It was only by chance that Tom Ronketty said he discovered that his wife’s family members have claimed for generations that they are connected to the infamous outlaw, Billy the Kid.
They even have family album that contains a couple of photos of a young man not yet known as Billy the Kid, the family told him.
That would be a truly historic discovery, as to date there has only been one verified image of Billy the Kid, a damaged tintype that sold at auction for $2.3 million. The emergence of genuine photo — let alone two — would be huge.
If either or both of the photos could be verified.
So far, despite a decade of having the images studied and scientifically examined, experts haven’t been able to do that. They also haven’t debunked them, either, the Ronkettys say.
‘Jeopardy!’ Moment
Tom Ronketty told Cowboy State Daily that he and his wife, Beth, were watching an episode of “Jeopardy!" when Beth shouted out the answer to an obscure question about the infamous outlaw.
“I asked her why in the world would you know about Billy the Kid?” Ronketty said. “Beth told me that when she was a kid, her dad always said that they were related to him, but his family wasn’t proud of the relationship.”
Ronketty thought she was pranking him, but Beth persisted and even claimed that they had an old photo album with two pictures of Billy that would prove what she was saying.
It took a couple of hours of searching through her father’s things to find the old, red-leather album Beth presented to her doubting husband.
“I'm like, ‘Get out of here,'” Ronketty said. “This is bizarre.”
Ronketty was expecting to see guns, horses and cowboy hats. Instead, Beth picked out two photos from the 40 in the album.
One was of a child and the other a dapper teenager. When Ronketty asked Beth how she knew those were of Billy the Kid, she casually said it was the story that had always been passed down within the family.
To verify her story, he took the album to her cousin Carol, who confirmed the family had always been told the photos were of Billy the Kid.
Ronketty was still convinced it was some kind of joke, but the cousins were adamant that they were only repeating their family’s oral history.
They also both said that they were never allowed to talk about it because everybody was embarrassed to admit to any relationship to Billy the Kid because he went on to become a notorious and famous doer of bad deeds.
He Believes, But No Confirmation
Ronketty was still not convinced and started researching the two photos.
Now 10 years later, he said he is a believer, although the pictures remain unverified.
Both the child’s photo and teenager tintype are now heading to auction after being with the family for 150 years. Ronketty said he is hopeful that new owners can use more extensive research to prove that they are the real deal.
Unfortunately, with only his wife’s family’s oral history and without strong evidence, such as an original document verifying the children as the outlaw Billy the Kid, that may prove almost impossible.
Many fake Billy the Kid photos have fooled the media over the years and historians are hesitant to put their seal of approval on photos that may only be doppelgangers.
That has ramped up considerably since 2011, when the only verified image of Billy the Kid sold for $2.3 million. Others claiming to have Billy photos have come out of the woodwork, including one that claimed to show a sweater-wearing outlaw playing croquet.
Outlaw and old West historian Michael Mike Bell warns that experts cannot authenticate photographs, only robust evidence can do that.
“Constant ownership by a family of a photograph does not prove that it portrays a particular individual,” Bell said. “The provenance must also document the creation of the image, documentation that proves explicitly that the subject in the picture is the person the current owner wants it to be.”
The Only Verified Billy the Kid Photo
Billy the Kid was born in 1859 in New York, New York.
His exact journey West is debated, and most claim it was through Indianapolis with his mother Catherine McCarty and brother.
But hers was a common name and there were at least seven other Catherine McCarty’s coming from New York during that same time period.
Billy’s mother Catherine died when he was 15 years old and by the next year, the young teen was arrested for stealing food.
Billy claimed to have killed 21 men in his short outlaw career, although historians believe the actual number to be nine. He went by various names, including Henry McCarty and William H. Bonney Jr.
When Billy was 21, Lincoln County, New Mexico, Sheriff Pat Garrett gunned down the wanted fugitive who had escaped jail and a death sentence. This gunfight ended the outlaw’s life, but not his legend.
The only verified picture of Billy the Kid was confirmed by the man who had killed him, Garrett, and others who knew Billy in life.
There were originally four tintypes, one of which survives and was sold at that 2011 auction, fetching the highest amount ever paid for an outlaw image.
Wish-Pics
Unfortunately for the Ronketty family, they don't have any eyewitnesses to verify the images to be that of Billy the Kid.
Instead, they must rely on the evidence at hand ranging from chain of custody to oral history to science.
Tom Ronketty admits it is difficult to verify a photo 150 years after it was taken, and historians echo this difficulty.
Bell said that the best case scenario would be to have a cast-iron provenance that traces the history of a particular photograph from the present owner back to its creation.
