AMERICAN “KELLY GANG.”

Patea Mail, 30 June 1882, Page 3

AMERICAN “KELLY GANG.”

SHOOTING THE LEADER

, j Recent American: papers contain ,Very extended sketches of the; career of the notorious Jatoes; and of itfco death of Jesse James, who was shot on 3rd April at his house in 13th street St. Joseph, Missouri, by Robert Ford, the brother of Charles Ford one of his accomplices, who now claims the ten thousand pounds (50,000dols) offered for his arrest. Eight months before, Governor Crittenden had offered another special reward of £2,000 (10,000 dels.) for Jesse James’s body, dead or alivOj ahd it is said the assassination of the outlaw was undertaken by Robert Ford with the Governor's full cognizance. James’s atrocities far surpass those of the Kelly gang, or of ordinary freebooters, and mor* resemble those of pirates of slavedeaiers in their wholesale disregard of human life. For sixteen years he and his gang had eluded the police of the United States, and though each member of his band had innumerable narrow escapes, and many were wounded,: killed, of captured; they would, re-appear presently in some distant part ;of the country; and repeat ; tbeif murderous programme afresh. ; A-favorite plan was to enter a batik, shoot the tellers, rob the safe, and ride off with the .booty,. Another was tqjstop a railway’train, shoot tire engineer or conductors and keep up |a fusilade while some of the gang broke open the treasure box* and robbed the passengers. Or wherever a large sum of ! money was known to be in careless keeping he would arrange to take it in the nrost open manner as he did in 1872, at the close of the Exhibition - at Kansas- city, when he wrested the box containing the day’s receipts, about £2,000 (ten thousand dollars) from the bands of the official treasurer, and mounted his horse and rode off with it while 20,000 people were on the fair-ground. His exploitis were seldom bloodless like this one, for if he met with any opposition be shot down everyone that obstructed him. Texas, Kentucky, Colarado, Mexico, and lowa suffered from him in turn, and even California, where be spent three comparatively peaceful years in recovering from the effects of sonriie reprisals he had once received.; but Missouri, where he lived chiefly; suffered most. , . ;

A sigh of relief was universal through these long troubled districts when it became known that Mr Thomas Howard, shot at his own house at St. Joseph, was really the most notorious and terrible robber and freebbther of ihodern times, who;:had at last met with his weli-idarned fate. He had taken off his coat, in which were his pistols, and was hanging pictures, when Ford shot him through the head. His friends were slow to believe tiiat their ever vigilant leader had been outwitted, but his mother and wife anjd everyone now admit that the outlaw is no more. James was 37 years old, and leaves a wife and two little children, It is thought that his brother, who was ita some way associated, with him, will in some way or other attempt to avenge his death.