Jesse James's killers were paid, pardoned, and hated for it
On 17 April 1882, Bob Ford and his brother Charley stood in a courtroom in St. Joseph, Missouri, for the killing of Jesse James. Indicted at noon, guilty an hour later, sentenced to hang, and pardoned by the governor the same afternoon: a St. Paul paper counted it at ten hours.
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Sources
Sources
- Gov. Crittenden's proclamation of 28 July 1881 as printed in the Chicago Daily Tribune, 29 July 1881; Portland Daily Press, 27 July 1881; the St. Joseph Daily Herald's inquest report of 4 April 1882 as reprinted in The County Paper (Oregon, Mo.), 29 December 1882; St. Paul Daily Globe, 18 April 1882; a Washington interview with Gov. Crittenden reprinted in the Butte Semi-Weekly Miner, 26 April 1882; Evening Star (Washington), 4 April and 16 September 1882; Butler Weekly Times, 25 October 1882; Memphis Daily Appeal, 6 October 1882; Rock Island Argus, 7 May 1884; Savannah Morning News, 14 June 1892 (the Philadelphia Record's Creede dispatch); Shenandoah Evening Herald, 9 June 1892 (all Chronicling America, Library of Congress)
- Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 15 and 22 April 1882 (Internet Archive)
- Frank Triplett, The Life, Times and Treacherous Death of Jesse James (1882), for its reprint of the inquest testimony (Internet Archive)
- T. J. Stiles, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War (2002); the State Historical Society of Missouri on Robert Ford and Thomas T. Crittenden
Pictures
- Frank Leslie's engravings of April 1882 (Jesse James on the cover of 22 April, Robert and Charles Ford, the burial wagon, Governor Crittenden); Jesse James with a handgun (from an 1864 ambrotype), his children Mary and Jesse in 1882, the 1882 lithograph of the James home, a revolver kept as Jesse James's, and Creede's Main Street on 1 June 1892 (Library of Congress); Bob Ford, Charley Ford, Frank James, Dick Liddil, Wood Hite, Sheriff James Timberlake, Thomas T. Crittenden (Brady-Handy), Zerelda Mimms James, Edward O'Kelley and the 1882 woodcut of the shooting; St. Joseph (1855 and 1868), Jefferson City (1869), Chicago (c.1880), the Bowery (c.1903), Canon City (1882, 1909), Creede (1891-93), Oklahoma City (1910); the Buchanan County courthouse, the James farm, Jesse James's grave and Richmond's courthouse as they stand now (Wikimedia Commons).