Legends of the Old West - JESSE JAMES Ep. 2 | "Confederate Avengers"

Episode Date: November 18, 2018

The James brothers partner with the Youngers to begin their careers robbing banks, trains and stagecoaches. As their fame rises, so does the death toll when the Pinkerton Detective Agency assigns agents to bring them down. Join Black Barrel+ for early access and bingeable seasons: 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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Fortnite created to give players of all ages, including kids and families, a safe digital space to play in download Fortnite on consoles, PC cloud services, or Android and play Lego Fortnite for free rated ESRB E 10 plus. Six men waited in the deepening shadows of a steamy July evening in western Iowa. They were positioned on both sides of the tracks of the Rock Island Railroad, waiting for the 5 o'clock express train from Omaha to Chicago. There was supposed to be $75,000 in gold on the train,

and the men had picked a good spot to steal it. They were a couple miles west of Adair, Iowa, near the Turkey Creek Bridge. The train would have to slow down significantly to make the sharp turn before the bridge, and this was where the men laid their trap. As the time neared 8.30 p.m., they heard the train approaching. They saw its headlights sweep the trees as the engine reduced speed. The men had disconnected part of the track, and now they yanked hard on a rope that pulled the section loose. The engineer saw the track give way. He reversed power and slammed on the brakes, but it was too late.

The train hit the loose section and careened off the tracks. The cars smashed into each other in a thunderous roar. The six bandits began firing at the train cars. The locomotive plowed into the dirt and fell off the tracks. Passengers screamed and cried inside as they were thrown everywhere. The six bandits descended on the fallen cars, wearing masks to hide their faces. Two men acted as guards, one on each side of the tracks. Two more went into the passenger cars to keep watch on the riders. The last two leapt into the second baggage car. They found three men, one of whom had the key to the safe. One of the outlaws yanked off his mask,

revealing sandy-colored hair and blue eyes. He snarled at the man with the key. If you don't open the safe or give me the money, I'll blow your brains out, he said. The man handed the key to Jesse James. Jesse opened the safe and collected roughly $2,000, about $73,000 less than he expected. He screamed at the men, where was the rest? The men pointed to the sacks on the floor. There, at Jesse's feet, were three and a half tons of gold and silver bullion. It was the first train robbery

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Just start your shopping with Rakuten to save money at over 750 stores. Join for free at rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. From Black Barrel Media, this is Season 3 of the Legends of the Old West podcast. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this is the second episode of a six-part series on Jesse James. Yes, an extra episode has been added. We're going to six. Previously, Jesse James and his older brother Frank rose from obscure Missouri bushwhackers to front-page headliners after they murdered the owner of a bank.

Now, things really get wild as they rob banks, trains, and stages, and come face-to-face with Pinkerton detectives for the first time. And now, here's Jesse James, Episode 2, Confederate Avengers. Cole Younger had experienced as much hardship during the Civil War as any man. In the sharply divided environment of Missouri, his father Henry had stayed loyal to the Union, despite the raids by Kansas Jayhawkers that cost the family thousands of dollars in stolen and destroyed property. Henry Younger was a successful merchant, and his family was considered wealthy. His 14 children were well-schooled. There were nine girls and five boys, and by the time the war broke out, Cole was the oldest of the boys.

His older brother Charles died the year before the war at age 22, which left 17-year-old Thomas Coleman Younger as the eldest male child. The young men of Cole's age gravitated toward the Bushwhacker groups rather than the regular army, and after the raids on this family's business, he broke with his father. He joined the other young men of Jackson and Cass counties in a guerrilla band called Quantrill's Raiders. There he met a young man from Clay County named Frank James, whose younger brother Jesse would join the group toward the end of the war. After Cole joined the Bushwhackers, his family was even more of a target. His father Henry was murdered in 1862, shot three times in the back.

