MR. LARRY WOOD: Thanks for the introduction and thanks to the Archives for inviting me. I do make occasional trips up here to the Archives, but always in the past it has been to go over to that archives room and do research. This is the first time I’ve ever been here as a guest or as a speaker. So I appreciate the opportunity.
First off, I’ll talk -- tell you just a little bit about myself. The introduction told you quite a bit about me, but my major in English at Springfield. What’s now MSU is English. And like a lot of English majors I started out my writing career wanting to write the “Great American Novel” someday, you know, that’s what a lot of the English majors do.
But gradually over the years, as I was trying to break into print, I came to find out that I was a lot -- had a lot more success with non-fiction. So I gradually started, you know, specializing more and more in non-fiction and particularly when I started getting interested in genealogy. I started doing my own family history and I started getting interested in local history, spending time in the local -- you know, local history sections of libraries. And when I would run onto something interesting, I said, oh, that would be something interesting to write about. And I especially started getting interested in Quantrill and the guerrillas and the guerrilla warfare in Missouri during the Civil War.
So that was really where I first started writing about history; those type of topics. Prior to that, I had just been writing a little bit of anything and everything. Like I said, I thought, in the back of my mind I wanted to write the “Great American Novel”, but what I really wanted to write was just to see my name in print like a lot of us. So I wrote a little bit of everything, you know.
So anyway, I published -- like the introductory speaker said, I published several other Civil War books, but this is my first non-fiction book that is not related to the Civil War. And it kind of grew out of some magazines articles that I had previously written for magazines like Wild West and Ozark Mountaineer. Probably half the chapters in this book were originally published as magazine articles. I got to the point where I thought, well, shoot, I can just, you know, write a few more stories and I can put a whole book of these notorious incidents together, you know, so that’s kind of -- was the genesis of this book.
I sent off the idea to the Pelican; Pelican Publishing is in New Orleans and they liked the idea and said, yeah, they wanted to publish it so that’s how this book came about.
Most of the incidents covered in this book, not all of them but most of them, center around Springfield and Joplin. I know a lot of you people up here in Cole County and places like Miller County and Benton County and Camden County probably think, well, you know, we had a lot of our notorious incidents also and I’m sure that’s true. But I started with the area that I was most familiar with. You know, I grew up in the Springfield area and I’ve lived most of my adult life in the Joplin area. So those were kind of the two areas I concentrated on. However, I will say that I think I’m in the process of negotiating a sequel to this book so I’m going to kind of expand on the next -- second book and go out a little farther geographically into northern Arkansas and farther east of Springfield. I’m going to have one story about Texas -- a Texas County one and Franklin County way up towards St. Louis. I’m still not going to have a whole lot up in this exact neck of the woods, but I am going to be expanding out farther for my next book.
So anyway, the first chapter in this book is about Wild Bill Hickok’s shootout on the square in Springfield with Davis Tutt. If you’ve ever been to Springfield and gone on the square in Springfield you may have even noticed that they still have little plaques in the street marking the spot -- the approximate spots where each one of them stood when they had the shootout.
The Hickok-Tutt shootout was widely known as kind of the -- the gunfight that ushered in the era of the Old West shootout, you know. Prior to that time, they did it the old -- you know, Southern gentleman way where they backed up and they paced it off and turned and fired and they had seconds and all that sort of thing. So this was supposedly the first gunfight where they just kind of faced each other and pulled their guns and started shooting, you know, the Old West style shootout.
What lead up to it was a poker game -- there were really several things that lead up to it, but the immediate thing that lead up to the dispute between Tutt and Wild Bill was a poker game in which Tutt won Wild Bill’s Waltham watch or one of his surrogates won it. It’s not clear exactly whether it was Tutt himself or one of the people he was kind of bankrolling, but, anyway, he took -- Tutt took the watch as a debt and they had a dispute over what the amount of the debt was and Wild Bill said, if you walk across -- don’t walk across the square with that watch; if you do, I’ll kill you. And, of course, Tutt said that he would walk across it this very day if he wanted to. So anyway, Wild Bill went down on the square and just kind of waited for him, really. Just stalked him more or less and when Tutt started to cross the square sure enough he shot him.
A lot of the incidents happen immediately -- immediate wake of the Civil War. The notorious incidents had political implications left over from the war. This one really did not, but it did have implications in the trial, the aftermath, of this incident had some implications from the Civil War. Wild Bill, of course, had been a scout for the North, the Union Army. Tutt had served briefly in the Confederate Army. So there was that division. But what happened when they sent Wild Bill to trial for the killing of Tutt he was let off and a lot of the people -- you know, Southern sympathizers all felt like it was just kind of a bought verdict. That if he had not been a -- if Tutt had not been a Southern sympathizer, a former Southern soldier that Hickok probably would have been convicted because in Springfield they both had kind of notorious reputations. They were both kind of viewed as ruffians.
