Digging up the past: Man sure relative was 'Sundance Kid'

DUCHESNE — Questions about the true identity of a man who died in November 1936 are still unanswered more than a year after his remains were exhumed from the Duchesne City Cemetery.

Was William Henry Long simply a destitute farmer with an enigmatic past and a bleak future? Or was he actually Harry Alonzo Longabaugh — the man history knows better as the Sundance Kid, living under an assumed name in a small northeastern Utah town years after his reported death in South America?

Jerry Nickle began his quest more than six years ago to flesh out his step-great-grandfather's real past. That search led to an exhumation of Long's remains on Dec. 12, 2008, by the executive director of Salt Lake City-based Sorenson Forensics.

A subsequent comparison of the genetic material extracted from Long's badly decayed skeleton and a sequence of DNA from known descendants of the Longabaugh family yielded an inconclusive result with regard to a familial relationship.

"I was disappointed because I know dang well it's him," Nickle told the Deseret News from his home in Gilbert, Ariz.

"I was just puzzled," he said. "As a kid I heard the stories about him riding with Butch Cassidy, that he robbed trains and banks. It was so fascinating to me."

Nickle said the presence of underground water in the cemetery where Long was interred, and the resulting disintegration of his wooden casket, makes it possible that his bones have been contaminated. An earlier exhumation by another relative in September 2006, which Nickle termed "unauthorized," raises additional concerns about contamination.

He speculated there's also the possibility that there may not be a genetic link between Long and the Longabaugh family because of "hanky-panky" somewhere in the past or possibly an adoption.

"You're never exactly sure because you never know what happened back there, like something that broke that genetic line someplace," said Nickle, who is working on a book and screenplay about the project.

Nickle plans to have Long's remains sent to another lab for additional DNA analysis. But no matter what the genetic tests reveal, Nickle believes the circumstantial evidence linking Long and Longabaugh is overwhelming.

According to Long's headstone, he was born in February 1860. His obituary says he was reared in Wyoming's Bighorn Basin, near the Hole-in-the-Wall hideout later used by outlaws but doesn't name a specific town. Nickle said no one has been able to locate Long's birth certificate.