photos of Billy the Kid

[dave spooner]

Do you believe that photos of Billy the Kid exist other than the Dedrick tintype which is the only authenticated image of BTK we know of??

[dave spooner]

Hey Chris...I am curious about the image in your avitar....

[Chris Lampe]

Dave,

That is supposed to be the only known image of my great-great-grandfather. Family history says he was slightly hunch-backed and therefore avoided military service in Germany. He emigrated to America and supposedly sent the passport back to Germany where two brothers impersonated him and used it to come to the U.S.

In the 1860's he supposedly traveled with one brother to California to seek a fortune in gold but ended up killing a man over a dog. He high-tailed it out of California with $10,000 worth of gold and re-joined the family in Illinois where he refused to have his picture taken for the rest of his life. One of his sons arranged to have an artist sit in the barber shop and do a pencil drawing of his father as he sat there. My avatar is that drawing.

[anthony martin]

  Dave,

     Chris forced the photographer to take this photo!

   Chris,

     General Loafer was a fine officer and a gentleman!

[Polly Gulley]

I couldn't make the link work Chris.

[Chris Lampe]

Marcus,

Have you had any more testing done on the tintype you believe may show Henry and Joe McCarty? In the interview I read you mentioned trying to narrow down the actual photographer as well as further testing. Possible photos of Billy are one of my primary wild west interests and I'm always looking for more information on the photos that are out there.

[Marcus Huff]

Chris,

Hesitant as I am to discuss that image, (lest I be accused of "photoshopping" Emilio Estevez) I can tell you this much...

The last somewhat-perplexing-conclusive analysis was done by Robert Powers, forensic detective and inspiration for the Gil Grissom character on "CSI". After three months with the image, Det. Powers concluded a 98% match for one subject in the photo, and 87% for the other, based on a variety of measurements, etc. Attempts to verify actual age of the physical piece through carbon dating and metal tests were abandoned due to a lack of compliance (in other words, I refused to "loan" the photo to interested parties with the means to date the tin, so they took their toys and went home).

The opinions of my friends and colleagues regarding the photo remain private conversations. I seek no confirmation publicly. On a personal note, I would be more interested in seeing a 3-D rendering of the two "Globe boys" than any sort of verification at this point. It is what it is..a neat old photo.

[Daniel Buck]

Marcus,

One of my (many) pet peeves (I know, conjurs up an image of a peeve on a cage, scurrying round and round on a hamster wheel) is the applying scientific/mathematical metrics to what are in reality skill-based judgments, e.g., comparing a couple of not very sharp photos and declaring that they depict the same person, with a .99 degree certainty.

Yesterday, I came across a related analysis in "Our Epistemological Depression," by Jerry Z. Miller, in the AEI magazine, The American. Key excerpt:


Its implicit premises were these: that information which is numerically measurable is the only sort of knowledge necessary; that numerical data can substitute for other forms of inquiry; and that numerical acumen can substitute for practical knowledge about the underlying assets and services. A good deal of our current economic travails can be traced to this increasing valuation of purportedly objective criteria, so denoted because they can be expressed and manipulated in mathematical form by people who may be skilled at such manipulation but who lack “concrete” knowledge or experience of the things being made or traded. As Niall Ferguson has put it, “Those whom the gods want to destroy they first teach math.” >>
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(Since I never could learn math, I guess the gods gave up on me.) Essentially, Muller is saying that Wall Streeters deluded themselves by confecting mathematical formulae about financial phenomenon that they either didn't really understand or that were incapable of being reduced to such formulae to begin with. The latter is the problem, in my view, with mathematically quantified photo comparisons. I have a fat file of alleged images of Butch and Sundance, often accompanied by assertations that the image had been photoshopped, computerized, 3-deified, prayed over, and yelled at, and the conclusion was that it was without doubt [fill in the blank].

A professor has recently declared, ex cathedra, that he found with .99 certainty that a photo of a Utah farmer who looks not at all like the Sundance Kid is the Sundance Kid. A
computer engineer who works with "a government intelligence agency," concluded, based on a comparison of images, that Ann Bassett was Etta Place. For good measure, he quantified it: the chance that the photos were not the same person was only 1 in 5400. Hows that for precision.

In the Sundance case, the expert flopped one of the two images in the comparison so as to improve, shall we say, the results.

What else peeves me is that in both cases the experts worked with bad images, i.e., not with anything close to an original.

What further peeves me (I'll stop peeving soon), was that in both cases the experts worked in a vacuum, that is, they ignored all the historical evidence. For example, Ann Bassett got married in Colorado while Etta Place was in Argentina. The Utah farmer shot a neigbhor while Sundance was in Argentina. Details, details.

I realize I am fighting an uphill, losing battle. Photo comparison technology will soon make it possible for everyone to find a photograph of their great-grandmother that precisely matrches a mugshot of Peter Pan. DNA results to follow.

Dan

Dan

[Steve McCarty]

I believe that the metal used to make tintypes (Ferro graphs) was polished zinc.

[Steve McCarty]

My grandfather's name was Joe McCarty.  He was a dentist near Dodge City, KS and knew Dr. Oscar H. Simpson well who was also Sallie Chisum's sister-in-law.  Doc McCarty knew that we were related to the Kid, but he didn't like to discuss it.  The story enraged him.  Here's a pic of Doc McCarty taken when he was about the same age as the kid.

Doc was about 5/9 and athletic.  Match his image to the kid's.  They were cousins.

 

 

 

[Steve McCarty]

[Polly Gulley]

No doubt about it that is a wow photo. Wish we had one of Billy as clear as this one. Unless we can find a photo that is without a doubt Billy we are never going to know for sure what he really looked like. In my opinion of course.

[Chris Lampe]

Marcus,

Thanks for the update! It's too bad about dating the physical tintype. That would have been very interesting.

I had done 3-D images of both guys but wasn't particularly satisfied with either. The program itself is designed to take 3 clear mug shots and render the person into 3-D for video games or presentations so my uses are really stretching it's abilities and it's of questionable validity. Some images transfer very well (mine) and others gave me fits (the de Aragon image, for example). I re-did the guys from your image. The program is at facegen.com and it's free to try if you want to download it and play with it.