MEDAL OF HONOR HEROES OF 1/31

 Another day of American heroes (AND THEY ALL LIVE!!!!!!!):

1/31/1943 - Two days after being forced to ditch his F4F Grumman Wildcat fighter in Iron Bottom Sound off the Solomon Islands, 21-year-old Marine Corps First Lieutenant Jefferson J. DeBlanc is back behind the stick of another Wildcat, flying an escort mission for 12 Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers sent to attack shipping off the Japanese-held island of Kolobangara ... and again he has problems with his plane, discovering a serious fuel leak en route to the target area and radioing home to have rescue forces alerted.  Despite his fuel issue, he continues on with the mission, and arriving over Kolobangara, dives on a Mitsubishi F1M "Pete" float plane attacking the American dive bombers.  Dancing about the sky, DeBlanc avoids the fire from the Japanese plane's rear gunner and explodes his first victim of the day ... but not the last. Spotting another "Pete," the lieutenant maneuvers behind his new opponent, fires into the plane's fuel tanks, and has a second victory.  Night coming on, though low on fuel, DeBlanc then climbs, and looks for more targets ... finding them in a formation of Nakajima Ki-43 "Oscar" fighters approaching the dive bombers.  Diving in, DeBlanc has a third victory, and damages a fourth Japanese fighter.  Not pleased, the Japanese fighters turn away from the bombers and attack DeBlanc and his wingman. Outnumbered, DeBlanc and his wingman immediately go into a "Thatch Weave" in which two weaving aircraft cover the tails of each other.  A tactic that has saved many American lives in the Pacific War already, this time the maneuver fails when the wingman swings too wide and is shot down.  DeBlanc's turn, an "Oscar" gets on the pilot's tail and is about to open fire, when he is chased off by a frontal attack compliments of another Wildcat on the mission belonging to Lt. James L. Secrest.  Attempting to disengage from the fight, DeBlanc is instead confronted by two more Japanese fighters ... turning towards his opponents in a climbing attack, the naval aviator explodes the first plane, but the other gains DeBlanc's rear ... in trouble again, DeBlanc forces his fighter to abruptly slow, and as the Japanese pilot flies by, he downs his fifth enemy plane of the day.  In taking his opponent out however, he has left himself vulnerable to yet another "Oscar" ... almost fatally so.  Japanese bullets rip into DeBlanc's fighter, knock his wrist watch off his arm, smash the instrument panel, and set the Wildcat's engine on fire.  Time to leave, the lieutenant bails out at low altitude off Kolombangara, and once in the water, discovers he has been badly wounded in the back, arms, and legs.  His encounter with the Japanese has lasted roughly five minutes.  Adventure not yet over, DeBlanc, supported only by his life preserver, makes a six-hour swim to shore.  Wounds untended, for three days he hides from the Japanese, subsisting on coconuts he finds in an abandoned hut, until local natives find him.  Instead of turning the downed aviator into the Japanese though, DeBlanc is traded to another tribe for a sack of rice ... a tribe friendly to the Allied cause which treats his wounds, feeds him, and carries him by outrigger canoe to the home of a nearby Anglican missionary, who in turn, forwards him to two Coastwatchers.  Authorities notified by radio, on February 12, three days before his 22nd birthday, DeBlanc is paddled out to sea and picked up by Navy PBY Catalina patrol plane that finally returns him to base (and then a hospital stay).  Safe with the war over (he will end WWII with nine aerial victories and retires from the Corps Reserve in 1972 as a colonel), for his actions on 1/31/1943, DeBlanc is given the Congressional Medal of Honor at the White House by President Harry S. Truman on December 6, 1946.

