Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 180 - Jesse James and the Old Man in the Cave

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Francis Horton, one of the hosts of the What a Hell of a way to die podcasts takes the wheel to tell the story of his home state of Missouri and the weird Jesse James grifting cave. *Corrections* Francis mixed up the Pottawatomie massacre and the Raid on Harper's Ferry. The massacre occured in 1856 and the raid in 1859 which ended in Brown's uprising being put down by famed asshole Robert E Lee and Brown's death. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow Up by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me today is Liam and Francis. Francis from What a Hell of a Way to Die. Hello. The plug zone is on the back end. I don't care. At this point, if anybody listens to this podcast and doesn't know what your show is, it's going to be very weird.

Today is... It would be kind of funny, though. It would be definitely funny. All the exposure to the Nate Bethea Extended Cinematic Universe. To be fair, yours is one of the least political ones. So you probably have the most normies listening. Uh,

you know, my, my review section on iTunes would strongly disagree with you. Yeah. The patron on, uh, here's why I'm quitting your Patreon. Uh,

never look at those exit surveys. I love them. I love them. I never do. Never look at those. No, it's i love i never do never look at those no it's great because one time somebody accused me of taking cia money um and i wish that was true uh but i want to be clear if the cia comes knocking and has 10 million for liam look if the cia weren't swooped in was just like hey i'll pay off literally all of your debt if you stop

podcasting wouldn't be hard to uh make that decision so today we're uh we're gonna do something a little different um and it's something that i think i've done once um with the guys from brigham young money and that is i'm handing the reins of the show over to somebody else oh yeah i've thought about doing this a few times um and i mostly don't because i'm a control freak and i really enjoy hosting this show uh anybody anybody who's ever worked for for me or worked with me can attest to that fact i i get some pretty weird texts you know what you you end up on the you go back to the fucking content mind or i'll go over to pennsylvania and hit you with a stick you're so far away i am not afraid of you. Give me like 12 hours.

Some frequent flyer miles. Your brain doesn't work. I'm fine. But also because I'm in the process of researching two series right now. Bonus stuff. And grad school. Occasionally a week off

is good from the research mind. So this week, Francis talked to occasionally a week off is good from the research mind. So this week, Francis talked to me a little bit ago, and he made a very good point. And that is a lot of people don't really know shit about a lot of our Midwest, Western-esque states. I don't know. Hawaii. Missouri is Midwest. Technically, there's arguments some

people call it south some people call it midwest i i consider it midwest because we have the gateway to the west um but you know the arch and whatnot did you name it that i did not uh that comes down personally to Francis Horton yeah back in 1963 i uh erected the half McDonald's sign and called it the gateway to the West. One day we'll get the second one and you'll be able to get some McDonald's. But most people don't know anything about this area of the Civil War, really. Everybody knows about... I mean, some people know, especially if you're from the area, you're from Kansas or whatever, like you probably know where to name the blue or the was it the the Jayhawks, right? That's what they're called.

The Jayhawks. Yeah. Yeah. People probably if you're from the area, you probably know where those names come from. Obviously, I'm also a bit hazy on that. Granted, like I didn't study this shit um at all in school they don't focus on this at all uh in in american high school education unless you're probably from the area uh you know if you're from michigan or pennsylvania or whatever you probably only learn about like

the eastern part of the united states i learned about bleeding kansas well fuck you then okay uh not not in any sort of depth. We didn't learn about battles on the Mississippi or anything like that. Which are very interesting because they had ironsides back then. The first kind of riverboat kind of low in the ground. But it's funny when you look up some of them. They're fighting over what was just called Island 10 in the Mississippi River. And you say, cool, where is that?

Like, oh, it doesn't exist anymore. The river, as it does, moves and changes. And so like there are entire like swaths of of America that people fought and died to protect that no longer exist. And I really I'm really glad I'm out of the army and hope that I never have that happen to me. It wasn't until I read about things like that happening that I was just like, God, I could literally die for nothing. And that is just a horrifying thought.

It's like one of the nice things about whenever you read history, like the Battle of, I don't know, Hill 248. Like, wow. 800 people died over that. Cool. We can even name it. What was it? What's the fatality count from the first

Battle of Verdun? Oh, a lot. It's like, alright, these five square miles, a million and a half dead, baby. I bet it's really well fertilized now, though. I think it's mostly uninhabitable from all the UXOs. I might be wrong. A lot of a lot of craters that are filled in with grass and poppies now.

So, yeah, the I wanted to talk about Civil war ish kind of in missouri but mostly i wanted to focus on um a a rebel from missouri that is kind of not necessarily a folk hero but a folk legend uh and that would be jesse james uh and if you don't know who jesse james is he's one of the many um wild west outlaws but he's not the biker that's vaguely nazi-esque that used to have a show in discovery channel i was married to sandra bullock for a while i think nor are we talking about team rocket from pokemon um we are well i'm out yeah same yeah so uh and and just to to get my references out of the way most of everything that i got comes from a book called jesse james last rebel of the civil war by tj styles um and a lot of

it's a very interesting book because it is centered around jesse james but jesse james didn't really enter into the civil war until like you know 186364-ish. And everything kind of before that, though, was very pre-Civil Wars. You know, there wasn't a Civil War happening in the 1850s, but there was a lot of murdering going on between Missouri and Kansas. So with discussing Jesse James, we will also discuss a little bit of the Civil War. And then we're going to get into my favorite at the end which is going to be the conspiracy theory surrounded by surrounding jesse james so hell yeah nice i hope you two are are ready for some fucking shit here i i really want to know if jesse james can melt steel beams no uh we'll we'll get there we'll get there because it's it's a very sideshow-esque missouri carnival carny kind of bullshit that bullshit that they try to pull here.

So Jesse James, born in 1847 in Kearney, Missouri, grew up in Clay County, Missouri. I'm not going to use too many of the areas of Missouri that are going to be difficult to figure out where they are. If you look at Missouri, on one side, on the western side is Kansas City. On the eastern side is St. Louis. Clay County is on that western side. It butts up against where Kansas City is currently. So that's the general area that we're going to be talking about where a lot of these things happen. Though, of course, civil war,

they go all over the fucking place because there are a bunch of Confederate guerrillas and there's nothing better to do than ride around and kill a union soldiers and whatnot. So he was born to a preacher named Robert and a woman named Zerelda. Robert was a well-known, well-respected preacher. And during the gold rush that was going on, the area was kind of lagging.

And then everybody started going to California to start mining gold and working mines and shit like that, find their fortune and everything. So he decided he was going to go and preach to the mine workers and workers and uh and be out there so he left zerelda with uh jesse and jesse's older brother frank and uh then promptly died of cholera after about two months hell yeah bro it was like no more no more of these children i'm just a wild west speed run it's it's you know i i think about how like you know now i don't want to leave my wife and kid alone just for a week at home while I go off and do army stuff or doing back when I was in the army or doing anything.

And this guy is just like, no, I'm going to leave for about a year and a half. I'm going to go preach. For no discernible reason other than I've just decided to do this. Honey, I got to go. I caught the Holy Spirit. Yeah. Which you may also know as cholera. Yeah.

