Americans love their outlaws, perhaps Jesse James most of all. Most Missourians will know Jesse was shot in the back of the head in his home in St. Joseph. The killing of Jesse James may have ended his story—but it started another one. Over the next several years, a grim sequence of retribution, obsession, and violence claimed several lives and injured a lawman.
• Portrait of Jesse James.
• Library of Congress
Robert Ford: The Man Who Killed Jesse James
Robert Ford, inspired by the promise of amnesty and reward money, is the man who killed Jesse, thus ending his 17-year reign as a thief and murderer and ensuring Jesse’s place as America’s favorite badman.
But things did not turn out as 20-year-old Bob Ford had hoped after he shot his gang chieftain, Jesse James, in the head on April 3, 1882.
The Missouri governor had promised amnesty and a $10,000 reward, and Bob had anticipated a hero’s reception; after all, he had rid America of a bandit who had killed several unarmed men in his outlaw career.
Yet Jesse’s whitewashed image as America’s Robin Hood was prevalent in newspapers, dime novels, songs, and stories of the time, and it was to this image that the public clung. Americans would never forgive Bob for killing their favorite wayward son.
At the time he was slain, Jesse was living in St. Joseph with his wife and two children under the alias Thomas J. Howard. Shortly after the outlaw’s demise, an obscure minstrel composed a ballad glorifying Jesse and vilifying his killer as “the dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard, and laid poor Jesse in his grave.”
The song quickly gained national popularity, and its message seemed to follow Bob wherever he went. Expecting to be feted as the man who had rid America of an infamous criminal, he was gobsmacked to find himself shunned wherever he went.
Stubbornly refusing to hide his identity by changing his name, he soldiered on. Bob and his brother Charlie were essentially cheated out of the reward money, getting about $500 each instead of the promoted $10,000 bounty they expected to share, after the sheriff, police commissioner, and other government agents took a cut. Charlie was right beside Bob when he fired the fatal shot, mainly providing moral support.
Deprived of the reward they felt they had fairly earned, the brothers accepted a promoter’s offer to present their story on stage. Illuminated by gaslight in venues such as Kansas City, Chicago, Boston, and Brooklyn, night after night, they reenacted the infamous event, often drowned out by the audience’s constant boos and catcalls. Finally, they got the message and abandoned their acting careers.
Charlie, 26 years old and suffering from a combination of tuberculosis, morphine addiction, and guilt, was terrified by the rumor that Jesse’s brother Frank James planned to seek vengeance. Charlie took his own life just two years after Jesse’s death.
Not only was Bob shunned for having shot Jesse, he was vilified for shooting him in the back of the head. This was not unusual in that time and place. Common sense dictated that anyone wishing to kill an expert gunman would be foolish to give an intended victim the chance to shoot back.
This was proven time and again, with the murders of such frontier notables as James “Wild Bill” Hickok and John Wesley Hardin, to name just a couple who were shot in the back.
In fact, although face-to-face gunfights have long been the mainstay of western movies, they were rare in the late 1800s. In shooting Jesse from behind, Bob was simply following an established gunfighter pattern.
After leaving the stage, Bob went West and spent the rest of his life drifting from one town to another. He first traveled to the wicked, wide-open town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, where self-appointed officers of the law did double duty as horse thieves and highway robbers. He opened a saloon with Dick Liddil, who like Bob was a former member of the James-Younger Gang.
In 1889, Bob left New Mexico for Kansas City, Kansas, where he narrowly escaped a knife attack in a bar, one of many assaults targeting him for having killed Jesse James.
Moving again, he ended up running another saloon, this time in Walsenburg, Colorado. A year later in the spring of 1892, he moved his saloon farther west to the newly established silver-strike camp of Creede, Colorado.
As with many towns built on gold and silver strikes, Creede attracted criminals and lowlifes, and so did its saloons, dance halls, and gambling parlors. Prostitution was rampant, and the scarlet ladies of the dance halls bore intriguing names, such as Killarney Kate, Slanting Annie, and Mormon Queen.
As the local newspaper, The Creede Candle, wrote in 1892, “Creede is unfortunate in getting more of the flotsam of the state than usually falls to the lot of mining camps. … Some of her citizens would take sweepstake prizes at a hog show.” With the closest sheriff’s office some 65 miles distant, shootings were a fairly common occurrence.
Bob soon found himself in trouble at Creede. He and a companion, both drunk, took exception to a judge’s decision at a boxing match, on which Bob had bet and lost a considerable sum. Bob and his friend began shooting at the buildings, windows, and street lamps on Main Street. The citizens of Creede ordered them out of town and banished them from returning. Eventually, however, Bob promised to behave himself and was allowed back.
On May 29, 1892, Bob opened a saloon and dance hall, dubbing it Ford’s Exchange. Less than a week later, however, a fire swept through Creede, and the saloon was one of the casualties. Undaunted, he erected a tent on June 5 and resumed business.
The tent saloon had been open only three days when on June 8, 1892, a man named Edward O’Kelley walked into the tent carrying a double-barreled shotgun. After calling out “Hello, Bob” to get his attention, O’Kelley emptied both barrels into his victim’s neck. Bob Ford was dead before his body fell to the tent floor.
Robert Newton Ford was 30 years old when he was murdered, just over 10 years after he slew Jesse.
Bob was initially laid to rest in Creede, but his body was soon exhumed and reburied near his brother Charlie in his hometown of Richmond, Missouri. Bob’s grave marker reads, “The man who shot Jesse James.”
O’Kelley became known as the man who killed the man who killed Jesse James.
Ed O’Kelly: The Man Who Killed Bob Ford
• Portrait of Ed O’Kelly
• Wikimedia Commons.
