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Jesse James

STORY PREFACE

Let not Caesar's servile minions,
Mock the lion thus laid low:
'Twas no foeman's hand that slew him.
'Twas his own that struck the blow..

Antony and Cleopatra
by

in
The Killing of Jesse James
Sedalia Democrat
April, 1882.

 

His St. Joseph neighbors knew the man living at 1318 Lafayette Street as Tom Howard. How would they know that the dark-haired gentleman, with a full beard, was really the lighter-haired outlaw  Jesse James? How would they know his wife was actually Zee James, not Mary Howard?

But Bob Ford knew. So did his brother Charlie. And they knew something else which the man with an alias did not.

The governor of Missouri had a pending deal with Bob Ford. If he killed Jesse James, Bob would no longer have to face a murder charge for the death of someone else. An enticing proposition, in 1882, but how would Ford kill a man who seemed invincible?

And...how did Jesse James become an outlaw in the first place?

 

Author: Carole D. Bos, J.D.