1. Jesse and his brother Frank, Confederate guerrillas during the Civil War, were said to have committed atrocities against unarmed Union soldiers, scalping and dismembering them.
2. Jesse was shot in the chest while attempting to surrender to Union soldiers near Lexington, Missouri.
3. He recovered from the gunshot wound under the care of his first cousin. The two were eventually married to his first cousen !
4. The first bank robbery to which Jesse James was linked was that at the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri, where James shot and killed a cashier he mistakenly believed was a former Civil War adversary. This marked the beginning of Jesse James public identification as an outlaw.
5. Jesse formed an alliance with the editor and founder of The Kansas City Star, who published letters from James that proclaimed his innocence. The editor wrote admiring editorials about James that painted him more as a noble character than a criminal.
6. Though the newspaper editor fostered a Robin Hood image of Jesse James and his gang, there was never any evidence or indication that they shared robbery money with anyone outside their gang.
7. The James-Younger gang, which was comprised of Jesse, his brother Frank, Cole Younger, his brothers, and some former Confederates, carried out a string of robberies from Iowa to Texas, and from Kansas to West Virginia. They robbed banks, stagecoaches, and a fair in Kansas City, often in front of large crowds.
8. Eventually, they turned to train robbery, usually robbing cars rather than passengers.
9. In 1874, a railroad company enlisted the Pinkerton National Detective agency to track down and capture the James-Younger gang.
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