Flea market find may be valuable Billy the Kid photo

How Billy the Kid killed 21 men, one for each year of his short notorious life, until he was killed by his former friend, Pat Garrett, is the stuff of Wild West legend.

How local lawyer Frank Abrams may have bought an authentic photograph of the infamous outlaw and the famed sheriff for $10 at Smiley's Flea Market may turn out to be an even stranger tale.

“This could be one of the most famous photos in American history. It could belong in the Metropolitan Museum,” Abrams enthused.

Abrams keeps the photo of five cowboys in a safe-deposit box in a bank vault, and always dons white gloves to handle the palm-sized picture. If Abrams' hunch about his $10 tintype proves right, he may be holding a piece of the past worth millions of dollars.

A camera buff particularly fond of Leica 35mm cameras, Abrams has long haunted flea markets, eager to buy old photographic equipment and photos. Four years ago at Smiley’s Flea Market, he bought five tintypes, including a group of cowboys and a man on horseback. All the seller knew was that the photos may have come from the famed Root family of Connecticut.

Abrams kept the cowboy photo at his office, always wondering who were those tinhorns in the tintype. “Maybe it’s Jesse James,” he joked with his wife.

Five men in hats, with cigars and whiskey bottles. One of them brandishing a Colt pistol. Their cheeks have been rouged by pastel crayon and then the print varnished, preserving the brightness of the men’s faces for more than a century.

Only two photographs to date have been authenticated of the man born Henry McCarty, alias William H. Bonney, best known as Billy the Kid.

In October, National Geographic Channel aired a documentary about the strange history of a photo that showed Billy the Kid and friends playing croquet by a cabin in New Mexico. The photo had been uncovered in a Fresno, California, storage locker and later bought at a flea market for $2. Investigated by Jeff Aeillo and a team of forensic experts, the croquet photo was insured by Kagan’s Auction House for $5 million.

When Abrams heard about the new Billy the Kid photo and its price tag, he took a harder look at the old photo he’d picked up at Smiley’s in 2012.

He zeroed in on one of the cowboys in the back, a squinty-eyed guy with a pronounced adam’s apple. At first, he thought he saw jug ears, one of Bonney’s distinguishing features, but that turned out to be the man’s hand holding a whiskey bottle to the side of his face.

Could it be Billy the Kid? Abrams believed it was possible.

Experts are doing facial recognition studies, matching faces from known photographs with the men in Abrams' tintypes. No one has definitely said it's the Kid. No one had definitely said it's not.

When he showed the photo to Tim Sweet, proprietor of the family-owned Billy the Kid Museum in Lincoln, New Mexico, Sweet recognized at least one man.

“That’s definitely Pat Garrett on the end,” Sweet said. “I’m not sure who the others are.”

The old gang reunited

A criminal attorney by profession, Abrams is trying to build the case that Garrett and Billy the Kid could have been together on Jan. 14, 1880, at a double wedding in a town called Anton Chico, some 85 miles east of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Garrett and another rustler Barney Mason were the grooms that day, and Billy the Kid was known to have attended the festivities.

Garrett and Billy had not always been on opposite sides of the law, but had rode together as cattle rustlers. A year later, they became sworn enemies about to enter Western legend.

The man twirling the Colt revolver on the end of the photo could be the notorious Dirty Dave Rudabaugh, who rode with the Kid. Both were captured in a famous shootout at their hideout at Stinking Springs, New Mexico, on Dec. 23, 1880.

Rudabaugh escaped from jail, but met his end in Mexico, where he shot two men in a cantina but was then shot and decapitated with a machete. A series of grisly photos show Dirty Dave’s demise.

Abrams believes the fifth man may be Joshua John Webb, another outlaw and known colleague of Rudabaugh.

Billy the Kid entered into American legend on July 14, 1881. Garrett, then a sworn sheriff, was in hot pursuit of his old friend, who had escaped from his jail and fled to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Garrett was talking with a local rancher when Bonney burst into the room that night. Garrett drew first and fatally shot Billy the Kid in the throat.

Garrett came under fire after Bonney’s death, with some stories suggesting the sheriff shot the outlaw in the back.

Journalist Ash Upton later helped Garrett in ghostwriting “The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid” in 1882, trying to tell his side of the story and shore up his reputation.

Garrett was later made a postmaster by President Teddy Roosevelt but didn’t win a second appointment amid rumors of his checkered past.

Abrams speculates Garrett wouldn’t have wanted the group photo published. “Maybe he didn’t want to be known as the guy who would shoot someone in his wedding photo.”

On the tintype's trail

In his quest to uncover the identity of the cowboys, Abrams has also been tracking a long cold trail how a picture taken in 1880 in New Mexico may have wound up in a famed wealthy family’s collection and made its way to a booth at Smiley’s Flea Market. He’s crisscrossed the country from New Mexico to New York and plans a trip to Bristol, Connecticut.

The other tintypes may provide a clue about how a possible image of the infamous outlaw may have made its way to a Fletcher flea market. In addition to the cowboy group shot, Abrams also bought an image of a bearded man on horseback. ASH is scratched on the back of the tintype, and the man on horseback bears a striking image to other photographs of the journalist Ash Upton, Garrett’s ghostwriter.

Abrams' best guess would be that Upton’s estate passed to a niece back East, Florence Muzzy, a noted local historian of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and related to Elihu Root’s family. But Muzzy’s descendants may not have been aware of the potential significance of the old Western tintypes.

A long road ahead

Aiello’s documentary for the National Geographic channel shows the hurdles in determining the historical validity of a photo like Billy the Kid playing croquet.  “You don’t just find a photo at a flea market, wave it around and wait for the $5 million to float down,” he said.

Aiello says the collectors who control Western Americana are quick to shoot down any potential candidates. “They see themselves as the protectors of the Billy the Kid legend.”

Abrams will have to keep piling up the circumstantial evidence and try to establish the provenance, or chain of events that led from a possible wedding in 1879 in New Mexico to a 2012 sale at Smiley’s Flea Market.

In Aiello’s opinion, Abrams has a valuable photo. “That’s definitely Pat Garrett. And that’s definitely Dirty Dave Rudabaugh.”

But the mystery man in the back row? Could that be the Kid? “I’m not at a place where I can say that’s Billy the Kid,” Aiello said, “but I’m not at the place where I can definitely rule it out."

Pictures of the Kid playing croquet or smoking cigars with Pat Garrett play against our perceptions of cold-blooded killers. “But they were human, and they liked to put their hair down,” Sweet said. “Like you and me.”

“If Frank can pin it down and get it authenticated, he’ll really have something,” Sweet said.

Abrams says he’s not thinking about money or a possible price tag if his photo is backed as authentic. “I’m not going to speculate, but it would be my retirement,” he said.

I’ve only made two promises,” Abrams added. He’ll donate to his local house of worship, and he’ll do something about the poor coffee served in the public defender's’ office at Buncombe County courts.

“I’d like to see a poster there,” he laughed. “Coffee courtesy of Billy the Kid and Frank Abrams.”