The Top 5 Most Notorious Outlaws (3 page)

The war may have been officially over, but it was not over as far as the guerilla armies were concerned. Bushwhackers were believed to have been responsible for the theft of $58,000 from the Clay County Savings Association in February 1866, and after Jesse became famous he was tied to that robbery, but there is no evidence to support that Frank or Jesse had anything to do with it. Nevertheless, the fact the bank was owned and operated by Republicans who had been part of the Union militia made it a clear target for bushwhackers.

The Clay County Savings Bank

There were a string of bold armed robberies in broad daylight conducted by bushwhackers that Jesse was associated with, particularly Archie Clement’s men. In later years, eyewitnesses to some of these robberies would claim that the James brothers participated, and after an 1867 robbery one man claimed “positively and emphatically that he recognized Jesse and Frank James … among the robbers.” Still, there was no clear connection made between a bank robbery and Jesse James until December 7, 1869. Jesse was on the lookout for Samuel P. Cox, the member of the Union militia that killed Bill Anderson. Jesse and another man – most likely Frank - went to Gallatin, Missouri and robbed the Daviess County Savings Association after asking for small bills in exchange for a 100 dollar bill. During the robbery, respected community citizen and family man Captain John W. Sheets was fatally shot in the heart and head.  Sheets was working as the bank’s cashier, and Jesse mistakenly believed that Sheets was Cox, so he murdered Sheets on the spot while getting away with less than $1,000.

Although the James brothers managed to escape and get out of town, Jesse bragged about avenging Bloody Bill’s death to anyone who would listen, despite the fact he was wrong. Naturally, that had the effect of implicating him in the robbery and murder, and Gallatin was in an uproar. The governor of Missouri offered a reward for the capture of Jesse and Frank, and the
St. Joseph Gazette
provided details of the robbery and murder. Mentioning Jesse and Frank by name as the suspects, the article marked the first time that Jesse’s name appeared in print in connection to a crime.  It was exactly what Jesse had been waiting for. For a man who spent much of his brief life seeking attention, he had it now, and with the help of a newspaperman from Kansas City, Jesse James would soon become a household name.

John Newman Edwards was a former officer in the Confederate army who worked as an editor at the
Kansas City Times.
An alcoholic who was still bitter over the war, he was eager to stir up the former Confederates within the Democratic Party. His interests were purely political, as he wanted the ex-Confederates to resume their place of power. He saw the story in the
Gazette
about Jesse and Frank James and, with it, an opportunity to spread propaganda about the former Confederates of the Civil War, which in turn could potentially help his cause. He had already shown no hesitancy to portray armed rebels as victims of radicals from the North.

Edwards

Edwards met with Frank and Jesse and quickly realized that Jesse sought the limelight far more than Frank did. Jesse possessed almost an urgency to be noticed and this played well into Edwards’ desire to create a story about the unfair treatment of ex-Confederates. About six months after the robbery in Gallatin, Jesse wrote an open letter to the governor, which Edwards printed in the
Times.
Jesse claimed that he was innocent of the charges against him and that the Union men were the true criminals. Jesse said that he was being unfairly cast as an outlaw simply because he held beliefs that were different from the Union. The creation of the mythical Jesse James was underway.

It was Edwards who started the myth that Jesse was the modern day Robin Hood who stole from the rich to give to the poor. In 1873, he devoted 20 pages to the James gang, glorifying their achievements as noble and for the greater good. Jesse was so enamored with the image that Edwards would create for him that he named his son, Jesse Edward James, after Edwards, although Jesse, Jr. was known as Tim. To make sure there was no doubt that he had been there, Jesse even took to leaving press releases at his crime scenes. He had no difficulty trying to live up to the image Edwards created, usually dressing in style and carrying a Bible that looked like it had been referred to often.

The Younger Brothers and their posse

The James brothers had certainly committed their first notorious robbery before the end of the decade, but they were just getting warmed up. Even while Jesse was asserting his innocence in papers, the James brothers were forming a gang of robbers by linking up with the Younger brothers, Cole, John, Jim and Bob. The James-Younger Gang would also include Clell Miller and other former Confederate guerrillas and sympathizers. As the most notorious and the one with a public persona, Jesse became the face of the group, and though he was often assumed to be its leader, it appears the group shared power and decision-making.