But, anyway, shortly after this incident -- I can’t get it to go -- okay. This is the square that I was talking about that shows the approximate spot where Wild Bill was standing and then across -- clear across the square there is the approximate spot where Tutt was standing at the time of the gunfight.
This is Maplewood Cemetery there in Springfield just off the square a few blocks and, of course, the tombstone on the right is his original one. The one on the left was just erected within the last several, I don’t know, ten to 15 years. I’m not sure exactly when. But, of course, it’s a replacement headstone. The one on the right is the original.
What I started to say was, right after this incident a writer for Harper’s Weekly Illustrated (sic) -- Harper’s Weekly anyway showed up in Springfield and wrote a real romanticized account of Wild Bill and all his -- this gunfight and also his escapades during the Civil War and prior to the Civil War. So really it was the gunfight in Springfield that kind of made Wild Bill Hickok a national hero, you know, it got him well-known.
What is that? Okay. I had a hard time seeing. I’m too close. That’s a picture of the Springfield square about the time of the Civil War. The reason that is in there is it goes along with the Chapter Two in this book, which is about the Regulators, vigilante Regulators of Greene County.
This is an incident that happened after the Civil War that did definitely have implications left over from the war. There was a group of outlaws centered around Walnut Grove who mostly were Southern -- you know, former bushwhackers, guerrillas, Southern people and they were committing outlaws – committing lawless deeds of crime and getting away with it. And so, this other group mostly Union, former Union formed what they called the Honest Man’s League to try and put a stop to it. And ironically, their very first victim was a former captain in the Union Army. So it wasn’t exactly a one-to-one relationship, but it was tended to be the Honest Man’s League as the Union sympathizers. One’s that were posing as the outlaw characters were mainly bushwhackers.
But this Captain Green that they killed, right at the very beginning, he had just kind of befriended some of the wrong people. He had fallen in with some of the crooks, some of the former Southerners and so they hanged him over close to Walnut Grove. Then one day -- a few days later about 200 and some of them rode from Walnut Grove into Springfield and gathered there on the square. That’s why those pictures are -- and gave speeches about how they were going to clamp down and drive out all the lawlessness from Greene County.
And this is a picture of a future governor, John S. Phelps. This picture was probably taken after he became governor, but at the time he was a prominent citizen in Springfield and he was one of the few that actually had the gall to oppose the Regulators and spoke out against them there that day on the square. You know each one of the speakers mounted an impromptu -- a wagon to use as an impromptu stage or whatever and they got up there and gave a little talk. And he was one of the few that actually kind of talked against them. But it didn’t do any good. They went ahead and drove -- went on down to Ozark and hanged a couple of people; an escaped prisoner that they caught down around Ozark. And pretty well did put a stop to lawlessness in Greene County. And they didn’t last very long because they really weren’t needed.
Okay. This is from the third chapter in the book. It too has a very much implication left over from the Civil War. This happened in Webster County not too far from Marshfield. There’s a church called Pleasant View Church. It’s actually closer to Elkland; if you ever know where the little town of Elkland is. But this is a depiction, of course, these are not pictures. The guy on the left is supposed Samuel S. Headlee.
He was a minister of Episcopal -- Methodist Episcopal Church and as a lot of you may know the Civil War tore the Methodist Episcopal Church apart and it became the Southern Methodist Episcopal Southern Church and Methodist Episcopal Northern Church. Well, at the time the Civil War was coming on he was the main preacher, but he was a very strong Southern -- you know, Southern sympathizer. Well, by the time the war was over though the Northern half of the church had taken over the church building, but the Southern half of it still claimed title to the building itself and there was a big dispute about it. And the -- Headlee said that he was going to try to take back the church for the Southern church -- for the Southern congregation and the Northern people said, well, if you do -- if you come and preach there, we’re going to -- there’ll be people there to kill you, you know, because he was actually acting against the law.
The great constitution had made it illegal for anyone who had ever supported or been in the Southern army or supported the Southern army to hold certain kinds of office or preach, or teach, you know, do a lot of different jobs. So he was breaking the law by even trying to preach. So he showed up on the day -- of the appointed day irregardless (sic) and tried to preach and they ran him away from the church. And so, he said, well, can I go preach on my own land? He had some land about a half mile away. And they told him, yeah, you can go preach on his own land to his own rebel brethren. And so, he started off, but then a couple of young guys came up and one of them killed him.
Oh. I forgot an important thing. Said, are you sorry you knocked down that Union flag at the beginning of the war? He had knocked down a Union flag there at the church, you know, at the beginning of the war.
This is all that remains of that church. It’s just a cemetery. It’s all that is there. That’s the old Pleasant View Church there close to Elkland. This is the, quote, “New” Pleasant View Church. As you can see it’s pretty old itself, but that’s the new church about a mile away from where the site of this incident happened.
