THE "BROOKLINE MASSACRE"

The Haunting Tale of Missouri’s Young Brothers

During the days of the Depression, stories of bank robbers like John Dillinger were splashed across the newspapers of America, making exciting reading for those who wanted to turn killers who got revenge on the banks who’d ruined so many people’s lives into heroic figures. But the story of the Young Brothers – and the deadly shootout in which they were involved in 1932 – was not a tale of folk heroes and bank robbers. It was a story of desperation, greed and horror, but strangely, it is rarely mentioned in the chronicles of the “Public Enemy Era” of the 1930s and was never widely known outside of the Ozarks region. It’s a tragically overlooked tale of violence, death, bloodshed – and ghosts.

The Young Brothers – Paul, Jennings and Harry – grew up on a small, 100-acre farm outside of Brookline, which was just southwest of Springfield. They were raised by a hard-working Christian couple, James David and Willie Florence Young, who undoubtedly hung their head in shame as three of their 11 children turned to a life of a crime.

The three brothers, who dubbed themselves the “Young Triumvirate,” seemed to be born under a bad sign. Juvenile delinquents who grew up to be petty criminals, they flaunted their disrespect for the law and despite a string of robberies and assaults, law enforcement seemed unable to pin anything solid on them. That changed in 1919 when Paul and Jennings broke into a small-town store outside Springfield and were quickly arrested with stolen merchandise. In light of the overwhelming evidence, they confessed to the theft and were sent to the state penitentiary in Jefferson City.

The pair was indifferent to the pain and humiliation they caused their family. James Young was inconsolable over the actions of his sons. It seemed that the burden of his sons was too much for him to bear and he grew sick and died while they were in prison. Only Mrs. Young continued to defend them, claiming that they were framed for the crime and didn’t deserve to be in prison. This continued for years. At one point, Mrs. Young was nearly arrested after police officers found stolen merchandise in her home. She claimed she knew nothing of the items (tires and rugs) stored in the farm house and Jennings stepped up and admitted to the crime so that his mother wouldn’t be charged with possession of stolen merchandise. While he was in prison, Paul and Harry committed numerous robberies and burglaries. Harry was back in the penitentiary in 1927, but soon all three were free again.

On June 2, 1929, Harry was driving recklessly through the town of Republic and was pulled over by City Marshal Mark Noe for drunk driving. Marshal Noe’s body was found outside of town in a ditch the following day – and one of the Young brothers graduated from small-time robberies to the murder of a police officer. Harry’s name and face were put out over the wire and he was hunted for over a year by officials throughout the United States and Canada. Somehow, though, he managed to elude capture, even though he returned to Missouri and went back to law-breaking with his brothers.

By Thanksgiving 1931, Paul and Jennings had joined their brother on the wanted list for stealing cars and taking them over state lines. Federal warrants were issued, along with state warrants for theft and Harry’s outstanding warrant for the murder of Mark Noe. Greene County Sheriff Marcell Hendrix made sure that word got back to the Young farm that he was tired of looking for Harry and believed that he had left the country for Mexico. Sheriff’s deputies and police officers from Springfield began staking out the Young family farm, believing that the brothers were occasionally returning home to see their mother. They were careful not to tip off Mrs. Young, who they were convinced would tell the boys that the police were watching.

In the meantime, the investigation into the Youngs’ activities continued. Federal and state officers in Oklahoma and Texas had linked the Youngs to stolen cars in Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa and Illinois, making up a car theft ring that was more elaborate than the authorities had ever seen up until that time. Despite the fact that the stake-out at the Young farm heated up, officers narrowly missed a visit by Jennings to the farm a few days after Thanksgiving. He allegedly passed through in a stolen Illinois car, headed for Texas. He may have stopped in again on his trip back north, but the authorities missed him again.

 

On Saturday, January 2, 1932, evidence indicated that Jennings -- and probably Paul and Harry -- were at the family farm. Since the farm was outside Springfield city limits, Chief of Police Ed Waddle handed the matter off to county authorities. Sheriff Hendrix organized the raid, gathering ammunition, as well as deputies and detectives. A total of 11 police officers went to Brookline and the Young family farm that day. Hendrix had been a friend and neighbor of the Young family for many years and did not believe the boys would hurt him, which is likely why no one contacted federal agents to assist in the arrests.

When the officers arrived at the farmhouse, they milled about for a few minutes, banging on doors and yelling for the brothers to come out. They thought they heard noises inside, but no one answered their calls. It was soon agreed that the men would fan out in front of the house, fire a gas canister into one of the upstairs windows and, after the gas had time to saturate the upper floor, the sheriff and a few others would force their way into the back door and flush the brothers out the front, where officers would be waiting. A detective fired a gas canister into an upstairs window while the other officers waited a few minutes before taking their assigned positions.

Sheriff Hendrix and Deputy Wiley Mashburn, accompanied by Detective Virgil Johnson, left the southeast corner of the house and walked to the kitchen door in the rear. In order to cover them, Chief of Detectives Tony Oliver waited out of sight behind a tree on the outside of a small lawn fence. Patrolman Charles Houser stood unprotected by the lawn gate. Detective Sid Meadows waited behind a tree outside of the lawn fence on the north side so that he could seeing anyone exiting on the northwest side of the house. Detective Ben Bilyeu stood in the open, near Tony Oliver. Detective Frank Pike and a civilian who came along for assistance, R.G. Wegman, were assigned to remain behind the officer’s cars so that they could cover the barn and shed. Detective Owen Brown and Deputy Ollie Crosswhite were at the northeast corner of the house so that Crosswhite could see into the downstairs windows. Essentially, the lawmen had the house surrounded, but they were unprepared for what happened next. 

Sheriff Hendrix banged loudly on the kitchen door. He, along with Deputy Mashburn, called out several times for the Young brothers to come out, unarmed and with their hands raised. There was no response from the house so the officers decided to kick the door open. Johnson forced the door from the center, with Hendrix and Mashburn on either side of him. The door creaked when the three men slammed into it and then crashed partway open. Mashburn raised his revolver and took one step inside. Suddenly, a shotgun roared in the kitchen and a blast of bird shot hot Mashburn in the face, ripping his skin apart and blowing both of his eyes out of their sockets!

Hendrix yelled and shoved into the opening left by Mashburn, just as the mortally wounded deputy was staggering backward onto the concrete sidewalk in back of the house. Another blast came from the shotgun inside, hitting Hendrix in the upper part of the right shoulder, just under his collarbone. The shot tore a ragged hole between his first and second ribs and tore open his chest. Hendrix fell to his knees, but did not collapse.

Deputy Mashburn, who was somehow still standing, continued to stagger backward. He swayed and stumbled and then fell down, cracking his head on the concrete. His body convulsed with pain as his hands fumbled over the bloody ruin of his face.  

Sheriff Hendrix must have seen his killer as he fell to his knees in the kitchen because he raised his gun to fire. But his torn muscles refused to function and the gun slipped from his fingers. He did not retreat. Instead, without saying a word, he crawled forward on the linoleum floor, inching his way forward in a growing puddle of his own blood, until he died at the feet of his murderer. Hendrix had come as a neighbor and friend to peacefully arrest the law-breaking sons of an honest and upright man, only to be gunned down by those sons for his generous efforts.

Detective Johnson, who had taken cover at the first shots, ran for the front of the house as Chief Oliver yelled to the others that Hendrix and Mashburn has been shot. Johnson turned at the gate and prepared to fire another gas canister into the house. He aimed and pulled the trigger, but it refused to fire. In his haste, he realized that the chamber had not been closed. He slammed it shut and raised the gun, but before he could fire it, it went off unexpectedly and sent the canister wide of its mark. It hit the outside of the house, bounced off and fell onto the front porch roof, where it started to burn. Johnson turned to Oliver and shouted that he had no more gas canisters.

