11 Startling Facts Surrounding the Murder of Jesse James
The famous outlaw’s death launched a string of unpredictable events.
Despite decades of efforts to paint the outlaw Jesse Woodson James as a Robin Hood of the Old West, the fact remains that he was a bank and train robber, a Civil War guerrilla, a terrorist, and a stone-cold killer. James was a bad man, guilty of multiple murders, who left an indelible mark on American history and pop culture.
To be fair to the man, saying that he had a harsh and brutal early life is like saying the Mount St. Helens eruption was loud. His father died when he was three. In 1863, a Union militia looking for his brother, Frank, tortured his stepfather by hanging him from a tree and whipped Jesse.
He joined a guerrilla band fighting for the Confederacy at 16. Both Frank and Jesse rode with William “Bloody Bill” Anderson, infamous for the Centralia Massacre. Jesse was shot in the chest twice during the war, the second time while trying to surrender to a Union cavalry patrol.
Frank and Jesse’s postwar crime career in the James–Younger Gang was probably as much about vengeance and rebellion as it was about money and fame.
By 1882, Jesse James was not so much a burr under the saddle of the Missouri government as a red-hot poker in their long johns. Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden had had enough of Jesse’s bold robberies and daring escapes. He decided to set a thief to catch a thief.
The September 7, 1876, raid on the First National Bank of Northfield, MN, decimated the James–Younger Gang. Ironically, that day was the opening of hunting season in Minnesota.
The robbery went sideways when a cashier refused to open the safe, claiming it had a time lock. One cashier was wounded in the shoulder; another was killed. A bystander in the street was also killed.
The townspeople opened fire on the bandits, killing two of them. A large posse ran down and captured the Youngers. Only Frank and Jesse made it out free and uninjured. After hiding out with Jesse in Tennessee, Frank headed east to settle in Virginia.
Jesse was forced to recruit a new gang. He could no longer find battle-hardened guerrillas and had to settle for common thieves. You know how it is; you couldn’t find good help even back then.
Governor Crittenden made a deal with the two newest members of Jesse’s gang, Robert and Charley Ford, on January 13, 1882. He offered them amnesty and the $5,000 reward put up by the railroads. It’s not clear if the governor wanted them to capture James or kill him or whichever they could manage.
A Cowardly Murder
On April 3, 1882, the Ford brothers were at Jesse’s small rented house in St. Joseph, MO, about 55 miles north of Kansas City. They planned to travel to Platte City later that day for a robbery.
James walked across the living room and laid his revolvers on a sofa. He noticed a dusty picture hanging on the wall, brought a chair over, and stood on it to clean the picture.
Robert Ford drew his .44 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver and shot the unarmed Jesse James in the back of the head. The single-action revolvers at that time had to be cocked before they would fire. So Jesse would have heard the unmistakable click of the hammer moving to full cock a fraction of a second before he died. James was 34.
Jesse James’s body was positively identified by the bullet wounds in his chest from the Civil War and a partially missing middle finger. From here, events cascaded in unforeseen directions.
Trials, Pardons, Deaths, And Graves
- On April 17, 1882, Robert and Charley Ford were tried, convicted, sentenced to hang, and pardoned by Governor Crittenden all on the same day. Having dodged the gallows, both men probably thought the last thing they would ever see would be the barrel of Frank James’ revolver. However, fate had different ideas.
- Briefly after the murder, Robert Ford posed for photographs as “the man who killed Jesse James” for money in dime museums, and he and Charley reenacted the murder in a touring stage show.
- On October 5, 1882, Frank James surrendered to Governor Crittenden. He was tried only for two robberies in which people were killed: The robbery of the Rock Island Line train at Winston, MO, in which the train engineer and a passenger were killed, and the robbery of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers payroll at Muscle Shoals, AL. He was jailed for three weeks in Independence, MO, and in Gallatin for a year awaiting trial.
- On September 7, 1883, Frank James was acquitted of robbery and murder charges in Missouri and Alabama. He was not extradited to Minnesota for the Northfield Raid and never saw the inside of a penitentiary. For the last 30 years of his life, he worked various ordinary jobs including selling shoes and working as a telegraph operator. He died in 1915 at the age of 72.
