (Ancestry.com, Pensions). He had served in Co. M, 1st Volunteer Cav. Emma applied for a pension 6 April 1928 soon after his death.
William S. Murphy was not Brushy Bill.