Oliver instructed Johnson, along with the other officers, to take cover, have their guns loaded and extra ammunition at hand. He feared that a long and bloody siege was at hand. Deputy Crosswhite suggested that Oliver send someone to get long guns – rifles and shotguns – and to bring more gas and bullets. Oliver sent Johnson for ammunition and reinforcements and the detective made his way behind some trees to his car.

Just as he was backing up to turn around, Detective Bilyeu and the only civilian on the scene, R.G. Wegman, scrambled into the backseat. The gunmen inside of the house had come to the front room, likely wearing bullet-proof vests, and when they saw the three men starting to drive away, they opened fire on the car. Two bullets shattered the windshield, narrowing missing Johnson’s head, and exited through an open window. Three or four shotgun blasts from the house blew out the rest of the glass in the car and wounded Johnson. In spite of his injuries, he sped away toward Springfield to get more help.

When the men inside of the house opened fire on the automobile, Chief Oliver yelled for his men to fire into every downstairs window. In between shots, Patrolman Houser looked around for better cover and spotting a large tree across the yard, he made a run for it. As he slowed to peer around the front of the house to see if it was safe, a bullet that was fired from a south window hit him in the forehead. His head blew apart as the bullet plowed through his skull. “My God!” he shouted and fell to the ground with his legs and arms outstretched. He was likely dead before completed his fall.

The killers returned to the kitchen to try and escape the house. One of them peered out the back window and was spotted by Crosswhite, who opened fire until his gun was empty. One of the Young brothers, firing with a rifle, went to the dining room window and standing on a chair, fired at Crosswhite to keep his pinned down as one of his brothers slipped out the back door, crept up behind the deputy with a shotgun and blasted him point-blank in the back of the head. Crosswhite was killed instantly.

Chief Oliver, while continuing to fire at the house, looked over and saw that Detective Sid Meadows was dangerously exposed. He ordered him to fall back. Meadows replied that he was out of ammunition, putting his hands in his pockets, hoping to find a stray bullet or two. Moments later, shots were fired at Meadows, splintering the tree he was hiding behind. Again Oliver ordered Meadows to fall back, trying to cover him by firing round after round with his pistol toward the house. Meadows started to move, leaning cautiously around the trunk of the tree, looking for his break. As he stuck his head out, a bullet from the house hit him just above his right eye. His head snapped back and he fell to the ground. He also died instantly.

Detective Pike leaned out from behind his tree and sent a steady roar of bullets into the house. He was answered by several shotgun blasts from a north window. Most of the shot went wild, but several pellets struck Pike in the left arm. Fearing that they were all going to be killed, Chief Oliver ordered Pike and Brown to make a run for the barn.

Before he could move, Oliver became the target for the shots from the house. The tree where he hid was ripped apart by shotgun blasts and he took a step backward to keep splinters from spraying into his eyes and he was hit hard by another blast, which ripped apart his heavy overcoat and clothing and tore into his flesh. In pain, he forgot his perilous position and stepped to the right, exposing that side of his body. He was struck by a rifle bullet, but did not fall. Bleeding badly, and struggling to stay upright, he ran for the cover of a nearby automobile. A second bullet hit him in the back, entering just below his left shoulder and bursting outward from his chest. Oliver pitched forward, sprawling in the dust next to the patrol car. He died painfully, slowly bleeding out as his chest cavity filled with blood.

Only two officers remained alive, Detectives Owen Brown and Frank Pike. They heard a yell from the house: “Lay down your guns and come up! We’ve killed the others!”

Both men refused to answer the killer’s demands but knew that they were now hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. They had no choice but to run for their lives.

With all of the lawmen either dead, dying or running away, the killers – suspected to be Jennings and Harry – came out into the yard. They yanked the spark-plug wires from the sheriff’s car, grabbed what guns they could easily find, and went back into the house. The searched the sheriff’s body, which was lying in the kitchen, and found his wallet, which had several hundred dollars in it. They hurriedly packed some clothes, along with five stolen revolvers, a rifle, a shotgun and dozens of rounds of ammunition and shotgun shells, into two traveling bags and began running. Investigators later believed that they fled through cornfields and orchards on foot, escaping in a northwest direction.

When Johnson returned with additional officers, weapons and ammunition, he could scarcely believe the horrific scene. Dead and dying men were strewn about the farm and the killers had escaped. Detectives Brown and Pike were soon located and Pike’s wounds were treated. Despite the seriousness of his wounds, Deputy Mashburn was still alive when Johnson returned, but he died later that evening.

This brought the death toll to six – a record number of lawmen killed during one incident.

Many would find it hard to believe that just two men had held off the raid and killed six lawmen, but both were considered to be expert marksmen. They also had the high ground from the second floor of the house and considering that the police officers, armed only with pistols, were poorly prepared for a shootout and had little cover in the yard outside of the house, it was feasible that two men could carry out the massacre.

A full-scale investigation was launched into the shootout, as was a nationwide manhunt for the perpetrators. Another of the Young brothers, Oscar, confirmed to lawmen that Harry and Jennings were the only two family members at the house that fateful day. Despite rumors that famous bank robber “Pretty Boy” Floyd was at the Young farm that day, it was later determined that he was in Texas at the time of the massacre. The hunt was on for the Young brothers, but with no solid leads, the authorities had to wait for them to resurface.

They soon turned up in Texas, identified after wrecking the car they were driving. But the real break in the case came about because of a nosy telephone operator.

Mrs. A.E. Gaddy, a local operator, overhead a conversation with the sheriff’s department about the wrecked car, but she said nothing about it to her family. Later that evening, her son was listening to a radio broadcast on station KMOX out of St. Louis and heard a story about the massacre in Brookline. The story included descriptions of Jennings and Harry Young. When he mentioned it to his mother, she instantly remembered the overheard conversation to the sheriff’s department. She told her son about it and out of curiosity, the young man called the farmer who picked up the men from the wreck to get descriptions of the two men. After talking with him, he became convinced that the occupants of the wrecked car were Jennings and Harry. He immediately contacted Prosecutor Dan Nee in Springfield and explained the situation.

At the time of Gaddy’s call, which was just 24 hours after the massacre, Nee, his assistant Horn Bostel, Federal agents Burger and DeMoss and three Frisco Railway detectives, Wilson, Nolan and Arndt, were questioning Mrs. Young and her two daughters, Lorna and Vinita, about the events at the farm. The three women said that they had been away visiting relatives when the massacre took place.

Nee gladly took Gaddy’s call and was convinced that the possible lead was worth checking out. He phoned the Navarro County officials and from them, he obtained the serial numbers on the guns. Nee knew that the brothers had connections in Houston and other Texas cities, where they operated their auto theft ring. Even though it was late, he and the other investigators began wiring and calling law enforcement agencies in south Texas to be on the lookout for Harry and Jennings Young.

Early the next morning, Nee and his men learned that the two occupants of the wrecked car had hitched a ride from the scene of the accident and told driver Isaac Levy that they were anxious to get to Houston. He was certain that they were on the trail of the Young brothers. The prosecutor pushed Texas officials even harder in his efforts to get them to use every possible resource to apprehend the murderers.

By Sunday night, the Youngs had arrived in Houston and managed to stay hidden, despite the local police pulling out all stops to find them. Lawmen raided the known hangouts of the Young brothers and questioned their friends and associates, but no one seemed to know where they were. Despite the heat that was placed upon them, Harry and Jennings managed to stay one step ahead of detectives and elude capture. Additionally, the bags of clothing and stolen guns, which they had packed and then left behind at their mother’s house, somehow found their way to Houston and were retrieved by the brothers at some point on Monday. It was later suspected that their brother Paul may have gotten the bags from Missouri to Texas without being detected. Detectives quickly learned that it was not just Mrs. Young who was trying to keep the brothers out of prison.

