Jumbo's Hide, Elvis's Ride, and the Tooth of Buddha

by Harvey Rachlin

  These Glendale and Winston misdeeds were only two in a long streak of crimes committed by Jesse Woodson James, who had devoted his adult life to sticking up banks and trains. Born in Clay County, Missouri, on September 5, 1847, to Robert and Zerelda James, Jesse knew his father only for a short time. Robert James, a Baptist minister who was one of the founders of William Jewel College in Liberty, Missouri, took off to join the California gold rush when Jesse was just a toddler and died in 1850 at a Placerville, California, gold camp, leaving Jesse and his siblings to be raised by their mother, who was widowed once more before marrying her third husband, Dr. Reuben Samuel, with whom she had four more children.

  It was the American Civil War that drew Jesse and his brother Frank into a life on the lam. Frank James had become a member of the guerrilla forces of William C. Quantrill that roamed the country pillaging and terrorizing Union forces and citizens. Quantrill’s guerrilla band had formed years before the start of the Civil War, in the course of the bloody Missouri-Kansas border skirmishes between slave-owning farmers in Missouri and abolitionists in Kansas. Mostly farmers, Quantrill’s men took every opportunity to search out and harass Union forces and citizens in the area but had no interest in joining the Confederate militia and being sent away to fight far from home.

  But Jesse’s world changed one day when, around mid-1863, as the North and South were locked in battle, a local Union militia came to the Samuel-James home, whose inhabitants they suspected of aiding Confederate guerrillas by passing information to them. Union soldiers strung Dr. Samuel from the backyard bean tree, although they were not able to make him confess, and put a rope around young Jesse’s neck while prodding him with swords, warning him that if he ever aided the guerrillas in any way he would be killed. Jesse’s sister and his mother, the latter pregnant at the time, were arrested shortly afterward and incarcerated in the most horrific prison conditions.

  Jesse was just a boy of fifteen at the time. But these incidents were so egregious that they seemed to have resonated harshly in him, leading him to ignore authority and view himself as an outsider. He joined the guerrilla forces of Bloody Bill Anderson, who had split off from Quantrill and risen to supremacy as one of Missouri’s strongest guerrilla commanders. Young Jesse sustained harsh wounds in some of the guerrillas’ ferocious attacks on federal garrisons but recovered enough to participate in the brutal Centralia massacre, in which some thirty guerrillas torched parts of the town, robbed incoming stagecoach passengers, and otherwise tormented the citizens. In their most heartless exploit they forced a train to stop, lined up more than two dozen unarmed federal soldiers aboard, and cold-bloodedly executed all but one of them. (A quick retaliation by Union soldiers was a fiasco; the guerrillas wiped out about a hundred of the troops.) Soon Union attacks on the guerrillas in Missouri killed their leaders and weakened their forces, but the ruthless executions festered in the memories of Union soldiers.

  On May 21, 1865, as the Civil War drew to an end, Jesse and a small band of guerrillas, carrying a white flag, were on their way to Lexington, Missouri, to surrender when a band of drunken Union soldiers saw them approaching and opened fire. Jesse was severely wounded in the chest; he crawled into some bushes and hid until the soldiers wandered off, then managed to make it to his nearby home in Kearney. Friends took him to Nebraska to keep him out of the hands of the authorities, but he was convinced his wound was fatal and insisted on being brought back to Missouri to die. In a home in the Harlem section of Kansas City, he was nursed by his first cousin, Zerelda (named for his mother, but whom he called Zee), who was to become his wife. Recovered somewhat but still terribly debilitated, he traveled to California to visit an uncle, Drury James, who operated a mineral springs resort. It was said that the sulfur in the mineral springs probably helped him regain his health.

  The wanton treatment of the Confederate guerrillas and the tempestuous politics in Jesse’s home state catalyzed the descent of some men into banditry. In 1866 Jesse and Frank began their own personal plunge into a life of crime when they committed their first stickup, of a bank, in which one person was killed. From that time on Jesse James blazed a trail of stickups over a wide area of the United States, including Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, Alabama, Texas, and California. Lurid press reports made him a legend, if not a folk hero, in his own time. But in the eyes of the law he was a wanted man.