DeBlanc

Wildcats

1/31/1951 - In Korea (near the town of Subuk), tasked with taking an important terrain feature called Hill 256 as part of Operation Thunderbolt, 25-year-old United States Army 1st Lieutenant Carl H. Dodd of Harlan County, Kentucky completes two days of combat that have him exposing himself to enemy fire as he leads his platoon repeatedly in attacks against Communist defensive positions ... destroying them one by one with accurate fire from his rifle and the grenades he tosses (by himself he takes out a machine gun nest and a mortar position), plus at the front of a bayonet charge made by his men.  Hill taken and held (previous to Dodd and his men, it has withstood numerous attacks), for his valorous actions, on June 4, 1951, Dodd is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Harry S. Truman.

Dodd

1/31/1968 - 28-year-old United States Army Chief Warrant Officer 3, Frederick E. Ferguson, a member of Company C of the 227th Aviation Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) has a dangerous day, in and above the enemy-controlled Vietnam city of Hue. Monitoring an emergency call from a downed American helicopter, Ferguson volunteers to take his Bell UH-1 Huey (its official name is the Iroquois) supply helicopter into the city on a rescue mission. Revved up to the max, the pilot takes his Huey on a low-level, maximum speed flight over the Perfume River, through intense enemy fire from boats and buildings, to a tiny South Vietnamese Army compound in the city where the downed aviators have taken refuge.  There, Ferguson lands in an extremely confined area in a blinding dust storm while under heavy mortar and small-arms fire. Disregarding the heavy damage his Huey has taken, once the five wounded soldiers are aboard, he lifts off, and flies his crippled helicopter back to base through the same gauntlet of galling fire.  For his actions, Ferguson is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor ... the first U.S. aviator to win the award during the Vietnam War.

Ferguson

Hueys

1/31/1970 - Serving a second tour of duty in Vietnam (the first is as a jet helicopter mechanic), 22-year-old U.S. Marine Corps Private Raymond M. Clausen, Jr. of New Orleans, Louisiana is part of a helicopter mission by HMM-263 to rescue an American squad trapped in a minefield, and under fire.  Guiding the helicopter pilot (their ride is a Boeing Vertol CH-46 Sea Knight) to a spot cleared by several mine explosions, Clausen leaves the helicopter six times (during one trip, while carrying a wounded soldier, a mine goes off killing a nearby corpsman and injuring three others) and makes his way through the minefield and enemy fire to help treat and move eleven wounded Americans and one dead soldier ... only when everyone is out of the minefield does Clausen signal to the helicopter pilot that is okay to liftoff.  In a White House ceremony that takes place on June 15, 1971, Clausen is presented the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Richard M. Nixon.

Clausen

Sea Knight

1/31/1970 - As a member of Company C, 4th Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 199th Infantry Brigade, 22-year-old Sergeant Richard A. Penry of Petaluma, California is helping set up a night ambush position in the Binh Tuy Province of Vietnam, when his unit is itself ambushed, hit with mortar, rocket, and automatic weapons fire that leaves many in the company wounded, and results in a scattering of the men into small, isolated groups.  Leadership in action, Penry makes his way through enemy fire to the company command post, where he treats the wounded company commander and others, and begins organizing a defense.  A crucial element of that defense will be radio communications back to base, and discovering the radio at the post has been destroyed, he runs outside the defensive perimeter to recover another ... and survives the shots sent his way only to discover it also does not function ... so he goes out again and comes back with two more radios!  Next, he crawls back to the perimeter and recovers weapons and ammo which he distributes around the defensive perimeter he has created.  Ready, when an assault on the company is made by 30 hostiles, Penry takes the most vulnerable forward position and beats back the attack by himself, using accurate pistol and rifle fire, and standing to shuck grenades at the enemy.  Then he learns that none of the radios are working again, so once more he leaves his lines and finds a fourth radio ... which he uses to contact headquarters and call for rescue.  While waiting for American helicopters to arrive, he continues to help with the wounded, readjusts his lines, and braves sniper fire to go out and lead five wounded soldiers back to the perimeter.  But he isn't there long ... when the rescue helicopters approach, Penry leaves the perimeter again to set up a guide beacon for the coming landings, sets priorities for the evacuation, and then successively carries 18 wounded soldiers to the extraction site.  More than enough for most, but not Penry, once all the wounded personnel have been evacuated, he then joins another platoon to go in pursuit of the enemy. Incredible stuff, for his actions saving his company, Penry is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Penry

BYE-BYE MR. BURKE

1/28/1829 - The infamous real-life boogey-men (so notorious that they will become the subject of a nursery rhyme used by parents to frighten their children) killing team of Burke and Hare, is permanently sundered in Edinburgh, Scotland when William Burke is hung, condemned chiefly on the testimony of his partner, William Hare, given to save Hare's own neck.

