Notorious incidents, he also mentioned the followup and i probably will not have time to get to that. But i will have copies of both books for anybody interested. As the name suggests, the book is about murders and shootouts and anything notorious that happened in the ozarks. In some cases, slightly outside the ozarks. The timeframe is from the and of the civil war up through the gangster era of the 1920s and 1930s, with one exception about the very last story of something that happened in 1950. But it covers the gangster era. I would like to say, if there is any other thing that i tried to develop in the theory is something jeremy touched on. The idea is that the old west was not just kansas and arizona territory and places like that, particularly in the years immediately after the civil war, like from 18651875 and 1880. There was a lot of things that happened in missouri and the ozarks and we were very much part of the wild west. The first chapter in my book is about while bill hancock. Particularly the shoot out in the square in springfield. He was born in illinois and came west when he was about 18yearsold. He spent time in kansas and other places. At the time of the civil war, he was working as a stock antler at a way station stock handler at a way station near nebraska. I think it was called rock creek. He got in a shootout with the mccandless gang. Dave mccandless, the previous owner of the property the station was on came to try to collect a debt, payment on his property. There was a shootout. Mccandless and one or two other people ended up getting killed. Later on, bill cooked up with the union army as a wagon master or wagon driver and he eventually ended up in springfield as a detective for the union army. Sometimes a spy. Sometimes a scout through the territory of southwest missouri. This is a picture of the square of springfield at about the time he was there. This is around 1865. We are looking southeast into the southeast corner of the springfield square. The building in the southeast corner was a saloon owned by a guy named andrews. One of the things while ill does wild bill does was he arrests andrews for illegally selling booze to soldiers. There was a restriction on how much if any they could sell. That was one of the things wild bill did was arrest andrews. Toward the middle part or maybe a little bit toward the lateral part of the latter part of the civil war, bill and dave hooked up and became friends. There was some talk they mightve already known each other slightly but they became drinking buddies and friends and gambling buddies but they had a falling out near the end of the civil war and the falling out was over a gambling debt that dave said bill hickok owed him. They disagreed on the amount. Hickok said it was only 25, dave said it was hickok senate was only 20, dave said was 25. They had a shootout. It was an afternoon poker game and the poker game ended and he was reminded of the debt he owed him and while while bill was going to his pockets to schommer was not 25, in digging through his pockets he dug out his gold pocket watch and laid it on the table and dave picked it up and said, i will keep that for collateral. And bill hickok said, dont show it in public and dave said, i will wear it across the square if i want to. Bill hickok waited to see if he carried through with his warning that he would walk across the square during the disputed watch. Sure enough, he did and wild bill stepped out to meet him. They both drew their guns at the same time. This was supposedly the first wild west shootout of the era. In other words, the first time they did not use a formal jury when they had a dispute. They just went out there and had a spontaneous gunfight. So this is remembered as the first wild west gunfight. That is taken from harpers new monthly magazine. This is a depiction of the gunfight itself. You cannot really tell because that is not exactly how it happened. They were a lot farther apart than the scene shown there. They were about 75 yards apart. This picture i took myself. This is somewhat White Springfield square looks like today. I took the picture and i was standing and they had plaques in the road showing where each man was standing. I was standing right where about wild bill was standing. It would be off in here somewhere. This building is where the courthouse at the time was. Dave tutt was just outside the entryway. So it was from there, to there. My Subsequent Research led me to believe very strongly that hickok was over here a little bit to the southwest. So it was more like here and there, about 75 yards apart when a shot at each other. Anyway, bill hickok was arrested and was going to be prosecuted for manslaughter. Dave tutt was buried a couple blocks off springfield. You can see that tombstone there on the right, that is probably the one that was placed when he was moved from the City Cemetery to where he is now. The Maple Park Cemetery about 34 blocks from the square. That modern one has not been there all that long. Maybe 50 years or so, i do not know how long exactly. Many of these episodes, they had overtones left over from the civil war. In this case, the fight between hickok and dave tutt did not. If no one was confederate and the other was federal, they were still friends said that did not enter into it. What did enter into it was one hickok went to trial for manslaughter they had what was called the great constitution passed at the end of the civil war in missouri that said anyone who had ever supported the confederacy could not hold office, be a preacher, be a teacher, all sorts of things. So naturally, all of the jurors and officers of the court were union people and hickok was a union person so he got off. A lot of the confederate people thought he was to blame because he had gone down to the corner and just waited to see if that i would come across. He was kind of stalking him almost. Another episode that really did have a lot of overtones from the civil war was the killing of a preacher in webster county, across the county line from greene county. Springfields green county, labor webster is the next county east. Nathaniel headley was a preacher of the Methodist Episcopal Church south. He preached a lot at a church across the county line in webster county. But during the civil