FACE TO FACE II: The "Many Faces" of a Notorious Killer- (not really)

“Face to Face” is my series here in Hidetown delving into the authenticity of our most popular likenesses of Old West personalities. It has perturbed me for most of my life that many published images, supposedly of the same famous Old West marshals or outlaws- do not really look like one another! Extreme variations of notables such as Wyatt Earp, Sam Bass and Doc Holliday gallivant across the pages of history with little concern.

So I am applying my skills as a professional artist, historical researcher, and Photoshop user to find the most reliable, representative images, and testing them and the “wanna-be's” with a process I call “Q-5.” This process is basically where I overlay the most prominent features of a person's face on to a possible second image of the person... usually comparing five or more features, such as distance between the eyes, the distance between the eye-line and the nostrils, the space between the nostrils and the upper lip, etc.. The ratios between these features are unique to each person, change very little during a lifetime, and the overlays quickly reveal many impostors. The two portraits above, both known photographs of John Wesley Hardin illustrate the idea, and show that the two faces are similar enough to be the same person... My Q-5 marks from the face on the left align very nicely on the face on the right.

The problem we will soon see however is the facial, skeletal similarity between siblings or relatives. Q-5, “FR,” (facial recognition technology), or whatever, will always be challenged by that particular alignment of genes. Sometimes writers find images from family albums, and make brash assumptions... believing what they want to believe... Above, surrounding the old "stand bys" are some portraits which have been suggested to be the famous gunfighter... all four of them pass Q-5... and seem likely until you compare their ears. On the upper left is Hardin's son... bottom right is his brother Joe... who tragically looked enough like his brother John Wesley Hardin to satisfy an angry vigilante necktie party... **************************************************************************************************** I remember once drawing a self-portrait during a college drawing class assignment... only to create a likeness of my brother... and no matter how hard I worked on it... it was still him. The confusion around Joe Hardin, a victim of frontier justice, survives until this very day, because (I contend) the publishers of Hardin's autobiography used a photo of Joe to illustrate J.W.'s likeness in their publication! The similarity is obvious.

Too add to the challenges of historical photographic portraits, old photographs tended to become flat, especially after they had been reproduced many times... “a COPY of a Copy of a copy...” and the old methods of photography literally depended on “a flash in the pan,” which washed out details in the first place, and killed the depth in a photograph. Subtle grays were lost, and faces looked harsh... blues eyes and blond hair were made to appear dark. Either that, or over time the old images became like fading images obliterated by a yard of sea water, with blurry details and little contrast. *************************************************************************************************** I have enhanced these images to the best of my ability to make them clear enough to compare their details accurately. I think the value of my Q-5 process will become self-evident as an excellent alternative to FR, “facial recognition” technology... and in some ways better. And the reason that I say that is that as an artist, with training in portraiture, I have a better feel for key features, where shadows unfortunately hide them, to make educated guesses as to their approximate positions, which leads to more accurate results. And I still believe the human eye trumps or at least equals the computer's ability for so-called “recognition.” If we can recognize our friends and family from the rear, at a distance, even as children, then I believe all people have an awesome built-in power of discernment. ***************************************************************************************************** And that means that I believe that some photographs involved in today's historical controversies have passed facial recognition processes with high scores... when they still may only be “doppelgangers.” Doppelganger theorists propose that every person has a look-alike somewhere... someone who could pass for their “doppelganger,” until close scrutiny is applied. My scrutiny of these supposed look-alikes evidence a great deal of focus on superficial similarities, such as hair style and build, and very few doppelgangers would pass FR comparison. And even if they did, those FR techniques are still just computer programs, and when applied to historic portraits, are woefully insufficient by themselves. Like lie-detection tools, a computer program is only as good as the user, who may or may not research the image adequately. The FR does not consider period hair and clothing styles, which must also be consulted, or facial changes due to surgery or injuries, or the insertion of false teeth, or many other factors. ************************************************************************************************************** I call any look-alike with 75% - 85% similarity a “doppelganger.” I only accept a 95% alignment as a match. These numbers are just subjective assignments made by me, as there is no way without a huge amount of record-keeping to actually arrive at true numbers... 85% means close but no cigar... 95% means so close that it has to be the same person, with minor differences because of facial expression, slightly differing camera angles, injuries, or aging. There are plenty of images which fall in between these numbers, mostly because there are not any photographs available to compare from similar angles. ****************************************************************************************************** Here some subjective fudging may be necessary, but it would be no different for the computer FR. But I promise you, I own perhaps one thousand tintypes, many of famous persons. I do not need for any of my own images to prevail in these comparisons. It was my search for truth which led me to my knowledge, and the finding of most of these treasures. Not to mention the creation of a reliable, mathematical, somewhat scientific process so that I could be absolutely SURE.

The above fellow brandishing a Colt revolver was purportedly a newfound image of John Wesley Hardin about the time Marohn's book came out. It NEVER looked remotely like the outlaw. Before I could establish the ID's for my own tintypes, I had to establish the true ID of those historic, reputedly authentic images published for the past one-hundred years... And I think you will be interested in what I have found. Below, just for grins, is Q-5 applied...

So to start off, I will pick on an easy target. And this to illustrate how the field of historical imagery has been exploited and even tainted in my estimation. Richard Marohn (Creative Publishing Company, 1995) authored the definitive biography of John Wesley Hardin, titled The Last Gunfighter; an excellent manuscript, with thorough research and scholarly, informative verbiage. But Marohn also bravely published the most images ever offered of his notorious subject, reproducing many “new finds” from various family sources, which would have been quite important- except that most were spurious ID's. He did not have someone like me to nix the doppelgangers, to protect the reliability of his book, and accepted numerous images on the basis of impressions by Hardin's relatives... and that was unfortunate. Below is a gang of seven faces (on the left) to compare to the three known photos of Hardin... It was obvious that all of these could not be the same man... but which ones MIGHT POSSIBLY BE HARDIN?