Burke

Hare

Born into an Irish middle-class family in Urney, County Tyrone in 1792, William Burke joins the British Army as a teenager, serves in the Donegal militia, and marries an Irish lass, but the marriage falls apart when Burke argues with his father-in-law over ownership of a piece of land.  Adios, the marriage is abandoned (along with two children) and Burke moves to Scotland, settles in the village of Maddiston where he works as a laborer on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal (a waterway running between the cities of Falkirk and Edinburgh), and begins living with Helen McDougal (whom he calls Nelly).  When work on the canal dries up, in November of 1827, the couple move to Tanner's Close in the West Port region of Edinburgh, where Burke makes a living selling second-hand clothes to the poor people of the region and becomes a cobbler, entertaining his customers with song and dance as they wait for their shoes.  Raised a Roman Catholic, seldom seen without his Bible, he becomes a regular worshipper at Presbyterian religious meetings that take in Grassmarket.  At roughly the same time, William Hare is born in County Armagh in Ireland (the exact year and locale are unknown).  Finding nothing to his liking in Ireland (he is described as a brawler with scars of his fights on his head and face), Hare also moves to Scotland and begins working on the Union Canal out of Tanner's Close.  After seven years of working on the canal, he too moves to Edinburgh, becomes a coal man's assistant and becomes the unwed spouse of a widow, another Irish immigrant, named Margaret Laird Logue.  Bonding over their Irish backgrounds, work experiences, and love of drink, sometime in 1827 the men and their ladies become fast friends and Burke and McDougal move into the lodging house of Hare and Margaret.

Union Canal

West Port, Edinburgh

The Edinburgh of the 1820s that Burke and Hare find themselves in has become a center for the study of human anatomy (along with the Netherlands town of Leiden and Padua, Italy) thanks to a host of scholars and scientists that include Alexander Monro Sr., Alexander Monro Jr., and Alexander Monro III, John Bell John Goodsir, and Robert Knox.  But in there is a problem inherent in the laws of the time and the subject matter, not enough cadavers are available for all the students to work on that are drawn to the city for training (only persons who have died in prison, by suicide, or are foundlings and orphans can be dissected).  Not surprisingly, a trade in stolen bodies grows in the town, with body snatchers and grave robbers becoming known as "resurrection men," and bereaved citizens protecting their dead loved ones with guards and watchtowers at cemeteries, large stone slabs are rented to go over graves until the bodies below are corrupted past the point of being useful, and families using iron cages around the coffins of loved ones called mortsafes.  In November of 1827, with the death of a lodger at Hare's house, the pair enter Edinburgh's body trade.

Edinburgh's Royal College of Surgeons

Monro III

Mortsafes

Upset that a lodger known as Old Donald has died of dropsy while owing four pounds in back rent, over drinks Burke and Hare decide to get the money owed by selling the corpse to Edinburgh University.  Substituting wood shavings and bark for Donald's body, the men send off the coffin they've received for the army pensioner, and after dark, the pair take the corpse to the medical university where they are told that Dr. Robert Knox is in the market for fresh cadavers (blind in one eye from a bout of childhood smallpox, a medical veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, the doctor is an expert on human anatomy that carries out two dissections a day before classes of more than 400 students).  Finding Dr, Knox, the men are pleased to receive seven pounds and ten shillings for their chattel, and begin thinking of future transactions when one of Knox's assistants tells the men that the doctor would be glad to see them again if they come across any other cadavers they'd like to market.  Seed planted, wanting the nice payday repeated (the pounds and shillings paid are worth roughly $900 in present-day dollars), in January of 1828, when another lodger at Hare's home comes down with a fever and becomes delirious, using the excuse that he will soon die anyway and that infectious state could cause business at the home to suffer, the pair become murderers for the first time when Burke holds the man down (a miller named Joseph) and Hare suffocates him with a pillow.  Taking the fresh corpse to Dr. Know, they are paid ten pounds for their second body and stumble upon a method of murder that will almost undetectable until the arrival of modern forensics.  Too easy and too great a payday to not try again, over a period of ten months, the duo will expedite the leaving of fifteen more individuals.

