Shot All to Hell

by Mark Lee Gardner

  But Jesse and Frank were not done yet.

  NINE

  ONE LAST ESCAPE

  But they are outlaws, and nothing but the fate that is certain to overtake them—death—will relieve them from their ceaseless wanderings.

  —ST. LOUIS REPUBLICAN

  4:00 A.M.., October 3, 1876

  Rice County Jail

  It was his first night on guard duty, and nineteen-year-old Frank E. Glazier heard footsteps on the sidewalk. Glazier was one of four armed guards posted each night at the jail, two inside and two outside, after Chief McDonough warned Sheriff Ara Barton that some friends of the Youngers might attempt a jailbreak. Young Glazier was one of the outside guards, his post being on the east side of the jail. He and the other outside man had strict orders to stop anyone who approached the building.

  At the sound of the footsteps, he ducked behind some bushes and watched as a man approached the yard. Once the man walked through the gate, Glazier stepped forward and ordered him to stop. But the man kept coming, heading straight for Glazier.

  “Who are you?” Glazier shouted, taking two steps back.

  The man did not slow a beat but appeared to be trying to get between Glazier and the jail. The guard raised his rifle.

  “Don’t you know I’m a policeman?” the man asked, getting closer.

  Glazier saw the man’s hand move to his pocket and begin to draw something out. Terrified, Glazier imagined the man was reaching for a knife or revolver. He pulled the rifle’s trigger, sending a ball crashing through the man’s chest and knocking him to the ground with a heavy thud. The man died without making a sound.

  The rifle’s smoke prevented Glazier from seeing the man fall. But after the smoke cleared, Glazier saw the motionless body, and he yelled to the other guards to come quick; he had killed or wounded a man. Someone bent over the lifeless form and then stepped back in horror. Glazier had killed William Henry Kapernick, city policeman number three.

  The Youngers wouldn’t be brought before the District Court for Rice County until the fall term started in several weeks, so they passed the time reading the papers, smoking cigars, and eating three square meals a day. As far as Sheriff Barton was concerned, the boys were model prisoners, not causing any trouble with the other inmates or even using any bad language. Under the care of physicians, they continued to recover well, although Bob would never regain the full use of his arm, and the inside of Jim’s mouth, with the bullet still lodged in the roof, refused to heal.

  Sheriff Barton had ended the mass public viewings after the first few days of their incarceration, but the Youngers were still allowed visitors. Pioneer Press and Tribune reporter J. Newton Nind came by every day to be locked up with the brothers. He mostly played cards with them, but Nind was not there to keep the brothers company. Working with the authorities, his primary job was to learn the identities of the two gang members who had escaped. But Nind failed because the Youngers remained tight-lipped about their companions, even in their most unguarded moments.

  The brothers’ eighteen-year-old sister, Henrietta, and their brother-in-law, Richard S. Hall, arrived in Faribault from Jackson County, Missouri, in early October. Henrietta was attractive, with a slight figure, fair complexion, and light brown hair. She had been so young at the time of her father’s death that she had grown up with Cole serving more as a father than a brother. And all three brothers were extremely fond of the “baby” of the family.

  Sheriff Barton wanted to put to rest all questions regarding Jim Younger’s identity, so he kept Cole and Bob out of sight so only Jim could be seen when Henrietta entered the cell block. The instant she spotted Jim, she ran over to her brother, placed her arms around his neck, and kissed him, tears streaming down her cheeks. She told Jim she knew he was innocent and that “in the sight of God he was not a murderer.” Sheriff Barton had the confirmation he needed.

  All the brothers became emotional when their sister arrived and during a second visit the next day. Bob, the most cheerful of the three, did most of the talking; Jim’s injury made it difficult for him to have a conversation. Sheriff Barton allowed Henrietta inside the cage surrounding the cells, where she trimmed Jim’s fingernails and did her best to make her brother more presentable. Cole told Henrietta to let the family know he had no one to blame but himself for their predicament, and that he was resigned to whatever the future held.

