The National Law Enforcement Museum has acquired four lots of Depression-era artifacts relating to the law men who apprehended Bonnie and Clyde and Billy the Kid.
Museum representatives acquired the items in four lots purchased at a Sept. 30 RR Auctions event in Nashua, N.H.
One of the lots included items carried by Pat Garrett, the Lincoln County (N.M.) Sheriff who killed Billy the Kid in 1881, such as Garrett's National Arms Co. Single Shot No. 2 Derringer, badge, and coin purse. The lot also includes a handwritten letter penned on the back of a mimeographed list of guns for sale and dated from the 1930s that refers to Garrett as the famous sheriff who killed the outlaw.
Another lot includes the Deputy U.S. Marshal commission and badge that belonged to Ted Hinton, the youngest (and last surviving member) of the posse that ambushed and killed Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in Louisiana in 1934. The third lot includes photographs of the posse, which included Ted Hinton, Frank Hamer, Prentiss Oakley, B.M. 'Maney' Gault, Bob Alcorn, and Henderson Jordan.
The final lot contains original 1930s Associated Press photos of a payroll robbery pursuit in New York. Two New York City patrolmen, Edwin V. Churchill and Walter J. Webb, were killed during the robbery. Their names are inscribed on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C.
In addition to hosting the auction, RR Auctions raffled off several other items—including a motorcycle that belonged to Aerosmith's Steven Tyler—to raise more than $10,000 for the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, the non-profit organization leading the efforts to build the National Law Enforcement Museum.
To date, the National Law Enforcement Museum has acquired more than 16,000 historical and contemporary artifacts, dating back to the 18th century.
