From: firstinitiallastname@texas.net   
      
   Pan T. Waste wrote:   
      
   > It took me about half an hour to come up with   
   > this reference:   
   >   
   > Forgotten Frontier - The Story of Southeastern New Mexico   
   > by Carole Larson, 1993, Univ. of NM Press   
   >   
   > Page 177...The author is writing about the final   
   > days of Pat Garrett and his death on the trail.   
   >   
   > "His slender, dark-eyed wife, Apolinaria, who survived   
   > her husband and died in 1935, spoke English with some   
   > difficulty, as she more often spoke the Spanish language."   
   >   
   > I did not take any more time to try to delve into   
   > where she died or how old she was. Garrett originally   
   > married her sister, who died shortly thereafter, and then   
   > he married Pauline (Apolinaria) in Ft. Sumner, where   
   > she was living with her family at that time, somewhere   
   > around 1880. At the time of her death she would have   
   > been around 75 yrs old, I presume.   
   >   
   > Now the imposter who claims to have spoken with   
   > her when he was 9 would have been either 1 or 2   
   > years old when she died, if, as the article claims,   
   > he is now 70 yrs old.   
      
   Overton says the latest effort to exhume the body motivated him to come   
   forward. But, if I recall, that's essentially the story that "brushy   
   Bill" told. I would have thought that if he had information that Bonny   
   did indeed survive by a ruse and that Bill might be he, that would have   
   brought him out much earlier. Sounds worth digging up a verifiable date   
   of death, which shouldn't be too hard.   
      
   I suspect Overton latched onto a known version of the events. Roberts   
   was obviously not Billy the Kid, through a glance at the ears, if   
   nothing else.   
      
   The whole thing is very likely a waste of time. The fact that some DNA   
   may be recovered from long-buried bones and teeth does not mean that   
   there is a likelihood that a sufficiently long sample can be obtained to   
   make a comparison to a known sample. In this case, I believe, the idea   
   is to exhume the mother's body.   
      
   That itself presents problems, as anyone who has been tasked with   
   exhuming remains buried for a relatively few years. And, in this case,   
   the mother's grave has been relocated, a process that inevitably results   
   in mixing and other error, including just giving up and moving   
   headstones. There could never be any certainty that her remains had been   
   found.   
      
   A definite negative result would mean nothing to the fantasists, but any   
   useful result is unlikely. DNA is simply not the magical thing it's   
   imagined to be.   
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
       "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)