He caught the Holy Spirit from drinking out of a well that somebody just pooped into. So once he was dead, of course, also during this time, everybody is in debt to somebody else. So the debtors came calling. And this is about the 1850s or so is what we're looking at. Jesse is probably about four or five years old. There's a lot of people basically have to start auctioning off the farm. Now, there's going to be a lot of talk about how poor they are but also how they have assets those assets were also known as slaves uh so they at times they were like

they're close to destitution but they held on to their slaves because it was like the one thing that they could like in a pinch sell um now also at this time the most of the slaves are under the age of 12 uh they just have a bunch of slave children that run around and hang out with Jesse James. Yeah. So Jesse's running around and just hanging out with other slave kids. Um, because that's,

they were the only other kids to play with other than his older brother, Frank. Um, so yeah, there's like kind of a weird gross dynamic going on there. And, uh, even after,

uh, even after the emancipation proclamation, their eldest slave, uh, who I did not write her name down, but she comes back and is just like, I have nowhere else to go. Uneducated black woman in the 1860s. What exactly else is there to do? She only knew the James family. So she ended up going back and helping take care of them. So there's a lot of...

Oh, this is all fucking vile. Terrific. It is. Oh, it's incredibly disgusting. It's also the way things were at the time. Oh, I understand that. I'm just... Listen, man, I'm here for color commentary.

That's what I was told. Yeah. All right. So to make ends meet, what is a woman to do but to marry another man? So she hooks up with an older gentleman, a bit of an age gap. That's a big age gap. I can already tell by the way you're voicing this. Well, it was an older widower.

He was probably he was like in his 50s and she was in her 20s. It's not like a gross child marriage kind of thing. Well, at least we got that done for us. Hooray! We already have a low bar of child slavery, so I'm glad we've skipped right over child marriage. I'm glad we don't have to juggle that, too.

Look, it was either this or sell her slaves and Zerelda just wasn't all about that. Or whore yourself out for money. Holy shit, dude. Well, but Zerelda never actually married this gentleman. She was with him for about a year and they ended up getting separated because he did not like kids at all

and wanted Jesse and Frank nowhere near him or in their house or anything. And so Zerelda's just like, I'm not going to just like send my kids away. I like them. My husband's dad is the only connection I have to my family. So yeah, it's like I'm marrying you to just like send my, my kids away. I, I like them. Um, my husband's dad is the only connection I have to my family. So yeah, it's like,

I'm marrying you to help them, not marrying you to get rid of them. So no, we're not going to do that. Um, second husband dies in a stagecoach accident about a year later, as one does in the 1800s. I love doing it.

It was a real shame when their cousin died and anvil landed on their head and they crushed down into, into a, uh the musical instrument accordion accordion. Yeah, yeah. And then just bounce back and forth at the sign that said, ouch. He opens up his mouth and the piano keys really has an effect on a young man, you know, watching your father be crushed into a skin accordion. So, no, I take that back. She did marry Benjamin.

Ben Sims was his name. Married him in 1952 or 1852. 1855, she marries Dr. Reuben Samuel. She marries herself a doctor. But this is an 18th century doctor, so that doesn't really mean much, and she's just like, you gotta stop being a doctor and come be a farmer now. Doctors back then was more of

like an on-the-job training situation. Kind of a janitor, really, more than anything else. So, he was studying medicine, and he was not a very strong-willed individual, which was kind of perfect for zerelda because at this point she's kind of um stopped giving a shit uh has decided that

she is going to uh survive her own way and she's going to do it with this gentleman's help or not um and i gotta say robert samuel for good or bad you know sticks with it all the way through and we're gonna we're gonna hear some some real fucked up things that happened to that poor man as he tried to not get killed. You know, he didn't know he didn't know he was married to what would one day become a band of bloodthirsty, scalping Confederate guerrillas. How is one supposed to know those things? That would make for a hell of a dating show. I'd watch that. That's the most cursed version of pinder on earth uh okay like go to come down to scalper

no e just to scalp so um do you guys you guys have heard of the missouri compromise yes okay do you know what it is? Missouri gets admitted as a slave state. Yeah. It's basically Missouri got to be come into the union as a slave state while Maine came into the union as a free state. That was just the way they did things because like America at the time is still struggling with do we like slavery? Do we not? I don't know. Are we going to keep doing this? And, you know, a lot of it was, you know, Abe Lincoln was just like, look, I don't give a shit about the slave states, but we're not going to have any more. And that's really what kind of helped push the the South to wanting to secede because they wanted to expand slavery. And, you know, he was preserving it all costs. Right. Right.

and then you know he was what preserved the union at all costs right right um and i'm gonna just say i'm a little asterisk here um i'm sure that there's gonna be some sort of civil war nerd that's gonna start yelling at me um i don't give a shit so um whatever whatever it is that you're upset about um you know this is this is missouri civil war i'm not talking about your battles of lexington and you know in kentucky and gettysburg and guys with giant mutton chops making speeches we're talking about like some brutal fucking shit that is happening all up and down the border to be fair there's probably some mutton chops floating around i'm sure there was a lot of um all the pictures of jesse james no mutton chops unfortunately uh he was as fuck the clean shaved man at the day, being clean-shaven would be awful.

Yeah. Those without beards are cowards. Out today, forever. As I mentioned before we started talking, Missouri during the Civil War was pretty bad, but Missouri before the Civil War was in some ways even worse because you had, you know, Kansas in people moving to Kansas and Kansas being a, at the time, essentially free state and not really even a state at

the time, but just, it's a free territory, no slavery there. And then right on the other side, you have Missouri, which is a slave state back, you know, up in Clay County and those areas up there, uh, in North, um, Northwestern Missouri, very farm heavy. Um, you know, Northern Missouri is very farm heavy. Southern Missouri is where the, all the Ozarks and the, uh, the mountains and everything are. Um, that place actually, uh, came to be known as little Dixie because it was, uh, a stronghold

of Confederate sympathizers and slave owners. And I'm, I'm not going to put like reason into i'm not going to like push like this is why they did it but i'm sure that like having jayhawkers um which are anti-slave uh guerrilla fighters come across the the border into missouri and like light your shit on fire, uh, free your slaves and kill people. Um, probably didn't ingratiate the idea to those people. Now, I also want to point out,

I am in no way saying that anybody is fault free for the things that they did here. However, there was a lot of, there was a lot of fucking people getting murdered by every side, by any and every side. There are even fucking Cherokee Confederates at one point that was led by a half Cherokee, half Scotsman, which is something that I'll have to dive into at some other point. I think people are confusing. People who...

They're picturing the Civil war as being very impersonal like when you see lines of infantry slugging it out at gettysburg or fucking wherever it's very much a state on state separatist civil war right but when you go to missouri it the politics of it kind of melt away and it's very personal uh and i think that's how people like people need to view it a little bit differently yeah like there's a lot of brutality in in the the civil war proper um but there's also at least some kind of it feels like there's some kind of respect for the other side for the dead of the other side probably why um you know assuming they're white yes yeah possibly why uh lost cause and um reconstruction shit was you know took hold so quickly is they're like you know you may have lost but you you fought

well because nobody wants to like you know be like ah look at you dumb asses you fucking dipshit you a bitch yeah i mean i would have done that but uh you know it is the right thing to do uh yeah morally correct i guess yeah so uh during this time of uh of pro and anti-slavery raids you've got uh pro-slave missourians uh who were known as uh bushwhackers crossed over the line to uh lawrence kansas and uh basically sacked the town uh went through killing people, stealing stuff, burning things down. The direct response to that was the Potawatomi

Massacre, which is better known as the raid on Harper's Ferry. So all of you people who have been excited about hearing about Harper's Ferry, here it is. And you've heard about it. So... And after that... So. So, um, Harper's ferry, about five people, uh, you know, Brown and his, his, uh, group of, uh, people, you know,

kill about five, five people. And there's just basically, this is just a lot of back and forth. You know, you've got Missouri and Missouri bushwhackers crossing over and, you know, killing Jayhawkers, Jayhawkers crossing back over. It's a lot of like those bastards. They just came over here and did this. Let's go back and do the same thing to them. You know that, you know, eye for an eye leaves us all blind. And every motherfucker here was tired of seeing basically.

