Transcripts For CSPAN3 Late 19th Century Violence In The Ozarks 20170826

Bill hickok to bonnie and clyde. The Kansas City Library hosted the event. Welcome. Welcome everyone. My name is jeremy and i had up the Missouri Valley special collection which is the local regional and History Department of the library. Our Research Room and heart and archives are located across the hall. In the Missouri Valley room you will find books, articles, and manuscripts documenting kansas as it rowdy, violent past evolved from a western cowtown to a bustling metropolis. Our history includes bloody border fighting during the civil war, notorious outlaws and prostitutes, rampant illegal gambling and bootlegging during prohibition, and gangland violence and assassinations including one infamous massacre from 1933. Perhaps there is no more widespread lawlessness, violence, and mayhem in missouri in the decades following the civil war and well into the 20th century than in the ozark region. Here today to talk about the notorious characters and sensational events of that. Times awardwinning author, larry would. Onhas written extensively the ozarks. Include,recent works wicked women of misery, lynchings and hangings in missouri. Addition to being a staff ,riter for the ozarks magazine he also publishes a blog called, ozark history. The presentation today draws from two books. Desperados of the ozarks. This will be available following the program. Please welcome to the kansas wood. Public library, larry [applause] mr. Wood first of all i would like to thank jeremy and the staff at the library for inviting me. Thank you for turning out. And thanks cspan for being here also. The main book i will be talking about is, ozarks, gunfights, and other notorious incidents. He mentioned desperados of the ozarks which is a followup to this book but i probably will not have time to get to it but i will have copies of both books for anyone who is interested in them. Suggests, this is about murders and shootouts and anything notorious that happened in the ozarks, in some cases slightly outside the ozarks. The time frames from the end of the civil war up to the gangster era of the 20s and 30s with one exception. The very last or is about something that happened in 1950. Mainly it covers the old west and gangster eras. Other than those connecting threads, if there is any other theme that i tried to develop in the story, it is the one i talk about in the preface. The idea that the old west was not just kansas and arizona territory. Particularly in the years immediately after the civil war like 1960 1865 to 1880. There was a lot of stuff that happened in missouri and the ozarks and we were a part of the old west. The wild west, i would say. The first chapter in my book is about Wild Bill Hickok, his shoot out on the square in springfield. Illinois, came west when he was 18 years old. In 1857, spent time in kansas and other places. At the time of the civil war he handlering as a stock at a way station along the oregon trail in what is now beatrice, nebraska. The name of the place was rock creek. He got involved in a shootout with the mccandless gang. He was the previous owner of a property that the way station was on and came to try to collect the debt and payment on his property and they ended up in a shootout and mccandless and at least one other person was killed. Bill looked on with the union army in missouri as a andn master or wagon driver he ended up in springfield as detective for the union army. Sometimes a spy, sometimes a scout through the territory of southwest missouri. This is a picture of the square of springfield at about the time he was there. This is from circa 1865. Into theking southeast southeast corner of the Springfield Square. The little building in the southeast corner was a saloon owned by a guy named angers. A lot of the things wild bill did when he was detective was he rews for and illegally selling booze to union soldiers. I dont remember what he was cited for but that was one of the things wild bill did. Toward the middle part or the latter part of the civil war, late 1863, early 1864, bill and dave had hooked up and became friends. They might have already known each other. In springfield, they became drinking buddies and gambling buddies. They had a falling out new the end of the civil war. The falling out was over a saiding debt that dave tut that hickok owed him. They disagreed on the amount. Dave said it was 35 and bill said it was 25. They were in a hotel room at the lion hotel which was a block south of the public square. It was an afternoon poker game. Ended and tut reminded him of the debt he owed him and wild bill was digging through his pockets to show in the memorandum to prove it was only 25 and he did out is gold pocket watch he dug out his gold pocket watch and tut said i will wear this across the square if i want to. That evening, wild bill took up a station at the square, waiting to see whether tut would carry through with his warning of walking through the square with the disputed watch. Sure enough, he did. Wild bill stepped out to meet him and they both true their guns at the same time and wild tut missed. But this was called the first shootout of the wild west era. They did not use formal dueling. They had a spontaneous gunfight. The is remembered as first wild