  Photographer Ira Sumner heard that Henrietta was in Faribault and quickly came over from Northfield to see her. He had made a small fortune selling his photographs of the dead Miller and Chadwell and a composite image picturing all the robbers captured and killed in Minnesota (Sumner had apparently ripped off Mankato photographer E. F. Everitt). He had sold more than fifty thousand copies, and he believed a portrait of the outlaws’ angelic teenage sister would be another sure moneymaker. He offered Henrietta $500 if she would sit before his camera (roughly $10,000 in today’s dollars), but she quickly turned him down.

  On October 19, the last person the brothers expected to see stepped through the heavy door to the cell block: attorney Sam Hardwicke. Clell Miller’s family had enlisted Hardwicke to help them recover Clell’s body and any remaining personal effects of the bandit. Accompanying Hardwicke was Clell’s nineteen-year-old brother, Edward T. “Ed” Miller. Ed had been leery of traveling to Minnesota, fearing that the people of Northfield would try to take their revenge out on him. But Hardwicke had assured him that everything would be okay.

  Exactly what was said between Hardwicke, Miller, and the Youngers during their brief meeting (conducted in the presence of the sheriff) is unknown. Perhaps Miller just wanted to know a little more about his brother’s last weeks, to have a few memories to comfort his aged mother back in Clay County. But Minnesota’s newspapermen, who were constantly at the jail, failed to report any part of the conversation—they didn’t even interview Miller.

  But a few days later, a Saint Paul Dispatch reporter appeared at Sam Hardwicke’s St. Paul office. An intriguing story had appeared in the Chicago Times, written by an unnamed journalist after a recent visit with Zerelda Samuel. The James boys’ mother was her usual cantankerous self, damning the cowardly detectives who had raided her farm and threw the “hand grenade” that killed her boy and shattered her arm. Jesse and Frank were innocent of crime, she said emphatically, but the “murder of that boy, and the loss of my arm will be avenged some of these days, as certain as my boys are living.”

  Samuel Hardwicke, a previously unpublished portrait.

  (Courtesy of Leona Hardwicke Mustion)

  It was that bitter threat of vengeance that had brought the reporter to Hardwicke’s door. The same article also revealed that the James-Younger gang’s real reason for the Minnesota expedition was to kill a Liberty attorney who had assisted the Pinkertons and later fled to St. Paul. Hardwicke was the only St. Paul lawyer from Clay County, Missouri, and the reporter wanted to know if he was the lawyer referred to in the article.

  Hardwicke admitted he was indeed the man, but he said that fear of the James boys had nothing to do with him leaving Missouri. He pointed out that he had remained in the state for nearly two years after the Pinkerton raid on the James farm (it was actually a year and four months). But he didn’t mention that he’d wasted no time moving from his home in the country into town once the word got out of his involvement with the Pinkertons. Then Hardwicke said something he surely did not believe, as if he was trying to convince himself as well as the reporter.

  “Their business is robbery, not murder,” he said of the Jameses. “I do not think they came to Minnesota on any other business, and have no apprehension whatever for my personal safety on their account.”

  Their business is robbery, not murder? Hardwicke knew full well that Jesse had assassinated a neighbor, Daniel Askew, because he had helped the Pinkertons. He also knew that Jesse had murdered the Gallatin cashier in the mistaken belief that the victim was the Federal commander of the bluecoats who killed Bloody Bill Anderson. Jesse, like his
mother and like the bushwhackers he had ridden with in the war, lived for revenge. Everyone in Clay County, including Hardwicke, knew this. The attorney was putting on a bold face, at least publicly.

  Privately, the James boys were on Hardwicke’s mind enough that he wrote a letter nine weeks later urging a prominent Missouri friend to contact Governor Hardin about the rewards for the outlaws. Hardin had refused to pay the rewards for some of the bandits who had participated in the Northfield and Rocky Cut robberies because the Rocky Cut rewards were for “arrest and conviction”—Chadwell, Miller, and Pitts had been killed. Hardin’s legal interpretation prompted the First National Bank of Northfield to consider withdrawing its standing reward of a thousand dollars for the capture of the James boys. The reasoning was that Jesse and Frank had boasted that they would never be taken alive, so Missouri’s rewards for their “arrest and conviction” were worthless.