Another chapter in the book has to do with what came to be known as the largest railroad-settler dispute in Kansas history. This happened just across the Kansas line from Missouri, down close to where I live in Joplin, at the very tip -- very corner of southeast Kansas. The two counties, Cherokee County and Crawford County; those counties were originally set aside in 1825 as a buffer between Osage Indians and Missouri settlers after the Osage were removed out of Missouri and located in Fort Scott in Kansas. And so, they had what they called the -- the neutral lands that were buffers.
And when the Cherokee and some of the other tribes were removed from Georgia and Alabama to Oklahoma territory, what’s now Oklahoma; that land was given to the Cherokee as an additional allotment of land. So it became known as the Cherokee Neutral Land. However, no Cherokees hardly ever settled on it, so at the time of the Civil War or right after the Civil War the Cherokees deeded it back to the government for them to act as their agent in selling it for them. And the government sold it to the railroad, the Fort Scott -- what’s it called? No, Kansas City, Fort Scott and Gulf Railroad (sic). There we go. The Kansas City, Fort Scott and Gulf Railroad (sic) and they got into -- then the railroad, of course, turned around and was trying to sell it to the settlers in individual parts -- you know, individual acreages and the settlers got into a big dispute with them because they thought they were being charged exorbitant prices. Some of them felt that they should get it just basically by squatters’ rights because they had already been there.
Anyway, eventually the whole thing erupted into violence in like the summer of 1869, I think it was. And that guy there is a -- was a congressman from Kansas who was actually one of the few people in political power who favored the settlers. He -- he made several trips to Washington D.C. lobbying on behalf of the settlers, but to no avail. The railroad prevailed anyway at the end.
And that is the railroad -- railroad bed as it looks today between Columbus, Kansas, and Baxter Springs, Kansas. It’s the same -- not the same railroad tracks, but it’s the same bed -- you know, it’s the same location.
Another incident in the book, another chapter, has to do with a guy called Jake Killian from Granby. That’s in Newton County, Missouri, close to Neosho. Jake Killian was a character even before this happened. He had gotten into a fight in the Civil War with a guy -- with one -- they were Union soldiers and he had gotten into a fight with one of his buddies over a poker game and his buddy had blinded him -- had shot him -- they struggled over a gun and Jake Killian ended up getting blinded in one eye.
But, anyway, that was during the Civil War. Then in 1869 there he had gone back to his hometown of Granby and he went to a traveling fair -- or traveling circus run by this lady’s husband, William Lake, and he -- it was a double-feature type of thing and after the first feature was over he refused to leave. They were putting them out so they would have to come back in and pay a second time. And he -- he was hiding and trying to see both shows for the price of one. And her husband, William Lake, came to try and put him out and anyway he ended up killing -- Jake Killian ended up killing her husband, William Lake.
And the reason -- part of the reason I have her on here is she, Agnes Thatcher Lake, later married Wild Bill Hickok, you know, so that’s kind of interesting.
And I was telling you about the story of Jake Killian getting blinded during the Civil War, well, he swore revenge on the guy that had done it and he went -- he found out that this guy -- I can’t think of his name right off hand. I don’t know, Watson, Wilson, something, I don’t know. He found out that the guy was over in Empire City, which is now part of Galena, Kansas, right across the border from Joplin, found out that he was over after mining -- after lead had been discovered over there at Galena and that he was -- Jake found out that -- or whatever his name is found out that -- or Killian found out that the other guy was over there at Empire City and went looking for him and even though he was, Jake Killian, was completely unarmed the other guy saw him coming and just went up to him and shot him dead. And they ruled it self-defense. Because -- the reason it was self-defense was because Jake Killian was such a notorious character and he had sworn that he was going to get revenge and he had been stalking this guy. So when the guy saw him coming he just got his gun and killed him even though Jake, himself, was -- was, you know, not even armed this time.
So that’s why Jake’s relatives wrote murdered on there, you know, because he really was murdered. But it was still ruled as self-defense, you know. That gravestone, by the way, is in Granby. Old Granby, what they call Old Granby Cemetery.
This next chapter has to do with the Bloody Benders. They were a family that lived out in southeast -- yeah, kind of southeast Kansas, close to Cherryvale. Do you know where Cherryvale, Kansas is? They ran a way station between Fort Scott and Independence. They were German and kind of eccentric -- you know, the people in the neighborhood thought they were kind of eccentric anyway. And what they were doing, of course, nobody knew it at the time was they were stealing -- killing people who were stopping at their wayside inn and killing them for their money. And they had -- their wayside inn was divided in two by what looked like a partition or a curtain and apparently their mode of operation was they would position the guy with his back to the partition, you know, sitting in a seat with his back to the partition and one of the Benders from the other side of the partition would hit him over the head with a hammer real hard and knock him out and then they would finish it off with -- by cutting his throat. And then they had a trap door and they would drop them down through the trap door and leave them there until dark when it would be safe to take them out into the garden or wherever and bury them.