west gunfight. Harpersa depiction from new monthly magazine. Of the card game and the gunfight. Cant tell much about that but that is not exactly how it happened. They were farther apart than it seems to appear there. They were 75 years apart 75 yards apart. This picture i took myself. This is 10 years old. This is what Springfield Square looks like today. It is not real uptodate but i took the picture and i was innding they have plaques the road showing where each man was standing. I was standing about where wild itas standing when would be off in here somewhere. The building their is where courthouse of the time stood and dave tut was just outside the entry to the courthouse. My Subsequent Research has led me to believe strongly that hickok was farther over this way to the southwest. It was here down to there. They were 75 yards apart when they shot at each other. And waskok was arrested going to be prosecuted for manslaughter. T was buried in the City Cemetery a couple blocks off springfield. Right isstone on the probably the one that was placed when he was moved from the city thetery to where he is now, maple park cemetery, three or four blocks south of the square and the modern one hadnt been there that long. Maybe 50 years or so. About manyting thing of these episodes is that they had overtones left over from the civil war. In this case, the fight between hickok and tutt did not because they were friends. Tutt was a former confederate soldier and hickok was a federal, they still were friends. That didnt enter into it. What did enter and was when hickok went to trial for manslaughter, they had what was , passed right at the end of the civil war, it said that anyone who supported the confederacy could not vote or hold office or be a preacher or teacher, all sorts of things. Jurors and officers of the court were union people and hickok was a union person so he got off. [laughter] a lot of the confederate people thought he was to blame because he had gone to the corner and waited. Waiting to see whether the guy would come across, stalking him almost. That really did have a lot of overtones from the civil war was the killing of a ,reacher in Webster County across the county line from greene county. Webster county is the next county east. Headley was the preacher in a methodistepiscopal church. The church right across the county line. During the civil war, as the north took charge, that church was taken over. At the end of the civil war, a year later in july of 1866, headley despite the fact that he , like theen the oath great constitution said you had to, he tried to reclaim the church for the southern wing. He announced when he would do it and he would preach their and they warned him not to but he showed up and did it anyway. They killed him. [laughter] this is all that is left of the church. Just a cemetery. The newwhat they called Pleasant View church. It was built around 1904. Both of the guys that shot headley and the guys that had warned him not to come the , theyzers of the one ended up going on trial but they were acquitted because they were northerners. Granby,a picture of missouri, from around the turnofthecentury. Poles, it isephone around 1900 probably. It will give you a taste of what granby looked like in the old days. This is a newton county. It is probably one of the most notorious, little towns in the United States in the years immediately after the civil war. I dont know any other town of a similar population that produces many notorious characters. A lot of names you have never heard of but they are word in a tory us they are notorious people. If them was a guy named have gone too far. [laughter] i will get to her in a minute. Kelly as named jake jake killian. He went to a traveling circus it grands be in granby, was a double feature. You had to stay for the first one but you had to go out and pay to get back into the second one. He tried to hide so he wouldnt have to pay a second time. Outthey forcefully put him and that made him mad and he went and got a gun and killed william lake. That is william lake austin widow William Lakes widow. She set up a reward for the arrest of jake killian. She later married Wild Bill Hickok. Not later from this picture but later from after she after lake was killed. This might have been taken after Wild Bill Hickok was killed. Jake killian himself ended up getting killed in 1878 in galena, kansas by a man named norton. They had been sworn enemies since the civil war. They were soldiers together in the Northern Army and got into a fight over a card game and norton partially blinded killian in 19. The almost almost blinded killian in one eye. Of when out killian got out of jail he found sawon and as soon as norton him coming he pulled out his gun and shot him. Didnt give killian a chance. Thetill got off because fact of killian had been stalking him and coming after them. The Killian Family said that he was murdered. This is the bender family, not actually in the ozarks, there are a couple of stories in here that are not in the ozarks but close enough. Benders ran a wayside inn. Kate,ad a daughter named kate was the only one that spoke fluent english. They were a german family. She was considered the leading spirit of the family. She was a healer and spiritualist. What this family did was they n and people started