was murdered in 1862, shot three times in the back. Seven months later, the pro-union Missouri militia forced Cole's mother to burn down the family house with her own two hands. The next year, three of Cole's sisters and two of his female cousins were arrested and taken to jail in Kansas City. The militia rounded up women from across the region and held them as spies. The militia rounded up women from across the region and held them as spies. On August 13th, the building that was used as their jail collapsed. Four women were crushed to death, including one of Cole's cousins. Exactly one week later, Captain William Quantrill led his guerrillas on one of the more bloody and infamous raids of the war. They attacked Lawrence, Kansas, and burned down more than 100 homes and businesses. They plundered and looted the town and massacred

more than 150 men and boys, most of them civilians. Cole Younger called it a day of butchery. As with the James boys, Cole's younger brother Jim joined the Raiders late in the war. Jim saw limited action and eventually drifted back to Missouri to rejoin his friends and brothers after the South surrendered. By the winter of 1871, after years of non-stop violence in Missouri after the war, the Younger clan had the same idea as the James boys. Head down to Texas. The Younger clan had the same idea as the James boys, head down to Texas. Cole, Jim, and John Younger may have been trying to lay low in Texas, but they certainly failed in mid-January when John killed a deputy sheriff. The James boys returned to Missouri just a couple weeks later, and the Youngers likely followed them. We know they were back together by June of 1871,

because Cole Younger joined Jesse and Frank for the first robbery of what would soon be known as the James Younger Gang. The robbery of the Okabok Brothers Bank in Cordon, Iowa was as easy as it would get. Frank and Jesse rode into town with pals Cole Younger and Clell Miller. Miller was two years younger than Jesse, which made him the baby of the bunch. He joined Bloody Bill Anderson's guerrilla band later in the war and was wounded in his first and only action, which just happened to be the engagement that killed Bloody Bill. Miller was about to be executed by federal troops, but a colonel from Missouri recognized him and helped spare his life Now he joined up with the James brothers and Cole Younger, as he would frequently over the next few years They trotted into Cordon, which was just north of the Iowa-Missouri border, and found the town nearly deserted

The majority of the townsfolk were over at the Methodist Church to listen to Missouri politician Henry Clay Dean give a speech in support of the railroads. Dean was a celebrated public speaker, and the local paper had advertised free beer at the event, so the turnout was considerable. That left a skeleton crew of employees in town. The four men quietly rode up to the bank, went inside, and found exactly one cashier left to run the operation. The robbers easily convinced the cashier that it was in his best interest to hand over the money, and he gave them $6,000. On the way out of town, they displayed the brash charisma that would become a hallmark of their heists. They rode up to the

Methodist church and interrupted Dean's speech. They shouted to the crowd that they had just robbed the bank, and one of them shook a sack in front of the audience to prove it. No one believed them. Dean cursed them for hecklers and returned to his speech. The crowd disregarded them and turned their attention back to Dean. The men laughed and rode away. When the crowd drifted back into town, it found the frightened cashier and discovered that the men had not been hecklers. They actually had robbed the bank. The owners immediately wired the Pinkerton Detective Agency in Chicago.

The founder of the agency, Alan Pinkerton, sent his son Robert to Iowa to handle the job. In the meantime, the county sheriff rounded up a posse and headed south after the robbers. The majority of the posse stopped at the Iowa-Missouri border, but the sheriff and Robert Pinkerton kept going. The thieves traveled south for two days, stopping with friends and family along the way. On the evening of June 5th, they were relaxing at a supporter's house in Davies County when they learned that the law was closing in on them. The bandits ran out of the house and hurried to the stable to get their horses. Pinkerton and the sheriff fired rapidly. Too rapidly, in fact.

They used up all of their ammo, and when the shooting died down, the bandits charged out of the stable and made a break for the thick timber in the distance. They had escaped once again. The sheriff returned to Iowa, but Robert Pinkerton stayed in Missouri for several days trying to track them. He got to know the land and the people, and interviewed Zerelda, the mother of the James boys. He was convinced they had pulled the job, but he had no proof and couldn't find them. The bank in Iowa called off the search, and Pinkerton returned empty-handed. But it was just the beginning of a feud that would last for the next four years, and it would have deadly consequences soon enough.

After the Iowa job, Jesse and newspaperman John Newman Edwards started another publicity campaign in the Kansas City Times. Jesse wrote a letter once again proclaiming the innocence of he and his brother, and this time his statements were overtly political. He tried to say that he was being victimized by the Radicals. But the power of the Radicals was long dead by 1871. The Republican Party had undergone a split after the Reconstruction era, and the two sides had fought against each other.

