Notorious incidents, he also mentioned the followup and i probably will not have time to get to that. But i will have copies of both books for anybody interested. As the name suggests, the book is about murders and shootouts and anything notorious that happened in the ozarks. In some cases, slightly outside the ozarks. The timeframe is from the and of the civil war up through the gangster era of the 1920s and 1930s, with one exception about the very last story of something that happened in 1950. But it covers the gangster era. I would like to say, if there is any other thing that i tried to develop in the theory is something jeremy touched on. The idea is that the old west was not just kansas and arizona territory and places like that, particularly in the years immediately after the civil war, like from 18651875 and 1880. There was a lot of things that happened in missouri and the ozarks and we were very much part of the wild west. The first chapter in my book is about while bill hancock. Particularly the shoot out in the square in springfield. He was born in illinois and came west when he was about 18yearsold. He spent time in kansas and other places. At the time of the civil war, he was working as a stock antler at a way station stock handler at a way station near nebraska. I think it was called rock creek. He got in a shootout with the mccandless gang. Dave mccandless, the previous owner of the property the station was on came to try to collect a debt, payment on his property. There was a shootout. Mccandless and one or two other people ended up getting killed. Later on, bill cooked up with the union army as a wagon master or wagon driver and he eventually ended up in springfield as a 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 around 1865. We are looking southeast into the southeast corner of the springfield square. The building in the southeast corner was a saloon owned by a guy named andrews. One of the things while ill does wild bill does was he arrests andrews for illegally selling booze to soldiers. There was a restriction on how much if any they could sell. That was one of the things wild bill did was arrest andrews. Toward the middle part or maybe a little bit toward the lateral part of the latter part of the civil war, bill and dave hooked up and became friends. There was some talk they mightve already known each other slightly but they became drinking buddies and friends and gambling buddies but they had a falling out near the end of the civil war and the falling out was over a gambling debt that dave said bill hickok owed him. They disagreed on the amount. Hickok said it was only 25, dave said it was hickok senate was only 20, dave said was 25. They had a shootout. It was an afternoon poker game and the poker game ended and he was reminded of the debt he owed him and while while bill was going to his pockets to schommer was not 25, in digging through his pockets he dug out his gold pocket watch and laid it on the table and dave picked it up and said, i will keep that for collateral. And bill hickok said, dont show it in public and dave said, i will wear it across the square if i want to. Bill hickok waited to see if he carried through with his warning that he would walk across the square during the disputed watch. Sure enough, he did and wild bill stepped out to meet him. They both drew their guns at the same time. This was supposedly the first wild west shootout of the era. In other words, the first time they did not use a formal jury when they had a dispute. They just went out there and had a spontaneous gunfight. So this is remembered as the first wild west gunfight. That is taken from harpers new monthly magazine. This is a depiction of the gunfight itself. You cannot really tell because that is not exactly how it happened. They were a lot farther apart than the scene shown there. They were about 75 yards apart. This picture i took myself. This is somewhat White Springfield square looks like today. I took the picture and i was standing and they had plaques in the road showing where each man was standing. I was standing right where about wild bill was standing. It would be off in here somewhere. This building is where the courthouse at the time was. Dave tutt was just outside the entryway. So it was from there, to there. My Subsequent Research led me to believe very strongly that hickok was over here a little bit to the southwest. So it was more like here and there, about 75 yards apart when a shot at each other. Anyway, bill hickok was arrested and was going to be prosecuted for manslaughter. Dave tutt was buried a couple blocks off springfield. You can see that tombstone there on the right, that is probably the one that was placed when he was moved from the City Cemetery to where he is now. The Maple Park Cemetery about 34 blocks from the square. That modern one has not been there all that long. Maybe 50 years or so, i do not know how long exactly. Many of these episodes, they had overtones left over from the civil war. In this case, the fight between hickok and dave tutt did not. If no one was confederate and the other was federal, they were still friends said that did not enter into it. What did enter into it was one hickok went to trial for manslaughter they had what was called the great constitution passed at the end of the civil war in missouri that said anyone who had ever supported the confederacy could not hold office, be a preacher, be a teacher, all sorts of things. So naturally, all of the jurors and officers of the court were union people and hickok was a union person so he got off. A lot of the confederate people thought he was to blame because he had gone down to the corner and just waited to see if that i would come across. He was kind of stalking him almost. Another episode that really did have a