And for -- this went on for like, oh, several months, I guess, before anybody in the neighborhood started getting suspicious and when they did start getting suspicious and started investigating the Benders made a run for it. And so they went to the Bender house and started digging around, the vacated Bender house and started digging around and they found like eight or nine different graves.
This by the way is a facsimile of the warrant that the Kansas governor issued for their arrest. This is their -- their building -- or their cabin, their wayside inn and back behind is where all the graves were found. And you can say that this is the Bender house taken on the day of the grave digging when they dug up all the graves. So, anyway, the Bender’s though had made a run for it and they -- they organized a posse to go after them and they finally overtook them somewhere down in Oklahoma territory, close to the Grand River, and, well, I started to say, I think, but I virtually know that they killed them -- you know, killed them and buried them all in a mass grave.
But when they got back no one -- none of the posse would say what had happened -- you know, well, why would they not talk? You know, the reason they didn’t talk is because they didn’t want to implicate themselves that they had taken the law into their own hands. Plus, in later years, some of the posse members finally did talk and, you know, that’s what they all said, yeah, that’s what had happened that they had overtaken and killed them. Yet, there’s a state -- the Kansas State Historical Society has a marker over there near the site of where it is saying, there at the very bottom, it says, their story is unresolved and it remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Old West. Well, it’s not unresolved. Anybody that knows what -- has read very much about it knows what happened, but anyway.
Another chapter in my book is about the Younger Brothers’ shootout with the Pinkerton agents in St. Clair County. It’s close to Osceola if you know where Osceola is. Exactly it was close to a little town called Roscoe, but the Youngers and the James brothers had just got through doing the Gad’s Hill robbery over in eastern -- way over in eastern Missouri and they had come back to their old stomping grounds around Monegaw Springs in St. Clair County which is where their grandfather had lived and where they had spent a lot of time as kids and that was their hideout around Monegaw Springs. So they came back over there and the Pinkerton agents came looking for them and caught up with Jim Younger and his brother John. They were staying at a friend’s house, Theodrick Snuffer -- pardon me.
And John wanted to go after Jim even though he was older and was a veteran of the Civil War was kind of -- more of the calm-headed one and he argued that, no, they ought to just let them go because they had gone on past Snuffer’s house, but Bob insisted -- or John insisted on going after them. So they did. They got their horses and rode after them. And Bob -- John ended up getting killed. He got slightly wounded.
One of the Pinkerton agents got killed, Detective Lull. A St. Clair county deputy that they had brought along -- that the two agents had brought along also got killed, Deputy Daniels. And then the other Pinkerton agent escaped. But it was a bloody shootout. And that’s a monument of the shootout in the vicinity that was just put up like in the 1990s, I think, some time not too awful long ago. And then there’s a real old one there that was put up in 1934. This happened in 1874, by the way, as you can see. What is this? Okay. I guess that’s all I have to say about the Youngers then.
All right. I mentioned Jake Killian a while ago as a notorious character from Granby. Granby produced more notorious characters for the size town it is than any town that I know of -- I mean, there were like five families of notorious characters that came out of Granby in the years immediately after the Civil War. And not only did they have like one member of their member was notorious, but they all -- if they had three or four brothers then all four of them were notorious, you know, that’s kind of the way it was.
I didn’t tell you about Jake Killian and all his brothers, but he had three brothers. One of them was hanged during the Civil War by bushwhackers after he had molested a woman at Lamar, Missouri, who was a wife of a Confederate guy, you know. And the bushwhackers caught up with him in Carthage where he had been jailed by his Union compadres for stealing. And the bushwhackers broke him out of jail and hanged him there close to Carthage.
Anyway, he had two other brothers. One of them committed the murder at the very same site where Jake had committed his murder. They set up a tent there in Granby. And then he had a third brother or younger brother who also committed murder. So, you know, the whole family were murderers. Anyway, this next chapter is also about a character from Granby called Hobbs Kerry. He, too, had a couple of brothers who were notorious, but I’ll just talk about Hobbs.
Hobbs was a miner there around Granby like anybody that lived in Granby was a miner same way as Joplin, you know, they were all miners that lived back in the 1870s, 1860s -- late ‘60s, 1870s. Of course, Joplin didn’t even get started until 1870, but, anyway, Hobbs drifted up to Joplin where he made the acquaintance of Bruce Younger who was the half-uncle of the infamous Younger Brothers. And by that connection, he ended up falling in with the Younger-James Gang and in the summer of 1876 he rode with the James-Younger Gang (sic) and participated in the Otterville train robbery in Cooper County over not too far southwest of Boonville, I guess it is.
So he decided there’s only one crime that he committed with the gang, but he got caught. He was the only one of them that got caught and he started turning state’s evidence and got off with a light sentence by giving the names of all the rest of them. And Jesse James, of course, wrote -- or somebody acting in Jesse James’ behalf wrote letters to newspapers talking about what a rat Hobbs Kerry -- and a liar Hobbs Kerry was and everything, you know. And that was shortly before they all took off to Minnesota to the Northfield deal is where they got wiped out up there.