disappearing. They would be traveling on the road and would never reach their destination. People got suspicious that it had something to do with these bender people and in 1873 a man named york went missing and his brother followed him to the bender house and asked questions and got suspicious answers. He organized a posse but by the time he got back with a posse the benders had fled. They put out a reward. The governor signed a proclamation, describing the benders and how much money was offered. This is a picture of the house when they finally started investigating. They dug up 10 or 11 bodies of people they had killed. They had the house partitioned off and they would arrange it where the traveler would be sitting with his back to the partition and another person sitting behind there would hit him over the head with a hammer and finish him off with a knife and drop the body through a trap door and hang them. They killed 10 or 12 people. To be awhat used historical marker. Im not sure there is still one there. There is one close to where it happened, close to cherryville. Notice the very last paragraph, it says that, stories abound, bender fate of the family is uncertain. The story remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of the old west. I am one of those who is convinced that they were executed by the vengeful posse. The posse went after them and came back several days later and absolutely would not talk about it. They would not say what happened. Why would you not talk about it . You dont want people to know. Or to be prosecuted. Not only that, i have gone through enough papers later on, 15, 20 years later, i have run into four men, on their deathbed , who say they were members of the posse and that was what happened. We overtook them and kill them. I dont think they escaped. Youngera picture of jim of the infamous younger gang in 1874. They pulled off the train robbery in wayne county, eastern part of missouri. They came back and took refuge in clay county. In st. Ngers took refuge clair county. That is where their grandfather had lived and they spent time as kids. Two detectives came into the territory looking for them. They brought along a local eputy from mozilla from oceola. They knocked at the door of a fer and thenuf youngers were there but they were hidden in the attic. They went on their way and after they had left the youngers follow them and caught up with them happy mile away and overtook them and had a gunfight. Killed, jim was younger was injured. Killedthe detectives was and the local Deputy Sheriff was killed. The only one that got away was the second detective. This is a monument about it. A little ways away from where it happened. This is the original monument setting very close to where it happened. Roscoe. O miles north of that is why it is called the roscoe gunfight. They were on their way to the springs two or three miles north of where that is. Somethinger concerns i mentioned. This is a picture of galena, kansas around the turn of the century. You can see light posts so it is probably around 1900. It was a hopping place around the turnofthecentury and even earlier. It was a wild place, a mining town. There are a lot of young, single men and anywhere there are a lot of young men there will be wild drinking and gun fighting. That was galenas reputation. One of the things that happened ,here in the fall of 1879 was supposedly, jesse james got killed by George Shepherd. Supposedly. That is jesse james. George shepherd had been a former member of the james gang but he had had a falling out with frank and jesse and he offered his services to the law and they said ok. Thenfiltrated the gang with intention of trying to kill or capture jesse james. After the glendale train robbery which took place in jackson i think glendale as part of independence now after the train robbery they were going south to texas to spend the winter. This was in november of 1879. Got south of galena. Some confrontation occurred. I dont know exactly what it was but George Shepherd went riding back into galena with a bloody leg saying i have killed jesse james. Investigated and couldnt find the bodies and said, either George Shepherd lied or jesse james lies dead. Most people believed that it was George Shepherd lying living. My own believe is that something did happen and i think george thought he and killed him. He probably shot at him and maybe saw him fall out of the saddle but did not kill him. He was killed later on, three years later. That is George Shepherd, a picture of him. Group south of springfield, they rose up around 1883, they call themselves the law and order group. Or sometimes the citizens committee. They consider themselves an ok group. An honorable group. They started out that way. The way a lot of vigilante groups do. They went overboard. Firstas where their organizational meeting was held on a bald knob. This was the leader. Nathaniel kenny. When this picture was taken he was a saloon keeper in springfield. Andtly after this he moved became a preacher. And started laying off the booze, i dont know. I have talked about how some of the incidents were a carryover or bitterness from the civil war carried over to aggravate these incidents. That is the case with the bald knobbers after the civil war because they were almost all of them former