Making Money

Dr. Knox

Usually getting their victims drunk first (and taking the opportunity to throw down a few whiskeys themselves), paid between eight to ten pounds for each body by an uninquisitive Dr. Knox or one of his assistants, for the most part using a killing method that will be called "Burking" in which suffocation is brought on by a hand covered mouth and pinched off nostrils, sometimes assisted by their ladies providing beverage, locking a door, or helping with hiding a body, the murders pile up into October of 1828: a salt seller named Abigail Simpson spends the night at Hare's house and never wakes up, an unnamed English match seller that comes down with jaundice while staying at Hare's fills out a need for a male corpse, an old women invited to Hare's by Margaret Hare is done away with using a stiff mattress cover, Mary Paterson is killed after she falls asleep at Hare's after imbibing too much whiskey with Burke (McDougal will get her skirt and petticoats), a Mrs. Haldane gets drunk and falls asleep in the stable of Hare's house and is killed, and when her daughter comes looking for her mother, Burke does a solo and kills her too after getting the woman intoxicated, a "cinder gatherer" who previously had sold scraps of leather to Burke for his cobbling is tempted into the stable with whiskey and suffocated, a drunken woman being helped home by local constable is done away with when Burke convinces the lawman that he is her friend and get her home so the officer can go about his business, a grandmother and her grandson have their oxygen cut off when they make the mistake of lodging at Hare's home (when the horse used to transport to Dr. Knox balks at its heavier than usual load and a porter and handcart are required to get the two corpses to the university, Hare shoots the horse dead), while Burke and McDougal are away visiting McDougal's father in Falkirk, Hare kills a women by himself (the murder will lead to a fight between the two killers when Hare lies about the deed and doesn't share the money he gets from Dr. Knox, leading Burke and McDougal to find new lodging a few blocks away from Hare's home ... the rift between the men will soon end though), a washerwoman named Mrs. Ostler who comes to the property Burke is staying at to do the laundry is filled with liquor and killed, a female McDougal relative is murdered (and Mrs. Hare suggests that maybe Helen should also be done away with), an inoffensive, mentally challenged 18-year-old with a limp caused by deformed feet named James Wilson and known on the streets of Edinburgh as Daft Jamie is murdered (despite fighting with his killers, who keep the youth's snuff box and snuff spoon ... several students in Dr. Knox's class will recognize Wilson but be dissuaded from contacting the authorities when the doctor claims they are wrong and then dissects the body, missing both its head and feet). 

