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Jesse James wasn't always the name of the worlds two favorite pokemon villains with a talking Meowth. Jesse James is actually the name of some guy born on September 5, 1847 in Kearney, MO. And Jesse James grew up to one day be a train robber. I suppose everyone needs a goal in life....
Jesse James grew up during the Civil War. He sided with the Southern Confederacy and the notorious William Quantrill's guerillas. So why did we mention said Quantrill? James learned to be an outlaw fom the guy.
And then as fate would have it, and as all the history books say, the North won. And James turned to a leader crime. Corrupted youth at it's finest. He lead a gang including Frank James and his cousin Cole Younger.
And the first thing any reasonable outlaw's gang should do is go on a massive crime spree. They robbed banks starting with a robbery in 1866 where they stole $62,000. And for another eight years they ran about robbing and killing. However, these criminals didn't just go and kill people everway, but gave money to those they met along the way that were worse off.
But Jesse James got tired of banks. On July 21, 1873 they robbed the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad in Iowa. Why that train? $75,000 in rumored gold is enough. Basically they pulled the rail out from the point at which the train was unable to stop. Assume a large kaboom followed as the train ran into a lack of tracks. There was no gold so they robbed all the passengers for $6,000.
On January 31, 1874 they went after another train. First off they wanted to kill the famous detective Allan Pinkerton on boared. Pinkerton was to arrest or kill Jesse James. Thus Jesse James obviously didn't like Pinkerton. Besides, there were rich passangers on board. Said detective was not on board and they stole $10,000.
And the gang continued to rob trains, stage coaches and banks till retiring in 1881 and moved to St. Joseph, Missouri. He changed his name but rumors flew that he was Jesse James. Finally Robert Ford shot Jesse James in 1882 on April 3 for the reward.
That was the end. Well, they made lots of movies of Jesse James, but I don't wanna talk of that. So I won't. Then in the 1940s, a hundred year old guy in Oklahoma claimed to be Jesse James and that the death was staged. So they dug up the grave in 1997 and verified that the body was indeed of Jesse James.
