Awkward day for Kelly expert
Paul Heinrichs
The Melbourne Age
19 May 2002
source: theage.com.au

Usually ebullient, Ian Jones, the Ned Kelly expert, is sounding distinctly uncomfortable. As the person who had authenticated a Ned Kelly photo sold at auction on March 26 for $19,080 but now believed not to be authentic after computer analysis, he rang the anonymous buyer yesterday. The man knew all about it. "I don't think he wants to talk about it at the moment," Mr Jones said. "I think it's obviously - I mean, how would you feel? In good faith, you pay $19,000 . . . it was quite a blow."

According to Christie's executive Michael Ludgrove, the firm had relied on Mr Jones' opinion. If Christie's was satisfied there had been a mistake, it would consider reimbursing the buyer, he was reported as saying. Mr Jones yesterday found himself in the "very awkward" position between buyer and seller - and not having seen the analysis, remains unconvinced he is wrong until it is proved to him. "Nothing to date has swayed me," he says of the photo he always calls "respectable Ned".

At the behest of The Age, the computer analysis was performed by three independent university-based forensic dental and head experts, who said the measurements of ears, nose, forehead and eyebrow ridges did not accord with other photos of Ned Kelly, nor with his death mask. A lengthy account of the tests was published in The Age yesterday. Mr Jones says he and another Kelly historian, Keith McMenomy, had believed for 40 years that the photo was definitely Ned Kelly, well before they knew it was in the collection of descendants of Tom Lloyd, a cousin of Kelly's. The photo showed him at the right height, the right build, wearing the right sort of clothes, and even his belt looked like the unusual one reputedly found on him in Glenrowan years later, now on exhibition in the Old Melbourne Gaol.