It is supposed that the two robbers that succeeded in escaping, leaving
six of the gang in Minnesota, three captives and three dead, were the
notorious James boys, Frank and Jesse. These bandits claim, as do the
Younger brothers, that they were forced to a course of crime by the
aggressions of their enemies.
From the close of the war down to the present time these men have been
outlaws, and a long list of crimes are laid at their door. Among others
may be named the robbing of the bank at Russellville, Ky., in March, 1868.
The attack on the bank of Gallaten, Mo., and the kilting of the cashier,
J. W. Sheets, in December of the same year. Another bank robbery at
Corydon, Iowa, in June, 1871. Another in Columbia, Ky., when the cashier
was killed, and still another robbery of the bank of St. Genevieve, Mo.,
May, 1873. The attack on the railroad train at Gad’s Hill in 1873, the
more recent robbery, in December, 1875, of the express company’s safe on a
train on the Kansas Pacific Railroad at Muncie, where $30,000 was secured,
and the Otterville robbery on the Missouri Pacific Railroad last July. All
are laid to this wonderful gang of bandits which includes the James and
Younger boys and a working gang of perhaps fifteen others.
In January, 1875, a desperate attempt was made to capture the James
brothers by Pinkerton’s detective police, by surrounding and firing the
house in which their mother, now the wife of Dr. Samuels of Clay county,
Mo., lived. It was a sad failure, one person being killed and several
wounded. There are no good likenessess of these robbers extant, the only
ones the police have being eight years old, and Cole Younger says they
look nothing like them.
[HEYWOOD’S BURIAL.]