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| Jesse James |
At about 2 p.m. on February 13, 1866, ten or
twelve men dressed in tattered Union army apparel rode into Liberty, Missouri.
Three guarded the city’s outskirts, and the others went to the Clay County
Savings Association. Two men went inside while the others waited outside.
The men warmed their hands by the stove while
checking out the bank. They quickly decided there was nothing to worry about
here, just two employees, one of them an old man, and no guards or guns. One of
them asked the clerk, William Bird, to change a ten-dollar bill. As he did, the
man pointed a gun at Bird’s head. The other man jumped over the counter and
stuck his revolver in cashier Greenup Bird’s face.
After that, they forced William Bird to open
the vault and put all the valuables into a seed bag. When he finished, they
asked for the key to the vault. Then they slammed the vault door shut, locking
the clerk and cashier inside. “No doubt, [they] thought they had locked the
door,” The Daily Journal of Commerce reported. But something went wrong,
and it didn’t lock. The Birds pushed on the door, and to their surprise, it
opened.
Greenup Bird waited a moment, then raised the
window and shouted an alarm that the bank had been robbed.
Nineteen-year-old George “Jolly” Wymore, a
student at William Jewel College, and his friend, S. H. Holmes, stood on the
corner across the street. When they heard Bird, they took up the cry. One
robber fired five shots into Wymore, killing him instantly. Holmes dived out of
the way and escaped injury.
Newspapers called the shooting a “deliberate
murder.” The robbers had been so quiet that if “they had succeeded in locking
the bank vault on the clerk and cashier and had retired quietly, it would
likely have been some time before the robbery would have been discovered.”
That mistake gave them away and cost George
Wymore his life. Next, the robbers began an indiscriminate fire, shattering
windows and blasting shingles off storefronts as they rode out of town.
George Shepherd
The posse caught sight of the bandits several times but couldn’t catch up. The sheriff speculated that the robbers were led by several ex-bushwhackers, including Oliver and George Shepherd, Red Monker (Monkus), Frank Gregg, Bill (James) Wilkerson, and Bud Pence.
Thirty men set out after them, led by Captain
Garth. Later that night, Captain Thomason led fifty more men in pursuit, but it
was too late. The bandits headed south toward the Missouri River and crossed on
a ferry. By the time the posse got across, a blinding snowstorm had wiped out
their tracks.
The best the authorities could figure was that
the robbers divided their booty at Mount Giles’s Church, ten miles out of
Liberty, then scattered. Their take, estimated at $60,000 (just over $2 million
today), comprised gold, greenbacks, and treasury bonds.
Jesse James was recovering from a chest wound
that collapsed one of his lungs at the war’s end, so it’s unlikely he was
involved in the robbery. Several accounts try to make it sound like he was
there, saying one man could barely sit on his horse. But that’s most likely an
old wife’s tale. If anything, Jesse was the brains behind the raid, planning it
from his sickbed. If that’s the case, Frank James might have been in it.
In The Outlaw Youngers: A Confederate
Brotherhood, author Marley Brant identifies the two men inside the bank as
Frank James and Cole Younger. It’s possible, but it’s just as likely they
weren’t involved. Frank and Cole were tight-lipped about their involvement in
many of the robberies, so all we can do is speculate.
The Wymore family claim they received a letter
from Jesse James a few weeks after the robbery, apologizing for the death of
their son. He said it hadn’t been their intention to hurt anyone. That would
fit in with Jesse’s pattern of writing letters denying involvement. The problem
is that the family refused to produce the letter, so it’s likely a false claim.
Besides, Jesse would not have implicated himself in the crime. He spent his
entire career penning letters that denied his part in any of the robberies
attributed to the gang.
Russelville Bank Robbery
Today the bank is home to the Jesse James Museum, even though it was never proven he was involved in the robbery.
Several other robberies, not generally
attributed to the James and Youngers occurred over the next two years. The
Alexander Mitchell and Company banking house in Lexington, Missouri, was robbed
of $2,000 on October 30, 1866. On May 22, 1867, twelve men descended on the
Hughes and Wasson Bank in Richmond, Missouri. They got away with $4,000,
killing three men during their getaway.
The next robbery the James and Youngers were
implicated in was the banking house of the Nimrod Long and Company in
Russellville, Kentucky, on March 20, 1868. The robbers were reported to have
escaped with as much as $12,000.
If anything, the Russellville robbery was a
lesson in how not to rob a bank.
The Nashville Banner reported that a man
calling himself Thomas Colburn visited the bank about ten days before the
robbery, trying to sell a $500 seven-thirty note. Mr. Long asked what he’d take
for it, and Colburn replied par plus the accrued interest.
That made Long suspicious. Colburn said he was
from Lexington, and seven-thirty notes were selling for a six or seven percent
premium there. Long also knew that some counterfeits had been passed in
Louisville, so he declined.
Colburn returned a few days later with a $100
treasury note and asked to change it into smaller bills. Once again, Long
refused to cash it. He did, however, offer to send it to Louisville, and if it
were good, he’d pay the usual price. But again, Colburn declined and went away.
Colburn returned at about 2 p.m. on March 20,
accompanied by two rough-looking men. They rode in from different directions,
dismounted, and walked into the bank.
This time, Colburn handed Long a $50 note,
asking him to cash it. Without giving it a look, Long replied, “No. I can see
it is a counterfeit without my glasses.”
Colburn drew his revolver and pressed it
against Long’s head, saying, “Surrender!”
Long jumped up and ran for the door. One robber
grabbed him, placed his pistol a few inches from his head, and fired. Somehow,
the ball only grazed Long’s head, tearing out a patch of hair and scalp.
Long grabbed the pistol, putting up a desperate
struggle. The robber beat him with the gun butt, but Long escaped. He ran
outside, screaming for help, but ran into two more robbers armed with
Springfield rifles. The men were shooting at anyone who came near them, so Long
was forced to take cover.
Inside the bank, Colburn and his associates
forced the other employees to hand over the valuables. They took $9,000 from
the cash drawer and several bags of bullion, mostly dollars, half dollars, and
quarters valued at under $5,000.
As the robbers left the bank, the men outside
shot Matt Owens, a townsman who’d grabbed a pistol and begun firing at them.
Owens took a bullet in the arm and chest, but wasn’t seriously hurt.
A posse of forty men formed quickly and chased
after the robbers but lost them in the woods five miles outside Russellville.
Deputy Sheriff Strode received a tip on Oliver
Shepherd’s whereabouts a week later. He took the 8 p.m. train to Lee’s Summit,
where he deputized eight to ten men. They rode to Shepherd’s home and
surrounded it. Unfortunately, Shepherd had left the evening before.
The following day, the posse went to the home of Shepherd’s father. They positioned men around the house, then hollered for Oliver Shepherd to come out.
The posse leader told Shepherd he wouldn’t be
hurt if he surrendered. Shepherd swore and said, “He would not be arrested. He
would give them hell as soon as he got his clothes on.” Then he opened fire.
The posse settled in and waited for daylight.
When the sun came out, Shepherd rushed out the west door with a pistol in one
hand, a shotgun in the other, and two more pistols in his belt.
The posse fired as
Shepherd dashed for the brush, killing him.
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