- I probably could have gone my whole life not knowing anything about Jesse James other than he was an
American outlaw of some sort. But it has come to my attention that there is a cemetery near here that claims to have his body, his grave. Because he faked his
death and moved to Texas. And there have been multiple
exhumations over the years to try and prove this, and it sounds like, Mr. James, you are an Iconic Corpse. (dramatic music) (static hissing) (upbeat western music) Howdy y'all! How ya doin'? It's me, notorious outlaw Jesse James. Jesse, you will be a asking,
aren't you from the Midwest, why do you have that crazy accent? Well, I live in Texas now. - [Interviewer] So when
were you born, Jesse? - I was born back in
1847 in Carney, Missouri, to the Reverend Robert James and Zelda, Zer, Zer-elda? Zerelda James. - [Interviewer] Uh okay, Jesse, so what was your childhood like? - Why not so bad. Had a brother
Frank and a family fern. No, that's farm, farm.
We had a family farm. - [Interviewer] Wait, you
mean you don't remember? - Look sonny, I'm over 170 years old, the mind's not what it used to be! Wanna rob a bank? (beep) The early half of the 20th century witnessed a crop of Jesse James imposters popping up all over America. Men in Missouri, Colorado, and Texas, each claimed that they, the
real Jesse Woodson James, had faked their death in
1882 and had lived on, free of the crimes of their former life. Kind of like all the Anastasia Romanovs, except with so many confederate flags. Seriously if NASCAR can
ban confederate flags, maybe we can get to work on
some of these cemeteries. You just pluck 'em out of the ground. You go bye-bye, bye-bye flags. I mean I get why certain people would want to be Jesse James. The legend around Jesse James is that he was a Robin
Hood sort of character. That he robbed from the
rich to give to the poor. But that was really public relations, I don't think it was the truth. He was really just more of a criminal. Like a through and through, 100% bad dude. T. J. Stiles, author of the book "Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War" went so far has to call him a forerunner of the modern terrorist. The image of Jesse James as this sexy, pro-confederacy rebel Robin Hood was largely fabulated by
the ex-confederate soldier and journalist, John Newman Edwards, and well, Brad Pitt. As a young man, Jesse grew
up in the pro-slavery, pro-confederacy Lil
Dixie part of Missouri. Raised by his mother Zerelda, a steely, six-foot-tall woman whom a Union soldier once called, "one of the worst women in the state," Jesse was brought up with
a deep hatred of the Union and a deep devotion to the south. Also his mom Zerelda got her arm blown off when an incendiary device
was thrown into her home in retaliation for a
detective that her quote, "affectionate, obedient, and
dutiful" sons had killed. Point is, if anybody made Jesse James, Jesse James it was Zerelda. But Jesse cut his teeth
with the confederate guerrilla fighters known as bushwhackers. Joining their ranks at age 16, Jesse soon took on the bushwhacker belief that murder got you respect. Jesse and his brother
Frank went on to ride with the aptly named bushwhacker,
"Bloody Bill" Anderson, a man who Stiles called, "the
personification of horror." If Zerelda made Jesse, Anderson taught him the
art of ruthlessness. After all, Bloody Bill was known
for scalping Union soldiers and carrying them on
his saddle as trophies. Hence the "Bloody" in
Bloody Bill. You get it. Jesse rode with Anderson
on numerous Union attacks, most famously the slaughter in Centralia, where Anderson's gang stopped a train of unarmed Union soldiers headed home, and stripped, executed,
and mutilated 22 of them. Now, Bloody Bill died in 1864, but Jesse and his brother
Frank had learned the tricks of the bad guy trade and went on to become feared killers who robbed
trains, and stagecoaches, and banks in the name
of confederate activism and well, money. Thanks to Edwards, that's the journalist, Jesse especially became
a hero in the public eye as a leader in the fight
against northern oppression and the battle to restore
confederate power. Plus, people were
thrilled, if not terrified, by his sharpshooting and
quick draw skills. Pew pew. After an illustrious career
of killing all the people and robbing all the places, Jesse James was killed at the age of 34 by a new recruit to his gang, Bob Ford. Ford was after the $10,000 in reward money put up by the Governor of Missouri, along with some railroad
and express companies. Believing he could trust
21-year-old Bob Ford and his brother Charley,
Jesse had asked them to live with him in his new
St. Joseph, Missouri home. There they waited for their chance to catch the gunslinger unarmed. They got that chance
when he put down his gun to dust a picture. (gun fires) Yes Jesse James' fatal mistake
was to do some housecleaning. That's why I don't clean my