  Hardwicke asked his friend to urge the governor to pay the rewards to “insure the continued offer of the liberal reward offered by the bank here.” If the governor could not do that, then Hardwicke suggested that he recommend a resolution to the legislature authorizing that the rewards be paid.

  “Sometime ago, I adopted it as a rule never to give myself any concern about those outlaws again,” Hardwicke wrote. “This occasion has made me break over the rule, in the hope that it might be the means of doing some good to the state.” And to Sam Hardwicke.

  On the morning of November 15, the grand jury convened in the court of Judge Samuel Lord to consider the four bills of indictment prepared against the Youngers. District Attorney George N. Baxter charged the brothers jointly with the murder of Joseph Lee Heywood; the murder of Nicolaus Gustavson; assault with intent to do bodily harm upon Alonzo Bunker; and robbery of the First National Bank. The grand jury interviewed seventeen witnesses during the course of the day, including Alonzo Bunker, Frank Wilcox, and Northfield postmaster Henry S. French, who swore he’d seen Cole Younger shoot the Swede.

  That afternoon, Henrietta Younger and Mrs. “Fanny” Twyman, the Youngers’ aunt, arrived by train. They came to Faribault unexpectedly and against Cole’s wishes because he was afraid that his relatives being present during the trial would only add to the circus. Sheriff Barton, in an act that reflected his growing fondness for the outlaws, allowed the Younger women to stay in his home during their stay, preventing any unwanted encounters they might face at a hotel. Hordes of curious people were in town to witness the court proceedings and get a look at the outlaws.

  The grand jury reported all four indictments at noon the following day, and the judge set the time for the brothers’ arraignment for 3:00 P.M. A distance of three hundred yards separated the door of the jail from the door of the courthouse, and an estimated two thousand people waited anxiously to see the prisoners. Finally, at about 3:30 P.M., Sheriff Barton opened the door and walked out of the jail with the Youngers and their sister and aunt, the women wearing veils. Two squads of six armed guards waited at the door, one squad marching before the sheriff’s party and the other falling in behind. The handcuffs and shackles clanked as the Youngers, handcuffed together with Cole in the middle, slowly shuffled along.

  The brothers, “neatly dressed and cleanly shaved,” looked nervous. One newspaper commented that the brothers looked “anything but the desperate men they are claimed to be.” Cole remarked that he had never before worn handcuffs. Jim said he had had them on once before when he’d been a prisoner during the war. They marveled at the size of the crowd, and when they entered the courtroom, they found it so packed it was suffocating. Men and women strained and jostled to get a better view of the outlaws, some even climbing up on their seats.

  The proceedings were short and somewhat anticlimactic. The brothers remained standing as the district attorney read the indictments. When Judge Lord asked the defendants to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty, their attorney requested more time to plead, which the judge granted. Sheriff Barton then marched the Youngers back through the ogling crowd to the jail.

  Most Minnesotans thought they had a good idea how the Youngers would plead. The press had been pointing out for weeks that because of a peculiar Minnesota law, the Youngers could escape capital punishment by simply pleading guilty. Under that law, only a jury could hand down the death sentence, and if a defendant pleaded guilty to a charge, there was no need of a jury. Thus, the harshest punishment that a defendant who pleaded guilty could get was a life sentence, regardless of how heinous the crime.

  “Any innocent soul who supposes the robbers can be adequately punished, labors under a grave mistake,” wrote the Pioneer Press and Tribune. “Their lives are as safe as that of the saintliest person in the state.”

  The belief that the brothers would take advantage of this law led to enough anger that there was concern that a lynching party of citizens from Northfield, Faribault, and other towns planned to raid the jail. But Sheriff Barton and Faribault’s mayor were confident they had plenty of armed men and were adequately prepared to defeat such a mob. The mayor announced in a particularly strident tone that they would “shoot down every man like a dog who tried to violate the law.” The rumored mob never surfaced.

  But the Younger brothers were actually inclined to take their chances with a jury and plead not guilty to the two murders. Cole strongly denied shooting Gustavson, and Frank Wilcox, the witness in the bank, would testify that Bob had exited before Heywood was shot. If they were lucky, perhaps they could get off with a few years in prison on the robbery charge. But over the next three days, Henrietta and Aunt Fanny begged them to take the safer course and get life in prison. The stakes were far too high for what amounted to a throw of the dice. They urged the brothers to think of their family and loved ones in Missouri.