On Monday afternoon, a Houston police officer believed that he spotted Harry Young, but lost him in a crowd. Early on Tuesday morning, January 5, a carpenter named J.F. Tomlinson called the police to report that he had seen pictures of the Youngs in the morning newspaper and that they resembled the men he had rented a room to the previous afternoon – and they were sleeping in his house at that moment.

Police officials quickly put men into action and gathered there near Tomlinson’s home. They made hurried plans to raid the carpenter’s small bungalow and capture the Youngs, dead or alive. They moved in on the house shortly after 9:00 a.m., surrounding the place with lawmen armed with every conceivable type of weapon, including handguns, rifles, gas grenades, smoke bombs and Thompson machine-guns.

Lieutenant Claude Beverly of the Magnolia Park substation was placed in charge of the raid. He led the way to the front door, grabbed the doorknob and pushed into the house, followed closely by Officers Peyton and Bradshaw. Tear gas canisters were hurled through a rear window into the bedroom where the outlaws were believed to be sleeping and then tossed into the front room of the house. Allowing time for the gas to spread through the rooms, Beverly walked down the hall and found another visitor to the house, who was handcuffed and taken outside. Beverly and Peyton continued to the rear bedroom door, threw it open and stormed inside – to find it empty. The Youngs were not in bed, or hiding beneath it. The closet was empty. One of the officers then stepped toward the bathroom door, turned the knob and started to open it, just as three blasts hit the other side of the door, barely missing the lawmen. They retreated to the kitchen and positioned themselves so that they could see the bathroom door. Things were eerily still for a moment and then the bathroom door opened slightly and one of the Youngs peeked out.

Beverly fired point blank at the face with a sawed-off shotgun. The door slammed shut and from inside the bathroom, several shots rang out. Someone behind the door shouted, “We’re dead – come and get us!” Suspecting a trap, Beverly kept his men back until another gas canister could be tossed inside. Then, they unlatched the door and pushed. It stuck before it could be opened all of the way, but once they pushed on it, the barricade moved inside. A body had been blocking the door. When they got into the bathroom, they found Jennings Young lying dead in a pool of blood. Harry Young was bleeding badly, but he was still breathing. The two of them had shot each other so that they could never be taken alive.

Harry Young was placed in an ambulance and rushed to St. Joseph’s Infirmary, where he died soon after arriving. He did not regain consciousness on the way to the hospital so the detectives that accompanied him were unable to get a deathbed statement from him. It’s unlikely that he would have made one anyway. The Youngs were merciless killers and never regretted the crimes they had committed or the destruction they caused to their family.

The two men were laid out on cold slabs in the Houston morgue, 700 miles from Springfield, where widows and fatherless children were mourning the loss of their husbands and fathers at the hands of the now deceased outlaws. There was no rejoicing in the Ozarks over the bloody end of Harry and Jennings Young, but the final act was over and the Youngs had come to a rather inglorious end.

The story of the Young brothers became little more than a forgotten footnote in the annals of Depression-era crime. Outside of the Ozarks, few people ever heard of the infamous brothers and the deadly massacre that claimed the lives of six policemen in 1932. Strangely, though, reports from what was once the Young family farm seemed to determine to make sure that the bloody day was not entirely forgotten.

According to subsequent owners of the farm house, strange happenings began taking place not long after the Young family moved out of the house. After the massacre, the house was repaired and the damage from countless bullet holes was covered over and hidden away, just like local memories of that horrible afternoon. The house was eventually sold and new families moved in over the years, almost every one of them encountering what seemed to be echoes of the house’s past.

Bizarre temperature drops were common in the house, as were knocking and banging sounds on the walls, thudding footsteps in empty rooms, voices and music that seemed to come from nowhere and feelings as if the residents were being watched. On several occasions, a woman who lived in the house complained of seeing faces looking in the window. When investigated, no one was ever there – including one winter’s night when there was snow on the ground. She knew that a man in an old-fashioned, fedora-type hat had been looking in the window, but when her husband went outside to look, he found no man – and no footprints on the snowy ground. Could this be a paranormal recreation of police detectives looking into the windows, trying to find out where the Young brothers were?

All of the odd happenings in the house seemed to be little more than memories of the past, replaying themselves over and over again, except for one report, which told of something a little more frightening. On several occasions, a woman who once lobed in the house stated that she had awakened on several occasions to find a dark figure standing at the end of her bed. When she tried to move, the figure grabbed hold of her legs and wouldn’t allow her to move. Then, he vanished and she was free. She later said that she would have believed that she dreamed the entire incident, if not for the fact that she woke the next morning to find dark bruises on her legs that looked exactly like handprints!

What haunted the old Young brothers farmhouse? Was it merely a bit of bad energy left behind at a place where men fought, killed and died? Or was it something else? Had the ghosts of the Youngs returned to prey on the living, just as they had when alive, or were they returning in despair to the one place where they had felt safe in life? A place where their mother always protected them?

That troubling question remains unanswered.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE JESSE JAMES

J. FRANK DALTON, ROUTE 66 AND THE CAVE THAT THEY BOTH MADE FAMOUS

On April 3, 1882, outlaw Jesse James was shot to death in St. Joseph, Missouri by Robert Ford, a member of Jesse’s gang. This ended the life of one of post-Civil War America’s most famous outlaws – or did it? According to a man named J. Frank Dalton, Jesse James actually faked his death in 1882 and in 1949, he was still alive and well and living at Meramec Caverns in Missouri. How did he know? Well, because Dalton claimed to be the famous outlaw!

The story of J. Frank Dalton is inextricably tied into the history of Meramec Caverns, a roadside attraction made famous by Route 66, the legendary “mother road,” which linked Chicago to Los Angeles and inspired songs, stories, countless road trips and captured the imagination of America. The story of the “man who would be Jesse James” is one of the weirdest stories ever told about Route 66.

Vintage photo of the entrance to Meramec Caverns

To tell the story of J. Frank Dalton, we first have to tell the story of Meramec Caverns, which became a familiar landmark along Route 66 as it traveled west of St. Louis. Located just three miles off the highway, down a twisting road that leads from the town of Stanton to the Meramec River, the cave was commercially developed in the 1930s by Lester B. Dill, a Missouri farm boy with the cleverness of P.T. Barnum. “I have put more people underground and brought them out alive than anyone else,” Dill often boasted and no one could dispute the claim.

Lester Dill was born in 1898 and was the second of nine children. He was only six years old when his father, Thomas Benton Dill, ventured into Fisher’s Cave, across the Meramec from the family farm, for the first time. By the time he was 10, Lester, guided by a kerosene lamp, was taking tourists from St. Louis on guided cave tours. Over the years, Dill continued to explore the many caves of the Meramec Valley. Later, Dill and his wife, Mary, followed the oil boom in Oklahoma, dabbled in Florida real estate and then moved to St. Louis, where Lester worked a carpenter. In 1928, when his father was appointed the first superintendent of the new Meramec State Park, where Fisher’s Cave was located, Lester came back to the area. He signed a contract with the state and launched a cave-guiding business, complete with souvenirs and homemade food.