lot of overtones from the civil war was the killing of a preacher in webster county, across the county line from greene county. Springfields green county, labor webster is the next county east. Nathaniel headley was a preacher of the Methodist Episcopal Church south. He preached a lot at a church across the county line in webster county. But during the civil war, as the north more and more took charge, that church was taken over by the Methodist Episcopal Church north. At the and of the civil war year later in july of 19 1866, headley decided he had not taken an oath of allegiance like the great constitution said you had to, he was going to try to reclaim that church. He announced when he was going to do it and he was going to preach it. They warned him not to but he showed up and did it anyway and they killed him. [laughter] what this is all that is left. This is called the new pleasantville church. Both the guy that shot headley and the guy that had warned him not to come and had been kind of the organizer of the ones opposing him and it up going on trial for murder but they were both, again, acquitted. Because they were northerners. Mr. Wood this is a picture of missouri, a city around the turn of the century. Not right after the civil war. You can see the telephone poles and light poles or something. But it will give you a taste of what grandview looked like. Probably one of the most notorious little towns in the United States in the years immediately after the civil war. I do not know of any other town of a similar population that has produced as many notorious characters. Some you never heard of now, but they werent notorious people. We talk about one or two of them. In my other book, desperados, we also talk about some of them. Ive gone a little too far here but i will get to it. [laughter] mr. Wood one guy, jake killian, what he did was he went to a traveling circus that william like owned. It was a double teacher. You could stay for the first one but then you had to get out and paid to it back in for the second one. He tried to hide so we would not have to pay for both times. He was hiding under a chair but william lake and some of his helpers found him and he got mad and went home and got a gun and came back and killed william lake. Agnes thatcher lake, his widow put up a reward for the arrest of james kelly. Another thing interesting about her is that she later married wild bill hickok. Not later after this picture, but later after lake was killed. This picture was taken maybe even after wild bill cuck was killed. She married well bill hickok after her first she married while bill after her first husband was killed. In 1858 and alayna, kansas, a man named norton in who he had been sworn enemies with ever since he civil war, they had gotten in an argument and norton had partially blinded him and one eye. Shot his eye out or almost out and killian had sworn vengeance. When he got out on jail bail, he went looking for norton. Found him and as soon as norton saw him coming, he pulled out his gun and shot and killed him. Did not even give killian a chance. But he still got off because killian had been stalking him, coming after him. But notice the Killian Family said he was murdered, you know . [laughter] mr. Wood this is a little bit outside the ozarks. As i told you, there are a couple of stories in there that are not really ozark but close enough. This man ran a roadside in in kansas in the early 1870s. It consisted of john bender, his wife, a son whose name was also john and a daughter named kate. Kate was the only one that spoke fluent english, it was a german family. She was considered the leading spirit of the family. She was a spiritual healer. What family did was they ran a wayside in and people started disappearing. They would be traveling along the road and never reach their destination. Finally, people started getting suspicious maybe it had to do with these bender people. In spring of 18 some new three, a man named york went missing and his brother followed him to the house and asked questions and got suspicious answers so we went back to organize a posse. By the time they got back with the posse, the family had fled. They put out a proclamation offering a reward for the benders. Describing them and so forth and how much money was offered. This is a picture of the house where they finally, when they finally started investigating the bender house, they dug up 10 or 11 bodies of the people they had killed. Apparently they had the house partitioned off and they would arrange it where the traveler would be sitting with his back to the partition and somebody on the other side of the partition would hit them over the head and then they would finish him off with a knife and drop their body through a trap door and drag them away. They killed a halfdozen or more, probably 10 or 12 people. This is what used to be a historical marker. I am not sure if it is still there but if not there is one similar. Close to where it happened, describes this. This last paragraph says all those stories abound, the ultimate fate of the family is uncertain. Some say they were executed by a vengeful posse. The story as unresolved and remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the old west. I am one of the ones absolutely convinced they were executed by the vengeful posse because the vengeful posse went after them and came back several days later and did not talk about it. And out say anything. Why would they not say anything . They did not want people to know they took the law into their own hands. Not only that, i have gone through enough papers later on, it 10, 15, 20 years later and two or three or four men on their deathbed said they were members of that posse and sure enough, that is what happened. I do not think they escaped. This