Disir
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A century-old document found inside a box of unarchived records in Doña Ana County is shedding a little more light on the shooting death of the Old West lawman who gained fame for killing Billy the Kid.
Dated Feb. 29, 1908, the nearly illegible handwritten coroner’s jury report refers to the investigation of the death of Pat Garrett, who served as sheriff in Lincoln and Doña Ana counties before being appointed as a customs collector along the U.S.-Mexico border. Garrett died earlier that day.
Historians have searched for years for additional official documents beyond court records and newspaper articles from the time that assigned blame for Garrett’s shooting death, since some have their own theories about who pulled the trigger.
Signed by several justices of the peace and coroners, the document states that Garrett was reported dead in Doña Ana County in the territory of New Mexico about five miles northeast of Las Cruces.
They found that “the deceased came to his death by gunshot wounds inflicted by one Wayne Brazel.”
Some historians have said that the one witness to the shooting never testified and records show Brazel was acquitted after a one-day trial in which his attorney successfully argued self-defense.
The document was found in November by Angelica Valenzuela, the records and filing supervisor with the County Clerk’s Office, as part of a preservation effort that involved records spanning the last half of the 1800s through the mid-1960s.
http://www.lcsun-news.com/story/new...ives-confirms-who-shot-pat-garrett/101874856/
It was unveiled yesterday. It's pretty cool.
Coroner's report for Pat Garrett discovered
Dated Feb. 29, 1908, the nearly illegible handwritten coroner’s jury report refers to the investigation of the death of Pat Garrett, who served as sheriff in Lincoln and Doña Ana counties before being appointed as a customs collector along the U.S.-Mexico border. Garrett died earlier that day.
Historians have searched for years for additional official documents beyond court records and newspaper articles from the time that assigned blame for Garrett’s shooting death, since some have their own theories about who pulled the trigger.
Signed by several justices of the peace and coroners, the document states that Garrett was reported dead in Doña Ana County in the territory of New Mexico about five miles northeast of Las Cruces.
They found that “the deceased came to his death by gunshot wounds inflicted by one Wayne Brazel.”
Some historians have said that the one witness to the shooting never testified and records show Brazel was acquitted after a one-day trial in which his attorney successfully argued self-defense.
The document was found in November by Angelica Valenzuela, the records and filing supervisor with the County Clerk’s Office, as part of a preservation effort that involved records spanning the last half of the 1800s through the mid-1960s.
http://www.lcsun-news.com/story/new...ives-confirms-who-shot-pat-garrett/101874856/
It was unveiled yesterday. It's pretty cool.
Coroner's report for Pat Garrett discovered
