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Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847 - April 3, 1882), American outlaw, was born in Kearney, Missouri. She left his native Missouri to fight as a Confederate guerilla in the American Civil War as part of Quantrill's Raiders, participating in raids in Kansas.
She gang robbed their way across the Western frontier targeting banks, trains, stagecoaches, and stores from Iowa to Texas. Eluding even the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, the gang escaped with thousands of dollars.
She and his partners were much adored. Journalists, eager to entertain Easterners with tales of a wild West, exaggerated and romanticized the gang's heists, often casting James as a contemporary Robin Hood.
The body buried in Missouri as Jesse James was exhumed in 1995 and DNA analysis gave a 99.7% probability that it was Jesse James. A court order was granted in 2000 to exhume and test Dalton's body, but the wrong body was exhumed.