northern soldiers. And then a group rose up to oppose them who were former confederates. Overtones from the civil war. The bald knobbers and the antibald knobbers but as far as the law was concerned, none of them were apprehended but many were killed. Moving into Christian County a few years later in the mid1880s, the law did get into it. This is billy walker, the sign his fathers name was dave walker and another one of the main ones was John Matthews and he had a nephew named wiley matthews. All of them were eventually captured and tried for murder because they had killed a couple of people in a family over by chadwick. They were convicted and scheduled to hang but the nephew escaped and was never recaptured. Hanged on thethem square in ozark in 1888. That was the end of the bald knobbers. This is a replica picture of one county theyn had secret signs and codes. This was a mask. This is a picture of Emmett Malloy a better picture over here. Malloy was a temperance revivalist and she traveled over the country giving revivals and trying to get people to not drink. She gave one in springfield, missouri in the winter of 188485. When it was over she moved out to a farm west of springfield near brookline. An adopted daughter, a foster daughter named cora lee, and maybe one or two other People Living with her. She was always taking in people and trying to help them, as was her downfall. She had taken in this guy named george graham, who she first met in an indiana prison when she was doing prison ministry. She had taken him under her wing. After he got out they went into the business together of putting antidrinking newspapers temperance newspaper the pretty soon after they started living on the brookline farm, he showed up and started romancing cora lee, the foster daughter. Actually, he resumed courting her because they had already started when they were back together in washington, kansas, putting out this paper. They had gotten into cahoots putting up the temperance paper, and when she moved to springfield, he kind of followed her there and resumed the romance. Eventually he talked her into letting them get married. They were concerned because they knew he had been married to sarah graham, but he assured them he had divorced her or that she had divorced him when he went to jail. That was true, but it turned out they had remarried when he got out, so he was committing bigamy when he married cora lee. Things were ok for a little while, but then sarah graham came to try to get her kids. They had a couple kids, sarah and george did. When george realized he was going to be found out about the bigamy, he committed a graver crime to try to cover up the bigamy. He killed his first wife, sarah graham, dumped her in a well on the malloy farm. That is what this headline is talking about. Cora lee was he was of course arrested for murder when they finally found out. Cora was arrested as an accessory before the fact because they thought she was in wasots and emma malloy arrested as an accessory after the fact because they thought she is kind of helped cover up. They thought when she got back from the revival she found out about it and try to cover it up. These are some the pictures of the people. This is george graham. These are all just sketches. He is the wife killer. This is cora lee, the foster daughter that he married bigamously. This is sarah graham, the first wife he murdered. This is sarah and georges son, charlie, their oldest son. He figured prominently in the legal proceedings. George was arrested for murder. But actually, cora lees trial started taking place before georges, and she was being tried for being an accessory. He was the one who turned it into a sensational thing because he testified that not only had he seen cora and george, his father, in bed together in washington, kansas at one time, he had also seen his father and his father in bed with emma malloy at one point. Not only that, he saw them both in bed with his father at the same time. [laughter] he turned it into a scandalous thing. It could have been that he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He didnt say he was saw the that he saw them having sexual intercourse. I dont know what it was. Anyway they liked scandal back in those days. Anyway, it was such a scandalous deal that the springfield newspapers put out a special edition. Kind of a pamphlet having to do with nothing but the graham tragedy and the examination of malloy and lee. Anyway, while coras trial was still going on, graham was taken out of jail and lynched by a mob in springfield. Eventually, cora lees trial ended in a hung jury and when that happened, they dropped all the charges against emma malloy. Cora lee had to be tried at least twice. I cant remember exactly how many times. My own take on it is that i think emma malloy was kind of rash. Not very judicial in deciding who she was going to befriend. She was always taking people and, always wanting to help people. I think that was her main mistake. Cora lee, i dont know for sure about her. [laughter] another similar type deal that involved a triangle or whatever, there was a guy named jj white. He had a friend named ed klum. They had been in the union army together in new york. Clum was married to a girl named scarlet. They called her lottie. Jj kind of liked her too. They started