Lonely Journey

The man was hell-bent to make people believe that the photograph he had discovered was the original one. In those five years, he talked to experts and eventually made a documentary but still, there are some who refuses to call it the original one. Randy explains it better, “It was a bit of a lonely journey.” He named the picture “almost Twilight Zone-ish.” You may want to know why he called it that. Well, because there were some people who considered it too good to be real. But as they say, hard work pays off. The man soon got the fruit of his hard work when science stepped in and made the much-awaited revelation. That made the haters shut off.

Five Years

The forensic experts finally drew a conclusion after taking help from forensic scientists, antique experts, art collectors, and historians. The team used facial recognition to examine the picture more clearly. The entire process took five years to complete but Randy was not sad about it. He knew that the result would be in his favor only.

How Figured Out?

The method of facial recognition proved the most helpful. Billy kid was one of those famous personalities from history who did not get much documented. However, his co-members were very well documented that shed light on their mission. The photograph that Randy had was featuring 18 people apart from the suspicious man. Amazingly, all the 188 members got tracked by the scientists as they had been documented in history. Not only that the experts also found out about the building in the background.

“The Regulators”

The experts learned that more than half of the people in the group belonged to “The Regulators.” Well, this information asserted Randy’s claim even more. The experts went ahead and decided to excavate the remnants of the schoolhouse situated in Chavez County in New Mexico. It is the same building, that was behind the men playing croquet. The experts succeeded in finding out the year in which the photo was taken. It was 1878.

Resemblance Won’t Do

David McCarthy from Kagin’s said, “We had to be certain that we could answer and verify where, when, how and why this photograph was taken. Simple resemblance is not enough in a case like this – a team of experts had to be assembled to address each and every detail in the photo to ensure that nothing was out of place.” So, they took every tiny detail into consideration. The expert added “An original Billy the Kid photo is the holy grail of Western Americana.

The Original One

Eventually, the experts confirmed that the unnamed man was Billy the Kid. Well, which implies that the antique dealers and collectors were ready to bid any high to get that photo. Kagin’s, a numismatist firm, that helped Randy a lot in verifying the authenticity of the photo offered to insure the picture for $5 million. Randy never willed to keep the picture of such historical value with himself and eventually decided to sell it to another historian.