Lester Dill

A few years later, when the state contract expired, and the country in the midst of the Great Depression, Lester began searching for his own cave to develop. He finally decided to lease Saltpeter Cave, which was just a few miles downstream from the park. Spaniard Hernando De Soto was said to have discovered the cave in 1542 and a couple of centuries later, it was explored by a French miner named Jacques Renault. During the 1800s, the cave was used by saltpeter miners for storage and shelter and legend had it that escaped slaves were sheltered there as they made their way to safety in the northern states. There were also stories that outlaws, including the famous Jesse James gang, found refuge in the cave and may have even left some of their ill-gotten gains hidden somewhere inside.

The legends of the cave were important to Lester but even more important was the cave’s proximity to Route 66, America’s most traveled highway. Dill knew that if he got the word out, the tourists would beat a path to his door. He renamed the new attraction Meramec Caverns and hired a local sawmill crew to construct a road to the cave. Meramec Caverns opened on Decoration Day (Memorial Day) 1933 and a total of six visitors paid 40 cents per person to follow Lester Dill through the damp passageways. It was not a great start, but Lester was not worried. He eventually bought the property and put almost every cent that he earned into improving and promoting the show cave.

 For the first three years of the cave’s operation, the entire Dill family, including the children, worked day and night. They even lived in a tent at the site. The battled treacherous ice on the steep road between Route 66 and the cave entrance and in the spring, built brick dikes to hold back the river and keep it from turning the parking lot into a lake and flooding the cave entrance.

Visitors that managed to make it to the cave always left with a Meramec Caverns sign tied to their bumper. School children that were hired by Lester saw to it that a sign was attached to the bumper of each and every automobile that stopped at the cave. Later, the job became easier when adhesive was developed for the backs of the bumper signs. In 1940, while he was exploring an unknown part of the cave, Lester found some rusted guns and an old chest, which he claimed had belonged to none other than Jesse James. Immediately, the words “Jesse James’ Hideout” was added to the bumper stickers.

A Meramec Caverns Barn, which are still around today

Besides the millions of bumper stickers attached to cars and the brochures handed out to tourists, Lester promoted the cave by posting signs, mostly painted on barns, along highways in as many as 40 states. Lester and his crew scoured the countryside, especially along Route 66, searching for just the right barns for their eye-catching signs. To entice the farmers who owned the barns, Lester handed out watches, pints of whiskey, and free passes to the cave.

During World War II, when gas rationing hit, Lester went down Route 66 to Fort Leonard Wood, a large basic training camp, and convinced the army to convoy troops to the cave for maneuvers. Hundreds of soldiers camped in the river bottom and marched into the cave in full battle dress. Every night, Lester through dances for the soldiers in the cave and gave special rates to anyone in uniform.

Francena, one of Lester and Mary’s daughters, married one of the soldiers – Rudy Turilli, a handsome Italian from New York. After the war ended, Rudy became the general manager of the cave and handled most of the promotion and publicity. It was Turilli who discovered a man named J. Frank Dalton in 1949 who raised eyebrows by declaring that he was actually Jesse James – but more about that soon.

One of the famous bomb shelter tickets issued by the cave

In the early 1950s, during a time when Americans were preoccupied by the Cold War, Meramec Caverns became known as the “safest bomb shelter in the world” when Lester and Rudy offered the cave to the government as a haven from atomic blasts. He created a passage in the cave to be used as a shelter and stocked it with rations and thousands of gallons of water. Visitors paid to visit this part of the cave and as an ominous incentive to return, were given tiny cards with the admission tickets – cards that promised them a spot in the fallout shelter if the “Big One” ever hit.

Lester and Rudy never missed an opportunity to promote the caverns and celebrities from Kate Smith and Pearl Bailey to Lassie toured the “world’s only five-story cave.” In 1960, Lester dubbed a small nook in the cave the “Honeymoon Room” and managed to get it featured on the Art Linkletter Show. For the show, they dressed a honeymoon couple in leopard skins, confined them to the room and promised them a free trip to the Bahamas if they could find a hidden key within 10 days. Each time a tour passed, the caveman couple were required to act out a skit. The humiliation – and the publicity – lasted the full 10 days since Lester and Rudy didn’t actually hide the key until day 10.

Toasted on network television shows and in the press as “America’s Number One Cave Man”, Lester Dill died in 1980. Despite the passing of the man who put Meramec Caverns on the map, the cave remains in family hands and continues to draw big crowds every summer. The cave was an icon on Route 66 and remains a permanent attraction after all of these years.

But it was the cave’s connection to Jesse James that drew the most visitor’s over the years – especially when Jesse James himself was alleged to take up residence there.

Outlaw Jesse James

There is no question that Jesse James was one of the most famous outlaws in history. Born and raised in Missouri, Jesse rode with Quantrill’s Raiders during the Civil War and unable to surrender after the war ended, he, his brother and their gang of cousins and friends wreaked havoc with banks and trains all over the Midwest. He remains an intriguing man, portrayed as both a cold-blooded killer by Pinkerton detectives and a “Robin Hood” rebel by friends and neighbors; he became a legend over the years. It’s little wonder that the grave itself had trouble keeping Jesse James in it. History states that Jesse was shot to death by Robert Ford on April 3, 1882 – shot in the back while straightening a picture on the wall. But the official account of Jesse’s death was just too mundane for his admirers to accept. In 1902, Jesse’s body was actually exhumed and reburied to make sure it was safe. Less than five decades later, nearly a dozen old men came out of the woodwork, each of them calling the corpse a counterfeit and each claiming to be the authentic Jesse James.

One by one, most of their stories were shot full of holes but one of them managed to capture the attention of Rudy Turilli, the son-in-law of Meramec Caverns owner Lester Dill. Rudy had been fascinated by the legend of Jesse James for more than 20 years. When all of the old men came forward claiming to be Jesse, he discredited all of them – except for J. Frank Dalton.

By 1948, Rudy was heir apparent to the caverns and followed his father-in-law in proving that he knew how to promote the cave. He and another fellow participated in a stunt that made world news. The two men climbed the Empire State Building and threatened to jump off unless everyone in the world went to Meramec Caverns! The authorities eventually talked them down. Rudy and his friend spent nine days in jail but the story made newspapers all over the country.

J. Frank Dalton -- the man who claimed to be Jesse James

When Dalton’s claim on the Jesse James name was first reported in Lawton, Oklahoma, Rudy and Lester assumed that he was another fraud. However, neither one of them was content with just ignoring the story. Meramec Caverns had a huge investment in Jesse James. They had been promoting the cave as Jesse James’ hideout for a number of years and the discovery of a strongbox that had been taken during a James train robbery turned up in an uncharted section of the cave seemed to offer proof of the story. If Jesse was still alive, Rudy and Lester were determined to find him.

Rudy traveled to Oklahoma to meet Dalton and became intrigued by what he found. The bedridden old man who claimed to be Jesse James was winning over the skeptics. The press was starting to put its confidence into print and no interviewer seemed able to poke a hole in his story. Most interesting of all, the self-proclaimed outlaw had a reason why he’d kept silent for so long. Dalton claimed that Robert Ford had actually shot Charles Bigelow, another James gang member, in 1882. Bigelow’s brains were blown out and he was buried under Jesse’s name so that the real outlaw (i.e. Dalton) could live in peace. Missouri Governor Crittenden had been in on the ruse. Dalton and the rest of the gang had made a pact to disclose their true identities only after they reached the age of 100.

Rudy, still skeptical, examined Dalton with a magnifying glass and was stunned to discover damage done to the old man’s body agreed with reports or injuries sustained by Jesse James – from a mutilated tip on the left hand index finger, to evidence of severe burns on both feet, a dropping right eyelid, and bullet scars along the left shoulder, hairline and abdomen. If Dalton wasn’t Jesse James, he’d groomed himself from head to toe, leaving out nothing, to make himself appear that he was. Rudy began making arrangements to bring Dalton to Stanton. He was planning a birthday celebration for the man that he believed was the legendary outlaw.