Hare's Lodging House

Burke's Home

Murder

Daft Jamie

Dr. Knox

The pair's final killing comes on Halloween of 1828 and is a middle-aged Irish woman named Marjory Canpbell Docherty who Burke gets drunk while claiming to be from the same part of Ireland.  Docherty however is discovered hidden in a pile of straw under a bed before she is taken to Dr. Knox by two other lodgers at Burke's place, Ann and James Gray and the authorities are notified of the death (but not before McDougal tries to bribe the two to remain silent about what they've found).  Questioned by police, four different stories of innocence are told to the authorities and when Docherty is found the next morning in Knox's dissecting room, both killing couples are placed in custody and charged with murder.  Sure that they have caught a quartet of killers, but unsure they can prove it in a court of law, Edinburgh's Lord Advocate, Sir William Rae focuses on getting a confession from one member of the group that will get the others convicted, and settles on William Hare being the weak link he needs.  Offered a full pardon for his tale of what has been taking place on the hard streets of Edinburgh, Hare turns on his partner (his testimony can't be used to prosecute his wife) and his lady.  The couple's trial begins at 10:00 in the morning of Christmas Eve, 1828 before the High Court in the city's Parliament House, heard by Lord Justice-Clerk, David Boyle, supported by Lords MacKenzie, Pitmilly, and Meadowbank (and the court protected from disturbances by 300 constables, with infantry and cavalry at the ready should more men be necessary).  Witnesses called and testimony given (though somehow Dr. Knox escapes the proceedings and will never be charged with anything, though his career goes into a downward spiral ... he dies in the town of Hackney in 1862) with only short breaks for meals be taken, at 8:30 in the morning of Christmas Day the jury is given the case and takes only fifty minutes to return a verdict of guilty against William Burke, while McDougal is told the charges against her are "not proven."  Sentenced to death by hanging, because of the motive behind the murders, Boyle tells Burke, "Your body should be publicly dissected and anatomized.  And I trust, that if it is ever customary to preserve skeletons, yours will be preserved, in order that posterity may keep in remembrance your atrocious crimes."

McDougal & Burke

Monster chosen for execution, William Burke on the scaffold confesses to his crimes (while also blaming Hare) and is hung in Edinburgh on the morning of January 28, 1829, before a crowd of over 25,000 men, women, and children (views from windows overlooking the scaffold sell for from five to twenty shillings).  Afterward, on February 1st, taken from his gibbet, the killer is publicly dissected in the anatomy theater of the University of Edinburgh's Old College by Professor Monro (the process lasts two hours) before a full house of students and interested doctors (during the cutting, Moro will pause to write on a piece of paper with a quill, "This is written with the blood of Wm Burke, who was hanged at Edinburgh.  This blood was taken from his head."), before being exhibited to a passing parade of fifty students at a time (which prevents a riot from taking place).  And as the judge declared, Burke's skeleton is given to the Anatomical Museum of the Edinburgh Medical School where it can still be seen on display, while a death mask and a book bound in the killer's tanned skin can be seen at the city's Surgeon's Hall Museum.  

The Execution Of William Burke

Death Mask And Blood Note

Burke

As for the others, McDougal is released after her trial, is almost torn apart by a mob the next day when she goes out to buy whiskey (she escapes retribution by taking refuge in the city's main police station off High Street, after fleeing out the back window of a smaller station in the city's Fountainbridge region), leaves Edinburgh after being denied permission to see Burke before his execution, and vanishes from history.  And the story is similar for the other two participants in the killings too.  Margaret Hare is released on January 19, 1829, travels to Glasgow, with the help of the local police escapes a mob calling for her death, makes her way by ship back to Ireland, and is lost to history, while William Hare is released from jail on February 5, 1829, escapes a mob ready to tear him to pieces, makes his way across the border into England, and is never seen again (there will be rumors of him in London, Canada, and Australia, but nothing is ever known for sure).

Hare

"Up the close and doon the stair, But and ben' wi' Burke and Hare.  Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief, Knox the boy that buys the beef."  With the hanging of William Burke on this day in 1829, the final chapter of the Burke and Hare Edinburgh killings ends.

Burke & Hare

  

         

  
 

    

A GUNMAN NAMED COLE

 1/15/1844 - Crazy times coming, on the Jackson County, Missouri farm of respected landowner (the family has properties in Jackson and Cass Counties, mail contractor, and merchant, Henry Washington Younger and his wife, the daughter of a prosperous local farmer, Bersheba Leighton Fristoe, a boy who will one day make savage history (the seventh child of fourteen she will bring into the world) is born ... Thomas Coleman "Cole" Younger.

