Controversy surrounds new Jesse James photo discovery

miércoles, 14 de octubre de 2015

Controversy surrounds new Jesse James photo discovery

© Hearst Newspapers

Expert debate has erupted over a photograph, identified in September by the Houston Police Department's veteran specialist in facial recognition as legendary outlaw Jesse James, seated next to his eventual killer, Robert Ford.

James lived a life on the run from the law, and seldom sat for photos before his 1882 death. An image of him would be an exceptionally rare and valuable find, but would require a meticulous process of verification.

HPD's forensic artist, Lois Gibson, spent a month analyzing facial features of the men in the photo. And last week, a genealogist traced the family of the photo's owner back to the James' community in 19th Century Missouri. But even that is only the start.

© Print Collector, Getty Images Jesse James in death, 1882 (1954). Picture taken just before he was placed in his $500 coffin. A leading member of the James-Younger gang, Jesse James was one of the most…

Take, for example, a photo of Billy the Kid—another famed Western bandit—verified Tuesday and expected to sell for millions. Investigators spent more than a year researching the photo, even locating the building pictured in the background and excavating its remains. The process and discovery were notable enough to merit a National Geographic documentary, scheduled to air this month.

The purported Jesse James photo belonged to Sandy Mills, a rural Washingtonian who said she inherited it from her grandmother, who inherited it from her grandmother, who used to tell stories about harboring the infamous outlaw gang in their Missouri farmhouse. Mills sent the photo to Gibson, a Guinness award-winning facial expert, who said in September she was sure it was James. But not everyone agreed.

© Print Collector, Getty Images Jesse James, American outlaw, c1869-1882 (1954). A leading member of the James-Younger gang, Jesse James was one of the most notorious outlaws of the American West, robbing banks, stagecoaches and trains. He was shot and killed in 1882 by Robert Ford, a member of the gang intent on claiming the bounty on James's head. A print from the Pictorial History of the Wild West, by James D Horan and Paul Sann, Spring Books, London, 1954.

Eric James, a self-described descendant of the bandit family and a prominent Jesse James blogger, published a scathing rebuttal, calling Gibson a "liar," "con-artist" and a "fraud." He said Mills had previously offered the image to him for verification, but that he deemed it "blatantly false."

"No evidence exists that Lois Gibson performed any scientific authentication of image assessment, or that she in qualified to do so," he wrote, passing off Gibson's eight pages of analytic illustrations as fraudulent comparisons to fake images of Jesse James.

He posted his article via Facebook with Freda Cruse Hardison, 58, a respected historian of the Ozark Region in Arkansas and Missouri. He didn't know that Hardison, who holds a PhD from the University of California, was preparing to publish her new historical novel: "Frank and Jesse James Friends and Family," which details the extended community of the famed outlaw brothers.

So when Hardison learned of the emerging controversy over an image of the Western legend, she figured she could weigh in easily. She'd already spent the last decade assembling a 50,000-person family tree for historical residents of Arkansas and Missouri. She contacted Gibson, plugged in some names and made a discovery.

Mills' great-great-grandmother, Pauline Roundtree, was indeed linked closely to Jesse James—she was the first cousin, once-removed, of Jesse's sister-in-law, Annie Ralston. For 19th Century towns of the Midwestern frontier, Hardison said, that's a tight connection, and means they plausibly lived nearby.

"It's not hard for me to believe at all that Pauline Roundtree would have been a part of all of that extended family and extended community of the James brothers," said Hardison, who's been cited as an expert on the Travel Chanel's "America Declassified" and in Oxford American Magazine.

It was Jesse James legends like the one Mills' grandma told that inspired Hardison to the topic of her book—stories she heard through years of regional research, about the time when grandpa fed the James brothers, when grandma gave them horses or when the outlaws sought refuge in a local cave. Hardison assumed they were tall tales.

Through investigation, she uncovered records of a great web of community relationships that kept the James brothers safe from the law during their years of banditry. When many local legends proved to be true, Hardison asked why people never told them before. They had, they'd tell her, but no one believed them.

Eric James, reached by email, said Hardison's research was "a hoax."

© Authenticated News, Getty Images American outlaw Frank James (second from left) and others pose over the dead body of his brother, Jesse James at Sidenfaden Funeral Parlor, St. Joseph, Missouri, April 4…

t's almost impossible to know for sure. Establishing a family link doesn't prove that's Jesse James in the photo. And there are no national standards for consistency and validation in most forensic sciences, including facial recognition, according to a 2009 report by the National Academy of Science, so Gibson could only present a compelling case, not conclusive evidence.

That's why T.J. Stiles, a leading biographer of Jesse James, said he sticks with photographs verified at the time, like a portrait of James in the Missouri State Archives that was signed by his widow.

"We have to assume that he did not have many photographs taken of himself, and that only those closest to him ever got their hands on one," he said. "But we want so much to find that hidden treasure, that rare photograph of the eternal fugitive."

© Print Collector, Getty Images The blotter on the man who killed Robert Ford, c1892 (1954). Robert Ford was the man who killed the famous outlaw Jesse James in 1882. He was himself murdered in 1892, shot by Edward O'Kelley. A print from the Pictorial History of the Wild West, by James D Horan and Paul Sann, Spring Books, London, 1954.

© Kean Collection, Getty Images Portrait of American outlaw Jesse James (1847- 1882), late 1870s. He and his brother Frank led a gang of criminals who commited a string of murders and robberies across the Central States after the Civil War. Jesse was shot by Bob Ford, a member of his gang, shortly after Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden issued a warrant for his and his brother's capture, dead or alive.