Legends of the Old West - JESSE JAMES D.C. Ep. 8 | "Darkness On The Edge Of Town"

Episode Date: February 26, 2020

With the Northfield ordeal done, Frank and Jesse rebuild their lives. Frank gives up his criminal past; Jesse wants to continue robbing. Jesse starts a new gang but it quickly crumbles and drives him downward into a dark state of paranoia. Forces are in motion that will bring about the end of his life. Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. 1876 was a unique year in American history. It was jam-packed with events that will never collide in such a short space of time again. That year, America's first sustained professional baseball league was created, the National League. It wasn't the first professional league, but it was the first to stand the test of time. In the summer of 76, General George Armstrong Custer made the fateful decision to attack 2,000 Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors in Montana. The infamous mining town of Deadwood rose up in a gulch in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory. Toward the end of the summer, Wild Bill Hickok was murdered in the No. 10 Saloon on Main Street and provided the town with everlasting notoriety. on Main Street and provided the town with everlasting notoriety. Three weeks later,

the James Younger gang arrived in Minnesota to plan the robbery that would eventually become the Northfield Raid. And while all this happened, America celebrated its 100th anniversary, and it prepared to elect a new president. In the fall of 1876, the nation withstood the most contentious and absurd election in its history, at least up to that point. Voters went to the polls in November, as usual, but it took five months to declare a winner. In the end, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won the election over Democrat Samuel Tilden.

Frank and Jesse James likely thought very little about the election. After surviving their ordeal in Minnesota, they were focused more on restarting their lives than worrying about the outcome of an election. The good old days of the James Younger gang were gone. John Younger had been killed two years earlier. Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger were in prison. Their old friends Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell had died on Division Street in Northfield, and Charlie Pitts had died in some weeds along a river outside Medelia, Minnesota.

Frank and Jesse were the only ones left. Frank tried to reform his life. Jesse might have tried, but he still missed the action of robbing banks and trains. Soon enough, he drew his brother back into the life and formed a new gang and went back to doing what he did best. and formed a new gang, and went back to doing what he did best. From Black Barrel Media, this is Season 7 of the Legends of the Old West podcast. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. And this season, we're revisiting the life and legacy of Jesse James.

This is the second-to-last episode of our series. It's Episode 8, Darkness on the Edge of Town. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch, and organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell and grow at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage. Whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits, Shopify helps you sell everywhere. They have an all-in-one e-commerce platform and in-person POS system,

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Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash realm, all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash realm now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash realm. Discover more value than ever at Loblaws. Like Fresh Promise. Produce is carefully selected and checked for freshness. And if it's not fresh, it's free. Yes, you heard that right.

From the crispest lettuce to the juiciest apples, Loblaws is committed to fresh. So you get the best fruits and veggies. Look for new value programs when you shop at Loblaws in-store and online. Conditions may apply. See in-store for details. Frank and Jesse truly laid low after they returned to Missouri from the Northfield raid. Their movements and locations are only known through second-hand accounts or theories. They recovered from their injuries and kept their heads down and stayed out of sight.

And while they did, the country changed around them. Early in their careers, they were viewed by some as Robin Hood figures, men who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. Newspaper editor John Newman Edwards vigorously promoted that image, but it was a facade. And now, as the nation changed, the brothers could no longer rely on politics as cover for their robberies. They once viewed themselves as men who struck blows for the South after the Civil War, but it was always a thin cover story. Now it was completely gone. If they kept robbing banks and trains, they would look more like common criminals than Confederate Avengers. When Frank and Jesse made it back to Missouri in September of 1876, they stayed out of sight for the rest of the year and the first half of 1877.

They moved to Tennessee in the summer of 1877, near the area outside Nashville where Jesse had lived two years earlier. They knew the area, and they had an uncle who lived just over the border in Kentucky, no more than a day's ride away. Jesse went back to using the alias John Howard, and Frank called himself Ben Woodson. It seemed like Frank underwent a real change with the move to Tennessee. He worked as a sharecropper and then hauled wood for a lumber company. It was back-breaking labor for a man in his late 30s who had never had a job in his adult life. But he enjoyed the work.

He quit cursing and joined the Methodist Church, and in February of 1878, his son Robert was born. Jesse's family also grew. In June, he and Zee welcomed their daughter Mary to the family. But Jesse missed the action of the robberies, and his celebrity status. By 1879, he began to wander back to Missouri with the thought of raising a new gang. In the fall of that year, he assembled his new recruits. James Andrew Little was one of the first. Everyone called him Dick Little, and he became Jesse's protege in the new gang. He'd known Jesse for six or seven years, and he hailed from Jackson County, the home of the Younger Brothers.

