[1] Brazel's place in history resulted from his 1908 confession and trial for the fatal shooting of former lawman Pat Garrett who, more than a quarter of a century earlier in 1881, had tracked down and killed Henry McCarty, also known as Billy the Kid.
[citation needed] Born in Kansas' Greenwood County, Brazel was residing in New Mexico when, on February 29, 1908, he met Garrett on a road near Las Cruces.
[citation needed] Observers knowledgeable with the matter have speculated that it was difficult to believe that Brazel, who was good natured and who had no prior criminal history, could commit murder.
[2] Garrett had numerous verbal and business disputes with other landowners over watering rights and, with advancing age, his disposition made him a very disliked man.
Brazel, with no prior history whatsoever, could easily claim self-defense against Garrett, who had killed at least four men in his lifetime, and was known to always carry the sawed-off shotgun under his seat.
[citation needed] In 2016, a Doña Ana County Clerk’s Office employee came across that document in a box of unarchived materials.
20, County of Doña Ana, territory of New Mexico on about five miles northeast of the town of Las Cruces and find that the deceased came to his death by gunshot wounds inflicted by one Wayne Brazel.
A little over thirty years later, in early July 1947, his nephew William "Mac" Brazel gained certain fame in the so-called Roswell UFO incident when he found strange debris on his ranch some 70 miles northwest of Roswell, sparking the claim that a flying saucer crashed on the ranch where Brazel was foreman and that the government subsequently instituted a cover-up.