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Thursday, August 28, 2008

Suit Targets Investigation Into Billy the Kid's Death

By Charles D. Brunt
Journal Staff Writer
       Legal wrangling over DNA analyses could have Billy the Kid rolling in his grave — wherever it may be.
    Scot Stinnett, publisher of the De Baca County News, and Gale Cooper, a retired psychiatrist and amateur historian from Cedar Crest, are suing current and former Lincoln County lawmen they say are withholding public records about DNA evidence collected during an investigation into events leading up to the Kid's presumed death in 1881.
    Legend has it that the Kid, William Bonney, was gunned down by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner. With backing from Gov. Bill Richardson, two Lincoln County lawmen launched an investigation several years ago seeking to determine whether it really was the Kid who was shot by Garrett and buried in Fort Sumner.
    The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government — a nonprofit government watchdog — is the latest player to enter the saga that so far has included the exhumation of two bodies in Arizona and analyses of their DNA by celebrity forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee.
    "Our primary interest is in the reason they (the records) are not being produced," NMFOG executive director Leonard DeLayo said earlier this month.
    The current Lincoln County sheriff says he doesn't have any records. The former sheriff and a deputy who started the investigation say anything they did was on personal time so any records they might have are their personal material.
    Stinnett and Cooper say the current sheriff has a duty under the Inspection of Public Records Act to obtain and produce the records, which they say include:
    n Lee's analysis of DNA derived from blood on a carpenter's bench where Billy the Kid's body supposedly was placed after being fatally wounded by Garrett the night of July 14, 1881, in Fort Sumner;
    n Lee's analysis of DNA taken from the graves of John Miller — who claimed he was Billy the Kid — and William Hudspeth in Arizona; and information regarding any payments to Lee. Hudspeth's remains, buried alongside Miller's, were unintentionally unearthed during the May 19, 2005, exhumation at Arizona Pioneers' Home in Prescott, where Miller died in 1937.
    According to court documents, Cooper filed several requests under New Mexico's public records law seeking records held by current Lincoln County Sheriff Rick Virden, former Sheriff Tom Sullivan and former Deputy Steven Sederwall.
    The lawmen have refused to produce the requested documents, claiming they either don't have them or that the records they possess are private documents not subject to disclosure.
    To much fanfare in 2003, Sullivan and Sederwall opened an investigation into the Kid's escape from the Lincoln County Courthouse during which he killed deputies Bob Olinger and James W. Bell — murders that sent Garrett looking for the outlaw in Fort Sumner.
    Because the DNA was collected during an official criminal investigation, the plaintiffs maintain the records are public.
    Sullivan and Sederwall, who resigned from the sheriff's office in June 2007, say they collected the information on their own time and at their own expense. They say they undertook the investigation to prove whether accepted historic accounts of the Kid's death are accurate or whether they were concocted by Garrett and others.
    Under that theory, the Kid escaped and lived out his life elsewhere.
    Sullivan and Sederwall have sought to exhume the Kid's remains from his alleged resting place at the Fort Sumner cemetery, those of his mother, Catherine Antrim in Silver City, and another Billy the Kid claimant — Ollie "Brushy Bill" Roberts of Texas — to compare DNA samples that could rewrite history.
    Stinnett said Sullivan and Sederwall gave depositions in the lawsuit earlier this month in Ruidoso.
    DeLayo said NMFOG's executive committee has directed him to move toward joining the plaintiffs in the litigation.
    "Our interest is in the continuity of record keeping, and that when you generate a document during an investigation, it's public information," DeLayo said. "You don't take it with you, and you don't claim that you did it on your own time."
    The suit is filed in the 13th Judicial District Court in Sandoval County.