Robert Ford
Robert Newton Ford (* 1860 in Ray County , Missouri ; † June 8, 1892 in Creede , Colorado ), mostly called Bob Ford for short , was an American police informer who was famous as the murderer of the legendary Wild West bandit Jesse James has been.
Life
Robert Ford was born in 1860, the youngest of three sons to James Thomas Ford and his wife Mary Bruin. In 1880 Ford met - probably through the mediation of his eldest brother Charles Ford - Jesse James, whom he had passionately adored since his early youth and was already legendary in his lifetime as the leader of the so-called James gang , a group of robbers who had carried out numerous attacks since the late 1860s committed on banks and trains. In 1881/1882, Ford shot Wood Hide, a member of the James gang, for which reason he was arrested for murder, but was released soon afterwards. He had made a promise to the governor of Missouri, Thomas Theodore Crittenden , that he would also kill James, whereupon he was promised a permanent reprieve and the bounty of $ 10,000 placed on James.
In 1882, Ford and his brother Charles moved into the household of the James family, who lived under false names in Saint Joseph , Missouri, officially as cousins of the landlord. There, on April 3, 1882, Ford shot Jesse James from behind in the living room of the house. Immediately after the crime, Ford surrendered to the authorities, who, to his surprise, arrested him and his brother for murder, charged him and sentenced him to death by hanging. The execution was not carried out, however, and the Fords were released within two hours of the verdict, after Governor Crittenden granted them both full pardon, as promised, and part of the bounty placed on James.
In the years that followed, Ford earned a living by posing for portrait photography as "The Man Who Killed Jesse James" and by staging the murder of James in cheap theater plays with his brother Charles. He reenacted the scene about 800 times in the play.
Charles Ford committed suicide in 1884. Eventually, Bob Ford opened a saloon in the town of Walsenburg , Colorado .
Ford later opened a saloon in Creede, Colorado, where he was shot dead by Edward Capehart O'Kelley on June 8, 1892 . His body was first buried in Creede, later exhumed and taken to Missouri. His murderer O'Kelley was initially sentenced to life in prison. However, after numerous petitions from the population, the sentence was initially reduced to 18 years by the state governor.In 1900, after only eight years in prison, he was released from the Colorado State Penitentiary for avenging the murder of the man even the later President Theodore Roosevelt referred to as "America's Robin Hood". O'Kelley was shot dead in an altercation with a police officer in 1904.
Jesse James' tombstone reads about Ford: "Murdered by a traitor and coward whose name is not worth mentioning."
Aftermath
Ford has found its way into American folklore in a variety of ways. Sung in a famous folk song about the murder of Jesse James with the line “That Coward Bob Ford”, the designation as a coward has remained a permanent surname or an attribute firmly assigned to Ford until the present day.
He is portrayed in numerous film adaptations of the life and death of Jesse James, for example in Henry King's Jesse James, Man Without a Law (1939) and Fritz Lang's Revenge for Jesse James (1940), in which the original material is merely used as an orientation mark for a largely fictitious one Plot serves, and in the film The Assassination of Jesse James by Coward Robert Ford (2007), which is relatively close to historical facts. The actors who played Ford include John Carradine , James Dean , John Ireland and Casey Affleck .
On the 1975 album Rock of the Westies Elton John sings I Feel Like a Bullet (In the Gun of Robert Ford) .
Individual evidence
- ↑ O'Neal: Kelly, Ed O. In: Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters. University of Oklahoma Press, 1991, p. 174. (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ford, Robert |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ford, Bob; Ford, Robert Newton |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American adventurer, police informer and murderer of the Wild West bandit Jesse James |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1860 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ray County , Missouri |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 8, 1892 |
| Place of death | Creede , Colorado |