This is an early scene from Galena; Galena, Kansas. As I’ve already kind of intimated Galena was a notorious lead mining town, too, similar to Granby, similar to Joplin, similar to Webb City; all those towns down around in the tri-state area down there were -- most to all of them were founded as mining communities and they all were in notorious places because they attracted such a notorious group of people, you know, adventurers and a lot of single men, a lot of gamblers, quite a few prostitutes, you know, just all kinds of notorious characters.
So, anyway, lead was discovered on Short Creek just across the state line there in southeast Kansas in 1877 and almost immediately there was a big rivalry grew up between Galena and its rival town Empire City. Empire City really had the -- all of the -- most of the mine rights and everything, but they had made the mistake of building their city -- their buildings and stuff up on a hill. And so even though the miners were working -- mainly working in the Empire City fields and working for the Empire City people they would go into Galena to, you know, go to the saloons and so forth because it was a lot more convenient.
So that lead the Empire City people to build up -- erect these great big barricades to try to keep the miners over there in Empire City and, of course, the Galena people wanted them to tear it down. They almost -- well, they did come to some violence. There was nobody killed, but they came to violence over it before Galena finally burned it down. And really it did avert the violence, but it’s just kind of an interesting story that they actually, you know, put up a barricade between the two towns.
They said, Empire City said, that they were doing it to retard the stench from Galena, you know –
(Laughter.)
MR. LARRY WOOD: -- because of all the -- what they -- Galena had what they called, Red Hot Street, and that was where all the saloons and the -- the dives and everything were located, you know, the houses of ill fame and all that. And so, they wanted to retard the stench emanating from Galena.
That is all that remains of Short Creek. That’s where the creek -- Empire City and Galena built their town on either side of that creek. Well, back then it was much more of a creek. Now, it’s just a little trickle thing. That’s about all there is left of it.
Jesse James, you can probably recognize who that is. Another notorious incident that happened in Galena or real close to Galena was the day that George Shepherd claimed to have killed Jesse James. George Shepherd, of course, was a Quantrillion. After the war -- in fact, at the end of the war he lead a group of Quantrillions to Texas including Jesse James and after the war he joined -- briefly joined the James Gang supposedly helped them do a job in Kentucky, I think, held up a bank in Kentucky. But by the time of this incident late 1870s, 1878 or 9, ’79 I think it is, he had gone back to Kansas City and had gone straight. And apparently had gone straight and was trying to earn an honest living and he was going to try to cooperate with Liggett, Sheriff Liggett of Jackson County -- or it may have been Clay County, I’m not sure which.
But, anyway, so he went and tried to infiltrate the James Gang, but it was with the understanding that he was cooperating with the authorities to try to arrest -- you know, breakup the gang. So he was able to convince Jesse and the rest of the gang to take him in and they started to Texas together and got down about to Galena and he was -- Shepherd was going to lay a trap for him and the people that he had recruited to help him to lay the trap for Jesse and his partners didn’t show up. So George was left there by himself and he still tried to go ahead and carry through with his plan and he shot at Jesse James, obviously, he didn’t hit him, but something happened.
Jim Cummins who was with Jesse James was there and there’s two or three other guys -- there was a big gun battle that took place and George Shepherd came galloping into Galena claiming that he had killed Jesse James and showing off his mangled leg as proof that he had killed Jesse James. And a doctor that went out was told -- was asked to come and treat the wounded people and he was -- seemed to be convinced that Jesse James was dead and that George Shepherd was telling the truth.
Well, you know, immediately everyone started saying -- well, the Galena headline in the newspaper said, “Does Jesse James the robber lie dead or George Shepherd lie living?”, you know.
(Laughter.)
MR. LARRY WOOD: So, anyway, so there was a big controversy on whether or not he was lying and if he was lying why? What was his motivation? And so on and so forth. And what -- something that just really didn’t occur to people at the time and what I think probably what really happened is that he probably actually thought he had killed him. I think that was his intent was to try and kill him. I think he probably shot at him and it was just a big gunfight and he thought he had killed him and so he took off bragging that he killed him and Jesse James seized upon the opportunity to try to fake his own death, which is what he did, you know, he -- he let rumors get circulated that he was dead, but they didn’t last too long. There’s an etching of George Shepherd.
Next chapter of the book is about the Bald Knobbers down around Taney County. You’ve probably all been to Branson and you know about the Bald Knobber Musical Show. It’s basically -- they get their name from the Bald Knobbers back in 1880. This was another vigilante group similar to the Regulators in Greene County only a lot bigger, more notorious and more well-known.
They were lead by a guy named Nat Kinney, the Bald Knobbers were -- if I can get him up there. He was an ex-saloonkeeper from Springfield. And that was one of the sources of friction between the two groups. There was Bald Knobbers and then the group that sprang up in opposition to them were anti-Bald Knobbers and, again, even 20 years later this thing had Civil War implications.