flirting. They had an affair. Lottie was not in good health. She decided she was going to come to missouri to stay with her sister in lebanon. Not too long after that, white came to Missouri City and bought a farm. Instead of staying at lebanon with her sister, she started living with jj white at the farm. Clum got word of it and came down to investigate, but in order to protect his wifes name, he let them introduce him as her brother instead of her husband. People thought that is what they were. He convinced her to go back with him and they got as far as lebanon, and she told him she did not feel like continuing the trip, that she would stop at lebanon and come the next day, but instead she went back while he went on to rochester, new york. This happened once or twice. At least twice. Finally, he got word back in new york that lottie had died. He came back and even after lottie was dead, he still let people believe that they had been brothersister, not husbandwife. This went on for a few more months. This was 1886. Finally, there was a 17yearold girl who started keeping house in the white residence, and she and white announced their attention to get married. Clum kind of had a crush on her, too. That was the straw that broke the camels back. He ended up killing both of them. [laughter] mr. Wood they said if he had killed white earlier, he wouldve probably gotten away with it, but by killing that 17yearold innocent girl, he ended up getting hanged. This is her grave at pierce city. This is his execution day in 1887. This is one of the banks that that the dalton gang tried to hang up. To hold up. The daltons were the cousins of the youngers and they were trying to outdo the cousins by trying to rob two banks at the same time in the fall of 1892 in kansas. The problem they had was they had lived there previously and they thought they knew the place, but the problem was when they got there, the hitching rail where they were going to hitch their horses was no longer there. [laughter] so they had to hitch them farther away from the bank and that ended up being their downfall. [laughter] mr. Wood the citizens on the Citizens Armed themselves and had a big shootout with them and four of the dalton members got killed. None of the citizens got killed. They laid them out and took pictures of them. And they buried them right there in the city. Bob dalton, grant dalton, a couple others. One of them they buried somewhere else. Anyway, rightfully so, they had a little museum. They do not call it the dalton museum. They call it the Dalton Defenders Museum because they want to emphasize that they are memorializing the defenders, not the criminals. After the dalton gang was shot to pieces and disintegrated, land picked up the pieces and started his own gain from the remnants of the dalton called he had a name for it. In 1894, just two years after he tried to rob a bank in Southwest City. That is the very farthest you can get in southwest missouri. It is a little town in the corner of oklahoma and arkansas. This is what was the bank at that time. It is still there, no longer used as a bank, but that was the same building they tried to rob. It turned out to be almost a reenactment of the fiasco at coffeyville. The Citizens Armed themselves and started shooting. In this case, the citizens got the worst of it. One of the citizens got killed. A couple of the outlaws got minor injuries, but not serious injuries. This is the road they came in on. This is a current picture of the road they came in on. A year or so later, the others got killed by a law man but not as a direct result of the Southwest City deal. This was a year or so later. By heck thomas. I mentioned galena, kansas. Another notorious episode happened in galena, kansas in 1897. They found this guy named Frank Gallagher with his body stuffed in an abandoned lead mine. It was a big mining town. Come to find out, they thought lebathrrested the staff gang. The problem was they had gone to the house late at night. It was known as a house of illrepute. He had gone there wanting to see a certain woman at 2 00 in the morning, and they said it was too late and would not let her come out, and he kept insisting so they finally got mad and, killed him and dumped him in the well. [laughter] anyway, the media got a hold of this and started exaggerating it. You can see here it says, for years they have applied their work of death. They thought they had killed as many as 10 or 12 people, but franks body was the only one they found. That was probably just a lot of exaggeration. This is a lady named nancy, supposedly the one that had given the order to kill that guy. Anyway, they have a house in galena now that they call the spackleback house. Another notorious episode involving a woman was cora hubbard. Andhad two male sidekicks later in 1897, these are the two sidekicks. The one in the middle is it is called tennyson. The one on the right is john sheets. They hooked up in kansas around somewhere in southeast kansas. They plotted it out and road all the way to Southwest City to pull it off and came back to kansas and were arrested near their hometown in kansas and taken back to pineville for arraignment. Eventually tried, and they received varying terms and terms in prison, anywhere from 10 to 12 years. Each one of them did. She was called the