“In the absence of such robust evidence such photographs remain nothing more than wish-pics,” Bell said. “Most look little like the character the owner hopes it is.”
Bell said that even if they show someone who appears to be the spitting image of a historic character, the absence of provenance means that the identity of the character in the picture can never be anything more than wishful thinking and speculation.
As Tom Ronketty embarked on his quest to show that they had the provenance necessary to prove the pictures are indeed Billy the Kid, he jokes that he didn’t could even properly pronounce “provenance” when he first started.
The picture had come to him, Ronketty said, and he hadn’t sought it out like others who had claimed to have Billy the Kid images.
Coincidences
Ronketty and Beth live in New Jersey, and he could not figure out how her family could be connected to a Wild West legend.
“I thought I was wasting my time until I started hitting on some key points about Billy the Kid,” Ronketty said. “I found out he was born in New York to Catherine McCarty and started to link up Beth’s dad's mother's family to the same area that Catherine was in at the same time.”
Research by Susan Stevenson, a historian who worked closely with Billy the Kid expert Fred Nolan, had linked Catherine as a possible servant and kept woman at the Bonney residence in New York.
She had hypothesized that Edward Finch Bonney was most likely Billy’s biological father, a theory that gains credence when Billy the Kid used the name William Bonney Jr. at his murder trial. But that remains just a theory with no concrete evidence, like with the photos.
Dr. Morris Calker, Beth’s ancestor, lived a relatively short distance from the Bonney residence and traveled in the same class of people.
He moved to Philadelphia, and one of the Catherine McCartys moved to the same neighborhood only a few blocks away. Ronketty believes that this is the Catherine that was Billy’s mother.
“Apparently, Billy's mother had to leave New York, whether it was because of the child out of wedlock or something else, she moved to Philadelphia,” Ronketty said. “There is a lot of unknown, even though there's a lot of coincidences.”
How a picture of Catherine’s oldest son ended up with the Calker family is in itself a mystery, although Ronketty theorizes that it was a gift from one close friend to another.
“The teenager picture was later on,” Ronketty said. “That was taken after they had already left Philadelphia and has nothing to do with Philadelphia.”
Using Science
The teen photo bears etched letters in the lower lefthand corner of the photo that Ronketty said was missed at first and only discovered after careful examination of the tintype.
He said it appears to spell out the name “Billy” but once more he said it cannot be proved.
“It wasn't easy to find, but once we found it, you cannot unsee it,” Ronketty said.
He also said that on the back of the tintype, it looks like “1872" is written out, but he is unsure what month.
“We found this evidence prior to having any of the pictures tested,” Ronketty said. “We were finding all these matches and coincidences that kind of made sense like, ‘Hey, we think we're on to something and we need to keep going.'”
With his doubt evaporating, Ronketty began searching out expert help.
He said that he is more scientific by nature and was careful to get at least two opinions. He also would not share any of the conclusions with those testing the photos until after he got their results.
Two years after discovering the photos in the album, Ronketty sent digital copies to a company that does work for the CIA and FBI with facial recognition software.
“They did their testing and they got back to me that the teenager picture was a close match for the iconic Billy picture with the rifle,” Ronketty said. “The younger picture of the child was more of a match to the teenager, but because of the quality of the iconic picture, they couldn't get a stronger match.”
Ronketty also sent the images to Kent Gibson for facial recognition.
Gibson was familiar with Billy the Kid and was an expert who worked with National Geographic, although much of his work has been disputed by other historians, such as Corey Recko.
Gibson came back with the same results of the company. The teenager fell into the "zone of authentication," but not the child photo, although it matched the teen image belonging to Ronketty.
Always Hopeful
Over the past decade, Ronketty has attempted to get his local police department to do an age progression without success.
However, he was able to get advanced scientific analysis at Standford University, where he developed a theory about why the person in his image does not have buck teeth like the verified tintype of Billy the Kid.
Ronketty theorizes that the buck teeth were intentionally removed from the image by removing the silver nitrate over the lips.
Ronketty said that he has now exhausted his own limited abilitis to research the images and is putting both on the auction block so that the research can continue.
Bell cautions that might be impossible for anyone to do since even with high-tech equipment, facial recognition studies of 19th century photographs are woefully inaccurate.
Ronketty acknowledges the roadblocks but is still hopeful that the evidence, historical or otherwise, can still be uncovered.
“My hope is that someone else can find the evidence needed to prove these photos are Billy the Kid,” Ronketty said.
Contact Jackie Dorothy at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