So if we if we if we all kill enough people who are blind, we don't have to remember we live in Missouri and Kansas anymore. Exactly. The world has moved on from needing Missouri and Kansas. No more Missouri and Kansas anymore. Just saw it and sink it into the ocean and let it be. Oh, we could have a new lake. Exactly. A Missouri-shaped lake.

So war on the horizon in Missouri, but Missouri didn't really... Missouri being a slave state was not necessarily meant that it was a Confederate state. And there's going to be there's a lot of argument back and forth on this. But what it boils down to is the governor and most of the governments of Missouri was pro-Confederacy while most of the people were not. was pro-Confederacy while most of the people were not. And this is during a time, like right now, if my governor, Mike Parson, decided that he wanted to be a secessionist,

there's not a whole lot that I can do about that because, you know, just the way I can vote. But apart from, like, you know, creating some guerrilla force to go and, like, oust him, which would be very difficult because, you know, police and military and all kinds of things. You didn't have those problems back then. You just kind of showed up and you're like, fuck off.

And they would, you know, kick the government out, which is what happened. They, Oh yeah. They were just like, get the fuck out of here.

And so for a while, Missouri was just kind of shut down, um, for, for lack of a better term, but also this is, you know, there's not really much industrialization. This is a border city or a border state at this point. Um, Kansas, like I said, isn't necessary, isn't really a state yet. And, uh, there's not, uh, you know, there's just, there's a lot of massaging that still needs to happen here. So Civil War starts up. There's a Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon who kind of came in. His idea was he was going to come in.

This is 1861. He was going to come in. He was going to capture the arsenal in St. Louis. How he did that was basically by massacring a shitload of people in the middle of the street capturing an arsenal which had already been emptied and he knew oh that's embarrassing he knew it oh he knew what was the point did you just want to kill some people in the street i mean like if we all got our hobbies but what was what was the end goal here he was killing confederates is what his draw yeah and right and and lion you

know eventually pushed uh basically in the first uh years of the war just pushed the confederacy for the most part out of missouri now this is because the confederacy didn't really have any kind of foothold in missouri um and And the union generals at the time also were not putting up with any bullshit. This wasn't like a like, okay, everybody's, we're here, everybody, we're going to take care of everyone. It was, you know, you, you have slaves, go fuck yourself. I don't give a shit what happens to you. We will forcibly evict you. We will make you move. We will, anybody, anybody who is pro-Confederacy was just like, even if you're just like, yeah, I think the Confederacy is all right, straight to jail.

Just, you're going to jail. You're getting the fuck out of here. And also just a lot of very violent raids on Confederate sympathizer towns and cities. And despite the violence and the strictness of it, it kind of worked. But what it also did was it weeded out all of the rebels that didn't really have their heart set into it. And the guys who really fucking hated the Union, those guys were just like, all right, that's fine. Let's go. Double down.

Yeah. So eventually, and I'm going to give you, we're going to start getting into Frank and Jesse James. Cause Frank, uh, ended up joining the Confederacy. Um, and, uh,

he was, he was recruited by Confederate forces. He saw like one battle and then he was captured while he was, uh, in bed with measles and they just sent him home. Basically. Ooh, don't want to do that get the

fuck out of here yeah there's going to be a lot of questionable decisions that are made about a lot of people doing war crimes but i think every i think like once the dust settled everybody was just like did you and then i you know what let's just move on let's not talk about anything that anybody did let's just call it even um well i know i set your grandma on fire but like that's all behind us also you fucked my mom so you know technically not a war crime it's a business transaction that's true so uh yeah frank james is basically sent home and uh they have he has to sign a piece of paper that says, I promise to never do it again. Wait, promise to never fight for the Confederacy or get measles?

Fight for the Confederacy. Basically, it was a loyalty pledge. And that's how people would have to pay $10 and sign a loyalty pledge to get out of jail and go back to their farms, which surprisingly did not work very often. It seems like a big promised to stay out of a war right and you know this you know if you capture a taliban guy and say do you promise not to go be taliban anymore do you think that you're like ah you got me yeah i signed the piece of paper i guess my word is we did that right like would we really would we release not saying

we shouldn't have released people from gitmo we should release more people from gitmo but like it was pretty much like you can't go and do terrorism. They're like, yeah, okay. And now one of them is like the foreign minister for the Taliban. Hey, you know what? That's reaping what we sow. That's all it is. That's a glow up is what that is.

That man spent his time in prison, hitting the books, and got out and immediately got promoted. Just in their studying law. I really want to test for the foreign ministry. Oh, foreign minister made it. So during the Civil War, Jesse James is still like, even for like Civil War child soldier standards, is still kind of too young. He's about 14 at the time.

And he's also like the youngest of Zerelda. And Zerelda and, you know, and Zerelda and, uh, Ruben ended up having a couple of other kids, but, you know, uh, Frank and Jesse are her original boys from, uh, from their original father. So he, uh, he stayed at home, but what they had him do is, uh, fill revolvers. Cause you know, revolvers took a little bit more than you know slap the the uh the round in the chamber and close the thing you had to put powder put wax the ball all kinds of things so uh a lot of times you would see these uh these gorillas at the time who would have uh what was called a gorilla shirt and it was a shirt that had six holsters in it so hell yeah bro you would run into battle shoot your uh shoot your guns dry

and drop them like fucking el duche yeah yeah yeah i just would say he's fucking he's wild west well and and to be fair all of them are um this is this is outstanding yeah because that was because revolver like everybody else is shooting the um muskets, which take you can maybe get around a minute, minute and a half, depending. You got to pour the stuff. You got to pour the thing. You got to rent. But this is just like, look, if I have six, six shot revolvers, that's 36 rounds that I can shoot off. And, you know, they're single action.

You got to pull a hammer back. But that's it. Like, it's it's not a it's not a lot of uh of action that has to go into it and you can just toss them to the side we'll get more revolvers off of dead people later it's no problem it was uh much like missouri today uh missouri back then was awash with guns so it's kind of like you know your uh final fantasy you kill someone you have to loot the corpse but it's it's revolvers all the way. Revolvers and

I don't know, cholera, because you got too close to them. You do have cholera. Everybody has a low case of cholera at this time. It's a baseline that you're at least suffering from typhus. I mean, shit, Frank almost died of measles and managed to get out of it. To be fair,

that could also happen in, I don't know, San Francisco in 2021. So Frank, you know, kind of gets back with gets back with the Confederate forces because there's a finally there is like an actual Confederate presence in Missouri. They understand that they do have some strongholds. They're led by this guy named General Price. Now, I'm not going to talk too much about Price because he doesn't matter, but we will talk about one of his captains, Quantrell, and one of Quantrell's lieutenants, Bloody Bill Anderson. So Quantrell's raiders were just a band of fucking Confederate assholes. They were guerrilla fighters they did not do like you know force on force kind of conflict it was a come in hit burn

things take what you can and get the fuck out didn't matter if it was union forces or union uh or or a uh a northern uh sympathizing town just uh fucking go in and get whatever so why fight fair when you can fight with a trench coat full of revolvers if i ask you i mean if i saw if i was like a soldier in the union and uh and i saw somebody with a shirt with six revolvers i'm just thinking how do i get in on that i'm not i'm not doing that i'm just thinking how fucking heavy is that shirt? Because revolvers back then were beasts. Yeah, they were heavy motherfuckers. But they were also all on horseback.