second belle star or something. It was sensationalized because she was a woman. They turned her into a hero. Jumping from the old west to the gangster era, this is henry star. He started out in the old west, he was an outlaw. He was belle starrs nephew by marriage. And trainank robber robber during the old west, and graduated from fast horses to fast cars and started robbing banks. In the 1900s. One that i talk about in my book, he robbed a Bentonville Bank in 1893, before cars. But then one with cars is the one i talk about most is when he tried to rob the bank of harrison, arkansas in like february of 1921, he ended up getting killed. That is the man that killed him. He was the former president of the bank he was who just happened to be there on the day that this happened. He was the former president and he knew where there was a gun stashed, and he grabbed a gun and killed him. That is henry starr after he was laid out dead. A year or so later in the fall of 1922, about a year and a half later, the remnants of the starr gang try to hold up the Eureka Springs bank, and again the Citizens Armed themselves and killed like two and seriously injured a third member of the gang. This is them after the thing was all over. They were celebrating the fact that they had broken up the bank robbery and captured or killed all of the bank robbers. That is one of the ones they killed. Another guy whose career also spanned the wild west era as well as the gangster era was nicknamed arkansas tom. He was born and buried in missouri. That is where caswell is. He drifted into oklahoma and hooked up with the wild bunch. That was the name i was trying to think of. They pull off the shootout at ingalls. He was the only one that was captured. He was sent to prison for 50 years. But after about 20 years or so he got paroled in the 1900s and and then he went the same way as henry starr, graduated to bank robbery in automobiles. He robbed this bank north of web city or joplin, missouri. The ironic thing about this is 15 or 20 years later, bonnie and clyde also robbed this very same bank. [laughter] in the early 1920s, he robbed the as very bank the bank between joplin and pittsburg, kansas. While he was still on the lam in 1922, less than two years later in 1924 they finally tracked him down in joplin at this house. The house has been remodeled but it is still the same house. He was killed in this house by Joplin Police in 1924, buried in an unmarked grave in joplin. This is ma barker. She was born in missouri close to springfield. Her kids were mainly born in aurora, missouri. When they were little kids, they moved to web city, which is where joplin is. They mainly grew up there and that is when they first kind of started to get into trouble. Not serious trouble, but kind of serious trouble. She moved and took them away to tulsa because she thought by doing so, she could keep them out of trouble. After they moved to tall so they got into more and more trouble. Even after they moved, they kept coming back to missouri and kind of using it as a hideout and old stomping grounds. Probably one of the main things they did in the ozarks was when fred barker, the youngest son and a notorious gangster killed the sheriff of Howell County in west plains, missouri. If you know missouri history that is way to the east. That is probably the most notorious thing they did in the ozarks. It was the first time that ma barker was identified as a member of the gang because in the house where they had been staying where they found the papers and stuff, they found pictures of her and the names of all of the gang members. That was when she first became notorious, really. This is where the barkers are all buried in welch, oklahoma. This is a picture of jennings. The jennings brothers in january , 1932 killed Six Police Officers from springfield who came out to their house near brookline west of springfield. Like 10 Police Officers came out to capture them. There were just two of the jennings brothers, and they thought this shouldnt be any problem. What they didnt know is that the jennings brothers had really highpowered rifles, while the cops only had pistols. Anyway, six of them ended up getting killed. Even today it is considered the most law officers to lose their lives in a single shootout with outlaws. That is the house where it took place. That is their sisters, who helped them stealing cars but did not help them in the murders. They were also buried in joplin even though they were killed close to springfield. They were buried in joplin because springfield would not take them. [laughter] mr. Wood joplin had so many notorious characters buried there that they went ahead and took them. [laughter] mr. Wood last chapter i am going to talk about is bonnie and clyde. Bonnie and clyde of course were from texas, but they did a lot of their notorious stuff in missouri and throughout the midwest. You guys may be familiar with the one they did here in platte city. They had a big shootout up there. The one i am going to talk about is the one in joplin. This is the place where they holed up in april 1933. The apartment was up above. They parked their cars underneath in the garage. The local police first thought they were possibly bootleggers they didnt think they were serious criminals or anything. They were going to check