Up until Marohn's publication, there were only two known, authenticated images of the outlaw J. W. Hardin alive- and one made after he was killed. There were also several wanna-be's already floating around out there. Then Marohn added about a half-dozen or more. Some were easily dismissed without any mechanical process. And others, although they pass the Q-5, are doubtful. A few were quite curious however, and excited me. If Creative Publishing Co. has a beef about this on-line discussion of their published materials, I understand... but remember I am making no money out of Hidetown... it is purely a search for historical fact... and you will see that some of the “new” Hardin images in The Last Gunfighter are more or less validated in this article.

Take note of the features in the post-mortem photograph above. The mustache is distracting, and the angle (foreshortening) of the shot makes it impossible to compare it to the other historically authenticated likenesses, but it still has important facts to offer... especially the presence of hair on the temples... right before death. This will help eliminate some of Marohn's bogus portraits of Hardin. ******************************************************************************************************* But I will interject here, that a person does not need a computer to analyze facial similarities. As any artist will tell you... it's all about GEOMETRY!

Here simple structural lines, employing simple geometry help to elimnate one Hardin "wann-be." The fellow with the tall hat passed the Q-5, but failed the simple "eye, ear & throat" test. Large eyes, tiny ear lobes, long neck... These are features which eventually pop out almost immediately, and save a researcher a mountain of time... But then there are those too close to call... So let's look at them, and apply Q-5... If you have a dog in this hunt, as in you own one of these original images... please understand, I am not trying to ruin- or make your day... only striving for the truth... letting the chips fall, which could hurt my position far more than anyone else's. I stand to offend some important collectors, I take the risk of being publicly wrong, and I have to abide, perhaps to my own detriment, by the same guidelines which I impose on others. So here we go...

Two of the more impressive of Marohn's finds were these two photographs- one supposedly made in El Paso right before Hardin was killed, the other of him around age 15. Neither impressed me at first... but one began to grow on me. The hawk-nosed fellow was not Hardin, regardless of the cool business card imposed on the image. John Wesley Hardin was bigger than life, but he had a pretty small, straight nose. When Q-5 was applied, his significant differences with Hardin became more obvious... EVEN THOUGH "Hawknose" is presented at a 3/4 angle, Q-5 can still be used to establish verticle alignments...

BUT, the fifteen year old portrait fared much better in comparison...in fact it was a dead ringer... not a doppelganger, but a 95% match! Check it out...

And once I was able to establish a NEW possible Hardin likness, I could compare it to others made from the same angle... such as "Hawknose"... THAT Q-5 below, with special attention to the nose, made a ton of difference in the progress of my study... leading to the joke about growing a nose while in prison... but seriously, throwing light on the Marohn Hardins. If one was this far off, and probably several were just as bad, then how could any of them be trusted?

Another of Marohn's "new, unpublished" Hardins was this wonderful 1870's cowboy photo (below), and it absolutely lined up in the Q-5 overlay. Still, the cowboy's ears were way too prominent... remember Hardin's ears laid more closely to his head. Ears, believe it or not, are most often the deal-breaker. Some would argue that his hat is pushing his ears forward, creating the illusion of protruding ears... but the most perpendicular ear does not appear to even be touched by his hat. You decide. Still, I really wish it was him... it IS the romantic ideal of the Texas cowboy. The authenticated younger photo of Hardin of similar age with a hat has a more menacing countenance. You look at him and his beady eyes and you can believe he was a killer. If this cowboy is Hardin, it is the "kinder-gentler" version! But Hardin was already killing when just a young teen-ager.

So Russ, you say, you have an original tintype of John Wesley Hardin? And you've trashed all of these guys? Put up or shut up! I bought these two tintypes just recently... at the same time, from the same vendor... in fact they offered them as a pair... a sort of "rags to riches" or "before and after" set. Well, at least my John Wesley LOOKS like John Wesley!

I had no doubts... and my Quintangulation (Q-5) technique, sure agreed with me... and I hope you will too.

I did not enjoy the results of my Q-5 comparison studies of Marohn's finds. I WANTED him and others to find the missing relics of our history. But I believe there is enough still floating around out there, that we do not have to accept OR PRINT the doppelgang. Marohn had an especially hard decision to make... only run photographs which he knew for sure, or share the new ones discovered during his research. To add to the confusion, John Wesley Hardin was close and distant kin with a dozen of Texas' worst troublemakers. Albums in his extended families would surely have had pictures of his cousins and in-laws, with names like Mannie Clements and "Killin"Jim Miller who were almost as famous and dangerous as he was. And some of them no doubt bore a resemblance to Hardin. Many of these look-alikes would have been quite colorful in their own right... they just did not kill people... or at least as many people... and as history faded and family lore got muddy, the fellow who rode with Hardin became Hardin. I have a tremendous respect for family histories as original source material, and have found that most people keep their family history fairly accurate. But relatives of the Hardins were being scoured for information and photographs when Hardin was on the lamb in the East, and that demand never ceased in the past one-hundred and fifty years. State Police, Pinkertons, Texas Rangers, journalists, writers, historians, all begged Hardin family members for scraps... and they got them. Bat Masterson sold numerous pistols as his trusty sidearm, Bonnie Parker's mother sold whatever she could of Bonnie's to make ends meet, it was and still a game descendants can play to make a buck off of their infamy. Check out the blog below- where we look at another familiar face... Doc Holliday.