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In July 2001, Chuck Hornung, a prominent Western researcher, visited a flea market in Albuquerque, where he bought a copy of My Life on the Frontier, the first of a three-volume autobiography written by territorial governor Miguel A. Otero, for the bargain price of $7.50. When he brought the book home and looked inside, he discovered a carbon copy of a letter, unsigned but apparently written by Otero, that revealed new details about Wyatt Earp and his posse's brief stay in Albuquerque while on the run from Arizona authorities in the spring of 1882.
For the hundreds of researchers, amateur and professional, who have made the Earp saga their life's work, the letter added a few interesting new wrinkles, but no real bombshells. For the Blonger researchers, both of us, it came as a complete surprise. Here, for the first time, was a documented connection between the Blonger Bros. and the iconic figure of the Old West, Wyatt Earp.
Hornung joined forces with Western scholar Gary Roberts to write the story of his discovery and an analysis of the letter, which was published in True West magazine in November of 2001 ("The Split: Did Doc & Wyatt Split Because of a Racial Slur"). For Earpologists, the possibility that Wyatt Earp had adopted XXXXXXX
All of this speculation hinged, of course, on whether the document was authentic. As Hornung and Roberts mentioned in their article, "further research must be done, not only on the substance of the claims in the letter, but also on the provenance of the letter itself, before conclusions can be drawn."
As far as we know, no further research has been done on the "Otero Letter," as it has come to be called, until now. We have expanded on some of the evidence presented by Hornung and Roberts, done additional research that challenges some of their initial assessments, and present it herewith.
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