Most of the Bald Knobbers were ex-Northern sympathizers or Northern soldiers. Most of the anti-Bald Knobbers were ex-Confederate sympathizers or Confederate soldiers. But, anyway, one of the things that irritated people -- the anti-Bald Knobbers about him was not so much that he was trying to bring law and order to the county, but that he was an ex-saloonkeeper from Springfield that was trying to enforce their morality. They didn’t think he was a suitable arbitrator of their morality, I guess.
But, anyway, they -- their first acts of vigilantism was they dragged a couple of guys out of the jail there at Forsyth in Taney County and hanged them to a tree on Swan Creek and pretty soon the vigilante movement moved to Christian County and other nearby counties. This was a Bald Knobber from Christian County called Billy Walker. And there was another one, John Matthews, from Christian County. And there’s a simulated mask -- what a mask might have looked for the Christian County Bald Knobbers. That’s at the Christian County Museum in Ozark. Whoops, gone too far.
And the thing about the Christian County Bald Knobbers -- well, one thing that distinguishes them from the Taney County Bald Knobbers is they had more of this esoteric signs and stuff and initiation rites and they wore those hideous masks and stuff. So they were more off the wall even than the Taney County Bald Knobbers. But, also, another thing that was different about them is none of the Taney County Bald Knobbers were really ever brought to justice, whereas, those two guys I showed you plus one other they were actually hanged at a mass hanging at the Ozark Jail. They were all rounded up and the four ringleaders were scheduled to be hanged. One of them escaped and was never caught, but the other three were hanged there on the same day at Ozark in like 1888, 1887, somewhere around there.
A really sensational case that happened in Springfield or close to Springfield in the mid 1880s involved Emma Molloy. She was a spiritualist revival. Not spiritualist revival it’s a temperance revivalist; went around trying to get people to swear off booze and stuff. And she moved to Springfield in the summer of 1884 and conducted a series of revivals and then the following spring she bought a house out west of Springfield close to Brookline. And then about that time, this guy named George Graham with whom she had been associated in the publication of a revivalist tract back in Kansas the year before showed up and he started taking up with her foster daughter named Cora Lee.
And pretty soon George Shepherd (sic) and Cora Lee got married. But what George Shepherd (sic) had not told them was he was still married to his first wife.
(Laughter.)
MR. LARRY WOOD: So then Sarah Graham showed up and apparently to keep the women from finding out that he was still married to Sarah Graham he killed Sarah Graham and dumped her in a well there on Emma Molloy’s farm.
And they, Emma and Cora Lee, were implicated as accessories after the fact. And, of course, George Graham was charged with murder, but before he could get -- even come to trial they dragged him out and hanged him. If you know your way around Springfield they hanged him close to Grant Beach Park there in Springfield.
And it was really a sensational case, of course, because some of the testimony that the defense brought in -- they brought George Graham’s son by his first marriage to Sarah Graham a 10-year-old kid or something testifying that George -- he had seen his father and Emma and Cora all three in bed together at the same time. Just stuff like that, you know, really scandalous. And the fact that she was a preacher, you know, a revivalist made it even more so.
And there’s the Springfield newspaper reporting the incident right after it was discovered; found in the bottom of the well, 60 feet deep.
And this was a sensationalist tract that was published about the whole deal about the murder and the -- the lynching and the preliminary hearing of Cora Lee and Emma Molloy about a year after the murder. It was a sensationalist thing that was published.
Another very sensational case that happened -- involved two guys who were Union soldiers together in New York and after the war was over they became -- they remained good friends, good buddies and even lived on neighboring farms and everything seemed to be going fine except this older -- there was one of them, this J.J. White and he was a little bit older and more polished, more educated and the other guy was Ed Clum. He was a frowzier looking guy and not as well-spoken and so forth, but he married this young girl named Charlotte or Lottie. She went by Lottie. And J.J. White was a womanizer. Had been, I guess, all his life. So he started romancing his friend’s wife.
And it got so bad that J.J. White’s wife committed suicide. And shortly after this, Lottie Clum took sick and it was decided that it would be best if she comes west and stays with her sister at Lebanon, Missouri. Well, that was arranged and Clum agreed to it and everything and she went to stay with her sister at Lebanon. Well, J.J. White called -- I mean, obviously, predesigned with Lottie he also came west to Missouri and bought a farm down by Pierce City and came back to Lebanon and got Lottie and brought Lottie down to live with him in Pierce City.
Well, when Ed Clum got wind of it he came to Missouri to take Lottie back, but while he was in Pierce City he introduced himself as Lottie’s brother. So, I guess, he didn’t want to bring shame and embarrassment to her by saying, you know, didn’t want to have a scandal so he introduced himself as her brother and then he started back to New York with her and dropped her off at Lebanon ‘cause she was still sick after listening to a promise that she would come home when she got to feeling better.