Cole

Henry Washington

Bersheba

Growing up, Cole does well in school and attends church with his family every week and will later describe the farm he calls home as a "garden spot."  But it is a garden full of snakes and not a good place to grow up at all as the residents of the area struggle with the slavery issue that will soon plunge the entire nation into civil war.  Well enough off to afford house slaves for tending to chores and serving meals, Henry Younger is nevertheless a Union man and against the state's secession, a position his son Cole disagrees with emphatically.  When the Civil War breaks out in 1861, Henry's position becomes untenable as he loses thousands of dollars in stolen and damaged property as both sides see him as an enemy.  Spurred into choosing a side at seventeen when he gets into a fight over a girl at a country dance with a older member of the Missouri militia, Cole leaves home and joins the pro-Confederate riders of school teacher turned guerilla, William Clarke Quantrill, and soon identified as such, his father is the first member of the family to pay the price for his son's decision.  Going about his business near the town of Westport, in July of 1862, Henry is shot in the back three times and killed by a member of the Kansas militia.  Seven months later, knowing his family has secretly been providing food and clothing to her guerilla son, militia soldiers show up at his mother's home and burn it to the ground.  And the atrocities against the Youngers continue when three of Cole's sisters and two female cousins are arrested as spies and jailed in a three-story brick building in Kansas City.  On August 13, 1863, the building suddenly collapses and one of the Younger cousins is killed (along with three other women, one of which is the sister of southern guerilla, William T. Anderson, who will earn the nickname, "Bloody Bill" reaping vengeance for her death) ... a death Cole believes was deliberately instigated to eliminate women sympathizing with the Southern cause.

Cole

Bloody Bill

As a Quantrill raider, on November 19, 1861, Cole kills his first man during a skirmish with Federal troops outside the town of Independence, dropping a Union soldier with a pistol shoot from seventy-one yards away.  His next killing occurs on Christmas night of 1862 during a search for his father's killer in the barrooms of Kansas City (he is accompanied by Quantrill gunmen, Abe Cunningham, Fletcher Taylor, Zach Traber, George Clayton, and George Todd).  Bloody back-and-forth, on August 21, 1863, Cole gets a chance to avenge his family's woes when he participates as one of the 450 guerillas Quantrill leads on a raid of Lawrence, Kansas (a pro-Union locale forty miles west of the Missouri border).  A raid Cole will call, "a day of butchery."  Gladly killing adult males (about 200 citizens of the town will perish during the raid), but also saving a dozen other citizens of the town, Cole next shows up in Texas when Union forces tear up Missouri looking for the raiders.  There, Cole will claim to join the regular Confederate army, and fight Union soldiers in the "Lone Star State," Arkansas, and Louisiana, take part in an expedition to Colorado to cut a transcontinental telegraph line, escort a Confederate spy on a secret mission to Victoria, British Columbia, engage in skirmishes with Comanches and Apaches, and become involved with a sixteen-year-old he meets in Dallas named Myra Belle Shirley, who after the war will become the female outlaw Belle Starr (involved enough that the union of the two produces a daughter named Pearl).  Whatever Cole is up to after Lawrence, by the time the Civil War ends, he is a master gunman and living outside of Los Angeles, California with an uncle.

Quantrill

The Lawrence Massacre

Belle Starr

War over, Cole returns to a ravaged Missouri where animosities over what took place during the murderous mayhem of the state have not been forgotten by either side.  Denied the ability to vote by the new Missouri constitution unless an individual could swear they hadn't fought for the South during the war (the state's infamous "Ironclad Oath"), automatically accused of a myriad of crimes taking place in the region, Cole and his younger brother Jim (also a Quantrill raider after Cole departs the unit) soon unite with other former guerillas with bad attitudes, including Quantrill veteran, Alexander Franklin "Frank" James, and his younger brother, a Bloody Bill Anderson rider shot in the lung while surrendering in 1865, Jesse Woodson James.  As members of the James-Younger Gang, on February 13, 1866, Frank and Cole lead ten other outlaws in what will become America's first daylight bank robbery (an early 1864 attack on a bank in St. Albans, Vermont by a group of Confederate soldiers is considered at the time to be just another act-of-war), a morning raid on the Clay County Savings Association of Liberty, Missouri that fills two grain sacks with loot that nets the bandits $57,000 in cash and gold coin (a princely sum worth $932,896.42 in 2021 dollars), but also takes the life of an innocent bystander, George Wymore, when the gang shoots up the streets leaving town and a bullet kills the young student as he is on his way to classes at William Jewell College.  As one of the leaders of the gang, Cole will participate in ten years of train (7), stagecoach (4), and bank robberies (12), along with numerous deadly gunfights, incorporate his younger brothers Jim, John (he will be killed by a Pinkerton detective on March 17, 1874, a death his brother John immediately avenges by killing Deputy Sheriff Edward Daniels and Pinkerton agent Louis Lull), and Bob into the band's depredations, and be one of the few men to survive disagreeing with Jesse.