Jesse added his cousin, Wood Hite, and Ed Miller, the younger brother of Clell Miller. He rounded out the gang with Daniel Basham and an Irishman named Bill Ryan. Jesse had personal connections to at least two of the five, but these were not men he'd grown up with. They were not men he'd fought with in the war, or men he'd robbed with for years. But ready or not, there was a train rolling through Missouri that was rumored to have $380,000 of gold on it. And they were going to rob it. The Chicago and Alton Railroad was shipping a load of gold bullion through central Missouri.

The ore had been pulled out of the mines in the west, loaded onto a train in Denver, and headed east to refineries. Its path across Missouri would bring it right through Jackson County, one of the strongholds of the James Boys. Jesse picked the tiny town of Glendale to stage the robbery. Jesse used the old gang's classic blueprint for train robberies. Round up the townspeople, force one of them to signal the train to stop, then rob it and disappear into the timber. The action happened more or less according to plan, but there was a big problem with the outcome. The gang only came away with $6,000 in cash, which of course was significantly less than the rumored $380,000 in gold. The gang had missed the motherl load by maybe just a few hours.

The gold had been offloaded in Kansas City before the train continued east into Jackson County. But then there was insult added to the injury. During the robbery, the express messenger who guarded the money told Jesse that there was $60,000 in the safe. That would have gone a long way in making up for the $380,000 in gold that had been missed. But when Jesse opened the safe, he didn't see $60,000. He saw $6,000 in cash and $54,000 in checks, which were worthless to the robbers. Jesse took the $6,000, and then he pulled one of his old stunts. He handed the train crew a press release. He wanted to recapture the headlines of the glory days, but the attempt was hollow. It was full of all the old arrogance, but the times and the men had changed.

The geography around Jesse changed as well. He still had his supporters in Clay and Jackson counties, but those counties were also ground zero for the expansion of Kansas City. In the 15 years between the end of the Civil War and the Glendale train robbery, the population of Kansas City exploded. In 1865, it was 3,500 people. By 1880, it was almost 56,000. As the city grew, it ate up territory that used to hide the James Gang. And then Jesse experienced one more disheartening sign of the changing times.

He was snubbed by his old friend, John Newman Edwards. Edwards had published his opus about the guerrilla fighters of Missouri two years earlier, but now he ignored the man he'd made famous. Jesse sent Edwards a note asking to get together while he was in Missouri. Edwards never responded. And Jesse was about to begin a roller coaster ride that had fewer ups than downs. Jesse returned to Tennessee for the rest of the fall of 1879 and the early spring of 1880. But as the cold weather cleared, he grew restless for Missouri and his new gang. He traveled back to the area around Clay County and reunited with the men from the Glendale robbery. He met up with Ed Miller and then got together with one of his old buddies

from the war, Jim Cummins. And the center of activity was the home of Martha Bolton. Martha was an attractive widow, and Jesse's protege, Dick Little, had a crush on her. Jesse, Ed Miller, Jim Cummins, and Dick Little used her house as a kind of headquarters or meeting place. And as they were more frequently around the place, they got to know her two brothers, Charlie and Robert Ford. Charlie was older, and he and Jesse quickly became good friends. Bob was just 18, 14 years younger than Jesse. Jesse had been an outlaw almost as long as Bob had been on the earth. Bob idolized Jesse. By 1880, the legend of Jesse James was not just fueled by 15 years of newspaper articles

and stories passed from person to person. It was fueled by books. The first was The Life and Adventures of Frank and Jesse James and the Younger Brothers. It was followed by The Outlaws of the Border, and The Border Outlaws, and The Border Bandits. The books were supposed to be non-fiction. They weren't technically novels or pulp fiction like some of the later installments, but the authors took extreme liberties with the facts anyway.

Frank and Jesse had gone from Confederate guerrillas in the Civil War to the most famous outlaws in the land to pop culture icons. And Robert Ford wanted to be part of the gang. But he would have to wait. Jesse had other things on his mind as spring turned to summer in 1880. as spring turned to summer in 1880. Jesse's frame of mind turned dark that summer. Paranoia and suspicion began to set in.