He went back to New York, she turned around and went back to Pierce City.
(Laughter.)
MR. LARRY WOOD: Okay. This happened again. This happened a second -- the very same scenario kind of happened a second time. Again, he got her as far as Lebanon and she turned around and went back. And he went back to New York and got himself kicked out of the GA- -- whatever, the organization for Union veterans, the GAR, yeah, he got himself kicked out of the GAR for being drunk at a picnic and stuff and being obnoxious to people.
But, anyway, then he got word that Lottie had died so he came back to Missouri a third time and still even though Lottie was now dead he still went along with the charade that he was the brother of the dead woman, not the husband of the dead woman. And he and J.J. White went around – drove around Pierce City pretending to be best friends, you know.
And everything, again, seems to be doing okay until J.J. White took up with a 17-year-old neighbor girl. And then when they announced that they were going to get married that was the thing that snapped -- you know, whatever you call it -- broke the camel’s back. That was -- so he ended up killing both of them. Kills J.J. White and his 17-year-old lover; you know, if he killed J.J. White he probably would have gotten away with it. No one would have ever been able to find a jury to convict him, but he crossed the line when he killed the love struck 17-year-old girl, you know.
So, anyway, that’s the jail that he was initially taken to after it was found out that he had done the murders. That’s the 17-year-old girl’s gravestone in Pierce City Cemetery. And there is the day of the hanging in Cassville, Missouri, when they hanged Ed Clum for killing Ella Bowe and J.J. White. It was like 1887.
This chapter of the book -- I’m running out of time so I’m going to be real quick. This is about -- this is kind of -- really a petty gang of thieves over in Columbus, Kansas, but they ended up killing a Constable there in Columbus. So really they weren’t that notorious, but they did end up killing somebody.
This has to do with the Coffeyville -- Coffeyville, Kansas, attempt by the Dalton Gang to rob two banks at once. The notorious -- where they wanted to top the Youngers and the James’ by robbing two banks at once and they end up getting completely wiped out, the Dalton Gang did.
There they are -- there were four members of the gang and all four of them got killed. That’s the museum there at Coffeyville. That one was a tombstone showing where three of them were buried. That is a monument to the Defenders, Coffeyville Defenders. And that’s a picture of the Defenders there at the museum. And that is the museum in Coffeyville. And it’s dedicated not to the Dalton’s, but to the Dalton Defenders, you know, it’s to the people that defended the town against the Daltons.
And Bill Doolin was kind of a part-time member of the Dalton Gang and when the Dalton’s got wiped out at Coffeyville, he kind of took the remnants of the Dalton Gang and turned it -- made it into his own gang. You may have heard of the Doolin Dalton Gang or the Dalton Doolin Gang, anyway, Doolin took up where the Daltons left off.
And this is a bank building in Southwest City, Missouri, the very corner of South- -- the very corner that he robbed in 1894 with the remnants of the Dalton Gang. And unlike the Coffeyville fiasco, they actually got the best of it. They killed one townsperson and wounded another, whereas, the outlaws escaped unhurt.
That’s the Main Street of Southwest City as it looks today where the crime was committed. That’s Bill Doolin after he got killed about a year-and-a-half later.
This is another incident that happened in Galena, Kansas, the -- this family including an older lady that ran a house of ill repute and a guy called late at night with his friend. They were drunk and wanting to talk -- see one of the girls that lived there and they wouldn’t let him. So, finally, his friend went home and he was still drinking and about two o’clock in the morning decided he would go back by himself and when he did they ended up killing him and dumped him in an abandoned mine.
And the whole family was finally convicted of murder or lesser crime. They were suspected of killing several other people, but they didn’t really need the convictions on those counts because the conviction on Galbraith was all they really needed. He was the young man that tried to call at the house.
And that’s kind of about where their house would be today if it were still there. As you can see, I told you how the -- how much the mining was all around Galena and Joplin that’s why a lot of the land down around there still looks like, you know, it’s mine waste.
Another really interesting incident happened at Pineville. This was a gal named Cora Shepherd (sic) that helped rob the Pineville Bank. She dressed in men’s clothes. They called her the “second Belle Starr” and she was -- really made some headlines down around Joplin when she did that. That’s the warrant for her arrest from McDonald County. Pineville is the county seat of McDonald County.
And there you see her and her two sidekicks on the day they were arraigned and the preliminary hearing. They were kind of mugging for the camera.
Henry Starr is one of the -- kind of a unique character in that his outlaw career spanned both the Old West and the gangster era. He started out robbing banks and stuff in Indian Territory in the 1890s and around in there and he ended up getting killed in Harrison, Arkansas in 1921 when he tried -- he was driving a big touring car -- motor car and he and his gang -- and Henry Starr ended up getting killed by -- this is the bank president that killed him there in Harrison, Arkansas. And there he is dead there in Harrison after they killed him.
