The March 2025 Wild
West History Association Journal ran my article "It’s Not Them: The Truth
Behind Alleged Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, Jesse James, and Doc Holliday
Photographs." In it, one photo covered was cut because of space, and the
cut made sense as the claim hadn't made any traction. Because the "historian"
behind the identification is still pushing this ridiculous claim, here is the
cut portion of the article:
It's Not Them: Billy the Kid "Silver City Tintype"
This photo supposedly shows the Kid
and others at a hydraulic mine near Silver City, though there’s no evidence at
all as to the actual location. The item was purchased in an antique store in
Canada and is of unknown origin. It is being pushed as “authenticated” in a
documentary produced by Brushy Bill conspiracy theorist Dan Edwards and
narrated by Emilio Estevez. The claim is that the young man in the photo is
Billy and the older woman is Silver City resident Margaret Keays Miller (who
would have been just over 30 if this had been taken during the second half of
the 1870s). Going on the assumption that the woman is in fact Miller, Edwards
declares early in the documentary that provenance has been established by the
fact that Miller was from Canada and the photo was found in Canada, not even a
specific location that can be tied to Miller, just Canada, an obviously absurd statement.
Moving on, because, of course, provenance has been established, Edwards turns
to New York Police Department Facial Recognition Detective Michael Furia to
identify the subjects. For comparison to the unknown woman in the photo,
Edwards provided Furia with two known photos of Keays and a photo Edwards
believes to be Keays but isn’t. That photo is one commonly misidentified as
Billy the Kid’s mother Catherine Antrim.
The
problem is the alleged Antrim photo was exposed as a fraud years ago and has no
connection to Silver City. It was identified as Catherine Antrim in the 1930s
by author Eugene Cunningham, who told collector Noah Rose it was her in order
to obtain another photo. Cunningham later admitted he lied and had no idea who
the woman was. Furia compare this photo along with the two of Miller to the
unknown woman and concluded she was both women. So we’re supposed to believe
that a photo that had been misidentified as Antrim based on a lie just happens
to be someone who actually knew Billy? But things get more ridiculous.
Moving on to the unknown young man
in the photo, Edwards not only gives Furia the one known image of Billy the Kid
to compare it to, but multiple photos of Brushy Bill Roberts and a photo of one
of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders that Edwards believes is Roberts but
isn’t. The Brushy Bill photos were included so Edwards could use Furia’s work
to support his contention that Brushy Bill Roberts was Billy the Kid. The
purpose of this article is not to waste time on Roberts’s ridiculous claim, so
I’ll just say this: there were over thirty witnesses documented to have seen
Billy’s body after he was killed by Pat Garrett and not a single person in Fort
Sumner in July, 1881, ever said it was anyone other than Billy. Billy the Kid
was killed by Pat Garrett. The photo of the Rough Rider was included so Edwards
could confirm another claim of Roberts: that he was in the Rough Riders during
the Spanish American War. Edwards believes the Rough Rider to be Roberts
because he thinks it looks like him. The catch is that the identification of
the man was attached to the original 1898 negative. The man Edwards believes to
be Roberts is William D. Wood of Bland, New Mexico. Another photo of Wood taken
around the same time confirms the identification.
Furia, unaware of
this history or the actual identification of Wood, compared the unknown man in
the photo to Billy Bonney, Brushy Bill Roberts, and William Wood and concluded
he is all three people. Yes, he really does facial recognition work for the NYPD.
Sources: Documentary Billy the Kid: The Silver City Photo; Weddle, Jerry, Antrim is My
Stepfather’s Name, 33; “Margaret Ann Keays, 1845 – 1929,” https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/K8FJ-2FX;
Nolan, Frederick, The West of Billy the Kid, 7; Rough Rider Bronco
Busters Photos, https://digitalcollections.library.harvard.edu/catalog/G11977_URN-3:FHCL.HOUGH:1432334
and https://digitalcollections.library.harvard.edu/catalog/G11977_URN-3:FHCL.HOUGH:1432333;
2023 correspondence with Houghton Library (Harvard) Reference Librarian Micah
Hoggatt; Heatley, Jeff, Bully! Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders
and Camp Wikoff, photo gallery; Emmett, Chris, “The Rough Riders,” New
Mexico Historical Review, July, 1955, 186.
Images from documentary
“Billy the Kid: The Silver City Photo”