them out. Had five policemen in two separate cars. One of them pulled up into the driveway, and that is when all hell broke loose. Clyde and his gang started shooting, and they finally jumped in one of the cars and rammed the police car, knocking him out of the way so they could make their escape. In the process they killed two Police Officers. Clyde was slightly injured but nobody else in the gang was injured. But like i say, two Police Officers were killed. The thing about the joplin shootout is it is what really made bonnie and clyde famous because afterwards they found two or three rolls of undeveloped film. In the film, a lot of it was them taking pictures of themselves, playful postures. One of her pretending to be smoking a cigarette or cigar and posed up there, and this one is w d jones, the young guy with them with all of his guns. There are bonnie and clyde are playfully aiming guns at each other. There is clyde with his gun. So anyway, these pictures were splashed all over the United States, and that is what really made them famous when they started having pictures in the Chicago Tribune and New York Times and stuff like that. If those pictures had not been retrieved from the joplin apartment they mightve gone on not being really wellknown. This was a picture of bonnie a couple years later after she was killed in louisiana. So anyway in closing, i guess the thing i would like to reiterate is the idea that the ozarks and all of missouri, particularly western missouri, kansas city, the western border, we were very much part of the old west, especially in the first 10 to 15 years after the civil war. That reputation has continued clear into the gangster era. A lot of the gangsters, like the barker gang, continually came back to missouri to hang out. Same thing with bonnie and clyde. They thought this was kind of a good place to hideout. We had more than our share of not only wild west incidents, but also gangstertype incidents. You guys here are all familiar with the one jeremy mentioned about the shoot out at the train, the central train station. Any questions . Please, as jeremy said, if you have questions, please line up and i will be glad to answer questions if i can. Lets first thank larry. [applause] i do have a question. Mr. Wood ok. Guns belonging to bonnie and clyde recently sold at auction for over 250,000 each. How did those wind up in private hands . Shouldnt they have been state evidence . Mr. Wood i honestly cannot answer that question. I agree they probably should have been state evidence but i do not know the answer to that. I do not know how they ended up in private hands. Does anyone know how they ended up in private hands . What . [indiscernible] hammer, he said one of the officers that was there when they killed them, one of the Police Officers there when they killed them in louisiana kept some of them. They just kept them . They should have been state evidence. [indiscernible] thank you. Mr. Wood thanks. The vendor family, you mentioned they killed 10 or 11 people. Mr. Wood i think they dug up 10 or 11 bodies. Was there speculation as to what the motive was . Mr. Wood the only motive anybody could come up with was greed. What they theorized they were doing was the travelers would stop there at the wayside inn to get something to eat or drink, and they would kind of position them, they kind of had a partition and would position them sitting at the table with their backs to the partition and somebody on the other side would put them out of commission with a hammer or whatever, and then they would finish them off with a knife or gun if they needed to, but i do not think they wanted to use guns because there was noise. All i could figure out was they were just robbing them, taking whatever money they mightve had, you know . If only we had undeveloped rolls of film for other gangsters of that era with pictures like that. Those were wonderful pictures. I do have a question. You published many books. You have many articles published on the ozarks in your blog. You regularly publish articles there. Some of these people are fairly well known, but others are not. I notice from the newspaper clippings, you get a lot of information from the newspaper. Is there a library archive, a place where you do most of your research . Mr. Wood nowadays i do most of it online. I subscribe to newspaper. Com, which is a Subscription Service that entitles you to all kinds of newspapers from all across the country. What i run into, ive been researching some precivil war stuff that happened in misery. In the past that has been very hard to do because most missouri newspapers before the war are no longer in existence, or very few of them are. What i started finding out is i find something published in the Baltimore Sun repeating something published in the st. Louis global or in the New York Times repeating something that was published in maybe the springfield newspaper or whatever. So you can find stuff that way, you know . I have heard that pendergast had a Hunting Lodge in the ozarks near sedalia. Did he do any of his shenanigans down there, or did he just keep them up here . Mr. Wood i am not too familiar with tom. But i have heard that, that he had some kind of Hunting Lodge somewhere in the ozarks. I wasnt even sure where it was, see you know more about it than i