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| Bob Ford |
Bob Ford is one of the most interesting and least understood
characters of the Old West. Ford was an outlaw wannabe who teamed up with Jesse
James in 1881. There’s no evidence to show he took part in any of the robberies
committed by the James Gang. His brother, Charley Ford, rode with Jesse James
and took part in the Blue Cut train robbery near Glendale, Missouri.
The
original James Gang had dwindled to just Jesse by the end of 1881. Most of the
Younger brothers were shot up or
imprisoned after the failed Northfield bank raid in 1876. Several members left
the gang in 1880, fearing arrest. Frank James moved to Lynchburg, Virginia,
figuring it was a good time to go
straight.
Jesse
moved his family to St. Joseph, Missouri, in November 1881. Like Frank, he
planned to give up the outlaw life and settle down on a farm somewhere in
Nebraska. But first, he needed one last score so
that he could retire comfortably. That’s where the Fords came in. Jesse
recruited them to help pull off his last job, robbing the Platte City Bank. The
week before the robbery, the Fords moved in with Jesse and his family,
masquerading as his cousins, Bob and Charley Johnson.
Unknown
to Jesse, Bob had a run-in with the law several months before this. He’d been arrested for killing Wood Hite. Rather than
go to jail, he cut a deal with Sheriff James Timberlake and Missouri Governor
Thomas T. Crittenden, to deliver Jesse James—dead or alive.
An
article in the Mexico Weekly Ledger
(Mexico, MO) said Bob Ford’s first
meeting with Governor Crittenden occurred at the St. James Hotel in Kansas
City, Kansas, on February 22, 1882. Ford agreed to capture or kill Jesse James.
In return, he would receive half of the $10,000 reward offered for him by the
railroads and the State of Missouri, and a pardon for his part in the murder of
Wood Hite.
Charley Ford
Bob and Charley Ford weren’t sure they’d kill Jesse. He never went anywhere without a gun, and it was impossible to draw a weapon without him seeing it. On the morning of April 5, 1882, Charley and Jesse spent several hours in the stable currying the horses, getting them ready for their raid on the Platte City Bank the next day.
It
was a hot, humid morning. The kind that made a man drip sweat. When they
returned to the house, Jesse looked at Bob and said, “It’s an awfully hot day.”
He pulled off his coat and tossed it on a chair. “I guess I’ll take off my
pistols for fear somebody will see them if I walk in the yard.” Next, he
unbuckled his gun belt, which contained two revolvers, a .45 caliber Smith and
Wesson and a Colt. He then picked up a dusting cloth
and climbed up on a chair to straighten some pictures.
It
was almost like Jesse was asking for someone to shoot him. Charley and Bob Ford
seized the opportunity. They knew they wouldn’t get another.
They
grabbed their guns and quickly stepped
between Jesse James and his guns. The April 5, 1882 edition of the Evening Bulletin (Maysville, KS) said,
“Robert was the quickest of the two. In one motion, he had a long weapon to
level with the muzzle no more than four feet from the back of the outlaw’s head...The ball entered the base of the skull and
made its way out through the forehead over the left eye.”
Mrs.
James was in the kitchen when she heard the shot. She rushed into the other
room and found Jesse lying on the floor. The Fords told her, “It was an
accident,” as they slipped out of the door. Zee James “tried to wash away the
blood that was coursing over [Jesse’s] face from the hole in his forehead, but
it seemed to her ‘that the blood would come faster than she could wash it
away.”
The
Fords telegraphed Sheriff Timberlake and Governor Crittenden that Jesse was
dead. They were ready to collect their reward. Then, they turned themselves
into local law enforcement officials.
Meanwhile,
a coroner’s inquest was held. Jesse’s
wife identified the body and accused Bob
and Charley Ford of murdering her husband. Jesse’s mother identified the body. When
asked if it was her son, she replied, “It is. Would to God it was not.”
The Watchman and Southron
reported, “Governor Crittenden asserts positively that the body is that of
Jesse James, and that his death was the result of an understanding between the
authorities and Bob Ford.” It was a high point for the governor, fulfilling his
campaign promise to rid the state of Jesse James and his outlaw band.
Bob Ford shooting Jesse James
The paper said, “The Ford boys claim to have no object in view save to obtain the reward offered by Governor Crittenden for Jesse James, dead or alive. They had recently had two interviews with the governor at the St. James Hotel in Kansas City. The governor was informed of their plan of action and approved it wholly.
“After
the shooting, they promptly gave
themselves up to authorities.” Their trial was one of the swiftest ever in the
Missouri court system. They were charged, pled guilty, sentenced to death, and
pardoned—all in less than twenty-four hours. Things didn’t go quite the way they
expected, though. The governor reneged on his promise to give the Fords half
the ten-thousand-dollar reward. They received less than five hundred dollars.
Bob
and Charley reenacted the killing in side-shows and posed for pictures with
gawkers and curio hunters for a while. Then, as that business slowed down, the brothers moved on with their lives.
Charley
Ford suffered from bouts of depression and bladder problems. He visited his
parents’ home in Kansas City in early May 1884. The only relief he could get
from the pain came from morphine, and he needed more and more of it to get by.
The St. Landry Democrat reported
his mother heard a gunshot and “found Ford lying on his bed, breathing hard,
while blood was oozing from his mouth and nostrils. The pistol, a large Colt
five-shooter, was placed against his breast over the heart. It burned a large
hole in his outer shirt.”
Like
his brother, Bob Ford’s life had its ups and downs. He wandered the West, trying his hand at odd jobs, such as
gambling and running saloons.
Bob
and a friend visited Cannon’s Gambling House in Kansas City on Christmas Day,
1889. They played a game of Faro. A man began to talk crazy about how he had
killed Jesse James. Then, “my abuser drew a knife from his pocket and held my
head back by my hair, and was about to draw the knife across my throat when my friend warded off the blow.” The
only thing we know about the attacker is that folks around the gambling house
called him “Fats.”
Bob
Ford quarreled with Deputy Watt Kelly over a girl in June 1892. The Sedalia Weekly Bazoo said, “Kelly
stepped into the dance hall. ‘Bob,’ he said, holding his weapon ready for
action. Ford was standing with his back to Kelly scarcely five feet away. He
turned, and as he saw who called him, his hand went for his six-shooter. But he
had no chance on earth. The shotgun, heavily loaded with buckshot, did
frightful work at so short a range. Ten whole charges struck full in Ford’s
neck, tearing away his windpipe and jugular.”
Bob
Ford, the killer of Jesse James, died the same way he took Jesse’s life—he was
shot in the back by an assassin.
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