  In 1875, for instance, two men, said to have been Pinkerton detectives, were hunting for him in connection with his train stickups. Arriving at the Samuel-James farm, where they thought Jesse and Frank were hiding, the detectives reputedly threw either a flare pot or a bomb into the farmhouse. Whatever it was, someone inside the house kicked the object into the fireplace, where it exploded, blowing off the right arm of Jesse’s mother and fatally wounding Archie Peyton Samuel, his eight-year-old half brother, who died within hours.

  Jesse, who with his brother Frank was probably not at home that night, was no doubt incensed by this bloody intrusion into his mother’s domain, and he continued holding up trains and banks. On the 25th of July, 1881, Governor Tom Crittenden issued a proclamation for the arrest of the James gang members.

  For more than fifteen years some of the best lawmen in the country had been doggedly on Jesse James’s trail, but to no avail. Jesse led a circumspect life, rarely taking off his gunbelt, trusting few, and divulging his true identity only to his gang members. He moved around a lot, used numerous aliases, and gave out multiple cover stories as to what he did for a living.

  With most of his gang members captured or killed in robberies over the years, especially at the September 1876 Northfield, Minnesota, bank heist—which turned into an all-out war between the town’s residents and the James-Younger gang and from which only Jesse and Frank escaped—Jesse often had to recruit new hands to assist him in upcoming jobs. While Jesse was living in Kansas City in 1881, he recruited Charley Ford, a man in his early twenties whom Jesse had met at Ford’s house near Richmond, Missouri, a couple of summers earlier through Edward Miller, a mutual friend and member of the James gang. Ford, and his brother Robert, would later move in with the James family, an act that would cause Jesse’s demise.

  Jesse and his family—his wife, Zee, and their two children—moved by wagon from Kansas City on November 5, arriving three days later at St. Joseph, Missouri, where on November 9 they settled in a house on 21st and Lafayette Streets. Jesse used the alias of Thomas Howard, purporting to be a railroad worker looking for employment. On Christmas Eve, 1881, the so-called Howard family moved into a city councilman’s house at 1318 Lafayette Street, which they rented for $14 a month.

  Soon they were joined by Charley Ford, who all the while had the intention of cashing in on the tempting $10,000 reward for Jesse James. He was aided by his younger brother, Robert. Robert was a grocery clerk and a habitual liar who would later falsely claim that in July 1881 he had become a detective. On January 13, 1882, Robert Ford had a private meeting with Governor Crittenden at the St. James Hotel in Kansas City about the capture of Jesse James, whom he said he had known for three years.

  With Charley’s plan of capture a well-kept secret, it was easy for him to bring his brother Robert into Jesse’s circle. Charley and Jesse were going to pull a bank robbery and would need more men. Jesse asked Charley if he knew anybody, and Charley of course recommended his brother. Jesse remembered Robert from an earlier meeting and went to meet with him. Twenty-year-old Robert became a member of Jesse’s gang, and the three made a stop at Jesse’s mother’s house before returning to the Howard home at 1318 Lafayette.

  Jesse was plotting his next bank robbery. He rode with Charley Ford to Nebraska, where they surveyed banks in several cities. Jesse would typically case a bank by giving the teller a large bill and asking for change, all the while scrutinizing the tellers, security, and layout. But it was the bank at Platte City in northwest Missouri that they settled on robbing. There was going to be a murder trial, and when everybody was at the courthouse l
istening to the proceedings, they planned to hold up the bank.

  While Jesse was concentrating on his next job, the Ford brothers were planning the assassination of their comrade. As Jesse had said he would never surrender to anyone, they realized they would never take him alive; the only recourse was to kill him outright when his gunbelt was off. Jesse rarely disarmed himself, but they would stand ready for the first opportunity to open fire on him. It was about twenty-four hours before the three were to ride to Platte City to rob the bank there that that opportunity presented itself.

