What Happened To The Man Who Killed Jesse James?

After the Northfield debacle, Frank was sensible enough to hide in plain sight as a farmer in Tennessee. Jesse did, too, but gave it up more quickly than Frank. By 1879 Jesse was back on the outlaw trail. Frank rejoined him in 1881 but retired again to farming the next year. Jesse put together other

After the Northfield debacle, Frank was sensible enough to hide in plain sight as a farmer in Tennessee. Jesse did, too, but gave it up more quickly than Frank. By 1879 Jesse was back on the outlaw trail. Frank rejoined him in 1881 but retired again to farming the next year. Jesse put together other gangs, with uneven success, until 1882. He recruited two brothers, Robert (Bob) and Charley Ford to help with a bank robbery he was planning for Platte City, Missouri. They had been minor gang members up to that point, but the personnel pool was getting more and more shallow.

Bob's problem was that he'd killed one of Jesse's cousins and tried to cover it up. As All That's Interesting reports, that crime was discovered and Bob was offered a deal: get out of jail, free, and no charges — providing he killed Jesse James. Oh, and there was a bounty involved, too — $5,000, dead or alive. Per Legends of America, on April 3 Bob and Charley met with Jesse in his home in St. Joseph, Missouri, to discuss the upcoming Platte City job. Jesse had taken off his jacket and his guns and when he stood up to dust and straighten a picture on the wall, Bob shot him in the back of the head. Bob and Charley bolted; Jesse's wife, Zee, heard the shot and cradled Jesse as he bled out. Bob shouted that the gun had gone off as an accident. (Spoiler: Zee didn't believe him.)

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