house, it's just too dangerous. Bob shot him in the back of the head and on April 3, 1882, Jesse
James passed into history. Or did he? Three days later, on April 6th, 2,000 people gathered
in Zerelda's front yard in Carney, Missouri for
Jesse James' funeral. It was there that Jesse James was buried under a coffee bean tree in the yard where he and his brother
played as children. Offers of money were made to Zerelda for the body of her slain son. I mean, the corpse of Jesse
James could bring in big money. A promoter even offered her
$10,000 for Jesse's body, but Zerelda refused. For a while. Eventually hard times won out and she turned her home into a museum where people could walk away with a pebble from Jesse James' grave
for the price of 25 cents. Jesse rested in peace
under that coffee bean tree until 1902, when per his wife's wishes, yes he had a wife, also named Zerelda, also his first cousin, so there's a lot we don't
have time to unpack there, he was exhumed and his body moved to Carney's Mount Olivet Cemetery
to be buried next to her. 500 people including his
brother Frank, his mother, his son Jesse James Jr.,
and about 50 grizzled old bushwhackers attended the exhumation. Upon revealing Jesse's remains,
it was noted that quote, "The skin was drawn taut over the face of the outlaw Captain, leaving the features plainly recognizable. The head was turned to one side, revealing the ghastly wound." His son confirmed the
identity of Jesse's corpse. So, an interesting postmortem
story but not exactly iconic. But wait, what if that was
not Jesse's body at all? After Jesse's body was moved and reburied is when other Jesses starting popping up. And while some were compelling, though ultimately proven fake, one of the Jesses has
endured: J. Frank Dalton. In 1948, at the age of 100,
this man named Dalton admitted, at long last, what had
been weighing on his heart. That he, Jesse James, had
faked his death in 1882. Dalton captured the
imagination of Jesse James fans and despite his knowledge
of the outlaw's life being kinda iffy in places, Dalton just chalked that up to old age, people were all too
ready to embrace Dalton as Jesse James rediscovered. Dalton died in 1951 at the age of 103, nine days after a promoter
named Rudy Turilli threw a birthday party for
Jesse James in Granbury, Texas. Dalton was buried in Granbury, where his body still lies
under a headstone that reads, you guessed it, Jesse Woodson James. (bright folk music) First thing you see when you drive in is the Jesse James plot. So they're all in, this cemetery believes they have Jesse James. It is so hot, you're gonna have
to drag me out of this car. It has to be right here. Graves, that's a little on the nose. Oh there it is, there it is, there it is. I saw the confederate flags. How you identify Jesse James. Jesse Woodson James, September 5, 1847 to August 15, 1951. This is the best part,
supposedly killed in 1882. Which, if you're from Granbury, Texas, you don't believe Jesse
James was killed in 1882. You believe he died in 1951, right here in Granbury, Texas. When the man Jesse James was buried here, the original headstone
said J. Frank Dalton. But this headstone,
saying he was Jesse James, was put here in 1984. At that point, I think
the town of Granbury had really gone all in on the idea that the guy buried here was, in fact, Jesse James, American outlaw. What I want to know are the laws around switching headstones. Like, in 1984, how did they get the right to just put a headstone that
says Jesse James on that grave. Like, if I am buried as Caitlin Doughty, could someone come in
and just put a headstone that says Becky Jarvitson, and all of a sudden my grave
is Becky Jarvitson's grave. What are the laws around
that, what are the politics? Is it cemetery policy? Because the town decided
it was Jesse James it was allowed to be Jesse James? Like, that's messing with history. So, by the time the headstone was switched a lot of people believed
Frank Dalton was Jesse James. And there were some good
reasons to believe it that went beyond a 100
year old man's confession. Lawyer and former Texas state
attorney general Waggoner Carr assembled a number of
documents that he believed proved that Dalton was Jesse, including the 1951 autopsy report identifying the body as Jesse James. Evidence on the body
included a missing tip of his left index finger that
Jesse had blown off as a boy and whole bunch of old
bullet holes and wounds in just the right places. There were also affidavits
from Dalton's friends on the Wild West show circuit
who had heard him admitting to being Jesse James. With all the hoopla over who
was and was not Jesse James, Professor James Starr of
George Washington University decided to try and put a
stop to all the speculation. In 1995, he got permission
to exhume the body of Jesse James, not the one in Texas, the one that's buried in Missouri, and conducted mitochondrial