  It was on the morning of April 3, 1882—exactly a hundred days after the James family had moved into the 1318 Lafayette Street house—that the Fords carried out their plot to do away with Jesse James. After breakfast had been served, Jesse and Charley went out to the stable to curry and feed the horses. Robert, who had moved into the house the week before, stayed inside during the day because Jesse had told him it would look suspicious for three healthy men to live idly under the same roof together.

  Between eight and ten o’clock—depending on the account—Jesse and Charley returned to the house, where Zee was in the kitchen and the children were playing in one of the bedrooms. Observing that it was warm, Jesse took off his jacket. Then he decided to either dust off or straighten a picture hanging on the wall.* Wary that the suspicions of any passerby might be aroused by the sight of his gunbelt, which held two pistols, he took it off and placed it on his bed under his coat before mounting a chair.

  Charley winked at Robert to signal that this was the opportunity they had been waiting for. Jesse James, the infamous outlaw, was unarmed and standing with his back to them. They drew their guns.

  Something caught Jesse’s attention at this moment—either the sound of the guns being cocked or the furtive movements of the Ford brothers behind him—but whatever it was, he started to turn his head toward the boys. The shooting took place so swiftly—Robert fired before Charley could pull his trigger—that before Jesse had finished turning his head, a bullet struck him behind his right ear, felling him instantly.

  Zee rushed out of the kitchen to see her husband lying bleeding on the floor. According to her account, she then went to the door and saw Robert and Charley Ford in the yard, Robert climbing over a fence. Charley denied shooting Jesse, blaming his brother. Zee then returned to Jesse, whose head she cradled in her arms. He was still alive but died moments later. He was thirty-four years old.

  The Ford brothers immediately repaired to a saloon three blocks away, at Tenth and Lafayette Streets, which had a telephone. They placed a call to the telegraph office and gave instructions for a telegram to be sent to Governor Crittenden notifying him that the outlaw Jesse James had been shot dead. Charley and Robert then went looking for City Marshal Enos Craig, to give themselves up, but the marshal wasn’t in his office. With a policeman accompanying them, the Ford brothers continued walking through the streets in search of the marshal.

  Marshal Craig couldn’t be found. He had already received a telephone call about the shooting and with some other officers had rushed out to the James’s house on the hill overlooking St. Joseph. The lawmen found a man lying dead on the floor, and the man’s wife at first denied that the shooting victim was Jesse James. She offered descriptions of the gunmen, and the officers arranged to close down all streets from which anyone could leave town. But soon the Fords showed up, and Robert admitted killing the man on the floor, whom he identified as Jesse James. To add credibility to their identification, the Fords told what jewelry and valuables Jesse had in the house, and the authorities found pins and rings with either Jesse James’s initials or first name engraved on them.*

  The four-room house in which Jesse James was shot and killed by Robert Ford on April 3, 1882. Shortly after word got out about the killing, a crowd gathered in front of the house.

  For killing the incorrigible Jesse James, the Fords presumed they would not only collect the $10,000 reward but become public heroes. But instead there was a large public outcry against them for shooting James from behind, and Mrs. James charged them with murder in a sworn warrant. The brothers eventually pled guilty to the charge of murder in the first degree and were sentenced to hang, but they were pardoned instead by Governor Crittenden. While they may have collected a small reward, their execution of the notorious James proved their own undoing: Charles, devastated by shame (and perhaps also suffering with tuberculosis), committed suicide; Robert opened a saloon in Colorado, only to be murdered in 1892 by a patron who sought to avenge James’s death.

  After the shooting, an inquest was held in which Zerelda Mimms James, Charley and Robert Ford, Zerelda Samuel, and others testified. During this time, as from the moment news got out that Jesse James was dead, people gathered everywhere in St. Joseph to talk about the killing. The death of the infamous outlaw had been falsely reported so many times in the past, that people were at first uncertain whether to believe that Jesse James was in fact gone. While Jesse James was a famous bandit, few people knew what he looked like, and the authorities were unsure if the murder victim was indeed James. But it became clearer over time with personal identifications by those who knew him that the dead man unequivocally was the elusive fugitive.