Cole Younger

Cole, Jim, John, and Bob Younger formed the core of the James-Younger gang along with Jesse and Frank. Other men came and went from the group, participating in various armed robberies that occurred over Jesse’s 15-year run as an outlaw. The James and Younger brothers moved freely about their home turf in Missouri. Thanks to Edwards, the public was convinced that the gang was on a noble pursuit. They not only did not turn the gang in, they helped shield them from the law, making the task of finding Jesse and his gang very difficult for Missouri authorities. This coincided with ex-Confederates winning back their seats in the state Senate. The conditions were ripe for the mythical Jesse to flourish.

It is no coincidence that Jesse’s wife had the same first name – Zerelda – as his mother. Zee, as she was more commonly known, was named after Jesse’s mother. Zee’s mother was Robert James’s sister, making Jesse and Zee James first cousins. The two met in 1865 when Jesse was recuperating from his gunshot wounds in Kansas City. Jesse and Zee had a long engagement, but after nine years, during which time most of Jesse’s energy was spent on the exploits of the James-Younger Gang, the two were married at a family home on April 24, 1874 in Kearney, Missouri. By all accounts a plain woman, Edwards portrayed her in the press as a God-fearing Christian of striking beauty. While that characterization may not have been accurate, there is no doubt that she was loyal to her infamous husband. A year after they were married, Zee gave birth the Jesse, Jr. She had twins on February 28, 1878, but they both died. A year after that, on June 17, 1879, Zee and Jesse welcomed daughter Mary Susan James to the world.

In June 1871, Jesse and his gang arrived in Croydon, Iowa as many of the town citizens were at a local Methodist church to hear Henry Clay Dean give a speech. Dean was known throughout the region as an entertaining speaker, and he was also an outspoken critic of President Abraham Lincoln. While many in the town were distracted by Dean, the James–Younger Gang stole $6,000 from the Croydon State Bank. Rather than simply taking the money and running, the gang, not wanting to be upstaged by Dean, went to the church and brashly displayed the money they had stolen.

That crime brought additional attention to Jesse James, and it was an indication that James and his gang were operating across multiple states. In fact, the gang would operate as far south as Texas and as far east as West Virginia. Powerless to stop outlaws like James, banks began turning to the Pinkerton Detective Agency in an attempt to track them down. In the 1850s, Allan Pinkerton had established a private detective and security guard agency in Chicago, a forerunner of sorts for both private investigators and the Secret Service. A decade later, the Pinkertons, as the agency was informally called, claimed to have uncovered and thwarted a plan to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, and from there they created the first secret service in the U.S. during the Civil War. In an effort to fight back against the notorious outlaws that targeted the nation’s railroad system, railroad companies such as Union Pacific hired the Pinkertons to join forces with their own police force to capture the outlaws that preyed on their trains. Now the banks were getting in on the act and hiring the Pinkertons to protect them as well.

Allan Pinkerton

Allan Pinkerton’s son Robert was sent to Missouri to find Jesse and Frank, and with the assistance of a local sheriff, Robert Pinkerton tracked the gang to a farm in rural Missouri. However, the gang got away and a few weeks later, Jesse sent another letter to the local press, again claiming that he was an innocent victim.

The following year, Jesse’s gang rolled into Columbia, Kentucky, intent on robbing a bank. When the cashier, R.A.C. Martin refused to open the safe, one of the bandits turned to leave, then turned back around and shot the man in cold blood. Later that year, Jesse and two of the Younger brothers went to the Second Annual Kansas City Industrial Exposition. In front of thousands of witnesses, they robbed a ticket booth and got away with about $900, but a little girl was shot in the fight with the ticket seller. Jesse again wrote a letter to the paper, denying any involvement by him or the Youngers in harming the child. However, Cole Younger was furious that his name was being mentioned in print in any capacity with the crime. Edwards seized the opportunity to write an editorial titled “The Chivalry of Crime” and compared the bandits to President Ulysses S. Grant, the former Union general. Edwards said that Grant had stolen millions of dollars from Americans, whereas Jesse and his gang stole from the rich to give to the poor.

Over the next several months, the James-Younger gang robbed banks, trains, and stagecoaches in Missouri, Iowa, Louisiana, and Arkansas. In 1874, the Adams Express Company gave the Pinkertons another shot at finding Jesse. Missouri Governor Silas Woodson had already put up a $2,000 reward and secured funding from the state legislature for a private police unit to look for him, but he had no luck. There were too many places for Jesse and his gang to hideout, and too many people willing to help them

Adams Express crossed paths with the James-Younger Gang in the afternoon of January 31, 1874 when the Little Rock Express approached the tiny town of Gads Hill, about 100 miles south of St. Louis. Were it not for the railroad, it is not likely that Gads Hill would have merited any attention at all considering it was home to a grand total of 15 residents. Most of those residents met Jesse and his gang when they were herded near the train platform at gunpoint and robbed. Some say they were locked in a house, while others say they were kept near the platform, but either way the James-Younger Gang kept a close watch over them until the train arrived at 5:15.