So it kind of helped to not have to run. You know, the guerrilla forces were never foot forces. At least not if they could help it. Because you had to be fit. You had to get in and get out. So it was always small bands or a medium-sized fire team or whatever that would go in, hit, and then come back out. So Union forces know about Quantrell. They know about Quantrell's raiders, and they're not happy about it. And they know

that there are certain people who are involved in it, much like the James gang. Well, not the James, I'm sorry, not the James gang yet, but the James family. Zerelda, the mom, has basically turned into a fucking firebrand confederate. Oh, cool. Oh, yeah. She is a firebrand confederate.

She fucking hates the union. Because the union has basically just kept showing up and fucking everything out. Right. Which, to be fair, they own slaves. So, you know, I kind of get it. Yeah.

So whatever happens, it happens to you. Right. Yeah. So Union forces end up catching up with Zerelda at the farm. They're looking for, because Quantrell and his raiders know that the James farm is a place that they can basically camp out in the woods and not be bothered. They're protected there. They're in this little Dixie area. So Union forces say, fuck that. They come in, they find the farm and they're, okay, where are they? Of course, nobody wants to talk. And then, so the Union forces grab Reuben and they put a rope around

his neck and they hang him. Now they do not hang him to death. They hang him and they put a rope around his neck and they hang him. Now they do not hang him to death. They hang him and they say, do you remember where they are now? And he says, yes, yes, please stop hanging me.

Yeah, of course. I think we've talked about this a couple of times on the shows. Like you only have to threaten me with torture. I'll cave immediately. Yeah. As soon as the rope was produced, i would be like yeah they're over here so yeah so uh the union forces uh go in uh they they catch the the rebels unaware

and basically chase them for multiple miles through the woods. Well, not through the woods. This is not a hugely wooded area, but like I said, it is more foreign land and everything. But they end up having to run for miles and miles and miles to escape the Union forces and eventually take a skiff across the Missouri River to get away. So Quantrell's raiders end up kind of getting back together and they have decided that what they are going to do to get away. So Quantrell's Raiders end up kind of getting back together and,

uh, they have decided that what they are going to do is they're going to do another raid on Lawrence, Kansas. And, uh, this one is Frank. James is known to have been there,

but Jesse is not. So Jesse hasn't, Jesse has seen a lot of violence, but he hasn't really partaken in a lot of violence yet. Um, but the raiding party in Lawrence was the murder of 150 people, men and boys. And the thing, the real big thing about this massacre in Lawrence was it is the first massacre that was done that was not race related. White people were killing white people and other white people were very confused and scared by that.

Because usually when there's a riot, it's a race riot. Either black people are killing white people or white people are killing black people. White people are never killing white people. So- They call that progress, King. This is what the woke left wants.

Oh, it's my AK that just says, how's this for so much of the tolerant left? I was honored to do that. So back end of the Civil War, the late 1863, early 1864, Jesse James is brought in at the age of 16. His mom sews him the gorilla shirt, also known as a bushwhacker shirt, because they were called bushwhackers. And he joins Bill Anderson,

also known as... Not quite. I'm terrified. Dad died of cholera. His dads now are just like brutal murderers. My dad's name is Bill Anderson, Francis. Oh okay yeah the the famous jewish confederate gorilla hey man secretary of the treasury for the confederacy was a jewish man one of our greatest shames really really leaning into it there that's incredibly disappointing so um yeah he starts writing with uh with bill

anderson um and there's a really interesting quote from Frank James, because the group that's under Bloody Bill, pretty much everybody is under the age of 25. And the quote from Frank is, if you ever want to pick a company to do desperate work, select men from 17 to 21. Which also goes along, I don't know if you know this book rumor of war by Philip Caputo, which is where he says, before you leave her, sir, you're going to learn that the most brutal thing in the world is your average 19 year old American boy.

And, and Joe, I think you and I can both agree on, on that one to, to an extent. Pretty much. I mean, like obviously I've quit in,

in response to this. Yeah. But also like the teenagers in general, in response to this, yeah. But also, like, teenagers in general will do horrific acts of violence if given encouragement. Because their brain doesn't tell them it's wrong yet. And not to mention they have, like, they have the tactic support of a state aperture behind them that says, like, no, no, it's fine. Yeah, what you're doing is good. And for the betterment of Missouri, it's, it's really easy to,

uh, do stuff when you've already decided that whatever ends justifies the means. So, right. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh,

the, as I've mentioned before, one of the biggest problems is that everybody on both sides are huge assholes. Um, the Missouri, the, the union forces are usually is that everybody on both sides are huge assholes. The Missouri, the union forces are usually people that everybody else knows. They're from like a County or two over. They had no problem with getting plenty of people to come in and do all of

this stuff because the Missourians hated the fucking Confederacy. So, yeah. So the, a lot of, a lot of just murder going on all over the place. September 23rd, 1864,

Bloody Bill leads what is called the Centralia Massacre, which is 24 unarmed Union soldiers were dragged off of a train, murdered, scalped, and then the entire town sacked. Yeah, there's a lot of scalping that goes on

uh seems unnecessary and and at one point like um bill anderson was meeting like a state senator who was just like very like into like yeah yeah it's really great what you're doing out here for the confederacy but he's like i will not meet with you until you get rid of the scalps on your fucking horse, though, because what the fuck? That's gross, man. You already have cholera. Like, you know, I do a lot of thinking about, you know, because it's Monday was Columbus Day. So a lot of people are doing the whole like, well, you can't judge them. You know, you can't judge people at that time by what was going on at this time. Shut up.

Yeah. And also, no, people knew that scalping people was bad. Like, there's no other thing we have to have, like, philosophical texts on. Well, not to mention, that's the point, right? It's the terror. It's the same reason why people get beheaded, right? Like, obviously, people sprinkle religion on it. But, like, the true reason is it's horrifying and terrible.

And it makes you fear the people that you're fighting. Like same reason why snipers are important. It's not because they're actually super like tactically important. It's that they're fucking terrifying. Yeah. At any point in time, you may die. And to know you can't do anything. There's nothing that you can ever do.

Just you might be standing there and then you're dead. Right. That's fucked up. And this one is like, you know, if I get captured, you know, I'm going fucked up and this one is like you know uh if i get captured you know i'm gonna die and i'm gonna die horribly and all of these other like that's that's the point it's not they weren't like collecting these to fucking sell them so uh at the at the time so also after the massacre of centralia was the battle of centralia where the union soldiers have decided that they have had enough of this uh centralia is in missouri and uh the union forces roll up on the confederates and the union forces get the

kicked out of them um 123 union uh dead versus three confederate holy shit the union that happened union so they had the confederates were just in really good positions like they they had the town. So they were able to, you know, they were able to barricade themselves before before they showed up. Urban warfare sucks now. Imagine if you had to reload after every shot. Yeah, no thanks. Well, the Union soldiers decided to take that take that aggression out on literally every Confederate sympathizer civilian that they found and just murdered the shit out of a whole bunch of

people. So that's kind of what I assumed was going to happen next as you do. So the James brothers are riding around with a bloody bill. Who's like I said, under Quantrell bloody bill Anderson dies during a skirmish with union forces. Basically, you know,

it's, it's one of the, it's one of those things where they're the, the guerrilla attack that they would do, uh, is they would start in a slow trot, uh, and then start their rebel yell and then run through hit and then run back and then start to, you know, uh, if, if they had set up an ambush, they would have they would draw Union forces into ambushes if or they would just escape. So at this point, they were doing that. They realized that the gunfire they were coming across coming out was a lot heavier than they were expecting. So pretty much everybody else peeled off except for Bill and one other guy who got gunned down.