During the planning, Dalton told Rudy to try and track down some of the other living members of the gang and Rudy found John Tramell, a cook. Rudy told the man that Jesse James wanted him to come to Meramec Caverns for his 102nd birthday party, but Tramell swore that he didn’t know the man. When Rudy went back to Dalton for an explanation, he was told that since he didn’t know a secret password, Tramell wouldn’t talk with him. When asked why he didn’t offer the password originally, Dalton said that he wanted to make sure that Rudy could be trusted. Dalton gave him the password and this time, when he returned to Tramell, the old man agreed to come to the party.

Dalton was given a cabin on the Meramec Caverns property where he could live. He drank heavily and gained an abiding hatred for reporters. He was friendly with everyone else, but grew to despise reporters, who bothered him day and night. Dalton asked for a six-shooter and would actually shoot holes in the ceiling of his cabin to scare the reporters away. Rudy and Lester became concerned that he might actually kill someone, so they started taking the powder out of the bullets and replacing the lead. This plan didn’t work well because Dalton picked up the bullets and knew they were light, so he demanded a full load.

While Dalton was busy fending off reporters, Rudy was working hard to secure Dalton’s legitimacy. Over the years, his faith in Dalton led to him appearing on What’s My Line? and The Tonight Show. Rudy appeared in newspaper after newspapers and in men’s magazines, where he offered $10,000 to anyone who could prove Dalton was a fraud. The story brought so much publicity to Meramec Caverns that Rudy created his own tribute to Dalton in the form of the Jesse James Wax Museum in Stanton.

Today, the museum still stands along Route 66 in Stanton. Inside, life-sized figures of Dalton, Rudy Turilli, Cole Younger and others greet visitors. Firearms that purportedly belonged to the James gang can be found in glass cases and antiques like Frank James’ bathtub and a barber chair in which Jesse received his last trim are on display. There are autopsy photographs and a computer-enhanced projection that turns a 34 year-old Jesse James into an elderly J. Frank Dalton, plus a study in 12-inch ears that allegedly proves that the lobes of Dalton and Jesse James were a perfect match.

Before Dalton’s death, Rudy and Lester petitioned the Franklin County Circuit Court to change Dalton’s name back to Jesse James. With hat in hand, Dalton was carried into the courthouse on a stretcher. Judge Ransom A. Breur dismissed the whole thing as the publicity stunt that it probably was. He said: “There is no evidence here to show that this gentleman, if he was ever Jesse James, has ever changed his name. If his name has never been changed from Jesse James, he is still Jesse James in name, and there is nothing for this court to pass on. If he isn’t what he professes to be, then he is trying to perpetrate a fraud upon this court.”

What that, Lester and Rudy returned to Meramec Caverns and J. Frank Dalton remained a mysterious and grumpy old man for the remainder of his life. He died on August 16, 1951 during a visit to Granbury, Texas. If he really was Jesse James, he was 103 years, 11 months and 10 days old.

But was Rudy Turilli’s belief that J. Frank Dalton was Jesse James actually correct?

In 1995, Professor James E. Starrs (a law professor, not a forensic scientist) from George Washington University exhumed the body of Jesse James that was buried in Kearney, Missouri – only one of two gravesites of James. Based on DNA comparisons with living members of the James family, it was ruled that the body in the grave was actually that of Jesse James. Not surprisingly, though, there was a lot of controversy about the findings, the quality of the evidence and why distant relatives were used for the tests when Jesse’s mother, Zerelda, was buried nearby. Supporters of the J. Frank Dalton claims scoffed at the findings and swore to produce their own tests of Dalton’s remains.

At this time, the death of Jesse James and the truth behind the tales of J. Frank Dalton remain a mystery...

FRANKIE AND JOHNNY -- A "KILLER" SONG

You might not recognize the song by name, but you've heard it. In fact, it's been recorded 256 times by artists like Lead Belly, Jimmie Rodgers, Les Paul and Mary Ford, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger, Sam Cooke, Lena Horne, Bob Dylan, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, Van Morrison, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Jack Johnson.  It tells the story of a woman, Frankie, who finds that her man Johnny was "making love to" another woman and shoots him dead. Frankie is then arrested; in some versions of the song she is also executed. It was originally penned by a St. Louis songwriter named Jim Dooley and while he took some liberties with the tale, he was inspired by a real-life murder. But how close did he stick to the story? Not close at all, declared Frances Baker, reputed to be the "Frankie" of the song.

France Baker of St. Louis -- "Frankie" of the popular song

In fact, there was nothing that made Baker angrier than hearing "Frankie and Johnny," especially since her St. Louis neighbors knew that she was the woman immortalized in the ballad. Baker never denied that, as an emotional 22-year-old in 1899, she shot her 17-year-old boyfriend (name Allen, called Albert and not Johnny) but what made her angry is the song's description of her as a loose woman.

Even after she was acquitted of murder on the grounds of self-defense, there was no escaping from the song's claim that she was of "easy virtue." She felt publicly humiliated and tried to escape her shame by moving to Omaha and then Portland, but the song followed her. And the embarrassment did not end there. A play, and then a movie in 1936, dramatized the song's love triangle. In 1942, Baker decided that she had put up with enough and sued Republic Pictures for defamation of character. More than 42 years after the shooting, "Frankie" was able to tell her side of the story. 

She was nothing like the character in the song, she said. She did not wear diamonds of fancy clothes and her income was not derived from loose morals, but from "washing and ironing and scrubbing steps." She even claimed that she was not upset when she found out her boyfriend was seeing Alice Pryor. She was asleep when Albert came to her house -- intent on killing her, she told the court. He threatened her, first with a lamp and then a knife. Luckily, Frances kept a silver-plated pistol at her bedside and she shot him -- not three times like in the song, but just once as he was standing next to her bed. 

Baker was so convincing with her story that the court ruled against her -- the jury wasn't even sure that the song was about her at all. It turned out that there were other versions of the song, with female characters with names like Annie and Lilly. In the end, Baker lost the suit.

But she went to her grave believing that she had been humiliated. She returned to Portland and in 1950, was committed to a mental institution. She died there two years later, at the age of 75.
  

THE KANSAS CITY MASSACRE

THE KANSAS CITY MASSACRE

The sun was shining brightly over Kansas City, Missouri, on the morning of June 17, 1933. Outside  Union Station, the usual flurry of activity was taking place as people came and went on the arriving and departing trains and crowds milled about, hurrying to catch their train as it was leaving the station or greeting loved ones who had just arrived by rail.

Kansas City's Union Station in 1933

Suddenly, the pleasant day was shattered by the sound of machine gun fire, echoing from the plaza parking lot. People began to scream and run for their lives and automobile tires squealed, men’s voices cried out in anger and over and over came the harsh retorts of gunfire. By the time that it finally came to an end, five men were dead and two others were wounded. Blood-soaked bodies were twisted inside a bullet-scarred 1932 Chevrolet and others lay sprawled on the pavement outside, glistening with crimson gore.

What no one knew in those panicked moments was that six of the victims were law enforcement officers, three of whom were agents of the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, the forerunner of the FBI. The seventh man, who lay dead with most of his head blown away, was a criminal who the police officers and federal agents were returning to Leavenworth, a prison from which he had made one of his famous escapes. His name was Frank Nash and he was one of the most successful bank robbers of the Depression-era. Nash had been nicknamed “Jelly” because of his uncanny ability to escape from even the most secure prisons.

But it was not only prison that Frank Nash escaped from. Some say that on the day of the Kansas City Massacre, Nash managed to escape from the grave, as well. His body may have been shattered by bullets that morning --- but his spirit has managed to survive.