That opened the door for the Democratic Party to surge back into power in Missouri. The right to vote had been given back to former rebels, and they used it to sweep out the Republicans and replace them with Democrats. And as a reminder, it's important to remember that the philosophies of the political parties of the 1800s were the opposite of what they are today. In the 1800s, the Democratic Party was the largely conservative, pro-slavery party of the South. The Republican Party was the largely progressive, anti-slavery party of the North. Even though the Democrats had regained power in Missouri, Jesse began to set himself up

as an innocent victim of the radical Republicans, and at the same time, as a defiant, dangerous man who would never be taken alive. It was an incredible balancing act, and it worked perfectly as John Newman Edwards started writing more stories about the exploits of the James Boys. The four bandits from the Iowa jobs separated for the rest of 1871, but their adventures picked up steam in 1872, though the year started with a scare. Clell Miller was lured into a trap. He was arrested and taken to Iowa to stand trial for the cord and robbery. Luckily for the robbers, he was acquitted and probably backed with the group for their

next robbery. In April, five men, including the trio of Frank, Jesse, and Cole, struck a bank in Columbia, Kentucky. Frank, Jesse, and another man went into the bank while Cole and the fifth bandit stayed outside near the county courthouse. The three robbers walked in and said good evening to the four men inside and then shot the cashier at point-blank range. At the sound of gunfire, Cole and his partner fired into the air to frighten people on the streets. The chaos made the gang seem bigger than just five men. In the bank, the cashier was

mortally wounded but not dead yet. When the bank in Russellville, Kentucky had been robbed three years earlier, the cashier vowed he would never open the safe if he were in the same situation. And he didn't. The bandits dragged him over to the vault, but he refused to open it. He died on the floor, and they had to break open a small iron box that contained $1,500 so they wouldn't leave completely empty-handed. They galloped out of town and were never caught or arrested. But a detective in Louisville named D.G. Bly was starting to put the pieces together. He was pretty sure that one of the men firing shots in the town square

had been a leader of the group that robbed the Russellville bank, Cole Younger. Cole Younger Like most newspapermen, John Newman Edwards devoted the majority of his coverage in the summer and fall of 1872 to the upcoming presidential election. Embattled President Ulysses S. Grant was up for re-election, and the South desperately wanted a better choice. But Edwards took a detour in late September to write a story that dripped with hyperbole. The story of the brazen robbery of the Kansas City Industrial Exposition. The exposition was similar to what we would call a World's Fair. The event in 1872 was the second annual fair, and tens of thousands of people traveled to Kansas City for the week-long

extravaganza. It was a money-making machine, and as the sun set on the fourth day of the expo, three men pushed through the crowd on horseback to the 12th Street gate. They wore checked cloths pulled up over their faces in the style we think of today as the classic outlaw disguise. Two men stayed on their horses and shouted at the crowd to get back. The biggest of the three hopped down, walked up to the ticket booth, and grabbed the money out of the cash box. As he returned to his horse, the ticket seller suddenly ran out of the booth and tried to stop him. One of the men on horseback fired at the seller, One of the men on horseback fired at the seller, but hit a young girl in the leg instead.

The bandits rode away with $978, but if they'd arrived at the booth 30 minutes earlier, they would have had $12,000. The fair's treasurer had collected the money at just the right moment. John Newman Edwards' story the next day was incredible. Rather than summarize it, here's a direct quote. It was one of those exhibitions of superb daring that chills the blood and transfixes the muscles of the looker-on with a mingling of amazement, admiration, and horror. It was a deed so high-handed, so diabolically daring, and so utterly in contempt of fear That's just one example of the words of John Newman Edwards. It's not hard to see how he helped turn the James Gang into romantic villains and folk heroes. Just two days after the story, he wrote maybe his most famous editorial.

It was called The Chivalry of Crime. At this time in the country, as the James Gang was just getting started, most robberies were still the result of sneaky burglars or conmen. There were very few daylight robberies by armed men. Most people still liked to read stories about burglars and thieves, who were different from violent robbers with guns. Edwards flipped that concept on its head. He praised the actions of the violent robbers.