In July, one of the five men from the Glendale train robbery, Daniel Basham, was arrested for the crime. Word spread that he named Jesse James and Ed Miller in his confession to the authorities. Jesse grew more paranoid. If the rumor was true, then the law would be looking for he and Ed Miller next. Sometime later, a decomposing body was found on the side of a road in Missouri. It was thought to be the body of Jesse's friend Jim Cummins, but it wasn't. It was Ed Miller. But that fact wouldn't be known right away. As far as most people knew,

Ed had just disappeared, and he was last seen in the company of Jesse James. Suspicion about Ed's disappearance rose. At least one person, Jesse's old friend Jim Cummins, looked in Jesse's direction. And as Jim grew more suspicious of Jesse, Jesse grew more anxious over the upcoming trial of Daniel Basham. Jesse led Dick Little and the Irishman Bill Ryan back to Tennessee. They robbed a stagecoach and then a miner's store, but the jobs produced very little money for the effort. And at this point, Jesse's downward spiral truly began. Jim Cummins went to Tennessee a month after Jesse's latest robberies.

He peppered Jesse with questions about Ed Miller. He began to poke holes in Jesse's lies. Jesse had told Charlie Ford that Ed got sick and went to Hot Springs, Arkansas to recover. Now Jesse said that Ed was recuperating from his mysterious illness in East Tennessee and that he might never be well again. Jesse said that Ed was recuperating from his mysterious illness in East Tennessee, and that he might never be well again. Jim became convinced that something dark, as he put it, happened between Jesse and Ed. Then Jim made a startling discovery.

When he traveled up to Jesse's uncle's farm in southern Kentucky, he found the horse that Ed Miller had been riding when he was last seen alive. It was stashed in the barn. After that, he finally voiced his suspicion to a friend. He believed Jesse killed Ed Miller. And during Jim's time in Tennessee, he learned more disconcerting things regarding Jesse. Jesse and Frank weren't getting along. Frank hated the Irishman Bill Ryan. He said Bill drank too much, and he didn't like the fact that Jesse was keeping close company with Bill.

Jim learned that Jesse's paranoia caused him to move his family from house to house in the Nashville area. They never stayed in one place very long. And the paranoia made Jesse irritable and angry. One day, Jesse started an argument with Dick Little and pulled a gun on him before Jim broke it up. And then the tension hit its breaking point. As Jim grew more suspicious of Jesse, Jesse grew suspicious of Jim. Jesse began to fear that his old friend might turn him in to the police. According to Dick Little, Jesse tried to convince the other members of the

gang to help him kill Jim Cummins. Little said he refused, but that was the last straw for Jim Cummins. He disappeared with only the clothes on his back. Jim's disappearance caused even more paranoia for Jesse. If Jim had gone to the police, he could bring down the whole gang. Jesse and Frank panicked. They quickly packed some things and left Nashville to spend a cold winter's night away from town. They waited and watched. They were ready for a posse to swoop down on them, but it never happened. Jim was just gone.

They returned home the next day, but now they were on guard both day and night. No one knows for sure when or even why Jesse killed Ed Miller. The easiest assumption is that Jesse believed Daniel Basham had given their names to the police and Jesse believed Ed Miller would betray him next. But some accounts say the reason could have been as trivial as an argument over tobacco. Regardless of the details, most everyone agrees Jesse did the killing. Late in the fall of 1880, while tensions rose between Jesse and his gang, the people of Missouri elected a new governor. When Thomas Crittenden took office in January of 1881,

he launched a crusade against the James brothers and all others like them. He devoted a large portion of his inaugural address to saying it was time to end the outlaws and to dismantle their support networks and their political protectors. The governor would get his chance soon enough, as the aftermath of Jesse's next robbery drove the gang back to Missouri and into the crusade of Governor Crittenden. On March 11, 1881, Jesse, Bill Ryan, and a third man who was probably Wood Hite struck the payroll for the Army Corps of Engineers

in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The engineers were working on a canal project for the Tennessee River. The outlaws captured the courier who was transporting the payroll and then escaped into Tennessee before the man could make it back to the Army camp to alert his superiors.

Jesse and the guys stole more than $5,000, but the Muscle Shoals robbery was truly the beginning of the end for the James brothers. The consequences of the robbery ruined the lives of the James boys in Tennessee and sent them on the run again. Frank had warned Jesse about the Irishman Bill Ryan and Bill's drinking problem. Exactly two weeks after the Muscle Shoals robbery, Bill was arrested. He got thoroughly drunk in a saloon in southern Kentucky and started running his mouth about being an outlaw. But at least he had the good sense to use an alias during his bragging. He called himself Tom Hill in the saloon, and no one knew if that name was real or fake.

When he was arrested, he stopped talking altogether. But the day after the arrest, Dick Little spotted a story in a Nashville newspaper. It said a man named Tom Hill had been arrested, and Little knew that Tom Hill was the alias of Bill Ryan. Little hurried to Frank and Jesse and told them the news. This time, they could not afford the wait-and-see strategy they had used when Jim Cummins disappeared. They had to move now. The trio headed up to Jesse's uncle's farm in Kentucky. Before they left, Jesse sent his family to a friend's house in a neighboring county. Before they left, Jesse sent his family to a friend's house in a neighboring county.

