Prison Puzzle Pieces. Dave Basham
1873 Jim, John and Bob Younger joined Cole in the James-Younger Gang.
The James-Younger Gang now included Frank and Jesse James and Cole, Jim, John and Bob Younger. Over time, many others joined up with them but left. You might say that their employee retention rate was quite low. Working conditions and their benefit package was undesirable
On March 17, 1874, Jim and John Younger were headed to see some friends in Roscoe, Missouri. Pinkertons were hired to capture outlaws that had robbed a safe. A Deputy Sheriff and two Pinkerton agents suspected the Younger's. The three men were tracking Jim and John when the Younger Brothers ambushed them. One of the Pinkertons ran off successfully. While the Younger's were interrogating the others, Detective Louis Lull, drew a hidden pistol and shot John through the neck. Jim killed Deputy Daniels while John pursued Lull on horseback into the woods. John shot Lull in the chest and left him. John rode out of the woods and fell to the ground, dead. Jim buried him by the roadside. Later he dug him up and buried him in an unmarked grave in a cemetery. Louis Lull died three days after being shot.
On the night of January 25, 1875, the Pinkertons surrounded the James farm. Frank and Jesse James had probably been there earlier, but had already left. The Pinkertons threw what they said was not a bomb into the house. This non-bomb exploded when it rolled into the fireplace. The blast nearly severed the right arm of Zerelda Samuel, the James boys' mother. Her arm had to be amputated at the elbow that night. The blast killed their 9-year-old half brother, Archie Samuel.
Continued injustices perpetrated upon the James and Younger families by post war authorities and people of dissenting viewpoints continually pushed the James and Younger brothers into justifying their criminal activities. This is an example of why I believe criminals are created and not born to be criminals. Learning about the backgrounds of inmates that I have been associated with and read about constantly reaffirms this point. Those scientists that say otherwise should quit trying to write papers to the contrary to get themselves notoriety and stoke their egos.
NORTHFIELD BANK FIASCO
This link is to a video on YouTube called "Faithful Unto Death."
This 12 minute video played at the Northfield Historical Society when I visited there. (This video is good; however it varies slightly from the information delivered on the historical society's tour.) The bank is part of the building. I like to support these places by buying their products. They did have Cole Younger's autobiography that he wrote while in Stillwater Prison, so I bought that, but they did not have this video available.
On September 7, 1876, at 2 p.m., Cole, Jim and Bob Younger, Frank and Jesse James, Charlie Pitts, Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell (aka Bill Stiles) attempted to rob the Northfield Bank in Minnesota. The Cannon River flows through the northwest side of the town. This is a very short distance behind the bank, so they had to cross a bridge to get into the main part of the town. They entered town in three groups so as to not draw attention. Frank, Bob and Charlie rode into town first and were the ones designated to enter the bank. Cole and Clell crossed the bridge next and swung around the block so they could come in from the south. Jim, Jesse and Bill crossed the river and hung out in the town square, which is right by the bank.
They were supposed to call off the robbery if there were a lot of people in town. There were a lot of people in town, but they felt these Minnesotans would be oblivious to actually having a bank robbed in their town, so they went ahead with the robbery. (A television show I saw on the history of this event stated that there were more people than normal in town on this day because it was the first day of hunting season. This was the only source that I found that stated this; however the other information was quite credible.)
When they entered the bank, Charlie closed the door. This was a warning sign to a man that had just left the bank, because the door was kept open for cross ventilation. While word of a holdup was spreading through the town, inside the bank the trio was getting on with the robbery.
Three people were working in the bank. Joseph Heywood was in charge of the vault. He was ordered to open it. The large door to a more secure area was open. The other area had a time lock on it, but it was new and was not yet operable. The robbers were told that they could not open it because of the time lock. The nature of this gang's success in the past had to do with getting in and out quick. This was taking too long and the total time reached 7 minutes. Charlie decided to try to bust into the vault himself. As he was passing through the large door leading to the vault, Heywood was able to slam the door on Charlie's arm. Charlie pushed back on the door, knocking Heywood to the floor. Frank put a bullet in Heywood's head. This robbery was not going well. One of the other three employees tried escaping through the back door. As he was running away, one of the robbers was shooting at him. The first shot missed, the second shot hit him, but he did get away. It was time to admit it was a bad day at work and to call it quits. What they never knew was that the vault had never been locked. If they would've tried opening it, they could've been in and out with $15,000 before the shooting began. One other point was that while Charlie was dealing with Heywood, the others were shaking the place down. They missed checking the cashier's drawer that had $3,000 in it. All they got away with was $27.
While all of this was going on inside of the bank, there was action going on outside. When the towns' folk became aware of the hold up, they got their weapons and started blasting away. One source stated that some were throwing rocks at the gang members. Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell were killed. All of them were wounded; Bob got it in the elbow, Cole in the hip, Jim in the jaw, Jesse in the thigh, Frank and Pitts both got hit in the leg. Bob's horse was shot.
By this account we can tell that there were definitely some people shooting that had extremely bad aim. These would be the people that get hired to have long shootouts in television and movie westerns. Maybe the town had a contest going where they got more points for hitting smaller more difficult areas to hit. Those who killed Miller and Chadwell were most likely the ones who lost the contest. Whoever shot the horse was probably eliminated from any future contests.
The death of a Swedish immigrant named Nicolaus Gustafson was attributed to a 75 foot shot by Cole Younger. It was suspected that because Gustafson did not know English that he couldn't understand what people were yelling when they hollered to clear the street. His tombstone reads, "A SWEDISH IMMIGRANT SHOT BY ROBBERS."
So that you can get a perspective of where this happened, Northfield is about 35 miles south of the Twin Cities.
The Youngers, James and Pitts got away into the woods. Many posses were formed. Over 1000 people were after them. Several days later, they were near Mankato which is about 60 miles southwest of Northfield. According to an interview with Cole, the gang decided to split up. This is common in old television and movie westerns in order to water down the size of the group pursuing you. If they were the first outlaws to do this, maybe their heirs could get residuals from all of those shows, probably not.
There are many varying accounts of the Younger Brothers and James Brothers. My guess is that the perspectives of many people confuse the facts. After this amount of time, it is doubtful that we will ever know many of the true details of these guys' escapades. Researching them and trying to find out the accurate details raised many more questions. I just had to pick a few interesting pieces to show how the Youngers wound up in Stillwater Prison history.
It's said that the Younger's and Pitts were on foot when a posse caught up with them near Madelia, Minnesota. This is primarily west, but a little south of Mankato by about 24 miles. There was a gunfight. The Younger's got wounded again. Pitts was murdered by a posse member. I say murdered, because he was shot while waving some type of a white flag trying to surrender. The Younger's were allowed to surrender. They could either plead guilty to murder and live or lose in court and be hung. Once again, they made a wise choice by pleading guilty to murder and staying alive. They were sentenced