  On Monday morning, November 20, the Youngers stood before Judge Lord and another packed courtroom, with everyone quiet and straining to catch each spoken word. When asked for their plea to the charge of murdering Joseph Heywood, the brothers answered guilty. The district attorney immediately turned to the judge and requested that a jury be impaneled to determine the “degree of guilt.” It was a hopeless legal maneuver to get around the law shielding the brothers from capital punishment, and it led to a delay of the sentencing until that afternoon.

  At 2:00 P.M., the Youngers again shuffled into the courtroom, their sister and aunt at their sides. The judge announced that he was denying the district attorney’s motion for a jury, after which the defense stated that the prisoners were ready to receive their sentence, if the state was prepared. The district attorney said the state was ready. The judge gestured to the Youngers to step to the bench.

  “Have you anything to say,” the judge asked, “any reason why sentence should not be pronounced?”

  “No,” the brothers said, shaking their heads.

  “Not one of you?” the judge said directly to Cole.

  “Nothing.”

  “It becomes my duty, then, to pass sentence upon you. I have no words of comfort for you or desire to reproach or deride you. While the law leaves you life, all its pleasures, all its hopes, all its joys are gone out from you, and all that is left is the empty shell. I sentence you, Thomas Coleman Younger, to be confined in the State prison at hard labor to the end of your natural life, and you, James Younger, that you be confined in the State prison at hard labor to the end of your natural life, and you, Robert Younger, that you be confined in the State prison to the end of your natural life.”

  The Youngers displayed not the slightest emotion as the judge spoke, but when he finished, and the brothers returned to their seats, the courtroom spectators saw “an expression of satisfaction and relief” sweep “over their faces.” Jim sat down next to Henrietta, who burst into tears and buried her face in his shoulder. He hugged her gently with one arm as the guards placed handcuffs on his other hand. He also leaned over and spoke words of comfort to his aunt, the tears wetting her cheeks as well. But the outlaws didn’t shed a tear, nor did their eyes even become
watery.

  “I have seen a good deal of the world,” Cole had told a reporter earlier, “and might as well retire any way.”

  On Wednesday, November 22, with Cole and Jim shackled together and Bob shackled to a guard, the Youngers were escorted behind the high walls of the state prison at Stillwater, accompanied by Sheriffs Barton and William H. Dill and Henrietta and Aunt Fanny. The reporters were there, too, peppering the prison’s new celebrity inmates with questions.

  “This is quite different from a county jail,” Bob told them. “There we always had plenty of people to talk to, but here everything appears to go by clockwork.” Each brother was asked in turn to name the two robbers who escaped, and each flatly refused. “If this cell door was opened now, and I taken out to be hung,” Bob said, “I would not reveal their names—but they are not the James brothers. . . . ”

  Clay County sheriff John S. Groom did not really care if the James brothers had been involved in the Northfield robbery, but he did care if they were in his county. Years ago, as a Kearney storekeeper, the forty-seven-year-old Groom had been on friendly terms with Zerelda and her boys, and he had known Jesse as a good, honest young man. But on the same day the Youngers became inmates at Stillwater, one of Frank and Jesse’s cousins walked into Groom’s office and told him the outlaws were visiting their mother. The cousin had had a falling-out with Jesse and was worried the quick-tempered outlaw might kill him. Groom quickly enlisted four men to ride with him to the James farm.

  At about 9:00 P.M., as a light rain fell, Groom’s posse slowly approached the farmhouse. Frank was walking from the barn to the house, and even though it was good and dark outside, he somehow spotted (or heard) Groom’s men. He swiftly unholstered his revolver and fired a shot into the air to alert Jesse inside. The sheriff and one of his men instantly fired at Frank, the flash of flame from the gun barrels giving Frank an excellent idea of where they were. The outlaw calmly leveled his revolver and fired, his bullet splitting the bark on the tree shielding the crouching sheriff.