Frank Nash never achieved the notoriety that was given to the famous bank robbers of the day, but he enjoyed a career that was just as profitable and perhaps even more daring than most. Nash was born in Indiana in 1887 and in 1902, his father, John O. Nash, moved the family to Oklahoma so that he could establish a hotel in Hobart. As a young man, Frank worked in the hotel’s kitchen as a cook but eventually, his father turned over the ownership of the place to his daughter, Alice, and her husband, John Long. Frank was not disappointed. He never believed that he was cut out for hotel work, either in the kitchen or as a front desk clerk. He was looking for more excitement and soon found it by committing a series of small burglaries around the Hobart area. In 1913, he teamed up with two accomplices and they continued their successful series of crimes until Nash grew to suspect that one of them had talked to the police. Without a second thought, Nash murdered him.

 Frank "Jelly" Nash

Nash was arrested and brought to trial but managed to get acquitted. He then murdered a witness who had testified against him and, for that; he was sentenced to serve a life term at Oklahoma’s McAlester State Prison. Nash was a model prisoner at McAlester and early in 1918, his sentence was commuted to 10 years. In July 1918, he was given a full pardon and released. In a short time, he was back to committing crimes again. Nash was next arrested in October 1919 after a series of minor robberies made him a suspect in a bank heist that was pulled in Cordell, Oklahoma. This time, the charges were dropped.

He then put together a gang to rob the bank in the small farming community of Corn, Oklahoma. He was arrested and convicted again and sent back to McAlester to serve a 25-year sentence. Remarkably, the former convict got another reduction in sentence. On December 29, 1922, the governor signed an order commuting Nash’s lengthy sentence to just five years, and the next day he was set free.

Over the next eight months, Nash is believed to have taken part in a number of murders and robberies, mostly with the Al Spencer gang. On August 20, 1923, he took part in the holdup of a mail train in Osage County, Oklahoma, that turned out to be the country’s last great horseback train robbery. The gang made off with $20,000 in cash and bonds but not before Nash brutally assaulted a mail custodian, leaving him with a serious concussion. Nash remained on the run after this robbery until late autumn 1923, when he was discovered working as a ranch hand in Mexico. His boss refused to turn him over to U.S. authorities while Nash was still employed in the country but compromised with officials by sending him over the border on a bogus errand. He was quickly arrested.

On March 3, 1924, Nash was sentenced to 25 years in Leavenworth for robbery and assault. He didn’t receive any political help or clemency this time, but he did receive unusual privileges for a prisoner with his past record. He was a model prisoner at Leavenworth and was made a trusty. After being given an outside assignment in October 1930, he calmly walked away from the prison and disappeared. What Nash did after his escape is not only unclear but it may also be the stuff of legend. It is known that he hooked up with the Ma Barker- Alvin “Creepy” Karpis gang for some time after meeting up with them in St. Paul. It’s believed that Nash may have known the Barkers from his days in Oklahoma, but no one really knows for sure. Nash is also believed to have worked briefly for the Capone mob, with the rackets in Kansas City, and with several small outfits organizing and carrying out robberies and burglaries.

In the early part of 1933, Nash underwent plastic surgery to straighten his crooked nose and he purchased a toupee to try and hide his well-known bald head. These changes were not very effective given the bank robber’s distinctive appearance, so he and his new bride, Frances Luce, decided to get away to one of the underworld’s most protected locations, Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Unfortunately for Frank Nash, federal agents, who considered the Hot Springs police department to be one of the most unreliable in the county, kept the White Front under almost constant surveillance. On June 16, 1933, Agents Frank C. Smith and F. Joseph Lackey from the Bureau of Investigation’s Oklahoma City office spotted Nash lounging with a bottle of beer in front of the cigar store. They followed him to a horse betting parlor, where he was placed under arrest and rushed out of town.

The two Bureau of Investigation agents drove into Fort Smith and at 8:30 p.m., they spirited their manacled prisoner aboard the Missouri Pacific Flyer headed for Kansas City. When they arrived, they would be met the following morning by more federal officers and local police officers, who would accompany them on the final leg of their trip to Leavenworth. Realizing that Nash’s criminal friends might try and help him escape, the agents kept their route a secret. The agents joked in their stateroom with Nash about his new disguise, a red wig that he had bought to cover his bald head. Nash good-naturedly shrugged, “I paid a hundred bucks for it in Chicago. You do what you can.” He told them that he also had his nose straightened and then asked the agents not to pull on his mustache because that was the real thing.

Word spread about Nash’s capture, passing from Galatas in Hot Springs to Herb Farmer, outside Joplin, to Verne Miller, the member of the Barker-Karpis gang who was living in Kansas City. Miller learned that an unnamed prisoner was heading to Kansas City by train and he began making arrangements to meet him. On the morning of June 17, there were a number of people waiting to see “Jelly” Nash. Federal agents Raymond Caffrey and R.E. Vetterli and city detectives W.J. “Red” Grooms and Frank Hermanson were waiting to escort Nash to Leavenworth in their car. Also waiting were five or more gangsters, the would-be rescuers of Frank Nash. One of them was definitely Verne Miller but the identities of the others are in serious doubt to this day.  

When the Missouri Pacific Flyer pulled into the station, Agent Lackey instructed Smith to stay with Nash in the stateroom while he went to the loading platform to find his contacts. Establishing their credentials to be legitimate, Lackey then asked the men to help him survey the immediate area. All were satisfied that nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Lackey then went back to the train to retrieve Nash. As Miller and the other waiting gangsters surveyed the scene and determined that the prisoner was Nash, they went out to the parking lot and took up positions among the parked automobiles.

Nash was led from the train platform and through the station toward the outdoor plaza by the two agents, Lackey and Smith, who both carried shotguns, and by Otto Reed, police chief of McAlester, Oklahoma. The bandit was still wearing his ridiculous toupee, which kept slipping off his head. The trio, joined by the sour lawmen, began to get into a Chevrolet that was parked in the plaza. Nash got into the front seat and Lackey, Smith and Reed got into the back. Agent Caffrey walked around the automobile to the driver’s side when a thunderous voice yelled at the lawmen from across the parking lot, “Up, up! Get ‘em up!”

Frozen in shock, the agents and the detectives looked up to see three men standing on the running boards of a nearby car, pointing machine guns in their direction. The man who had yelled at them waved his weapon back and forth while another, heavyset man pointed the muzzle of his gun directly at their windshield. For the next several moments, the entire parking lot was frozen in time. The lawmen dared not move and bystanders stood gaping at the drama that was playing out in front of them. Police detective “Red” Grooms moved first. He jerked his pistol out and squeezed off two shots, hitting the heavyset man in the arm.

The wounded gangster never paused. He shouted, “Let ‘em have it!” A second later, he pulled the trigger of his machine gun and he and the others raked the Chevrolet with bullets. Burning lead ripped into the metal body of the car and shattered the window glass. Agent Caffrey spun to the pavement, dead before he hit the ground. Police Chief Reed took several bullets to the chest and fell to the floor of the car. Agents Smith and Lakey were also hit several times and pitched forward onto the floorboards. Lackey somehow managed to pull himself up and thrust his revolver out the window, returning a few shots. The weapon was shot out of his hand. Agent Vetterli and detectives Grooms and Hermanson were all wounded and fell to the pavement, scrambling for any cover they could find.

Inside the car, Nash waved frantically at the gangsters with handcuffed wrists. He screamed at them, “For God’s sake, don’t shoot me!” His voice was silenced by machine gun fire as bullets ripped away most of his head.