Bill Anderson was 24 years old when he died. So he packed, he packed a lot into, uh, into, into the shit here. Yeah. How old are the James brothers at this point?

Uh, so Jesse is probably about 17. Uh, Frank was about three or four years older. Um, Jesus. Yeah. Yeah.

There's, there's, there's a lot, there's a lot of just young people. Like Quantrell didn't Quantrell died in 1865. He was 27. Like, yeah yeah this there's there's a lot there's a lot of just young people killed like quantrell didn't quantrell died in 1865 he was 27 like holy shit dude yeah and he died he died after the civil war was over like he was still fighting you died in may i think uh the uh that was like a month after the civil war officially like the confederates officially surrendered because the

fuck else are these guys got going on? What are they going to do? But Quantrell died mostly also because there was a lot of infighting in his groups. They kept splittering into smaller and smaller groups. And eventually just he had too small of a group. He didn't have the backup he needed and he got shot, which is not surprising. Yeah, that's how these guys are always going to end. Yeah, they were never going to die at the end of a noose.

They were always going to get gunned down in battle. And that's kind of what they wanted to do. And Bill Anderson, Bill would have been the one that people in Missouri know if he had not died as early as he did. So I'm sorry, he died at the age of 23. And Jesse James at this point is about 17. So you've got this, this is like the Confederacy is just run by children, you know, at this point. All right. So Jesse James and a few other people were trying to give themselves up. Because you got basically clemency. You were if as long as you

came, you said, Yes, I'm going to stop fighting. I'm going to lay down my arms, and I'm going to be done with these things. I promise that once again, I will stop being a confederate. Yeah. I saw a piece of paper that says, my bad at everything. Yeah. So he's turning himself in at Lexington, and he comes across just some Union soldiers. There are conflicting reports, as there usually are with things like this. Some say that Jesse was running away from, like he had just done a hit, and he was running away and then doing the like shit.

They're coming after me. They're coming after us, but we're near Lexington. So let's go give ourselves up and they won't kill us. Some say that he had a white flag that he was bringing to surrender. Whatever happened, he got shot. And I have to say also, I apologize because this is actually the second, no, third time he's been shot. Uh, and, and I have to say also, I apologize because this is actually the second, no third time he's been shot. Um,

Patrick baby. He did it. Yeah. It takes multiple times. It takes multiple bullets to, uh, to kill Jesse James. So,

uh, yeah, the first time he was shot, it was a, in an out wound and he was kind of, he was fine. And you know, a couple of basically a month,

this one, uh, he got shot in the chest while trying to give himself up. And it took more than a year to really convalesce from that. Some of the other gunshot wounds that he got, one of them was a self-inflicted one by accident

while he was... He shot off one of his fingers while loading revolvers. Oh, wait, Sam. He had one job. That was great loading revolvers. Oh, wait a second. He had one job. That was great. He was a child, I guess. But like, I guess this is your lesson.

Don't let your kid be your fucking revolver squire. Well, I mean, not back then when, you know, everything was very volatile and blew up constantly. He also got shot during another raid. But like I said, it was one of those. It was an in and out and he was fine. They did that like, is he going to live? I don't know, maybe. And then he did. But the second time that he got shot, not only did it take like, you know, a year for him to really properly, uh, convalesce from it, but this is where the Jesse James like, uh, mythos really starts because

as I said, there's conflicting stories about what happened, but the story that went out and about to everybody was Jesse James was, you know, Confederates are trying to lay down their arms, you know, and do this gracious losing and Union soldiers still shot him. Now, keep in mind, these are people that were literally murdering

and scalping people. So fuck them um first off right yeah i don't give a shit like okay you you want to surrender technically what the union forces did would be considered a war crime if they're like surrender no fuck you i'm going to shoot you but also you can kind of understand it because they probably had friends that were literally scalped they may have been looking at the scalps of people they knew um on like this is a very regional war man like these guys are fighting people from a county like or like a couple streets down probably in a lot of cases like they know someone who had their house fucking torched like fuck these guys yeah and but

everybody's had a house torched by one side or the other and you know there's just amongst us yeah everybody everybody has been fucked by this war and now the war is over. So it seemed for a minute that maybe Jesse James was going to, you know, settle down a little bit. His his cousin, who was also named Zerelda, was taking care of him during his common name. What is Zerelda a common name what is zerelda common name she was named the zerelda the cousin was named after the mom because everybody loved the mom because she was you know such a confederate sympathizer and everybody loved the confederacy but also he ends up marrying her and having kids with her so there's probably a lot of probably a lot of psychology going on there that uh boy i don't i don't have

the degrees to go into doing my cousin's named after my mom, and now she's my wife. They have kids. There are Jesse James descendants from that first cousin. Oh, I have no doubt. Yeah, so, but you know what? These guys, they just,

they can't let a good war end. And since they didn't have violent, they didn't have a war that was there for them to do. They had to find violence in their own ways. So that's when they just decided we're going to start robbing banks and shit. I'm not going to tell you every single bank and carriage and train and whatnot that got hit. It's not that important. Not all of them are all that important, but also not all of them are confirmed.

Jesse James or Frank James was there. Sometimes they're like, you know, conflicting reports like this train was hit. But at the time there were reports that the James brothers were in like Kentucky or something. And then there's times that it was like, it was the train was hit. We don't know where they were at the time there were reports that the james brothers were in like kentucky or something and then there's times there's like it was the train was hit um we don't know where they were at the time so like there's no confirmation of where they were so they probably were there so

there's not to mention a lot of this is clout shit we're like yeah of course that was me yeah um everybody you know everybody wanted to uh to to have a part of the James gang. So they decided to rob the Clay County Savings Association. Now, the book that I read on this, it's a book ostensibly about Jesse James, but good Lord, was there about four or five pages about how banking worked before and after the Civil War. So, and I'm not really gonna get into that, but I am going to say that they were knocking over banks and stealing stuff that was not necessarily money, but like certificates and coins and precious metals and things like that.

Pokemon cards. Exactly. You better hope that that shit was insured because the FDIC didn't exist yet. Well, we're going to get to that. Jesse James running out, shoving a rare copy of Exodia, the forbidden one into his pocket. Yeah. So also at this time, there is a former Confederate soldier by the name of John Edwards, who starts printing stories about like all of these great and wonderful people. There's a book called Noted Gorillas, which you can find on Google

Books if you really want to read through it. And it's basically like a dime store novel kind of stuff about how great these Confederates are. And, you know, even after the war, all these great and wonderful things that are doing. And a lot of them revolved around Jesse James because Anderson was dead. Quantrell was dead. Frank really wasn't leading at the time. It seemed like it was kind of around Jesse. And they also started to build up their gang. So the James brothers,

their gang was known as the James Younger gang because there was another Cole Younger who was a member of Bloody Bill's Raiders and whatnot. They're like, hey, do you want to keep killing people? Yeah, sure. Why not? I know one thing and I'm good at it. Yeah. So the Clay County Savings Association was knocked over.