DNA testing on it. Mitochondrial DNA testing
proves relationship via DNA passed down through women. So Starr tested descendants
of Jesse's sister Susan against teeth from Jesse's exhumed remains and hair from the original burial site. Voila, the DNA was over a 99%
match to Zerelda's lineage, proving conclusively that Jesse
James is buried in Missouri and that J. Frank Dalton
was not Jesse James. Of course, team Dalton is Jesse James was not so easily swayed by science, especially since they believed the testing was incorrectly done. In 2000, they manage to exhume
Dalton's remains for testing. Well, they tried to exhume
his remains for testing. What happened during
the exhumation in Texas is that you see that these two graves are next to one another, and over time either the caskets got moved
slightly closer to each other or the headstones have
moved over the years. Remember, this headstone got replaced with Jesse James' headstone. So when they dug into the ground here they came up with a metal
vault, and a metal casket. Whereas Jesse James was
supposed to have been buried in a wooden casket. So that's strike one. It's a different casket then
the man was supposed to be in. Then, the man that they
exhume has only one arm. Jesse James had both arms. You
shouldn't have a missing arm. But this man, William Henry
Holland, who died in 1927, did only have one arm. So they knew almost immediately that they had exhumed the wrong man. And they couldn't send
this random Granbury, Texas resident's long bones to California to be tested for Jesse James' DNA. Imagine you're William Holland
and you're buried peacefully in your local cemetery
and like 80 years later because the guy in the
casket directly next to you is thought to perhaps be some
famous bank robber outlaw they just dig you out of the ground. What's bonkers to me is
that three of Jesse James' great-grandsons wanted this
man here in Texas exhumed because they thought he was
their actual great-grandfather, not the man buried in Missouri. So, you can see why this conspiracy has continued to flourish. An autopsy report saying that
Frank Dalton was Jesse James. An exhumation gone awry, so no way to prove he wasn't Jesse James. And actual James relatives giving support to the Jesse James escaped
and lived in Texas theory. There was talk of going
back and getting Dalton's actual body exhumed,
little to the left guys, but to the best of my knowledge
that still hasn't happened. So until then, the world
has but one true grave of Jesse James, and it's
not in Granbury, Texas. My understanding is that
there's still a lot of folks here in Granbury, Texas who think the man buried in that grave is Jesse James. And that they just dug up the wrong bones. So there you have it. Feared in life, everyone
wants to be him in death, the man, the myth, the
Iconic Corpse, Jesse James. But wait, what about William
Henry Holland's missing arm? Another really important
thing about William Holland, the man they incorrectly
exhumed right here, is that his arm that was missing, he lost in an accident
when he was 13 years old, and that arm is buried in
another plot in this cemetery. He is here, his arm is somewhere else. I'm gonna try really hard to find his arm. 'Cause you don't see graves very often with just someone's arm. That's exciting in and of itself. Beyond the fact that he
was exhumed as Jesse James when he was never even
thought to be Jesse James. His casket was just in
slightly the wrong place. (bright music) It's so hot and we can't find
William Holland's stupid arm. Sorry, it's not stupid. It's cool that he has his
arm buried in the cemetery. It's just so hot. You're just gonna have to bury me here. Except maybe say that I'm someone cool or say I'm like Dolly Parton. Yeah, this is it. Oh you can hardly see it, but you can. It says, "Arm of W. Holland, amputated, 1895." So I think they buried his amputated arm in between two infants, which explains the small
size of these graves, unfortunately, is because
you have two babies and one 13-year-old arm. I guess he fell out of a pecan tree. I have learned, in searching
for this arm here today. This video was made
with generous donations from death enthusiasts just like you. Howdy, y'all. How y'all doing? And a family fern, farm,
farm. Farm, we had a farm. Just gonna leave this on till
I make sure it all looks good. What's up, it's me Jesse. Stache vibes. (vocalizing) Get your head in the game. Free from the crimes of their former life. La, what's a la? To some, Jesse James was a hero. And to other he was the most... To other. (laughs) To one person. Am I right? Try saying aptly-named
bushwhacker 12 times fast. Aptly-named bushwhacker,
aptly-named bushwhacker. Or did he, or did he, or did he? Pew. Pew, Pew. Like Dolly Parton or Betty White, Shaka Khan. That's messing with history. That's it, those are my
thoughts, thank you. Cut.
I just adore this women