At one point in the chivalry of crime, he even compared them to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Here's just a taste of the story. There are things done for money and for revenge of which the daring of the act is the picture, and the crime is the frame it may be set in. A feat of stupendous nerve and fearlessness that makes one's hair raise to think of it, with a condiment of crime to season it, becomes chivalric, poetic, superb. Two weeks later came another spectacular installment, this one in the form of an anonymous letter

supposedly written by the Kansas City Fair bandits. It said, Some editors call us thieves. We are not thieves. We are bold robbers. I am proud of the name, for Alexander the Great was a bold robber, and Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte. The letter closed by saying explicitly

that the robbers stole from the rich and gave to the poor, and it was signed with three names of famous bandits from European folklore. But between the comparisons to emperors and Robin Hood was a tirade against Republicans and direct threats against bank employees. The author also said, a man who is damned fool enough to refuse to open a safe or a

vault when he is covered with a pistol ought to die. If he gives the alarm, or resists, or refuses to open, he gets killed. And finally, just let a party of men commit a bold robbery, and the cries hang them. But Grant and his party steal millions, and it is all right. There's no direct proof that Jesse James wrote the letter or that he's connected to it by way of Edwards, but the list of possible authors really only has two names on it. As the publicity campaign of the late fall of 1872 wound down, 1873 brought a new target to the James boys, wound down, 1873 brought a new target to the James boys, one that presented Edwards with new stories of daring heroics and banditry, railroads. Railroads were the first major corporations in America, and no state suffered more from their greed and corruption than Missouri.

Initially, most people were in favor of bringing railroads to town. They were in favor of connecting rural communities and making travel faster and easier. But the system started to collapse quickly. The federal government was supposed to subsidize construction, and then that fell apart. Local governments jumped in to fill the void left by the federal government. They raised money through railroad bonds to support construction. More than 40 railroad companies sprang up in Missouri alone. They made promises they ultimately couldn't keep.

One by one, they failed. They left tracks half-finished or not begun at all. Local taxes rose, and so did Missouri's debt. In just a few years, Missouri became the third most indebted state in the Union to railroad bonds. Rage turned to resistance as vigilante groups took matters into their own hands. Again, it was no surprise that the railroads were the new targets of the outlaw gangs. The James Younger boys never robbed a bank in Missouri after 1873, but their train robbing careers were just beginning. Monday, July 31st, 1873, Western Iowa. Six men dug and prodded and pulled the tracks apart.

They had picked the 5 o'clock express train from Omaha to Chicago as their target, and this isolated stretch of the Rock Island Railroad as their ambush site. They loosened a section of the track and threaded a rope through it so they could pull it out of alignment at the appointed hour. That hour was 8.30 p.m. Frank, Jesse, Cole Younger, and three more men waited in the humid summer evening. Technology had advanced rapidly in the last five years, and it allowed the men to be quicker and leaner. The new Colt revolvers made reloading faster and easier, so they no longer had to carry five or six pistols. Now they only needed two, one for each hand.

And that year, Winchester introduced the rifle that would change the West. With those three weapons, they were set. They stood on either side of the tracks as the train slowed down to make a sharp turn right before their trap. As the engine approached, they yanked the rope and pulled the track to the side. The train crashed with the ear-splitting sounds of grinding metal and breaking glass. The cars toppled off the tracks and the bandits went to work. Two men walked alongside the tracks and fired their guns and shouted curses at the passengers to keep them cowering in fear. Two men jumped into the passenger car and covered the frightened riders. The last two jumped into the second baggage car and began

the robbery. All six wore masks, but when Jesse entered the baggage car, he took his off. He started to internalize the public persona of the daring outlaw hero that he and John Newman Edwards had created, and he didn't care who saw his face. Jesse pointed his gun at the express messenger and demanded the key to the safe. The man gave it to him, and Jesse grabbed $2,300 out of the safe. But the gang had heard there was $75,000 in gold and silver on the train. Where was the rest? The messenger pointed to the bags that were strewn across the floor. The rest was in the form of raw bullion that had been pulled out of the mines in the west and was on its way to New York to be made into coins. The outlaws had no way to carry three and a half tons of metal, so they had to leave it behind. They scrambled off the train and disappeared into the night. In addition to the terror felt by

the passengers during the crash and the robbery, the bandits left them with an extra layer of fear. The masks worn by the outlaws were easily recognizable as those worn by the Ku Klux Klan. by the outlaws were easily recognizable as those worn by the Ku Klux Klan. John Newman Edwards went to work after the robbery on another chapter of the myth of Jesse James. That fall, he produced a 20-page supplement to the St. Louis Dispatch about the James Younger group, and 11 pages were devoted to Frank and Jesse. He once again portrayed them as southern heroes getting revenge for northern atrocities. He somehow claimed they were not guilty of all the daring feats of banditry he described, while also praising the exact same actions. And just like the previous year, Jesse wrote a letter of his own in response to Edward's glowing compliments.