- On May 6, 1884, Charley Ford died by suicide. He was terrified that Frank James would find him, had struggled with depression, was dying slowly from tuberculosis, and was addicted to morphine. He was 26.
- On December 26, 1889, Robert Ford survived an attempt on his life in a Kansas City, KS, gambling house when a bartender known as “Fat” tried to slit his throat.
- On June 8, 1892, Edward O’Kelley entered Robert Ford’s tent saloon in Creede, CO, a silver mining town, carrying a sawed-off, double-barrel shotgun. He walked up to Ford, said, “Hello, Bob,” placed the gun against Ford’s neck, and discharged both barrels. Ford died instantly. He was 30. O’Kelley received a life sentence but was pardoned 11 years later.
- On January 13, 1904, a drunk Edward O’Kelley was shot and killed in Oklahoma City by police officer Joe Burnett after O’Kelley assaulted him and attempted to shoot him. According to the Perry, OK, Daily Enterprise-Times, there was a hand-to-hand struggle, an exchange of gunfire, and O’Kelley bit one of the officer’s ears. O’Kelley was 46.
- On July 17, 1995, Jesse James’ body was exhumed with his family’s permission in an effort to quash the long-standing and persistent rumors he had faked his death with the help of the Ford brothers. Yes, there were conspiracy theorists in 1882. I would be willing to bet that people in 399 BCE wrote scrolls suggesting that Socrates faked his death.
- On February 23, 1996, James E. Starrs, a forensic sciences professor at George Washington University, announced at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Nashville, “I feel a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that we have the remains of Jesse James.” His evidence included a better than 99% mitochondrial DNA match and 12 of 13 scientific analyses that were consistent with the body being that of Jesse James.
- On May 30, 2000, there was an attempt to exhume the body of J. Frank Dalton, of Granbury, TX, about 25 miles southwest of Fort Worth, who died in 1951 at the age of 104 and who claimed to be Jesse James. David Glassman, a forensic anthropologist, halted the project when his initial examination of the remains revealed that one arm had been amputated. Therefore, the body was neither Dalton nor James since each of them had both arms at the time of their deaths. The body was eventually identified as that of Henry Holland, an amputee who died in 1927.
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Sources
Wikipedia: Robert Ford (outlaw)
Wikipedia: Charles Ford (outlaw)
Wikipedia: Thomas Theodore Crittenden
Wikipedia: Edward Capehart O’Kelley
Stone AC, Starrs JE, Stoneking M. Mitochondrial DNA analysis of the presumptive remains of Jesse James. J Forensic Sci. 2001 Jan;46(1):173–6. PMID: 11210907.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Monday, April 17, 1882, Page 1, “Pardoned: Gov. Crittenden Bids the Ford Boys Go Free”
St. Joseph News-Press, MO, Friday, October 06, 1882, Page 1, “Busted Gang! The Robber and Outlaw Surrenders”
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Friday, September 07, 1883, Page 1, “Not Guilty: So Say the Twelve Men in the James Case”
Wichita Eagle, KS, Thursday, December 26, 1889, Page 1, “Bob Ford’s Life”
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, MO, Thursday, June 09, 1892, Page 2, “Bob Ford Killed”
Wichita Eagle, KS, Thursday, January 14, 1904, Page 2, “Shot to Death: Ed Kelly, Slayer of Bob Ford, is Himself Killed”
Kansas City Journal, MO, Saturday, January 23, 1904, Page 2, “Are Sure He Killed Bob Ford”
St. Joseph News-Press, MO, Saturday, February 24, 1996, Page 1, “Almost Certain it’s Him” by Gary Chilcote
Madisonville Messenger, KY, Wednesday, February 28, 1996, Page 6, “Forensic Experts Believe They’ve Got Their Man — in James’ Grave” by Michael Fleeman, Associated Press
Hood County News, TX, Tuesday, December 20, 2022, “A legend shrouded in mystery: Former forensic anthropologist recounts the 2000 exhumation of Jesse James’ grave” by Ashley Inge