It is the first daylight robbery of a bank during peacetime. So, you know, we're setting records here. We're breaking new grounds. I mean, mostly because that seems like a really bad idea, right? Like so brazen, yeah. Yeah, but also like... But who's going to stop you, I guess. Yeah, so this is Clay County, which was pro-Confederate, but the bank is owned by a unionist,

which is why they had no problem stealing from it. Oh, okay. And there's a lot of reports that some of the robberies, some of the daytime robberies, they would be hamming it up for the crowd, just to be like yeah look how fucking cool we are yeah it's you know toss a couple coins to the kids or whatnot you know you're fucking tight five in on up on stage exactly you know it's just like hey the raiders aren't going to be here for a minute what's the deal with hard tech yeah so um they're they're going they're going they're they're really going through a lot of

stuff uh when it comes to robberies um they're like i said they're hitting trains they're uh hitting stage coaches some of them are attacks of opportunity just like oh somebody you know a train is going through let's uh you know let's knock it over uh some of them were well planned out the way that they would uh get the trains is they would go to the track and tear the tracks up basically so that the train engineer would see it and hit the brakes on it and then they'd jump on.

Now, a lot of times when they would rob trains, they wouldn't rob the passengers. The first time they did, they robbed the passengers. And actually like during Jesse during jesse james's autopsy uh and going through personal artifacts they found a watch that he'd stolen from that first uh that first robbery on him so yeah some sentimental value i guess it's like oh this is my first first time we knocked over a train daddy's first train robbery yeah but what they were really targeting were um these things called express safes.

So Express was a company that helped move money back and forth. And they put safes on these trains and chucked them in the back, you know, in the caboose or whatever. So a lot of times the gang was stopping these trains and they were just like, we don't have time for the passengers. Fuck all that noise. Go get the safe. Blow it. Get whatever is in there and get it out. Now, Liam, you mentioned the FDIC. You're correct. There is no FDIC going on at the time.

But what there are is the Pinkertons. Yep. Oh, boo. Hey, the guy was an abolitionist. So 1974, the Express Company hires Pinkertons to... Please note, I am not endorsing the Pinkertons. Although he did fund John Brown. Fun fact.

Noted sponsor of this podcast, the Pinkertons. Look, the Pinkertons, they're like a hammer, man. Whichever arm is swinging it is the real problem. Total wackadoodle. Exactly. So the Express Company hires the Pinkertons. They're like, you guys got to stop all this. So there's two attempts that the Pinkertons make.

The first one is this man named Joseph Witcher. His plan was he was going to travel to Missouri and start working as a farmhand on the James farm. His plan was like, I'm going to get in close with them. I'm going to, uh, you know,

talk to the family, uh, become good with them. And then I'm going to capture them and bring them in. Now, now everybody, the long con, right.

He's, this is basically like a month and a month in planning. Now, people who are familiar with, uh, Joseph Witcher and knew he was a Pinkerton and who knew the James gang was like, basically like a month and a month in planning now people who are familiar with uh joseph witcher and knew he was a pinkerton and who knew the james gang were like you were gonna die there's absolutely no way that that you're gonna pull this off you're gonna die most likely zerelda herself will kill you like as soon as you step up there um he's like no man i got this i've got this i'm

gonna go in i've got a plan they They're never going to know it's me. John Witcher was found the next morning with three bullets in his back. Oh, okay. Hey, nobody can say he wasn't fucking warned about it, all right? He was warned so many times. So the second attempt that the Pinkertons made was they basically, like of them surrounded the house that that Zerelda was in. And they threw an incendiary device in there into the house. Now, like I said, Jane, Jess, Jesse and Frank were, you know, Zerelda's original boys from from their, you know, her first husband.

But she did have other kids. So the Pinkertons throw this incendiary device into the house and the the youngest uh the youngest boy in there um who was uh jesse's half-brother it's like oh he thought it was like a stick that came out of the fire so he just picked it up and chucked it into the fire and it exploded it killed oh jesus killed the kid uh and blew off one of zerelda's arms. Oh, my God. Yeah. Who's letting these people around these things?

Really imprecise assassination attempts. One of these guys shot off their own fucking finger. They're like, let's play catch the dynamite. There's a lot of very questionable ideas that are going on here that I don't understand, and I don't really know what they're doing. I assume there's a baseline level of drunkenness. We're probably ignoring. Like from the Pinkertons or from the James gang,

from the James gang. They don't really talk about, uh, the book didn't really talk about drinking. Like, um, if there was, and I feel like if that,

that it would, that if that was a part of what they were doing, like, I'm sure there was, you know, some drinking, but I feel like the violence they were doing was a completely sober decision. Oh, probably. I just think

it's probably likely that everybody's operating under some level of drunkenness because it was common for the time for water to not be around all that often. Right, and when it was, it was full of cholera. That's right america's america's favorite after this second attempt um basically like missouri was

like the people of missouri were very upset um that pinkerton's kept trying to do this shit and so uh missouri nearly uh passed an amnesty uh thing thing for the James brothers to just be like, no, you guys, nobody like, you know, they got away with it because of the because it was war once upon a time. But you're not going to get away with that anymore. Right. You'd hope not. Right. But Missouri State was just like, no, we want to give them amnesty. It was barely defeated.

So technically they still were outlaws, but they enjoyed a lot of protection around where they were. So especially after that second Pinkerton raid. Now, in 1876, there's a robbery of the First National Bank in Northfield, Minnesota. It is a bank robbery that does not go well, and the only ones left alive are Frank and Jesse. They head back to St. Joseph, Missouri, which is northwestern Missouri, which is kind of where Clay County is and everything. And they got to take a break. They got to slow down. But also, they are still haunted men. So they had some newer members of their gang, the Ford brothers.

We have Robert and Charlie Ford. And they're like, look, you guys, come live with us. Keep us safe. We want to make sure that we don't get gunned down by some dumbass. Let me guess, one of these dumbasses ends up gunning him down. Oh, absolutely. Robert Ford decides that he wants the $10,000 bounty and kind of figures at this point it's probably going to be pretty easy to get

because there's really not much of a gang left. There's not a whole lot of protection. So on just a fateful day in. So, um, you know, on just the, a, a, a fateful day in, uh, sorry, let me find my,

uh, April 3rd, 1882. Uh, Jesse James is sitting at the farmhouse and he's reading the newspaper and he sees in the newspaper that like one of his former gang was, uh, like one of the last of his former gang was captured and was being pumped for

information. And he's just like, why did the, the Ford brothers not tell me about this? And that's when he kind of turned around and saw Robert Ford standing there and was just like, Oh, and that's why I don't,

I don't know why this happened. I don't know what was going through Jesse James, Jesse James's head, but certainly the next thing that was going through it was a bullet. Because what he did was Jesse James pulled his revolvers out and put them down on a table. And then he got on a stepladder with his back to Robert Ford and was straightening out a picture. And then just Robert Ford came up and popped him in the back of the head, shot him down. And,

you know, killed him one shot. It took, it took four gunshots to kill Jesse James. But eventually one of them found his brain and took it out. So I don't know if you guys have seen the movie, the assassination of Jesse James by the coward, Robert Ford.

