Counterfeit note rewrites chapter of Billy the Kid
For the first time in more than a century, one of the counterfeit bank notes proven to be in the sequence passed by Billy the Kid and his gang has found its way back to Lincoln County.
U.S. Marshal Historian Dave Turk of Washington, D.C., and retired Federal Criminal Investigator Steve Sederwall of Capitan began the hunt to find the sample of the counterfeit bank notes passed by the Kid. They knew that at least one would have been preserved after the trials were over that convicted the ring of the crime.
What they found was contrary to, and more than, what is currently recorded.
"History has it that the plates used to print the counterfeit were never found," Sederwall said. "That's not true. There were 22 plates on three different Eastern banks and the illegal bank notes passed in Lincoln County were from a New Bedford bank. This operation was not cowboys with a press in a barn here in Lincoln County. It was organized crime, fine-tuned, clever, very sophisticated and much bigger than recorded by historians."...
Read entire article at LC Sun News
U.S. Marshal Historian Dave Turk of Washington, D.C., and retired Federal Criminal Investigator Steve Sederwall of Capitan began the hunt to find the sample of the counterfeit bank notes passed by the Kid. They knew that at least one would have been preserved after the trials were over that convicted the ring of the crime.
What they found was contrary to, and more than, what is currently recorded.
"History has it that the plates used to print the counterfeit were never found," Sederwall said. "That's not true. There were 22 plates on three different Eastern banks and the illegal bank notes passed in Lincoln County were from a New Bedford bank. This operation was not cowboys with a press in a barn here in Lincoln County. It was organized crime, fine-tuned, clever, very sophisticated and much bigger than recorded by historians."...