  Concerned that some people might try to avenge the murder of Jesse James by killing the Fords, the authorities placed the brothers in jail, letting them retain their weapons, and augmented the number of guards. Mobs of people congregated around St. Joseph, and stories and rumors grew about associates of Jesse James planning to exact revenge for the murder of their fallen comrade. Some of the stories may have been true; others were apparently fanciful concoctions. Several people reported seeing packs of heavily armed and rough-looking men, sometimes up to a half dozen in number, riding through different parts of St. Joseph bent on retribution. The newspapers fueled the stories and rumors by printing outrageous reports, including warnings of gang members coming by train to kill the Fords. The governor of Missouri was called on to send soldiers to the city. Public sentiment began mounting against the Fords. People said that even if the victim was Jesse James, the well-known robber and killer, shooting him in the back of the head without affording him due process in a court of law was as heinous as the crimes of which he himself was guilty.

  Jesse James’s body was taken to a St. Joseph undertaker, Seidenfaden’s, where Dick Liddle, an accomplice of Jesse’s who had surrendered a couple of months earlier, and Sheriff Timberlake of Clay County identified the body as that of Jesse James, and the coroner performed an autopsy of the outlaw’s head. While this was being carried out, a photographer was setting up in a back room to take pictures of the corpse. J. W. Graham had heard of Jesse’s death the day before at the St. Joseph picture studio where he worked. He told his manager a lot of money could be made by selling photos of Jesse James in death, and he received from the city marshal the exclusive right to photograph the bandit’s remains.

  Graham had difficulty making it into Seidenfaden’s, with the hordes of curiosity-seekers gathered outside and stretching for blocks. He repaired to a back room and set up some boxes there as a stand for his ponderous studio camera. Soon Jesse’s body, stretched out on a board, was carried into the back room. A rope was tied under Jesse’s arms and around the back of the board, and the dead outlaw was propped up. Graham took two photos. On his way back to the studio Graham was followed by a crowd of people wanting to purchase an image of Jesse James’s corpse. Graham’s two pictures sold well, with orders coming in from all across America, and they were both widely published.

  So many people were congregating at Seidenfaden’s that the coroner finally consented to permit a viewing of Jesse’s body for a few hours. Jesse’s corpse had been placed in a “cooling box” to preserve it. While rain poured, crowds streamed into the undertaking establishment, but with all those wishing to enter, many people, even prominent local citizens, did not get the opportunity to see the body of the infamous bandit who had for so long eluded the law.

  Because Jes
se James’s criminal past was heavily associated with Kansas City, some authorities thought his body should be remanded to the authorities there, but after Governor Crittenden was satisfied that the remains were in fact those of Jesse James, St. Joseph officials were successful in having the body conveyed to the James family. Zerelda Samuel, Jesse James’s mother, took possession of his body, afraid it might end up displayed at a carnival or become the object of derision in a traveling sideshow.

  Zerelda Samuel buried her son beside the coffee-bean tree in the backyard of her farm near Kearney, Missouri, to prevent anyone from invading his grave. Twenty years later, in 1902, Mrs. Samuel, too old now to live on her farm, moved (by this time Jesse’s wife was dead) and had Jesse’s body reinterred at the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Kearney. It was raining on the day of reinterment. Supposedly the skull of the corpse fell off, and Jesse’s son, Jesse Edward James, picked it up to see where the fatal bullet had gone inside his father’s head. The remains were then placed into a different coffin, a painted wooden box bearing a metallic hue.

  Jesse James, shortly after he was murdered, with his stickpin in his cravat.

  For many years after Jesse James’s death, numerous people stepped forward claiming to be the real Jesse James. Indeed, between 1882 and the 1930s perhaps some twenty people turned up heralding themselves as the notorious Wild West outlaw. One of the strongest assertions was registered in the 1940s by J. Frank Dalton in Lawton, Oklahoma. Dalton, who died in 1951 at an age he gave as 104, had several bullet wounds on his body, but they didn’t correspond to those of the real Jesse James.

  With all the bogus claims that had cropped up over the years, some people in the latter part of the twentieth century wanted to use modern science to determine once and for all if the alleged remains of Jesse James buried at the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Kearney were in fact his real remains.