Billy the Kid, Brushy Bill, & the NYPD

The Wild West Extravaganza

Wild West Josh

History, Education

4.8 • 833 Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2026

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Did the NYPD prove that Brushy Bill Roberts was Billy the Kid using forensic technology? Short answer: no. Not the NYPD, not the FBI, not the CIA, and not Interpol. No official agency has ever conducted a forensic photo comparison or any kind of investigation into whether Brushy Bill Roberts was Billy the Kid. So where does the claim come from? Most of the time, it traces back to the documentary "Billy the Kid: The Silver City Photo," produced by Dan Edwards, and featuring an NYPD detective named Michael Furia. That’s what we’ll be discussing today, taking a look at what Detective Furia actually did, what he did not do, and why a confident opinion about an old photograph is not the same thing as a forensic identification. Along the way, we get into why facial recognition software doesn’t work on 19th-century tintypes, what the NYPD's own policy says about photo matches (spoiler: a match is only an investigative lead), and how a tool like Civil War Photo Sleuth really operates. We also identify one of the six photographs for who it actually is, a Rough Rider named William Dibrell Wood, a real and well-documented man who was most definitely NOT Brushy Bill Roberts. Wild West Quiz - https://wildwestquiz.com/ Check out the website! https://www.wildwestextra.com/ Email me! https://www.wildwestextra.com/contact/ Free Newsletter! https://wildwestjosh.substack.com/ Buy Me A Coffee! https://buymeacoffee.com/wildwest Join Patreon for ad-free bonus content! https://www.patreon.com/wildwestextra Merch! https://wildwestextramerch.com/ Silver City Photo Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4A1OMB238s&t=1398s Detective Furia Billy the Kid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-m-AJ5G0Tg Forever West YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ForeverWestPodcast Corey Recko: http://www.coreyrecko.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Attention all passengers. The Uber ride for Jeff's rugby team will depart in five minutes from Platform 15.
0:09.2	Your ride comes with six toilets and a refreshments carriage that you'll empty within five minutes.
0:16.5	Thank you for booking your tickets on Uber.
0:20.2	Trains on Uber.
0:22.0	Did the New York City Police Department really prove that Brechiebel Roberts was Billy the kid by using forensics technology?
0:28.2	I get questions like this all the time.
0:30.1	And if it's not the NYPD, it's the CIA or the FBI or Interpol or some other official sounding group.
0:36.0	And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but no, none of
0:38.6	those agencies have ever conducted a photo comparison study or any type of investigation into Billy
0:43.6	the Kid and Brushy Bill Roberts. It has never happened. Now, that said, most of the time when someone
0:49.2	brings up Billy the Kid and the NYPD, what they're referring to is a documentary produced by
0:53.7	Dan Edwards titled Billy the Kid the Silver City photo. what they're referring to is a documentary produced by Dan Edwards titled
0:54.9	Billy the Kid the Silver City photo. I'll drop a link down below if you'd like to check it out for
0:59.3	yourself, but the documentary is mostly centered around a newly discovered photograph that
1:04.2	allegedly depicts Billy the Kid over in Silver City, New Mexico. Now, I personally happen to disagree,
1:10.0	but that's neither here nor there. What really
1:12.0	call my attention and what I'd like to discuss today is one of the methods that Mr. Edwards
1:16.7	used to authenticate the photo, along with several other photos also featured in the documentary.
1:22.7	And I say method, but really I'm just referring to one person, a detective by the name of Michael
1:27.4	Furia.
1:28.8	He's described in the documentary as a quote, facial recognition expert currently employed
1:33.5	by the New York City Police Department in their facial recognition unit.
	...

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