That is what I was i i have seen this movie it was a really long time ago and as you started introducing the fords it's like fuck robert ford that name is very familiar and i couldn't remember the movie despite the fact that i saw it like it's a really good movie because the title is so goddamn long it's a it's a good movie it's a very long movie brad pitt plays jesse james and it's really more of movie about the fords than it is about jesse james which i thought was always interesting because what happens after that one um robert ford is put in jail and tried for murder um because he murdered somebody um but he's immediately like the the governor at the time

of missouri said nope pardoned you're you're out of there and there was a lot of uh people that thought that the reason why jesse james was was pardoned was or that robert ford was pardoned was because the the governor was in on the uh the assassination that's not necessarily that that's not confirmed but that's just you know some of the rumor mill that was uh that was going around at the time i mean it could certainly be like oh thank god someone finally took care of this shit yeah i have a pardon like i mean he tried to collect the bounty but he shot a man the fucking back of the head like that's just murder yeah he he then robert ford then like

goes on a uh a tour around like new york uh to different play to different stages um re uh but replaying the uh the the whole thing like basically a stage jesus basically a stage play of how i killed jesse james have you ever seen the documentary the act of killing no i haven't they literally do that um they have have torturers and executioners. I want to say for Suharto, I might be wrong. I think, yes. Reenact how they tortured and killed people. It's legitimately one of the darkest fucking documentaries I think that exists, ever could exist.

And this guy just did it for like dimes. He was, you know, he got it wasn wasn't like on the side, on the road. He wasn't busking this or anything. He was getting, you know. Standing at the corner and pretending to shoot his brother. That's how I killed Jesse James. We'll reenact. Yeah.

Then you put money into one of the six holsters in his shirt. Also, it's a weird flex right because like you're admitting that when uh you took down because you're bragging that you took down this guy right like i am the man that killed jesse james like yeah but you admitted you shot him in the back like a pussy four times yeah which which ended up like not working out because people were just like yeah go fuck yourself you shot him in the back of the head nobody's impressed by you nobody's impressed by this you shot him in the head yeah so robert ford uh eventually um you know kind of bounces around uh he's he finds some success as a saloon keeper um by building saloons out in uh like colorado you know just places to drink out

in the new areas um he was gunned down in a tent saloon that he was operating in 1892. Edward O'Kelly is the person who shot him. He gave absolutely no reason as to why he shot him. Felt like it. He just showed up and said, hello, Robert, and then put two shotgun barrels into his chest. Your Honor, I would like to enter this evidence of fuck that guy. Yeah, so in 10 years Edward Kelly was

sentenced to life in jail, but got a pardon in 1902 for medical reasons. Charlie Ford took his own life after being addicted to opium really bad and also having tuberculosis. The only one that really makes it out is uh frank

james who turns himself into the missouri governor spent like three weeks in jail and then was acquitted of all charges and then just left to do whatever he wanted until his death and uh and 1915 at the age of 72 so are you guys ready for for conspiracy? Absolutely. Let me guess one. Let me guess one. He was an agent of the Pinkertons or something. No, no, nothing. He was secretly a union man. The CIA hadn't been invented yet, so I'm not sure what to say.

This is more carny shit than anything else. He was trying to shoot his hat off. In Missouri, we have, Missouri has a lot of caves underneath it. And we have what we are called show caves, which is basically somebody goes in and they make a cave to where people can walk in it and, you know, see a slag tie, slag mites.

They put, you know, walkways and shit like that. You know, a cave that you can comfortably go into without having to, you know, be terrified, crushing yourself under the earth. Um, so there's one that's near us in St. Louis called Merrimack Caverns. Merrimack Caverns is probably one of the oldest ones that we have here. Um, I, I, it's been a, been a few years since I've been there, but, uh, I really enjoy going there and it's been, uh, in operation for, for more, for about a hundred years, I think.

in operation for about 100 years, I think. So there's two things that Merrimack Caverns likes to claim. One of the things they like to claim is that Jesse and Frank James came to this cave and hid out in the cave and split their loot up. And there is on the tour of in this cave, there is a place called Loot Rock. And at Loot Rock, if you look it up, Merrimack Caverns, Loot Rock, you will see this terrible picture of these two like dudes because they're like, we found, you know, we found a couple of gold coins. We found a rusty lantern and we found these other things here. So obviously the James gang came here and and split up their money. So they have these irrefutable evidence.

Yeah. Nevermind that before you even go into that area, they talk about how like that entire chamber was flooded with water. Um, and they had to pump all the water out to, uh, to make it walkable. Wait,

wait, maybe Jesse James is like Kevin Costner from water world. He has skills. Hopefully this story was better than that one. Well, there's, there's also's also um this thing called uh that's owned and operated by the uh the people who own merrimack caverns is called the jesse james wax museum which we call the jesse james is alive museum because the conspiracy theory that it pushes is that jesse james was never killed he yeah he was he faked his death and oh like tupac yes but not in a he disappeared in a he faked his death and here he

is right here he's living in the cave now you can come talk to him come talk to jesse james okay wait wait he's still there no he died in like 1951 uh oh but of course yes noted world war ii veteran jesse james yes uh he basically this old man uh who his name was j frank dalton he also claimed to be a former lawman that was named frank dalton who uh was well known at the time but uh after hearing the uh the claim like hearing these claims he basically went and lived in Merrimack caverns claiming to be Jesse James. They had a fucking hospital bed in there for him. Like it's how fuck this man just lived in a cave. Uh,

they have a, they have a little shack that's called Jesse James's hideout. They're like, this is where, this is where the old man, this is where old man Jesse lived. Um, his final days.

It's like, and the source in this, I assume is that old man who made lived um his final days it's like and the source in this i assume is that old man who made a living doing this yes and in in the the crazy how that works in the jesse james wax museum too they're just like look you can see they they do that thing where they they anamorph like young jesse james into the old jesse james but you're like why did his ears and nose get so big suddenly like what is this j this? Jesse James anamorphic into an eagle. I like that book better. So the guy, the people who own Merrimack Caverns were just like, because people kept being like, this is absolutely not Jesse James.

He was killed. And he's just like, well, I will give $10,000 to anybody who can prove to me that this is not Jesse James. So the descendants of Jesse James were like, fine. They exhumed the body. They're like, here's the evidence that we have. Here's the,

you know, the, the gunshot, um, that, that one, that gunshot that, um,

that nearly killed him. Uh, that ball was still in him. They're like, here's the finger that he blew off. Here's the other time he got shot. Here's his skull with a with a fucking hole in it and i was gonna ask did this guy blow a finger off to to like

because that would be commitment to the method acting right he everybody knew that jesse james is missing a finger um no i don't believe so um oh that's that's that is a cop out it really was uh and i gotta say it's been a while since i've been there. So I don't know if they how they address that, because the the wax museum is very in depth with this conspiracy. But they also say they're not allowed to take any pictures or take any information out of there, because, like, obviously, there's some fucked up mystique that they're trying to hold on to. fucked up mystique that they're trying to hold on to uh but yeah if you're ever in missouri in the st louis area find um merrimack caverns uh and you'll find the the jesse james wax museum which is the as we call it the jesse james is alive museum i absolutely want to go there i want to go there so bad now it's it's it's incredible um and caves all over missouri like will will claim some kind of Jesse James,

something like everybody loves to just be like, Oh, the James gang came here because it connects them like with Missouri history. But it's like, you're just a fucking cave. Like you, do they all have an old guy living in them? Sadly?

No. Um, got to commit, man. There's a lot of, there are a lot of caves that, um, like the,

there's one called the small and civil war cave. And it's a, it's a and it's a it's a it's a cave that is has a massive like opening so it's been used by like you know natives it's been used by the you know the the locals as just like a gathering place it's got a nice little creek inside of it and everything but also a lot of these places were used because one there are sources of fresh water and two there are sources of fresh water. And two, there are sources of fresh bat shit. Because you can use bat guano to make gunpowder. I don't know how, but apparently that is a thing. Someone is going to blow their fucking fingers off trying to get their crafting skill up high enough where they can turn bat shit into explosives.

