The house at 1318 Lafayette St. in St. Joseph, Missouri, was a one-story white wood cottage with green shutters, sitting in a lot on the brow of a hill overlooking the town. It was Monday, April 3, 1882, and over breakfast the man who rented the house, who was going by the name Thomas Howard, commented on a newspaper article about the surrender of Jesse James Gang member Dick Liddil to Missouri authorities. Liddil was a traitor and ought to be hanged, he said. There was consider­able unease among the two guests, brothers Charlie and Bob Ford, but they pretended not to care.

After breakfast, Mr. Howard and Charlie Ford went to a stable behind the house to curry the horses. Upon returning to the house, the two men entered the living room. “It’s an awfully hot day,” said Howard, pulling off his coat and vest and tossing them aside. “I guess I will take off my pistols,” he continued, explaining that he didn’t want anyone who might be walking by outside to look through the window and see him armed. He picked up a feather duster and stepped up on a chair to clean some pictures on the wall. Bob and Charlie quickly moved between Howard and his guns, Charlie giving a wink to Bob. Both drew revolvers on the man on the chair, now with his back turned. Hearing the click of a weapon being cocked, Howard started to turn his head, and then the report of Bob’s six-shooter reverberated through the house. Charlie didn’t even bother to fire but lowered his gun as the man fell to the floor, with a bullet in his skull.

Howard’s wife rushed into the room, and the brothers tried to explain that the six-shooter had accidentally gone off. “Yes,” the wife said as she bent over her husband’s corpse, “I guess it went off on purpose.” The Fords dashed to the telegraph office down the way and sent messages to Clay County Sheriff Henry Timberlake, Kansas City Police Commissioner Henry H. Craig and Missouri Governor Thomas Crittenden. Last, they used a newfangled device known as a telephone to call the office of City Marshal Enos Craig. Thomas Howard, the man they had killed, had earlier used the alias John Davis “Dave” Howard, among others. But his real name was Jesse James.

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GETTING ACQUAINTED

The Ford boys first became acquainted with outlaw Jesse James in the summer of 1879. Jesse had been living in Tennessee since 1877, trying to “go straight” following the disastrous attempt to rob the Bank of Northfield, Minn., the year before. While his older brother Frank made the transition to peaceful citizen, Jesse suffered from malaria and found it difficult to adjust to honest work. He returned to Missouri to put together a new gang and in the process crossed paths with the Fords. James T. and John Ford, the father and brother of Bob and Charlie, had served in Virginia under Colonel John Singleton Mosby, the legendary “Gray Ghost” of the Confederacy, and were fellow guerrillas. Jesse, who had served under guerrilla leaders William Quantrill and “Bloody Bill” Anderson, probably swapped more than a few war stories on his occasional visits. Jesse liked to at least maintain the pretense of being harassed by former Unionists in order to obtain food, shelter and information from ex-Confederates while he was on the dodge.

One of the recruits to this new outfit was Ed Miller, whose brother Clell had been killed in the September 1876 Northfield raid. Miller knew the Fords, and it was Miller who first brought Jesse to the Ford house, the Harbison place, outside the town of Richmond, in Missouri’s Ray County. In the summer of 1880, Jesse and Miller had a falling out. The exact details are unclear, but it appears that Ed wanted to leave the gang, and Jesse got the notion he was going to be betrayed and fatally shot Miller. Jesse turned up at the Harbison place with Miller’s horse, which he left there, telling Charlie Ford that Ed had become ill and had gone down to Hot Springs, Ark. Enter Jim Cummins, a former guerrilla comrade of Jesse’s. Jim’s sister Artella had married Bill Ford, uncle of Bob and Charlie. The couple now lived at the old Cummins place in Clay County, a few miles from the James farm. Cummins became suspicious that something bad had happened and tried to locate Miller. A trip to Nashville, Tenn., where Jesse was living, in the winter of 1880-81, brought similar suspicions on Cummins, when he started asking too many questions. He fled in the night to avoid a likely bullet from Jesse.

On Friday evening, March 25, 1881, almost two weeks following the robbery of a Corps of Engineers payroll at Muscle Shoals, Ala., gang member Bill Ryan became drunk at a small store a few miles north of Nashville. Brandishing a revolver, he claimed to be Tom Hill, “outlaw against State, County, and the United States Government.” He was soon taken into custody. On his person was found some of the Muscle Shoals loot, and he was quickly lodged in the Nashville calaboose. Clearly, Jesse’s choice of gang members left a lot to be desired. It would only get worse.

The bad news about Ryan arrived via the local newspapers, and Frank, Jesse, their respective families and gang member Dick Liddil were soon beating a hasty retreat to Kentucky, with the law on their tail. Soon that state was getting too hot, and they decided to go back to Missouri. Jesse saw this as a chance to lure his now unemployed brother Frank back into the holdup business. He also wanted to keep an eye on legal proceedings against Ryan, who was extradited to Independence, Mo., in June, to be tried for his part in the Glendale train robbery, and to follow up leads on Jim Cummins.

Jesse soon settled in Kansas City, and was planning a raid on the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad somewhere near Gallatin, Mo. It was said that the trains brought large sums of cash to the Farmer’s Exchange Bank there twice a week. On the evening of July 15, 1881, the gang struck near the whistle stop at Winston. Conductor William Westfall was killed in the process. It was later said that Westfall had been on the train that took Pinkerton detectives on their 1875 raid on the James farm, but this was apparently not known at the time. The crime created a sensation in the press. Governor Thomas T. Crittenden, who had vowed to rid the state of the James Gang in his campaign the year before, held a meeting in St. Louis with railroad and express company executives, who promised a collective reward of $50,000 to put the gang out of business. Frank and Jesse had a reward of $5,000 each on their heads for their capture and delivery to authorities, with another $5,000 on conviction. There was no mention of it being dead or alive. Handbills were printed to this effect, though in later years counterfeit “Dead or Alive” posters would be marketed to unwary tourists.

Following the Winston robbery, the gang scattered. Dick Liddil spent a good bit of time at the Harbison place with the Fords, and the brothers were reportedly initiated into the holdup business in August 1881. Liddil, a convicted horse thief prior to joining Jesse’s new gang in 1879, took Charlie Ford with him to rob a stage running between Excelsior Springs and Vibbard. The driver was hauling just one passenger. “Charlie made them stand and I made them deliver,” Liddil recalled in his later confession, the take being a whopping $30. About a week later, Liddil put together another sub-gang consisting of himself, Jesse’s cousin Wood Hite, and Bob and Charlie Ford. On Thursday evening, August 25, they robbed a man with a wagon of $20 to $30 halfway between Lexington and the railroad junction at North Lexington. They tied up their victim and continued to wait for other prey. About five minutes later, they halted a stage with seven passengers, six men and a woman.

“All of you hold up your hands and get out of there,” one of the outlaws commanded. Bob and Wood held double-barreled shotguns on the men after they stepped down, while Dick and Charlie, armed with revolvers, relieved them of around $200 and several watches. All the bandits wore blue masks. The woman, a Miss Hunt from St. Joseph, was allowed to remain in the coach and to keep her valuables. One of the victims, C.W. Horner of Appleton City, a cripple studying for the ministry, was relieved of $52. Oddly, it was the same stage driver, a Mr. Gibson, who had been robbed by the James-Younger Gang seven years before, almost to the day, near the same place.

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