Scientists Solve Texas Outlaw Mystery

June 14, 2001 1:14 pm EST, By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Smithsonian scientists announced on Wednesday they had solved a 123-year-old mystery over whether a legendary Texas outlaw, "Wild Bill" Longley, managed to escape his hanging in 1878.

American folklore has it that Wild Bill, a notorious post-Civil War gunfighter who boasted he had killed 32 people, did not die in a public hanging in Texas around his 27th birthday, but fled to Louisiana where he lived until a ripe old age.

Smithsonian National Museum of National History forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley told Reuters that after an exhaustive 15-year study that involved DNA testing, he could say definitively the outlaw met his fate on the gallows.

"I'm convinced we've got Wild Bill Longley," Owsley said in an interview. "I've been in law enforcement cases for a long time and Bill was becoming a career case for me. It was just a project that really required persistence and expertise."

Wild Bill terrorized newly freed slaves and was known as a thug and a pathological liar who caused trouble wherever he went.

LEGEND OF RIGGED EXECUTION

Legend has it Longley's friends rigged a fake execution with an ingenious harnessing device and then aided his escape, most say to Louisiana but others to South America. Similar legends persist about Jesse James, the Wild Bunch and Billy the Kid.

"Through the expertise of our world-class anthropologists, the Smithsonian Institution has solved a 120-year-old mystery," said Robert Fri, director of the National Museum of Natural History.

"Cutting edge technology combined with classic sleuthing has resolved this historical case," Fri told a news conference to announce results of the study.

Owsley became involved in the case when he was approached in 1986 by a Louisiana man, Ted Wax, who said he believed his grandfather was William Preston Longley, a.k.a. Wild Bill, but that he had lived under the alias Captain John Calhoun Brown, the same last name as the sheriff in charge of his execution.

"It was truly a family mystery. They had grown up with this folklore and they wanted to get an answer," said Owsley.

Longley's hanging in Giddings, Texas, a town about halfway between Austin and Houston, was reportedly observed by thousands of people, but the Louisiana man's story was so convincing that Owsley took on the case.

Owsley thought it would be an open-and-shut case and that when he managed to unearth the grave in Giddings, where Longley was said to be buried, he would find a box filled with stones instead of the outlaw's remains.

The search for the grave was hampered for several reasons. First, the cemetery caretaker had moved the grave marker, but not the body, largely in order to placate people who did not want to be buried alongside an infamous outlaw.

The situation became even murkier when a historic photograph of the cemetery indicated the location they had pinpointed was clearly wrong.

They were finally able to identify the grave with the use of remote sensing equipment and the assistance of advanced computer graphics to analyze the photograph.

When they excavated the grave, they found a skeleton in a modest pine box whose height matched that of the gunfighter. Other evidence pointing to Longley was the discovery of a Roman Catholic medallion around his neck and traces of a flower.

While in jail, Longley converted to Catholicism and reportedly wore a medallion for his execution. In addition, he was visited before his hanging by a 10-year-old niece who gave him a corsage to wear.

The most convincing evidence came from a DNA comparison between the skeleton and a great-granddaughter of Longley's sister. "The DNA evidence put the final nail in the coffin. We can now say it was Bill Longley," said Owsley.

He said the Louisiana man who set off the investigation was disappointed by the Smithsonian's findings and was still convinced Wild Bill Longley was his relative.

"He's willing to concede that I found a Longley but not necessarily his Longley. I still haven't been able to convince him yet," said Owsley.

-- Anonymous, June 16, 2001