Except this time, he said he was in Montana and planned to be there for the near future. He tried to establish an alibi beforehand. And he needed it, because the James Younger gang was about to go on an unprecedented rampage, as one author put it. In 1874, they were unstoppable. The gang appeared to be at full strength, as far as its namesakes went.

Frank and Jesse were there, of course, along with Cole Younger and Cole's brothers Jim, John, and Bob. In January, the gang hit a stagecoach in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, and then one in Hot Springs, Arkansas. In Hot Springs, they asked the passengers if anyone was from the South. A man from Memphis raised his hand. They returned his watch and his money. They wouldn't steal from Southerners. At the end of the month, they robbed a railroad at Gadds Hill, Missouri. This time, the gang added a new twist. As the train pulled away after the heist,

the crew discovered a press release that had been written by the bandits. They left instructions that it was to be telegraphed to the St. Louis dispatch. The outlaws described their own robbery in great detail and called it the most daring on record They were also kind enough to leave a blank space for the railroad crew to fill in the amount of money that had been stolen It was two thousand dollars As the gang stayed out of sight on the backwoods trails of southern, Missouri John Newman Edwards fired up the presses again He continued to rail against the radicals,

blaming their power after the war for the rise of these outlaws. He continued to call the bandits admirable highwaymen and championed them as Confederate Avengers. But the Gad's Hill robbery was about to bring the first real challenge to the gang's brazen ways, as the Pinkertons were back on the case. Thanks to the editorials of Edwards, the James boys had nationwide fame, which Jesse loved. But the reality was that the outlaws were doing very little actual damage to the companies they targeted in these dazzling, daring feats of

banditry. The key was this. The gang wasn't robbing the railroads. Attacks on the railroads were great for gaining sympathy with Southerners, but the gang wasn't stealing the railroads' money. When they derailed the Rock Island line in western Iowa, the railroad quickly cleaned up the mess, repaired the tracks, and got the trains moving again. When they stole $2,000 off an Iron Mountain train car in Gadds Hill, they hadn't robbed the Iron Mountain Railroad. They had robbed the Adams Express Messenger Company that was transporting money

on the railroad. The railroads barely lifted a finger to stop the villains, but the messenger companies who were responsible for the stolen money were different stories. After Gadds Hill, William Densmore, president of Adams Express, sent a telegram to Alan Pinkerton in Chicago. Pinkerton was probably the most famous lawman in the country after the Civil War. He had run the spy network for the Union during the war and then formed America's first national law enforcement agency. The company prided itself on two things, reconnaissance and infiltration. After the bank robbery in court in Iowa, Pinkerton had sent his son Robert in a direct attempt to arrest the James boys, and it failed. Now he went back to what his men did best.

He sent an agent to learn about the gang, not arrest them, and the agent produced results. The Youngers were holed up in sparsely settled St. Clair County, and the James boys had gone back to the family farm in Clay County. Pinkerton dispatched three detectives to get close to the outlaws. Louis Lowell and John Boyle went after the Youngers, and J.W. Witcher went after the James boys. Again, they were not supposed to make arrests, just infiltrate and learn. J.W. Witcher was from Des Moines, Iowa, and was said to have nerves of steel. He traveled to Liberty, Missouri dressed like a poor farm worker, and his goal was to get hired onto the James farm. He introduced himself to the local sheriff and told him of his assignment.

He then met the president of a bank and explained the mission to him. The bank president quickly brought in the former sheriff of Clay County to listen to this insane idea. Both men were stunned. They couldn't believe the detective was stupid enough to try to infiltrate the James Farm. But Witcher was confident in his abilities, and he said he heard the brothers were not presently at the farm. The former sheriff said it didn't matter. The old woman would kill you if the boys don't, he told Witcher. The detective was not dissuaded.