The train’s conductor, C.A. Alford, brought the train to a halt when he saw the red “danger” flag signal him. The bandits jumped onboard the train, telling Alford to keep quiet if he didn’t want to get his head blown off. After robbing the baggage car, they moved on to the safe in the Adams Express car, which netted them over $1,000. Before moving on, they took the conductor’s revolver and tobacco. From there, it was on to the passenger car. Alford recalled, “They weren’t careful with the passengers. They punched them in the ribs with pistols and pointed their shooting irons into their faces. Not a man escaped. Everyone was robbed…”

Those robbed included a sleeping car porter, who forked over his two dollars, and a “train boy” was relieved of $40. As the bandits made their way through the train, Frank quoted Shakespeare, one of the men wrote “robbed at Gads Hill” in a receipt book, and another outlaw exchanged hats with one of the passengers. When all was said and done, the first train robbery in Missouri in peacetime earned the James-Younger gang over $6,000. As he left the train 40 minutes later, Jesse left a press release with a passenger, with the request that it be sent to the
St. Louis Dispatch.
It read:

“The most daring train robbery on record. The southbound train on the Iron Mountain Railroad was robbed here this evening by five heavily armed men and robbed of … dollars. The robbers arrived at the station a few minutes before the arrival of the train, and arrested the Agent, put him under guard, and then threw the train on the switch. The robbers are all large men, none of them under six feet tall. They were all masked, and started in a southerly direction after they had robbed the train, all mounted on fine-blooded horses. There is a hell of excitement in this part of the country.”

Acting on behalf of Adams Express, the Pinkerton agency sent undercover agent John W. Whicher, to track down Jesse in March 1874. When Whicher got to Clay County and asked where Jesse lived, the sheriff advised him not to go out there. He told Whicher if one of the James boys didn’t kill him, their mother would. The next day, Whicher’s body was found with six bullet holes and a note pinned to him saying that this is what would happen to agents who went looking for the James brothers.

After Whicher’s death, Allan Pinkerton took it so personally that he now made it his personal mission to take down the James-Younger Gang. The lawlessness was also becoming a political issue for local Democrats, who were criticized for their inability to stop Jesse and Frank. On January 25, 1875, the Pinkertons took another run at the James boys when three of the agents, with backup from Clay County locals, surrounded Zerelda’s house. Shortly after midnight, Pinkerton ordered that the James farmhouse be firebombed. At this point, he was embarrassed and desperate, willing to try anything.

The Pinkertons first tried to set the house on fire by shooting a kerosene-soaked object at it. Rueben put out the initial fire by removing the burning siding. The Pinkertons then tried some type of firebomb, made of a hollow iron ball filled with combustible jelly. One of the agents broke a window and tossed the bomb into the house, setting a quilt on fire. Zerelda was able to throw the quilt out the window while Rueben got a shovel and threw the bomb toward the fireplace, where it exploded. Jesse’s half-brother, Archie, was hit and killed by the flying shrapnel. A servant was also hit and seriously wounded, as was Zerelda, who had to have her right arm amputated below the elbow. All the while, Frank and Jesse were nowhere to be found.

To say that the Pinkerton attack was a disaster would be an understatement, and after that episode public sentiment was now squarely in the bandits’ favor. Some in Missouri’s state government even went so far as to propose a bill offering the James-Younger gang amnesty, a measure that was barely defeated, and many people came to believe that Jesse was telling the truth and truly was a victim of a manhunt by vicious radicals.

Most also correctly suspected that this obviously illegal act by the Pinkertons would not go unanswered. The underground intelligence system that aided the James brothers told them that Jack Ladd was the Pinkerton detective who threw the grenade and that he had infiltrated the area by working on Daniel Askew’s farm. Jesse and Frank pursued Ladd for over a week before discovering that he had left the state, but Askew was easier to find, given that he lived a short distance from their mother’s farm. Jesse rode out to Askew’s house on April 12, 1875, not knowing for sure what Askew did but not caring for an explanation. Upon confronting Askew, James shot him to death in his yard. Allen Pinkerton’s dream of catching Jesse James was finished.