And some of the remnants of the Henry Starr Gang formed their own gang in the year and a half later and tried to rob the Eureka Springs, Arkansas bank and they also got the worst of the -- they ended up getting killed. These were the heroes of the town lined up after they had thwarted the bank robbery, you know, taking pictures of themselves; congratulating themselves. There’s two more of the heroes of the town. There they all are showing off their guns and stuff.
(Laughter)
MR. LARRY WOOD: And there’s one of the outlaws that they had killed. This was like in February of 1922, I think it was -- oh, sometime in 1922 anyway.
Okay. This is a guy called Roy “Arkansas Tom” Daugherty. He, too -- his criminal career spans both the Old West and the gangster era. He started out as a member of Doolin’s Gang. He participated in the shootout in Ingalls with the Doolin Gang and then he ended up getting killed in Joplin in 1924 after robbing several banks in the Joplin area, you know, driving high-powered cars. And he’s buried there in Joplin and I’ve got a picture here somewhere of the house he was killed in.
This is one of the banks he robbed. It was at Oronogo. This is another bank; it’s now the post office of Asbury, but it was a bank, also, and he robbed it. These are all little towns down around the Webb City, Joplin area. That’s the house he was living in at the time he got killed -- or he got killed in that house by the Joplin Police.
Ma Barker: I have this picture of Ma Barker. I’m not going to go back to it, but Ma Barker was born in Ash Grove; grew up in Aurora. Her sons grew up in Webb City, then they moved to Tulsa, but even after they became notorious as the Ma Barker Gang, the gang, a lot of them came back to the Webb City, Joplin area to lie low, to hideout. And I talk in this chapter about -- a lot about their killing of the Howell County Sherriff at West Plains. That’s the main part of the chapter.
This is their graves over in -- well, near Welch, Oklahoma. It’s fairly near Miami, Oklahoma. You may be more familiar with that.
The Young Gang -- Young Brothers is a notorious gang that killed the six police officers down around Springfield and it still ranks as the largest fatality for a shootout -- you know, in law enforcement history. Most -- the most law enforcement personnel getting killed in the same shootout at the same time. There were six of them that got killed by these two Young brothers because they went out to arrest them thinking, you know, they were just a couple punks and they had ten of them and only two of us -- or only two of them and ten of us, but what they didn’t understand was that the two had high powered rifles while the lawmen all had just pistols, you know. So they just started picking them off, you know.
That’s the house where it took place. It’s just west of Springfield close to Brookline. That’s their sisters that kind of helped them -- tried to help them make a getaway and stuff. Also, one of those sisters ended up later buying a -- buying a headstone and putting it on their grave. That’s another interesting story. A couple days after they did the mass murder there in Springfield they escaped to Houston, Texas where they themselves where killed by the Houston, Texas police in a shootout; brought back to Greene County, turned away at the Greene County line because they -- people didn’t want them buried in Greene County so they brought them -- took them back all the way to Joplin and buried them in the Joplin Fairview Cemetery. That’s where -- that’s where they are buried.
This is Bonnie and Clyde’s shootout house in Joplin; the most notorious incident in Joplin’s history probably. It’s been turned into a bed and breakfast, now.
(Laughter.)
MR. LARRY WOOD: Really. Yeah. And it’s owned by a former Baptist preacher there in Joplin.
(Laughter.)
MR. LARRY WOOD: Yeah. But, I guess, he likes outlaw stuff. I don’t know. That’s -- one of the interesting things about the Joplin deal is that’s probably what really made Bonnie and Clyde famous because they left behind these rolls of film, you know. And the rolls of film were developed and splashed all over the headlines all across the country. And pictures like this is what made them, you know, the romantic couple -- you know, posing for the camera, you know. And there that’s W.D. Jones one of their sidekicks.
I’ve got one of Clyde in here somewhere. Yeah. That was Bonnie and Clyde, you know, pretended to be pointing the gun at Clyde.
And the very last chapter in the book is about the notorious mass murder that took place in Joplin in the 1950, ’51 around in there. Bill Cook, this was when he was in reform school and he was probably only 15, 16 years old or something. But he was about 20 when he committed these notorious crimes.
He picked this family up on 66 and brought them back to Joplin, his hometown, killed them there in Joplin, dumped them in an abandoned mine and then took off to California and killed a couple people in California before these people were discovered and hauled up out of the mine. And so by then they had already brought him to justice out in California and they convicted him and executed him out in California. However, he, too, was brought back to Joplin to be buried and is buried in the -- that’s the day that they dug the bodies out of the mine, the abandoned mine.
And that’s the cemetery where Bill Cook is buried, it’s just north of Joplin. It’s called Peace Church Cemetery. And it’s an unmarked grave. Supposedly he was buried at night because they didn’t want any disturbances and, you know, people protesting and stuff but they -- they buried him kind of secretly, secret ceremony so it wouldn’t be –
Okay. I’ve already run a little bit over time. So anybody have questions you want to ask?
(No response.)
(Applause.)