Chasing Frank and Jesse James by Wayne Fanebust

Author:Wayne Fanebust
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2018-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

10

Missouri Outlaws Face Minnesota Justice

“Minnesota has shown the Governor and people of Missouri what to do with highwaymen.”

—The Faribault Republican (Faribault, MN), October 11, 1876

James McDonough, the chief of police for the city of St. Louis, Officer Russell, a St. Louis policeman, and C. B. Hunn, the assistant superintendent for the United States Express Company, came to Faribault to identify the prisoners as well as the three outlaws who had been killed. The Missouri men held court at the Barron House in Faribault, regaling the Minnesota men with tales about the outlaw exploits of the James–Younger gang, while displaying photographs of the gang members. Local authorities were warned to be vigilant and careful, for it was known that the gang had “many confederates” who would risk life and limb to affect an escape.1

McDonough would later be dismissed by a Minnesota newspaper editor as a “wind bag” who grossly overstated the danger of a jailbreak while boasting about how his presence and superior knowledge of the outlaws convinced people that the prisoners were not worthy of their sympathy. His published comments about the many people who came to the jail to have a look at the famous outlaws were thought to be “a libel on our people,” out of line and unworthy of a visiting police chief.2

But the St. Louis chief of police and the others were in Faribault on official business, and after examining the body of Pitts, McDonough, Hunn and Russell unhesitatingly recognized him as the outlaw Charlie Pitts. They were shown photographs of the dead Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell, and they recognized them as well. When taken to the jail, they identified two of the sullen men behind bars as Cole and Bob Younger and the third man as “Al Carter, a notorious desperado from Texas.” The St. Louis men insisted the man in jail with the messed-up face was not Jim Younger. Furthermore, they insisted that Jim did not go to Minnesota, rather he was in Texas, and “he was so badly wounded not long ago and could not have recovered” in time to participate in the raid. Jim Younger’s picture in the Minneapolis Tribune is labeled “Cal Carter, in Jail.”3

This was a mistake, of course, for the third man was Jim Younger. And no one knew that better than James Hardin Younger himself, the reluctant bandit who almost sold his horse and left the gang.4 Having been seriously wounded in the mouth, he was unable to speak. But when he was misidentified, he “shook his head in denial.” His brothers chimed in too. They were clearly aggravated that they could not convince the St. Louis crowd that the wounded man was not Al or Cal Carter, but their brother. It was as if Jim was suffering anonymously, and, moreover, he had been denied his claim to fame in favor of another.

There was at least one Northfield man who objected to the misidentification of Jim Younger. That man was Miles Church, who claimed to have purchased a horse from Jim Younger and had a bill of sale to prove it.

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