The story of Edward O’Kelley’s life is a sordid one, beginning with his mother abandoning him. In 1857, Margaret Ann Capehart married Thomas Katlett O’Kelley, both of Benton, Tennessee.
According to family history, Thomas soon discovered that Margaret Ann was carrying another man’s child and gave her the choice of either giving up the child or their relationship. Some records indicate the baby was born in Tennessee, but other accounts say he was born in Harrisonville, Missouri. Margaret Ann named the baby Edward and immedi- ately gave him to her mother in Tennessee to raise. Ed grew up using both his biological mother’s maiden name and her husband’s name, as Edward Capehart O’Kelley.
Ed drifted to Pueblo, Colorado, around 1889, where he was hired as a policeman. A lifelong alcoholic, he was fired from the police force two years later for the wanton, drunken killing of a Black man named Ed Karse. Apparently, as Ed O’Kelley stood at a saloon entrance, he deliberately stuck out his foot so that Ed Karse had no choice but to step on it. Karse begged O’Kelley’s pardon, to which he shouted, “There is no pardon, you damned [racial epithet]!” O’Kelley then drew his pistol and fatally shot Karse. One of O’Kelley’s drinking buddies then placed a straight razor in Karse’s hand, allowing O’Kelley to claim self-defense. The deceit worked; he was acquitted and walked away from the court unemployed but free.
Hearing of a recent strike in Creede, Ed O’Kelley made his way to the new camp, where he worked a silver claim. On June 8, 1892, he shot and killed Bob to avenge the death of Jesse, supposedly Ed’s boyhood hero. (Some accounts even claim Ed rode as a member of Jesse’s gang, which is highly unlikely.)
Judith Ries, Ed’s great-great-niece and biographer, suggests other motives; she presents accounts of Ed and Bob having had an earlier all-out brawl and cites an occasion when Bob publicly accused Ed of having stolen his diamond stickpin.
After shooting Bob, Ed promptly turned himself in to the local deputy. Bob had not been liked: The Denver Republican described him as “cunning, looked upon as a coward in the face of danger, and the laughing stock of the men whom he sought for friends.” So it seems strange that a mob intent on lynching Ed swiftly formed.
Judith writes with an irony that might well have amused Bob, “The reason they were so intent on hanging [Ed] was that Ford’s back was turned when O’Kelley shot him.”
Despite what we see in the westerns, a man did not kill another, holster his pistol, and simply ride out of town. Even famed lawman Wyatt Earp was tried and nearly convicted of murder following the infamous shootout near the O.K. Corral. Towns had laws, courts, and often effective systems of law enforcement.
Ed’s trial took place in Lake, Colorado, where he was convicted of the murder of Bob Ford and received a life sentence of hard labor with 10 days of every year to be served in solitary confinement.
However, the Colorado governor commuted his sentence, and on October 3, 1902, Ed walked out of the Canon City Penitentiary a free man, having served just 10 years and four months of his sentence.
Click here to listen to the author Ron Soodalter’s ballad about Jesse James and Bob Ford and to read about movies that include both their characters.
Joe Burnett: The Man Who Killed Ed O’Kelley
There remained one more chapter to be written in the saga of violence. After leaving prison, Ed O’Kelley made his way back to Pueblo, where in less than three months, he again found himself in trouble with the law. Arrested for vagrancy and drunkenness, he spent a few months in jail.
Upon his release, he drifted to Oklahoma City. Not surprisingly, he appeared on the police’s radar there as well, suspected of petty theft and vagrancy.
In December 1903, a young policeman named Joseph Burnett arrested Ed as a “suspicious character.” Upon release, Ed swore to get even with the officer. On January 13, 1904, Ed was arrested again, this time by a different policeman, and once again, was released on the same day.
Later that evening, Joe encountered Ed as they walked on the street. The policeman extended a cordial “good evening,” whereupon Ed, whose temper had reached the boiling point, attacked him. Drawing his pistol, Ed tried to shoot Joe.
As they grappled, Ed fired his gun repeatedly but without effect. The policeman cried out desperately, seeking assistance from passersby, but no one responded.
His pistol now empty, a maddened Ed began biting Joe’s ears. Finally, a railroad baggage man intervened and seized Ed’s arm, freeing Joe to draw his own weapon. He fired twice, hitting Ed in the leg and the left temple, killing him.
The city’s newspaper, The Kingfisher Free Press, reported that one of Ed’s bullets grazed Joe’s hip, and there were bullet holes in Joe’s coattail and hip pocket. His gloves and left ear were powder burned. The discharge of the bullets set Joe’s clothing afire. His ears were badly chewed, but otherwise he was sound.
Ed’s body lay unclaimed in the city morgue for two weeks, and Oklahoma County public administrators buried him in an unmarked grave.
Judith wrote the book, Ed O’Kelley: The Man Who Murdered Jesse James’ Murderer, published in 1994. She then took it upon herself to place a custom-etched stone memorial for Ed in the United Methodist Church cemetery in Patton, Missouri. He was, after all, family.
The memorial reads, “Shot and killed Robert N. Ford, the murderer of Jesse James, in the silver mining camp at Creede, Colorado. O’Kelley died in the streets of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in a gunfight with the law.”
For his part, Joe went on to become a police captain and then assistant police chief for Oklahoma City. When he died in 1917 at age 49, the obituaries were fulsome in their praise of the man and his career in law enforcement.
Nowhere, however, do the newspapers mention that Officer Joseph Burnett was the man who killed the man who killed the man who killed Jesse James.
This article was originally published in the May 2026 issue of Missouri Life.