Bystanders ran screaming for cover as bullets cut through the air. Many ducked behind cars, while others merely dropped to the pavement and covered their heads with their hands. Mrs. Lottie West, a caseworker for the Traveler’s Aid Society, witnessed the massacre from the station. She spotted a police officer that she knew, Mike Fanning, who came running to see what was going on in the parking lot. She screamed at him, “They’re killing everybody!”

Bullets were now bouncing into the pavement in front of the car. They tore into the already-wounded

lawmen, killing detectives Grooms and Hermanson.

Mrs. West screamed at Officer Fanning, “Shoot the fat man, Mike! Shoot the fat man!”

Fanning later recalled: “I knew she meant the big man whose machine gun was doing such bloody work. I aimed at him and fired. He whirled around and dropped to the ground. I don’t know whether I hit him or whether he fell to escape. In any event, he got up, fired another volley into the car, and ran toward a light Oldsmobile car, which roared west towards Broadway. As the car raced out of the parking lot I saw three more men in it and there may have been more.”

Just as Fanning was about to walk over to the lawmen’s car, which was by now a smoldering, bullet-riddled ruin, a 1933 Chevrolet with more gunmen inside sped past the parked car and fired into it from the rear. As the second car sped away, Fanning ran over to the lawmen’s auto and looked inside. He reported. “It was in shambles. In the front seat, a man was dead under the steering wheel. On the rear seat was another dead man. On the right was an unconscious man but he was groaning. A third man lay face down on the floor. I could see that he was alive.”

Agent Vetterli, holding a wounded arm, staggered over to where Fanning stood. He stared down at the pool of blood that was gathering on the pavement at their feet. Five men were dead: federal agent Caffrey, Chief Reed, detectives Hermanson and Grooms, and Frank Nash, the man the shooting supposedly had been designed to set free.

The bullet-riddled smoking ruins of the law enforcement car – with the bodies of the slain men still inside. 

In hours, newspapers across the country screamed headlines about the “Kansas City Massacre.” The public was shocked and federal agents and local lawmen scoured the Kansas and Missouri countryside looking for the escaped gunmen. Witnesses tentatively identified one of the killers as Verne Miller and Mrs. West was sure that the “fat man” had been Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd. The authorities deduced that the third gunner must have been Floyd’s sidekick, Adam Richetti.

 That was the way that J. Edgar Hoover began presenting it to the press and since that time, it has largely been accepted as the truth. Basically, the official story was that when news of Nash’s arrest reached his pal, Verne Miller, he went to John Lanzia, an underboss for Kansas City’s corrupt political leader Tom Pendergast. Lanzia declined to put any of his own men at risk in a rescue attempt, and Miller had to recruit Floyd and Richetti, who were passing through town and were conveniently hiding out at his house. The attackers opened up with machine guns and killed Nash in the battle that followed. That is the official story but in more recent times, it appears that the FBI account may be based more on speculation, perhaps even perjury (survivors could not initially identify Floyd or Richetti), than on actual evidence. Many believe that it was a very public way for Hoover to give the bureau the excuse that it needed to carry firearms and to make arrests without using local lawmen. Soon after the massacre, President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed a law that broadened the agency’s jurisdiction and authority. Agents were allowed to carry firearms and given almost a free hand in their pursuit and apprehension of criminals.

It is also believed that the official statement was used as a way to directly go after Floyd and Richetti. In October 1934, Floyd and Richetti were spotted by Ohio authorities, who captured Richetti after a gunfight and then called in agents from Chicago. The group literally stumbled across Floyd as he was running across a field and killed him. Examined at the mortuary, Floyd’s shoulder bore no scars from a wound that he was supposed to have received in Kansas City. Adam Richetti was executed in 1938 and he swore to his grave that he and Floyd had no part in the massacre.

So, if Floyd and Richetti didn’t kill those five men in Kansas City, who did?

One of the shooters was undoubtedly Verne Miller. Miller, who worked for a time with the Barker-Karpis Gang, was an expert marksman who had learned his craft as a machine-gunner in the service during World War I. After being discharged from the Army, he returned home to South Dakota where his prowess with firearms earned him a job as a policeman. Later, he was elected sheriff but Miller felt constricted by the law and turned to a life of crime, first as a bootlegger and later as a bank robber. After a series of arrests, he ended up in St. Paul, where he met Barker and Karpis, and then drifted to Chicago, where he hired out as a gunman. Miller was known for his violent temper and often erratic behavior and the Kansas City Massacre has all of the earmarks of the kind of unstable operation that he would plan.

In the hours after the massacre, the police trailed Miller to his home after the shooting but found that he had fled. They found bloody rags in his living room, but nothing else. Miller and his current girlfriend, Vivian Mathias, had escaped to Chicago. On October 31, 1933, federal agents raided their apartment but Miller had escaped. Mathias was taken into custody and charged with harboring a fugitive.

Almost a month later, on November 29, the naked and mutilated corpse of Verne Miller was found in a roadside ditch outside Detroit. His hands and feet were tied and he appeared to have been tortured before his death. His skin had been burned with flatirons, an ice pick had been used on his tongue and face and he had been badly beaten. His captors had finished him off by crushing his skull with some sort of heavy object. To the investigators who had been pursuing him, Miller’s murder had all of the signs of an organized crime execution.

Underworld theories surfaced about who else might have been involved in the massacre. It seemed to be common knowledge that Floyd and Richetti had not, so who else was in the car? Two of the most often suggested accomplices were little-known gunmen Maurice Denning and William “Solly” Weissman.

Strangely, Weissman was found murdered just two weeks after Miller’s body was discovered. He had also been beaten and tortured and then was dumped along a road outside of Chicago. Maurice Denning was never seen again, dead or otherwise. Were these three men killed because they botched the rescue of Frank Nash – or because of something else?

One of the most prevalent theories behind the Kansas City Massacre is that it was never designed to help Frank Nash escape from custody, but rather to make sure that he was permanently silenced. Many believe that powerful figures in the underworld were afraid that Nash might talk about things he knew to stay out of prison, endangering their operations. Rather than let him be taken into custody, they had him killed – and hired Miller, Denning and Weissman to pull the trigger. Then, because they knew who had ordered the hit to be carried out, killed those three, as well.

We will likely never know for sure what really happened but there is one rumor that circulated in mob circles that suggests that the assassins may not have been the ones who really killed Frank Nash. He may have accidentally been killed by a federal agent instead. There was (and still is) speculation that the wounds that killed Frank Nash and Agent Caffrey, both in the front seat of the car, may have been caused by a weapon that was in the back seat, in the hands of another federal agent. The story has persisted that when the fighting broke out, the agent began fumbling with the action of an unfamiliar 16-gauge shotgun that was loaded with steel ball bearings instead of the customary lead buckshot. The shotgun then went off by accident, blowing most of Nash’s head all over the roof of the car and fatally wounding Agent Caffrey. Some of the ball bearings were reportedly found in the agent’s body during an autopsy.

But whatever happened, the end result was the same and Frank “Jelly” Nash had his life instantly snuffed out. Whether he was killed by accident by a shot that he never saw coming, or whether he was slain by his friend Verne Miller, his spirit now refuses to rest. To this day, local stories have it that his ghost can still be found wandering through Kansas City’s Union Station. Does he walk that last stretch through the station on his way to the lawmen’s car – and to his doom? Or is he searching for his killers, wondering what became of the men who betrayed him back in 1933?

Stories of a haunting have swirled about Union Station for many years. Some people have reported seeing figure of men in dark suits outside the building, near where the massacre took place. When approached, these figures always vanish. There are also stories of footsteps being heard on the pavement outside and inside the building, in the corridor leading out to the parking lot. Some have surmised that these phantom footsteps may be a re-enactment of the last steps taken by Frank Nash and the federal agents as they walked to their doom.

