A Coroner's Verdict Heist?

William Vincent Morrison and C.L. Sonnichsen, the men who represented Brushy Bill Roberts and publicized the old-timer’s claim to be Billy the Kid, relied heavily on one central fact: that there was no record of death for William H. Bonney, alias Billy the Kid.  

“And this brings us to what can be found in black and white…THERE IS NO ACTUAL LEGAL PROOF,” C.L. Sonnichsen writes, in his book Alias Billy the Kid, “OF THE DEATH OF BILLY THE KID.” 

This was one argument Morrison returned to frequently in his arguments in favor of Brushy Bill Roberts. In fact, this served as one of the lynchpin issues around which Morrison based his claim that Roberts was the Kid. 

Sonnichsen continues in his book: “In handling Brushy Bill Roberts’ case, Morrison had to find that death certificate [of Billy the Kid’s] if it was still in existence. Without some record that would stand up in a court of law, his man was not legally dead. If he could not be proved to be legally dead, there was no point in going to court to have the death record set aside…Morrison made diligent search, in person and by letter. He could find no evidence that BIlly the Kid’s death had ever been legally recorded anywhere in New Mexico.” 

Ignoring the absurdity of this claim (contrary to Morrison and Sonnichsen’s protests, Billy the Kid’s death was adequately documented to the satisfaction of the territorial authorities of that time), it is seen here that the “no death record” argument was central to the whole Brushy Bill narrative. 

Just a few paragraphs later, Sonnichsen again drives his claim home: “One possible explanation [for Governor Ritch to not grant Garrett a reward] would be Ritch’s knowledge of the shaky character of the purported death certificate - a document which cannot now be, and perhaps never could have been, produced.” (There was no “shaky character” of the death record.) 

Again and again, Sonnichsen and Morrison returned confidently to their claim that no death certificate can be produced. 

The “death certificate” in question is the original coroner’s report on the death of Billy the Kid, given by Garrett to the territorial authorities. 

In response to Morrison’s claim, many historians and officials, among whom was famed Lincoln County War authority Maurice G. Fulton, insisted that the document existed, that it was transcribed in newspapers at the time, and that a photostatic copy even existed at the time of Morrison’s investigation. 

Why were Sonnichsen and Morrison so confident that the “death certificate” didn’t exist? Why were they willing, in essence, to base their whole claim, the whole ballgame, on this fact? Why were they so sure no “death certificate” would be found in some dusty corner of a government building? 

Is it possible that they, or someone they knew, stole it?

If, as many claim, the whole Brushy Bill fiasco was a fraud from start to finish, then what if this document was taken offstage before the production ever began, thus securing, in the minds of the conspirators, the success of the outcome? 

Morrison was looking for Billy’s death record in 1949. On October 31 of that year, Carmen Armijo, deputy clerk for Las Vegas, New Mexico, wrote Morrison, saying, “I sent your letter requesting the corner’s [sic] verdict of the purported death of William H. Bonney to the Clerk of the District Court of De Baca County, as there is no record in this office of any corner’s [sic] verdict, and we do not have the records of De Baca County in this office.”

Morrison had also written to Secretary of State, Alicia Romero, in Santa Fe, for the coroner’s verdict. Presumably happy to oblige at first, Romero was no doubt surprised when she could not locate it. 

To quote the El Paso Herald Post of November 2, 1949: 

“Romero thinks [the coroner’s verdict] merely has been misplaced - but she can’t find it in her vault. The report was signed by Frontier Sheriff Pat Garrett stating simply he killed William H. Bonney (Billy the Kid) at Ft. Sumner in 1881. It was sent [to] Territorial Governor Lew Wallace shortly after the death of New Mexico’s most famed outlaw. Mrs. Romero found the valuable historical document ‘practically in the garbage dump’ of the capitol basement, rescued it and placed it in the vault.” 

Alicia Valdez Romero was the Secretary of State for New Mexico from 1947 to 1950. This means that some time between 1947 and November of 1949, Romero found the original coroner’s report in the basement of the Santa Fe capitol building, and placed it in a vault, and that by November 2, 1949, the report had gone missing. 

It is curious that such an important historical document was discovered between 1947 and 1949, and that Brushy’s claim to be Billy, which relied so heavily on the missing document, went public at the end of 1949 and into 1950. It is almost too large a coincidence to ignore. 

It is not known the security of the “vault” that Romero kept the document in, or whether she let visitors and researchers see it. It is not known how the document would have been stolen. It is not known who, precisely, would have stolen it. 

But it is certainly worth considering that the original coroner’s report in the matter of the death of Billy the Kid ended up in the possession of the very men making the claim that it did not exist.