Jesse & Frank

Jim Younger

John Younger

Bob Younger

Gun always at the ready, Cole's most notorious outlaw moments include the desperado being one of the men that robs the Southern Bank of Kentucky in Russellville, Kentucky, a job that almost results in the death of bank president Nimrod Long (1868), the robbery of the Daviess County Savings Bank of Gallatin, Missouri (1869) in which Jesse kills cashier John Sheets, mistakenly believing the man is the Union militia officer that ambushed and killed Bloody Bill Anderson in 1864, the $1,500 robbery of the Deposit Bank of Columbia, Kentucky (1872) that results in Judge James Garnett being shot in the hand as he tries to warn the town their bank is being robbed and the death of cashier R. A. C. Martin from a .45 slug to the head, the robbery of the ticket booth at the second annual Kansas City Industrial Exposition (1872), a job that nets the gang only $900 and gets a little girl accidentally shot, for a $3,000 payday (the bandits are seeking a gold shipment of $75,000) helps derail a train of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad outside of Adair, Iowa, injuring numerous passengers and killing the train's engineer and foreman (1873, the first train robbery west of the Mississippi River), is one of the men that plunders $30,000 from a Kansas Pacific Railroad train outside of Muncie, Kansas (1874), the $20,000 robbery of the Bank of Huntington in Huntington, West Virginia (1875), escaping a posse that captures gang member Tom Webb and kills outlaw Tom McDaniel, and the $15,000 robbery of a Missouri Pacific Railroad train at a spot called "Rocky Cut" outside of Otterville, Missouri (1876).  And of course, Cole is a major player in the gang's Waterloo, when the men from Missouri try to take down the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota (the bank is chosen because two of its shareholders are former Union generals, Benjamin Butler and Adelbert Ames) ... ten minutes of mayhem that kills two badmen, two citizens, and wounds Cole, Bob Younger, Jim Younger and Frank James for plunder amounting to $26.60.

Reward Poster

Cole

One of eight bandits that rides into Northfield, Minnesota on September 7, 1876, Cole's assignment in the robbery is to keep people away from the entrance to the bank on the town's Division Street.  Pretending to be adjusting the cinch of his horse's saddle, when townspeople begin firing on the robbers, Cole mounts up and begins firing up and down the street and into windows containing commotion curious faces.  When outlaw Clell Miller is gunned down (a round from medical student Henry Wheeler severs the outlaw's subclavian artery), Cole jumps down from his horse and tries to help his outlaw comrade, and for his trouble receives his first wound of the raid  when he takes a rifle bullet in his left hip.  Taking Miller's two pistols, he remounts and calls into the bank that it is time to leave.  Message unheeded as bandit Bill Chadwell is dumped to the ground by a round through his chest, Cole rides up the bank entrance again and calls out, "For God's sake come out.  They are shooting us all to pieces!"  Trying to suppress the gunfire of the townspeople of Northfield, Younger shoots Swedish immigrant Nicolaus Gustavson in the head when the drunken man, not understanding the outlaw's instructions to get off the street stumbles in the direction of Cole's pistols.  When Bob Younger is wounded exiting the bank, Cole rides over and pulls his younger brother up on to his mount before riding out of town and into the largest manhunt in the United States to the time.  Avoiding posses for two weeks as the gang moves south, Cole refuses to leave his wounded brother when Jesse suggests Bob Younger is impacting the men's escape, and with his brothers and Charlie Pitts, after a gunbattle near the town of Madelia, Minnesota on September 21, 1876, in which Pitts is killed and the other men are all wounded again (Cole will be on the brink of death from four wounds to his back, a wound to his arm, buckshot in his left shoulder, and a bullet round that enters his right jaw, passes over the outlaw's palate arch, and comes to rest in the upper side of his left jaw ... and from riding in the rain for so long without taking his boots off, when his footwear is removed, his toenails pull away from his feet) before finally being captured.

