Did Pat Garrett's widow really say that her late husband did not kill Billy the kid?

What about his own daughter, Elizabeth? Is it true that she gave an interview in the 1980s, making the exact same claim?

I get questions like this all the time, mostly due to people repeating false or unsubstantiated information they find online.

What does the historical record have to say? And where exactly does the truth lie?

Well, let's start off with Garrett's widow, Apollinaria. See back in 2003, over a hundred and 20 years after Billy the

kid's death, a man named Homer Overton came forward claiming that he knew Apollinaria when he was a child,

and according to her,

Billy the kid's death was indeed a hoax.

Per an article published by NBC on the 13th of January 2004, quote,

legend has it to Billy the kid was gunned down by a sheriff in 1881, but was he?

Homer Overton will tell you that the dead man was an unwitting imposter, a drunk shot point-blank in the face by two unlikely chums, the lawman and the legendary gunfighter himself.

Overton learned this some 63 years ago, at age nine, from the widow of Sheriff Pat Garrett.

Overton's sworn statement was offered as evidence for exhuming the body of the kid's mother,

Catherine Antrim, to compare her DNA with that of a Texas man who claimed until his death in 1950 that he was William Bonnie, known in Western lore as Billy the Kid.

Authorities in Lincoln County, where the kid was convicted to killing a sheriff in the 1870s, want to know if that man, named Ollie Brushy Bill Roberts of Hico, Texas, was

the real Billy the Kid.

A hearing on the exhumation petition set for January 27th in Silver City, where Antrim

is buried.

Town officials oppose disturbing the grave site. Garrett's widow, a

Pollinaria Garrett, told Overton and a buddy that her husband and the kid shot a drunk

passed out in a street. With no face left, the drunk was just a body that could be passed off

for Bonnie. Overton lives in Altiloma, California, where he issued a notarized sworn affidavit December 27, 2003 that was filed in court in Silver City a week ago.

...