is a picture of the infamous younger gang. 1874, they pulled off a train robbery in wayne county, eastern part of the illinois. Came back and took refuge in the home stomping grounds of clay county. The youngers took refuge in oc only or a cigarette, that is where the and took refuge in their hometown where they had been as kids, so that was kind of their oldup. Some detectives came into the territory looking for them and they brought along a local deputy from osceola and they found them they knocked at the home of a man who was an old friend of the grandfathers. Sure enough, the youngers were there but were hidden in an upstairs attic and they went on their way and after they had left, the youngers all of them and caught up with him about a halfmile away and overtook them and had a gunfight and john younger was killed. Jim younger was injured slightly. One of the detectives was killed and the local Deputy Sheriff was killed. The only one that got away unscathed was pinkerton. This is kind of a monument about it. A little ways away from where it actually happen. This is the original monument that sits very close to where it happened. Two miles north of roscoe. That is why it is called the roscoe gunfight. They were on their way to the springs about two or three miles north. Next chapter concerns something i mentioned. This is a picture from around the turnofthecentury. You can see light post so you know it is not 1870s. Probably around 18 1900. You can see it was a hopping place around the turnofthecentury. A mining town, like many mining towns there were a lot of young, single men and anywhere there is a lot of young, single males there would be a lot of gunplay and drinking. That was the reputation. One thing that happened in the fall of 19 1879 was supposedly jesse james got killed by George Shepherd. Supposedly. Jesse james. George shepherd of course had been a former member of the james gang but had had a falling out with frank and jesse and offered his services to the law. They said ok. He infiltrated the game with the intention of trying to kill or capture jesse james and after the glendale train robbery which took place here in Jackson County at think someplace i dont even know exactly where glendale is maybe it is as far as independents now or something. After the glendale train robbery they were going south to texas for the winter, they got a little bit south and some kind of confrontation occurred. I do not know exactly what it was but shepherd went riding back into galena with a bloody, mingled leg saying, i kill jesse james. I just killed jesse james. The newspapers went and investigated and cannot find any dead bodies. The next day they said, either George Shepherd lied and jesse james is living or jesse james is dead. My own personal belief is that something actually did happen. I think maybe george thought he actually had killed him, he probably may be saw him fall out of his saddle or something but did not kill them. Obviously. Because he was killed two or three years later in st. Joseph. That is George Shepherd. A picture of him anyway. There was a Vigilante Group in missouri south of springfield. It rose up around 1883. They call themselves the law and order group and sometimes called themselves the citizens committee, Something Like that. They considered themselves and ok group. An honorable group. They kind of started out that way, the way a lot of groups do. They are trying to do something good but of course they went overboard. This was where their First Organization was held. This was their leader. Nathaniel kenney. When this picture was taken, he was a saloon keeper and springfield. But shortly after this, he moved and became a preacher. Started preaching in a church. Maybe started laying off the booze. I dont know. Again, cap about how some of the incidents were kind of carryover or at least the bitterness from the civil war carried over to aggravate some of these incidents. This is an ball harbor almost 20 years after the civil war. Almost all of them were northern soldiers. The others were almost all former confederate soldiers. There again, overtones from the civil war. They kind of killed each other, a couple members each. As far as the law and trying to apprehend them, and none of them were apprehended. However the ba bal harbour movement moved over a couple counties a couple years later. Dave walker and another of the main ones, john matthews, they had a nephew named wiley matthews. All four were eventually captured and tried for murder because they had killed a couple people of a family over by chadwick. They were convicted and is scheduled to hang but wiley, this mans nephew, escaped and was never recaptured. So only three of them hanged on the square in ozark in 1888. That was kind of the end of bal harbourism after that. This is a picture of one of the christian counties. They had secret signs, secret codes, and so forth. This is one of the masks. This is a picture of, malloy. When she was younger. You can tell she was an attractivelooking woman. She was a nationally known temperance revivalist. She traveled all over doing revivals. Trying to get people to not drink. She gave a talk in springfield, missouri, in the winter of 1854 or 1855. After it was over she moved on to a farm west of springfield a 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 whats the word best the temperance newspaper the word the temperance newspaper. 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 to me when hetting bigamy 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,dont her umped her in a well on the malloy farm. That is what this headline is talking about. He was of course arrested for murder when they finally found up. Cora was arrested as an accessory before the fact because they thought she was in cahoots