The Northfield Bank

Miller & Chadwell

Pitts

Captured Cole

Placed on trial, to escape being hung, the three Younger brothers all plead guilty to the Northfield robbery and its murders to avoid being hung.  Sentenced to life in prison terms at the Minnesota Territorial Prison at Stillwater by Judge Samuel Lord on November 20, 1876, the brothers begin serving their time at the state prison two days later.  Behaving themselves in prison (Bob will die from tuberculosis at the institution in September of 1889) Cole and Jim, with recommendations from the Missouri General Assembly, former Missouri governor Thomas Crittenden, eighty-six citizens of Madelia (including the three surviving members of the posse that caught them), and the prison's warden, plus a newly passed law allowing paroles against life sentences if the prisoners have spent a minimum of twenty-four years and seven months behind bars, the former outlaws are paroled on July 10, 1901 (despondent that the terms of his parole do not allow him to marry his fiancée, St. Paul socialite and newspaper reporter, Alix J. Muller, Jim quits his job at a cigar store in Minneapolis and on October 18, 1902 puts a .38 bullet in his head, committing suicide at the age of 54).  In 1903, Cole's parole is changed to a pardon on the outlaw's promise that he will never return to Minnesota and on February 14, 1903, the 59-year old former gunman begins a train journey back to Kansas City, Missouri.  Back in Missouri, Cole's other many crimes are ignored and he quickly hooks up with his former riding companion, Frank James, and becomes involved in a Wild West show called "The Great Cole Younger and Frank James Historical Wild West (following the terms of his parole, Cole does not participate in the show, but receives 25 percent of the show's profits for the use of his name ... a series of lawsuits closes the show abruptly in September of 1903).  Back in old stomping grounds, Cole writes an autobiography filled with colorful tall tales called "The Story of Cole Younger by Himself" and an account of his last robbery and incarceration called "Real Facts - Northfield Robbery," hosts a Fourth of July picnic in Kansas City in 1906 in which he gives a lecture about the outlaw life and presents an early silent film depicting a train robbery.  On August 21, 1912, Cole becomes a Christian and repents his criminal past.  Outliving Frank James by a year and a month (Jesse's older brother death occurs on February 18, 1915), after having a private deathbed audience with his friend Harry Hoffman and Jesse's only son, Jesse Edwards James, in which they discuss the Northfield robbery and what happened after, Cole dies at the home of his niece in Lee's Summit, Missouri at the age of 72.

Prison

Making Crime Pay

Frank James

Cole

But of course, Cole never really leaves at all as his days as a Missouri bushwhacker with Quantrill and his robberies with the James-Younger gang are told and retold up to the present in books, magazines, plays, music, television shows, and at the movies, with memorable portrayals of Cole coming from a host of actors that includes Dennis Morgan (Bad Men of Missouri - 1941), Wayne Morris (The Younger Brothers - 1949), Alan Hale Jr. (The True Story of Jesse James - 1957), Frank Lovejoy (Cole Younger, Gunfighter - 1958), Cliff Robertson (The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid - 1972, with Academy Award winner Robert Duvall as Jesse James), David Carradine (The Long Riders - 1980), Randy Travis (Frank and Jesse - 1994), and Scott Caan (American Outlaws - 2001).

Cole - True West Magazine

 

 
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