searching for “the kid”
 
 

One obvious place to search for evidence whether Brushy really was Billy is comparison of handwriting samples.  But there are two major problems in attempting such comparisons.  First, the various letters attributed to Billy The Kid were obviously written by at least two different people and it is entirely possible that none of them were actually written by Billy himself.  Second, the letters attributed to Brushy may also have been written by someone else, possibly his wife, or his advanced age may have degraded the quality of his writing disabling any valid comparison.

What about documentary evidence?

Billy The Kid’s Handwriting?

Brushy Bill’s

Handwriting?

I doubt whether any of the well known letters attributed to Billy were actually in his own hand.  His handwriting would not have been as skillful as some of those letters suggest.  This note scribbled on a cigarette paper and found many years later stuffed into an empty bullet shell may be the only authentic example of his handwriting.

This writing is a portion of a letter written by Brushy Bill and likely in his own hand.  I am no handwriting expert but I believe this letter and the cigarette paper note show an overall similar script.  There are noticeable differences but if these were both written by the same hand they were written about 70 years apart.  A fellow’s handwriting tends to change some over that much time.  But notice the similar slanting of the letters, spacing of the words and the  size of the lowercase letters compared to the caps.  Compare the word “this” (last word on the first line) with the word “this” on the cigarette paper (very first word).  Compare the letter “g” (the word “gun”, first word, second line) and the letter “g” on the cigarette paper (the word “going” on third line from bottom).

Now consider the three Roberts signatures shown at the left.  The first one is clipped from the above letter. It was likely signed in Brushy’s own hand because it was signed “Wiliam Bonney Billie Kid” just below the name Bill Roberts.  His wife didn’t write the letter because he was keeping the Billy The Kid identity a secret from her.  The second is also signed by Brushy on the death certificate for his second wife Luticia Ballard.  This again was in his own hand because it is clearly marked with a star indicating where he was to sign and later marked with a check mark to the right.


Note the similar slant and proportions of the letters, the way the letter “T” is crossed and the way the letters “e” and “o” are closed in both signatures.  Now notice how the third signature has the ending “s” much larger that the other lower case letters and how the “t” is not crossed the same as the first two.  Also the small letter “e” and “o” are both open where in the first two signatures they are both closed and the entire signature shows letters drawn more slowly and in the straight up position.  


The third signature is from the signature of O.P. Roberts in his divorce from Anna Lee in 1910.  O.P. Roberts, or Oliver Pleasant Roberts was married to Anna Lee but Brushy never identified her as one of his wives.  O.P. and Brushy were two different people as can clearly be demonstrated by these signatures.  This is compelling evidence that Brushy began using the alias of Oliver Roberts sometime after 1910, not long before he married his “first” wife Mollie Brown in 1912.  Also of importance here, Brushy signed his name as “Bill” which is short for William and also as “Ollie” which may or may not be short for “Oliver” but both signatures show a more accomplished handwriting than the O.P. Roberts signature as do all of the alleged samples of handwriting by Billy The Kid.  So while these samples do not prove Brushy was Billy the Kid, they do prove O.P. Roberts was not Billy nor was he Brushy Bill.  Thus the real possibility remains that Brushy and Billy were one and the same.