Billy Who? The Kid's Death Put to Scientific Test

It is more than 120 years since the famous outlaw Billy the Kid was shot dead at the age of 21 in New Mexico by Pat Garrett, his old drinking buddy turned sheriff.

It is a tale that has been celebrated in countless books, comics, songs and films. But was it really the Kid who was gunned down? Or did Garrett murder an innocent man and just pretend it was him?

Rumours that the Kid had survived to fight another day and had, in fact, died as an old man in Texas have circulated for years. So has the suggestion that Garrett was not really the upright lawman of his image but someone who killed an innocent man to help the Kid escape. Now plans are under way to use modern science to solve the riddle.

Billy the Kid, born Henry McCarty in New York in 1859 and also known as William H Bonney, was said to have carried out his first murder at the age of 12. By the time he escaped from jail in Lincoln, New Mexico, by shooting dead two deputies with a smuggled gun, his total murders had reached 21.

Claiming that he had been deceitfully promised a pardon by Governor Lew Wallace in exchange for information on other killings, Billy the Kid escaped as far as a friend's ranch at Fort Sumner, about 100 miles away. Garrett was waiting for him there. As he entered the house, Garrett shot him in the heart.

But an alternative theory suggests that it was Garrett who smuggled the gun and that the man who died was a drifter friend of the Kid's called, confusingly, Billy Barlow. This theory posits that the Kid lived long enough to return to New Mexico in 1950 under the name of Brushy Bill to demand the pardon he was denied.

Now the inheritors of Pat Garrett's law enforcement role want to clear up the rumours once and for all.

The body of the woman said to be the Kid's mother, Catherine Antrim, buried in Silver City, New Mexico, is to be exhumed. Her DNA will be compared with that of Brushy Bill, who is buried in Texas. If there is a match, then it would suggest that Garrett's reputation and one of the great legends of the Wild West may be seriously tarnished.

Steve Sederwall, mayor of Capitan in Lincoln county, New Mexico, said yesterday: "There are Garretts still living here and I think they feel that we're at a point in time when we need to clear it up."

Garrett's image was displayed on the sheriff's department's cars and badges, he said, which showed how important his reputation still was.

He said it would be "probably months" before they knew for sure which Billy had bitten the dust.