Academic seeks death certificate for outlaw Billy the Kid

An Arizona university professor is taking his pursuit of a death certificate for Billy the Kid to New Mexico’s highest court.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reports historian Robert J. Stahl filed a petition Friday with the New Mexico Supreme Court to order the state’s medical examiner to create the document.

Stahl says he hopes the court will order the Office of the Medical Investigator consider evidence validating William H. Bonney’s death.

According to most accounts, the Kid was fatally shot by Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner in 1881. But some claim Garrett shot someone else and the Kid took up ranching or escaped to Texas under an alias.

Stahl was told he’d need a court order for a death certificate to be issued.