Kansas City has a remarkably extensive history of famous criminals: Bonnie and Clyde had a shootout here, and Pretty Boy Floyd was a suspect in the “Kansas City Massacre”. But by far the best-known outlaw in the area was Jesse James.

I diaried the story of Jesse James in my history blog here:

https://lflank.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/jesse-james-the-real-story/

In 1866, the Civil War had been over less than a year, and feelings still ran hot. During the war, Jesse James and his brother Frank had ridden with the local Confederate guerrillas, led by Bloody Bill Anderson. They ambushed Union sympathizers, robbed banks and trains, and terrorized the area. And when the war ended, some of them couldn’t let it go. One of these was Jesse James. He formed a gang of ex-Confederates that included his brother and Cole Younger, and continued to rob trains and banks, justifying it by declaring that he was avenging the South.

On February 13, 1866, two men in Union Army overcoats entered the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty MO. It was a cold and snowy day, and after warming themselves by the stove, one of them went up to one of the bank tellers with a ten dollar bill to ask for change, then pulled a pistol. After gathering up all the money, the robbers pushed the two tellers inside the bank vault and closed the door.

Outside the bank, several gang members were acting as lookouts, and when two college students walked out of a nearby building, one of the robbers panicked and shot at them, wounding one fatally. The gang then rode off.

In those days, there was no FDIC, so the bank lost the $65,000 that the thieves had taken (almost $4 million in today’s money). The bank was forced out of business, and the depositors lost their money.

Today, the Jesse James Bank is a museum, but it is somewhat of a misnomer. While it is fairly certain that it was the James Gang that carried out the robbery, it is unlikely that Jesse himself was there–he had been shot and wounded near the end of the Civil War and had still not recovered at the time.

Here are some photos from the Bank Museum.

The bank building

The historical plaque

Inside the bank

The vault

The clock is still set to the time of the robbery