MegaHoax: The Strange Plot to Exhume Billy The Kid and Become President

Shelbyville, KY: Gelcour Books, 2009 Gelcour Books, New York. 2009. Softcover/Trade Wraps. Stated First Printing. Inscribed by the author on the front wrap reverse. Book Condition: Near Fine; minor tip bumps. No DJ. Pictorial Wraps. Wraps are not bent or folded; spine is not creased or split. 477 pp 8vo. This huge book exposes and spoofs the most elaborate historic-forensic hoax ever perpetrated: the Billy the Kid Case. Fabricating the headline-grabbing contention that Sheriff Pat Garrett had not shot Billy the Kid on July 14, 1881, but had killed an innocent victim for his Fort Sumner grave, the hoaxers proposed to dig up Billy and his mother for DNA comparisons (though both graves were unreal tourist markers). After that silliness was blocked legally, the hoaxers fabricated possession of Billy the Kid DNA from an old carpenter’s workbench; and went on an hilarious exhumation rampage to prove that utterly discredited pretenders were Billy the Kid. The hoaxers were as surprising as their hoax: a seated governor, his major political donor, sheriffs and deputies, a university professor, a U.S. Marshals Service employee, and a nationally known forensic expert - all of whom ignored historians saying their quest was absurd. The hoaxers were after publicity - and they got press, TV documentaries, and a movie. Th governor, Bill Richardson, believed the scheme would generate national name recognition for his 2008 presidential bid. Second, his donor, was an amateur historian, receiving that hijacked history as weird pay-to-play. Even more strange was the author’s statistical impossibility as the hoaxers’ nightmare. She combined a medical degree with specialty in forensic consultation, world-class knowledge of Billy the Kid history, and the willingness to stand up to promulgators more like thugs than theoreticians. Thoroughly researched. A clean pristine copy.