Dean King, self-proclaimed “Feud Expert,” travels around the country giving lectures on “the feud.” Here we see him giving his “history lesson” standing in front of a bogus photo of a youthful Randolph McCoy. As Ol’ Ran’l was born in 1825, that photo would have had to have been taken before 1865. This style of lapel and neck wear appears nowhere before the 1880’s, so I knew the photo was bogus, and said so in my book. Now we have the word of Maureen Taylor, a top photographic expert, http://www.maureentaylor.com/ that the photo is from 1885 to the early 1890’s, at which time Ol’ Ran’l would have been in his sixties.
It is one of several bogus photos in King’s best-selling “True Story,” along with some that are highly doubtful. Of course his lectures are no more factual than his book, which is an agglomeration of most of the tall tales ever written about “the feud.”
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