do. I have a brother that lives in Lake View Heights and it is supposed to be in that town. Larry, this will be the last question. One of the audience members was curious how you became interested in ozark history. Mr. Wood i was an english major in springfield at smsu. Like a lot of english majors, i kind of aspired to be a writer. I wanted to write the Great American novel. I wrote over and over but i found myself having much more success with nonfiction, and i wrote a lot of magazine articles. I found that i could just kind of if the framework was already there, i could tell he the really good story. As far as coming up with great of ideas myself i had more troubles. I finally gave up the idea of writing the Great American novel and start concentrating on nonfiction, particularly historical nonfiction. Shortly after, i started doing my own genealogy research. That is what got me started in that field. I did my own history and branched out from there. I started doing local history. Thats about 25, 30 years ago that i started branching out and doing mostly history. Writing out of college, so i have been writing about 50 years. I am 70 years old now. 25 at least, i have been concentrating on historical stuff. I would like to thank everyone for coming out today. [applause] i would like to remind everyone that he will have books for sale following. I will stay out there, talk to some more. If you want to buy my book, great. If not, we can just talk, i guess. [laughter] [indiscernible chattering] coming up this weekend on American History tv on cspan3, tonight on reel america, the War Department film, do not be a sucker, about hate filled speech. I am just an average american, and im an americanamerican, and some of the things i seen this country make my blood boil. I see people with foreign accents, i am negroes holding jobs above me, and you, i ask to gof we allow this on, . What will become of us real americans what will become of us real americans . At 8 00 p. M. Eastern on the presidency, Herbert Hoover scholar talks about the relationship between the 31st president and calvin coolidge. Election,before the coolidge, ever the party regular, finally gave hoover an extraordinarily diffusive hub with endorsement diffusive public endorsement that evoked newspaper headlines. Fitness toared his become president. He said coolidge was able to, experienced, trustworthy and safe. Allmerican history tv, weekend, every weekend, only on cspan3. Unfoldsn, where history daily. as979, cspan was created a Public Services by America Public Television Companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. American history tv is on cspan 3 every weekend, the chewing museum tours, interviews on the presidency, the civil war and more. Here is a clip from a recent program. Hamilton advised the creation of an energetic, efficient government, one that did one thing well for as little money as possible. That one thing was to protect american lives, liberty and property from tyrants, foreign and mastic. Straight off, i think hamilton would clash the military budget without degrading the ability to deter a foreign incursion. Nuclear weapons can ditch or foreign states, at least rational ones. Terrorists, on the other hands, my be placed at the borders and places of attack, not the mountains and deserts of asia. The rest of what the federal government does is subsidize one group at the expense of another. Hence, that should be scaled back from the hamiltonian point of view, but so markets can grow again. Using out the department of education, would not endologixish and in the United States, it would force parents to fund their childrens education, which most could do if their taxes were not so high. The socalled Hamilton Program would phase out over time and the process would render the poor better off. Yes, i have gotten a sign on that. A study by the National Economic bureau of Research Shows that Social Security redistributes wealth from poor black men and hispanics to white middleclass widows. Widows liveclass long, [indiscernible] phasing out Social Security were make the elderly eat pet food, it would give people an incentive to save more for retirement, like before social therity wasnt lamented in 1930s. In response, to after all, what was a temporary National Economic problem. Another euphemism for the great depression, temporarily National Economic problem. Hamilton would also stop the war on drugs, which is a war on ground people of which he held no prejudice. He would work to improve the justice for africanamericans, hispanics, native americans, because they had incentives to work harder and smarter. That mostly means to stop doing expensive things to people and allow them to live like other americans. Atfout fear of police, ice, so on, and so forth. You can watch this and other American History programs on a website, where all our video is archived. That is www. Cspan. Org history. Each week, American History tvs american artifacts visits museums and historic places. Up next, a visit to the National Building museum to learn about the exhibit architecture of an asylum, st. Elizabeths, 1852 to 2017. Known as the Government Hospital for the insane when it opened, it was built on it a 180 acre farm with a view of washington, d. C. At its peak in 1960, st. Elizabeths had almost 8,000