Billy the Kid's Croquet Photo: The $5 Million Mystery Finally Solved

Billy the Kid's Croquet Photo: The $5 Million Mystery Finally Solved Frank Abrams bought it for just two dollars at a flea market in Fresno—and walked away with what may be the most valuable outlaw photograph ever found. The faded croquet tintype, taken near Fort Sumner around 1880, shows a relaxed young man playing a polite lawn game instead of posing with a gun. After years of forensic testing, facial-recognition analysis, materials science, and location matching, researchers concluded the figure in the center is almost certainly Billy the Kid. The photo’s discovery by Frank Abrams sparked one of the most bitter authentication battles in Old West history. In 2015, billionaire collector William Koch assembled an independent team of scientists and historians to verify the image. Their work linked the scene to the Maxwell property and identified likely matches for Paulita Maxwell and outlaw Charlie Bowdre—placing the gathering in the exact social circle Billy moved in shortly before his death. The final breakthrough came from a forgotten letter in the archives of the Lincoln County Historical Society, describing a croquet game at Fort Sumner, Billy’s presence under the name William Bonney—and even a dog with a distinctive white patch that appears in the photo. Today, major auction houses estimate the image at up to five million dollars, making this quiet moment on a dusty lawn one of the most important—and expensive—visual records of the American West ever uncovered. #BillyTheKid #OldWestHistory #WildWest #RarePhotos © 2026 Johnny Carson Diaries. All rights reserved.