Around sunset on a cold March evening in 1874, he walked up to the James family farmhouse and knocked on the door. At 3 a.m. on that frigid night, Mr. Broxley, the man who operated the Blue Mills Ferry across the Missouri River between Clay and Jackson Counties was sound asleep, as a man should be at that hour. He was slow to awaken as he heard someone outside bellowing his name. The man was shouting that he was Deputy Sheriff Jim Baxter of Clay County,

and he had just arrested a horse thief. He and his men needed to cross the river because they were on the trail of others. Broxley still hesitated, and then the man outside threatened to cut his boat loose, so the ferryman got up, bundled up, and went out to his boat. When he opened the door, he saw four riders waiting for his service. One had a gag in his mouth, his hands were tied in front of him, and his feet were tied under the horse. This man was clearly the thief. The other three wore heavy coats and scarves over their faces to protect against the cold. They had their hats pulled down low so that only their eyes were

visible. Broxley did his job and transported the four men across the Missouri River into Jackson County. Presumably, he towed himself back across and climbed back into bed. He probably didn't hear the three gunshots in Jackson County that night. Later that morning, the body of Detective J.W. Witcher was found at a fork in the road. He had been shot three times at close range, once in the temple, once in the neck, and once in the shoulder. One account said Witcher had a note pinned to his body. It contained a warning.

This to all detectives. The three men who had posed as deputies were reportedly Jesse James, Arthur McCoy, and Jim Anderson, Bloody Bill's brother. The detective who had been sent to penetrate the network of the James brothers hadn't lasted a day, and the men on the trail of the Youngers wouldn't do any better. March 17, 1874, St. Clair County, Missouri. Detectives Louis Lull and John Boyle rode with former Deputy Sheriff Edwin Daniels through the wilderness of St. Clair County searching for the younger brothers.

The detectives had used fake names on their journeys, and only Daniels knew their true identities. But their very presence in St. Clair County raised suspicions. They stopped at the house of Theodore Snuffer to ask directions to another home in the area. But after he told them, they rode away in the wrong direction. By coincidence, Jim and John Younger were seated at Snuffer's dinner table at that very moment. They saw three heavily armed strangers riding through the area, and they immediately wondered if the men were detectives. As the detectives trotted down the road,

they heard hoofbeats charging up behind them. They turned to find John and Jim galloping toward them. John held a double-barrel shotgun and told them to halt. Boyle was ahead of the other two men, and he kicked his horse and raced away. The younger spired, but they only shot his hat off his head. Lowell and Daniels were caught, however. They dropped their gun belts.

Jim got down and picked up the weapons. They were of fine quality, too nice to be with men from this area. John interrogated the men, who claimed they were not detectives. While they argued, Lewis Lowell slipped a hand behind his back and gripped his backup gun. He yanked it out of his waistband and fired. The bullet tore through John Younger's throat. As he slipped from the saddle, he pulled both triggers of the shotgun. The buckshot shattered Lull's right arm. Jim Younger blasted Lull on the side and then snapped off a shot at Daniels. The bullet sliced through the deputy's neck. Lull's horse panicked at the gunfire and took off down the road with the badly wounded man

still in the saddle. Lull smacked into a tree branch and tumbled to the ground. Jim Younger went to his brother's side, but John was clearly dying. A black farm worker named McDonald had watched the shootout from a nearby pasture, and now Jim motioned to him to come closer. He tossed the man one of the nice pistols and told him to go tell Snuffer what had happened. Jim rode away, leaving his brother and Deputy Sheriff Daniels dead in the road. Detective Lewis Lull survived for another three days before he died of his wounds, but it was long enough for him to make a report about the gunfight. The murders of the two detectives devastated Alan Pinkerton. They also devastated William Densmore, who had hired Pinkerton in the first place.

The bloodshed was too high a price for Densmore. He stopped his pursuit of the James Younger gang, He stopped his pursuit of the James Younger gang, but Alan Pinkerton did not. For him, it was now personal. He wanted revenge, and he was prepared to spend $10,000 to do it. After months of planning, the Pinkertons tightened the noose around the James gang, and the final confrontation had violent and tragic results. In the midst of their spree of robberies, the James brothers found time to get married. But 1875 showed fractures in the James Younger gang. Jesse became more dangerous and reckless,

and his status as a high-profile criminal forced him to move his young family across the country, all of which built to the most pivotal event in the lives of the outlaws. That's next time on the Legends of the Old West podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please give it a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you're listening. You can check out our website at blackbarrelmedia.com and follow us on social media.

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