Frank packed up his wife and young son and put them on a train to Kansas City. While the outlaws waited for the fallout of Bill Ryan's arrest, Bill was transported to Nashville. He stuck to his story about being a guy named Tom Hill, which was good for Frank and Jesse. But it didn't help Bill at all. The army courier they robbed in Muscle Shoals went to Nashville and identified Bill as one of the robbers, Frank, Jesse, and Dick Little hid with James' family relatives, and then they decided it was time to leave the area for good. Frank's family was already in Kansas City, and there was really only one place everyone could go. Back home to Missouri.

Frank James hadn't participated in a robbery for nearly five years, and now he was on the run again, thanks to his brother. After a week of living like fugitives, Jesse and Dick Little packed up and headed for Missouri. Jesse collected his wife Zee and their two children and put them on a train to Kearney. Then he and Little followed on horseback. Frank lingered in Kentucky for another week, and then he joined his family and his brother in Missouri. It seemed like it happened almost overnight.

Frank's legitimate life in Tennessee was gone. By mid-April 1881, they were all settled in Missouri. Jesse chose to live right in the middle of Kansas City. He now wore a full beard and dyed it black to disguise his face. He used the last name Jackson when he moved his family into a small cottage. Frank's movements are more mysterious. He Jackson when he moved his family into a small cottage. Frank's movements are more mysterious. He later claimed he visited his sister in Texas, and he sent his family to the farm of a former Confederate general and then on to California.

Throughout the spring and early summer of 1881, Jesse's neighbors in Kansas City thought he was a gambler because he was gone so often He was most likely making plans for robberies that never happened That summer the first real dime novel about the James brothers was published It was called The Train Robbers

or A Story of the James Boys In June Bill Ryan was extradited to Kansas City. His true identity had finally been uncovered, and Missouri Governor Thomas Crittenden ordered him back home to stand trial for the Glendale train robbery. The governor was making progress in his quest to bring down the outlaws. Daniel Basham was already in prison for the Glendale job, and now the governor convinced Basham to testify against Bill Ryan. Basham happily volunteered to testify against Ryan to get out of prison immediately, rather than spend the next 10 years behind bars.

As the legal teams prepared for the trial, Frank James followed his younger brother back into the train robbing business. trial, Frank James followed his younger brother back into the train robbing business. On the night of July 15, 1881, near the village of Winston, Missouri, five men boarded the Rock Island train. They looked like common passengers. Frank, Jesse, and Wood Hite sat in the smoking car. Clarence Hite, Wood's younger brother, and Dick Little stepped onto the platform of the express car. Without warning, Jesse jumped up and started firing in the train car. Terrified passengers hit the ground. Two of Jesse's bullets did unintended damage.

One hit the conductor, and one hit a passenger, and both men died instantly. The gang quickly emptied the safe in the express car and leapt off the train. They mounted their horses and rode into the Crooked River Basin, an area Frank and Jesse knew well from their time as guerrilla fighters in the Civil War. This was a new tactic for the gang, and more violent than usual. But many accounts of the robbery say the killings were accidental. Jesse wasn't aiming at the two men, and he wasn't trying to murder them in cold blood, but they died nevertheless. Clarence Height said later Jesse felt bad about killing the conductor, but in the days that followed, Jesse learned the conductor had been the same man who drove the special train of Pinkertons to attack his mother's farm,

and then he was glad of the outcome. Following their typical custom, the gang split up after the robbery and laid low for the next six weeks. But in that time, loud voices rose from all quarters to condemn their actions. The Kansas City Times, the newspaper founded by John Newman Edwards, which had supported the James Boys ten years earlier, now turned on them completely. now turned on them completely. The paper called the raid the most atrocious of the many desperate robberies of this class that have disgraced our state of late years. The tide had turned for the James boys.

They were losing support, and the governor's noose was tightening around them. After one more robbery, the end would finally be here. Next time on Legends of the Old West, support for the James brothers crumbles. The governor offers unprecedented rewards for their capture and the money tests the loyalty of the new gang members. The boys rob one final train and then Jesse retires to St. Joseph, Missouri with the help of Bob and Charlie Ford

That's next week on the season finale of Jesse James Director's Cut Original music by Rob Valliere Music editing and sound design by Dave Harrison I'm your writer and host, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Please visit our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details and join us on social media. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and BBarrel Media on Twitter.

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