Somebody figured it out. And it's just that 1800s of of figuring some shit out so this is fucking cheating i wish i knew how to do stuff like that i don't even i don't even know how to like change my own oil in my car but these guys are making fucking gunpowder out of bat shit um so just to cap it all off um so the relatives of jesse james presented the evidence the guy didn't pay up they took him to court the court said he had to pay up and uh he managed to die in 1977 without ever paying so good for him yeah good for him he rounded that grift out strong all the way to the end and uh that grift still goes strong today there's um the the old man is not there anymore because obviously you can't you know get away

with like here's 180 year old jesse j but, uh, at least you can still, they should have tried though. They should have tried. You know, they ran that grift until like 1951. They ran it into the ground as best they could through two wars running the museum. Now,

like, is it, I assume it's the old guy's family. No, it's still the, it's the, there are, there are Missourian people who just own Merrimack Caverns.

They're the ones who created the Jesse. They're the ones who like the Jesse. They're the ones who like really helped keep the Jesse James like mythos going in Missouri by being like, Jesse James came here to split up their gold after a bank robbery. And, you know, we had him living here. Like they're so like, you know, I guess deep inside of it that they can't really let it go. But it's not owned by the old man. The old man was just like an old man who was just like, yeah, I'll be Jesse James in the cave, I guess.

He just wanders into the cave one day. Hey, old man, do you want a job? I don't know how they managed to figure it out. I don't know how they managed to strike a deal or what the man got paid. I hope it was handsomely and not just a hospital. I assume not. He lived in a cave. I mean, it's a pretty nice cave, though.

They had like ballroom dances in that cave. Fair enough. It's a nice cave. You can't... If you're a lonely old man and you just want to talk to people, pretending to be Jesse James might be the way that you...

Not a bad way to do it, I guess. It's depressing now. It's that or constantly going to the bank to talk to the bank uh to to talk to the tellers because they have to talk to you or you could always go and be jesse james and go to the bank and rob them i don't know if i can legally hi everybody now you have to talk to me i have your attention uh francis uh thanks that was actually like i don't know shit about jesse james other than like i assume the same stuff that most people have picked up over the years and i didn't know that

he was like a fucking civil war veteran i didn't know any of that stuff yeah he's a veteran just like you and me joe yeah and i actually you know those are the three ways that you can become a veteran you can start a coffee company start a podcast or become a terrorist bank robber veteran parentheses the bad kinds yeah that's it that that's yeah that's what you do afterwards now uh gentlemen we have a thing on the show called questions from the legion um where if you donate to the show you can ask us a question that is largely dumb uh and you just want to hear our stupid stories or opinions on things that we can answer in about three minutes a piece. So yeah,

you could donate to the show. Ask us in Patreon DMs or I don't know. Load it into a revolver. Put it into your large trench coat and then confront one of us on the street with it. Please do not do that. Please do not do it. This is the legal warning. Please

do not confront us on the street with a handgun. Because I might have one too. And my handgun is probably better than whatever Navy Colt revolver that you're cosplaying with. Hey, it's about the aesthetic. So this question of the Legion is tell me a very bad cooking story that you have. And I have one that jumps to mind immediately because my family doesn't't let me forget it despite the fact it's been like 20 years um so i like i've joked over the years that like i pretty much was left alone uh because my mom worked like several jobs and like i had to pretty much babysit myself which also meant i had to cook for myself from time to time

but the problem was i couldn't cook uh so one time i wanted to make soup and i didn't know exactly how to make soup i didn't know what base was i didn't know what stock was nothing like that uh so i filled a pot with water because i assume the soup is liquid therefore you make soup with water right um i then added raw vegetables and meat and i boiled it you're making an irish soup that's why grandma's cooking. Yeah. But there's no, but it was like,

you know, I don't know what kind of meat it was. It wasn't stuff you'd put in soup. I didn't make soup. I don't know what it was, but it made me sick. I didn't do that. And like my mom came home from work, like very,

very late. And they asked me what happened, why the kitchen was a mess. I told her. And like to this, I am 33 at the time of recording. This had to have happened when I was nine or 10 years old. I still hear about it, every family function.

I'm actually a halfway decent cook, but one time I did, when I was younger, I was cooking myself a grilled cheese sandwich and it was an electric range and a cast iron stove and it was right next to the sink so i had like my hand on the handle of the cast iron which is just one basically one piece of metal um and then i put my i rested my other hand uh on the sink and there was a bit of water there and apparently i completed a circuit and which ended up throwing me about three feet in the air and about three feet backwards. Thankfully, not with the cast iron in my in my hands.

I did not I didn't I didn't, you know, punch myself in the face or manage to kill myself. But I learned to not do that and to always keep my kitchen dry. And it's something i do today i never thought about that before but i'm gonna do nothing but think about that next time he's a cast iron yeah i cook with nothing but cast iron at the moment and uh thank god i have a gas range now oh fancy boy yeah cast iron pan is like five dollars at walmart right and also like i didn't even buy it it was like given to me because cast iron lasts forever yeah it's like getting a hand-me-down bowl from a friend you can just keep scraping it and using it's fine what about you liam you doing any cooking let's

see yeah uh so i i'm now 29 does that when i was 18 maybe 19 i was a sophomore in college and I had bought, I had no money because I was a sophomore in college and I had bought from our local grocery store what I could describe charitably as a log of 70, 30 ground beef. Okay. And had forgotten about it. And then I eventually put it in the freezer and I got it out to make something I've long since forgotten. The beef had had and I should have known this at the time had probably expired. This was the weekend of St. Patrick's Day. So I drank on food poisoning and I made it four or five beers in before I became the most violently ill I've ever been in my life. I've had dysentery and this sounds worse yeah i was just throwing up and shitting and like miserable like i i collapsed on the three walk block hole on three block walk home i i like

collapsed to the ground and my ex-girlfriend had to like limp me home and i was just like and she was like well you were still like you like i was delirious like i wasn't even drunk i was just like delirious and apparently like not making any sense but like walking in a straight line and she was like i had to put my arm under you and be like thank you so much for getting me home and i had like no recollection of this like that's the best way is if you do something like that you just do not remember it so you can pretend it never existed so i was like did i black out i was like i don't think so because i remember like most i remember most of the evening except for like the immediate aftermath of throwing up i don't remember but yeah it was

it was i wouldn't recommend it so check your expiration dates is what i'm saying so this is an official podcast uh uh recipe now four day old meat and beer um and then just mix it all together uh gentlemen thank you uh for joining me um this is great. It is always nice to not have to research an episode, even though I've done it twice in almost four years. That's nice. Nice little treat for Joe. I was nervous about this because my podcast is very just like, yeah, just whatever.

Let's watch a movie and talk about it. And yours is serious-ish. Not serious, but you take it serious you gotta you gotta kind of work at it the the lines led by donkeys podcast where the research is serious but we are not exactly like i i'm specifically looking for funny things like you know um how a pinkerton just shows up dead after being like yeah i got him i can take him and then he just found he's found dead in a ditch the pinkerton shape of hubris i love it um but yeah i mean i think that i don't know i guess i i could say you did a great job but i guess the audience will be the judge of that

we'll see how much of the dog yelling gets uh left in uh but again thanks everybody uh thank you for supporting the show and listening and until next time don't have children load your revolvers