The ghost of Frank Nash is perhaps the most commonly reported specter connected to the massacre.

Visitors and staff members have reportedly seen Nash’s ghost at several different locations in Union Station, both in the daytime and at night.

Does Frank Nash still lurk in the darkest corners of Kansas City’s Union Station? And if he does, how long will he linger here? It seems very possible that his confused and tortured spirit has remained behind at the place where he met his tragic end but how long he may stay here is a question that no one is able to answer.

The Last Ride of Frank James

THE LAST RIDE OF FRANK JAMES

Death of the Outlaw Brother

On this day, February 18, 1915, famous American outlaw – and brother of Jesse James – Alexander Franklin “Frank” James died on his farm near Excelsior Springs, Missouri.  Frank long outlived his more infamous brother, eventually retiring from a life of crime and joining the western show circuit in the dying days of the real “Wild West.”  

Frank James (Right) and his more infamous brother, Jesse

Frank was born in Kearney, Missouri to Baptist minister Reverend Robert Sallee James and his wife Zerelda (Cole) James, who had moved from Kentucky. He was the oldest of three children. His father died in 1851 and his mother re-married Benjamin Simms in 1852. After his death, she married a third time to Dr. Reuben Samuel in 1855 when Frank was 13 years old. As a boy, there was little hint about Frank’s wild life to come… He showed great interest in his father’s sizable library, especially the works of William Shakespeare and he attended school regularly. According to all recollections, he had plans to become a teacher. But then the Civil War got in the way.

Frank was 18 when the Civil War broke out in 1861. Initially, Frank and his younger brother, Jesse, stayed on the family farm, but soon, the violence of the outside world began to intrude on their peaceful farm life. The area where the James family lived was near the turbulent Missouri-Kansas border. Zerelda, a formidable frontier woman, had been raised in Kentucky and was a slave owner, so there was no question that her sympathies were directed toward the South. In May 1861, Frank James enlisted in the Confederate Army. He fought under General Sterling Price in the battle of Wilson’s Creek in southwest Missouri and then on September 13, 1861, the Missouri raiders, including Frank James, besieged Lexington, Missouri. Frank fell ill and was left behind when the Confederate forces later retreated. He surrendered to the Union troops, was paroled, and was allowed to return home. On his arrival, however, he was arrested by the local pro-Union militia and was forced to sign an oath of allegiance to the Union.

By early 1863, Frank, ignoring his parole and oath of allegiance, had joined the guerrilla band of Fernando Scott, a former saddler. He soon switched to the more active command led by William Clarke Quantrill. Frank, and his friend, Thomas Coleman "Cole" Younger were with Quantrill during the 1863 raid on Lawrence, Kansas.

The raid, which has come to be known as the Lawrence Massacre, or Quantrill’s raid, was an attack that was led by a band of Quantrill’s men against the pro-Union town of Lawrence. The town was known as a staging area for “Redleggers” and “Jayhawkers”, which were essentially free-state militias and vigilante groups who made a practice of attacking and burning farms along the western border of Missouri, an area sympathetic to the Confederacy.

The Lawrence raid was masterfully planned by Quantrill. He joined together with a number of other independent guerilla bands and chose the time and day of the attack well in advance. The different groups of Missouri riders approached Lawrence from the east, during the pre-dawn hours. The riders were armed with multiple, long-barreled, cap and ball revolvers, shoved crossways into their double-breasted shirtfronts so that they would not have to reload during the heat of the battle. Quantrill, leading nearly 400 men, descended on Lawrence in a fury. Mayhem ensued during a four-hour frenzy of pillaging, burning and mass executions of most of Lawrence’s male population. By the time that Quantrill’s men rode out of town, one-quarter of Lawrence’s buildings had been burned to the ground, including all but two businesses. Most of the banks and stores were looted and between 185 and 200 men and boys were dead in the streets.

The Lawrence Massacre remains one of the bloodiest events in the history of Kansas and the Jayhawkers wasted no time in retaliating. A day after the attack, surviving citizens of Lawrence lynched a member of Quantrill’s raiders caught in town. On August 25, General Ewing authorized orders that evicted thousands of Missourians in four counties from their homes near the Kansas border. The raids were vicious, thorough and indiscriminate and left the western part of the state wasted and in flames.

The retaliation continued for months afterward. Just three months after the Lawrence raid, a party of Union soldiers invaded the James family farm, looking for information about the location of Quantrill’s camp. Jesse, who was just 15 years old at the time, was questioned, then horse-whipped when he refused to answer the soldiers’ questions. Dr. Samuel, who also denied knowing where the raider’s camp was located, was dragged from his house and was repeatedly hanged from a tree in the yard. Somehow, the doctor managed to survive the interrogation, but his mental state was so affected by the ordeal that he was placed in an asylum in St. Joseph. He remained there until his death in 1908.

After the war, refusing to surrender to the authorities they believed had oppressed them before and after the war, turned to the outlaw life. During his years as a bandit, Frank was involved in at least four robberies between 1868 and 1876 that resulted in the deaths of bank employees or citizens. The most famous incident was the disastrous Northfield, Minnesota, raid on September 7, 1876, that ended with the death or capture of most of the gang.

Five months after the killing of his brother Jesse in 1882, Frank James boarded a train to Jefferson City, Missouri, where he had an appointment with the governor in the state capitol. Placing his holster in Governor Crittenden's hands, he explained, “I have been hunted for twenty-one years, have literally lived in the saddle, have never known a day of perfect peace. It was one long, anxious, inexorable, eternal vigil.' He then ended his statement by saying, 'Governor, I haven't let another man touch my gun since 1861.”

Frank James in 1898

Accounts say that James surrendered with the understanding that he would not be extradited to Northfield, Minnesota. He was tried for only two of the robberies/murders – one in Gallatin, Missouri for the July 15, 1881 robbery of the Rock Island Line train at Winston, Missouri, in which the train engineer and a passenger were killed, and the other in Huntsville, Alabama for the March 11, 1881 robbery of a United States Army Corps of Engineers payroll at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Among others, former Confederate General Joseph Orville Shelby testified on James' behalf in the Missouri trial. He was acquitted in both Missouri and Alabama. Missouri accepted legal jurisdiction over him for other charges, but they never came to trial. He was never extradited to Minnesota for his connection with the Northfield Raid.

Even in those days, the legend and affection for the James Brothers meant that Frank did little jail time for his crimes. After his surrender James was taken to Independence, Missouri, where he was held in jail three weeks, and later to Gallatin, where he remained in jail a year awaiting trial. Finally, James was acquitted and went to Oklahoma to live with his mother. He never was in the penitentiary and never was convicted of any of the charges against him.

In the last thirty years of his life, James worked a variety of jobs, including as a shoe salesman and then as a Burlesque theater ticket taker in St. Louis. One of the theater's spins to attract patrons was their use of the phrase "Come get your ticket punched by the legendary Frank James." He also served as an AT&T telegraph operator in St. Joseph, Missouri. James took up the lecture show and “Wild West” circuit, while residing in Sherman, Texas. In 1902, former Missourian Sam Hildreth, a leading thoroughbred horse trainer and owner, hired James as the betting commissioner at the Fair Grounds Race Track in New Orleans. He returned to the North Texas area where he was a shoe salesman at Sanger Brothers in Dallas.

In his final years, Frank eked out a living offering guided tours of the James family farm 

In his final years, James returned to the James Farm, giving tours for the sum of 25 cents. He died there on February 18, 1915. He was 72 years old and a largely forgotten figure that would only find fame much later, when interest in the old west became an American obsession.