war, as the north more and more took charge, that church was taken over by the Methodist Episcopal Church north. At the and of the civil war year later in july of 19 1866, headley decided he had not taken an oath of allegiance like the great constitution said you had to, he was going to try to reclaim that church. He announced when he was going to do it and he was going to preach it. They warned him not to but he showed up and did it anyway and they killed him. [laughter] what this is all that is left. This is called the new pleasantville church. Both the guy that shot headley and the guy that had warned him not to come and had been kind of the organizer of the ones opposing him and it up going on trial for murder but they were both, again, acquitted. Because they were northerners. Mr. Wood this is a picture of missouri, a city around the turn of the century. Not right after the civil war. You can see the telephone poles and light poles or something. But it will give you a taste of what grandview looked like. Probably one of the most notorious little towns in the United States in the years immediately after the civil war. I do not know of any other town of a similar population that has produced as many notorious characters. Some you never heard of now, but they werent notorious people. We talk about one or two of them. In my other book, desperados, we also talk about some of them. Ive gone a little too far here but i will get to it. [laughter] mr. Wood one guy, jake killian, what he did was he went to a traveling circus that william like owned. It was a double teacher. You could stay for the first one but then you had to get out and paid to it back in for the second one. He tried to hide so we would not have to pay for both times. He was hiding under a chair but william lake and some of his helpers found him and he got mad and went home and got a gun and came back and killed william lake. Agnes thatcher lake, his widow put up a reward for the arrest of james kelly. Another thing interesting about her is that she later married wild bill hickok. Not later after this picture, but later after lake was killed. This picture was taken maybe even after wild bill cuck was killed. She married well bill hickok after her first she married while bill after her first husband was killed. In 1858 and alayna, kansas, a man named norton in who he had been sworn enemies with ever since he civil war, they had gotten in an argument and norton had partially blinded him and one eye. Shot his eye out or almost out and killian had sworn vengeance. When he got out on jail bail, he went looking for norton. Found him and as soon as norton saw him coming, he pulled out his gun and shot and killed him. Did not even give killian a chance. But he still got off because killian had been stalking him, coming after him. But notice the Killian Family said he was murdered, you know . [laughter] mr. Wood this is a little bit outside the ozarks. As i told you, there are a couple of stories in there that are not really ozark but close enough. This man ran a roadside in in kansas in the early 1870s. It consisted of john bender, his wife, a son whose name was also john and a daughter named kate. Kate was the only one that spoke fluent english, it was a german family. She was considered the leading spirit of the family. She was a spiritual healer. What family did was they ran a wayside in and people started disappearing. They would be traveling along the road and never reach their destination. Finally, people started getting suspicious maybe it had to do with these bender people. In spring of 18 some new three, a man named york went missing and his brother followed him to the house and asked questions and got suspicious answers so we went back to organize a posse. By the time they got back with the posse, the family had fled. They put out a proclamation offering a reward for the benders. Describing them and so forth and how much money was offered. This is a picture of the house where they finally, when they finally started investigating the bender house, they dug up 10 or 11 bodies of the people they had killed. Apparently they had the house partitioned off and they would arrange it where the traveler would be sitting with his back to the partition and somebody on the other side of the partition would hit them over the head and then they would finish him off with a knife and drop their body through a trap door and drag them away. They killed a halfdozen or more, probably 10 or 12 people. This is what used to be a historical marker. I am not sure if it is still there but if not there is one similar. Close to where it happened, describes this. This last paragraph says all those stories abound, the ultimate fate of the family is uncertain. Some say they were executed by a vengeful posse. The story as unresolved and remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the old west. I am one of the ones absolutely convinced they were executed by the vengeful posse because the vengeful posse went after them and came back several days later and did not talk about it. And out say anything. Why would they not say anything . They did not want people to know they took the law into their own hands. Not only that, i have gone through enough papers later on, it 10, 15, 20 years later and two or three or four men on their deathbed said they were members of that posse and sure enough, that is what happened. I do not think they escaped. This is a picture of the infamous younger gang. 1874, they pulled off a train robbery in wayne county, eastern part of the illinois. Came back and took refuge in the home stomping grounds of clay county. The youngers took refuge in oc only or a cigarette, that is where the and took refuge in their hometown where they had been as kids, so that was kind of their oldup. Some detectives came into the territory looking for them and they brought along a local deputy from osceola and they found them they knocked at the home of a man who was an old friend of the grandfathers. Sure enough, the youngers were there but were hidden in an upstairs attic and they went on their way and after they had left, the youngers all of them and caught up with him about a halfmile away and overtook them and had a gunfight and john younger was killed. Jim younger was injured slightly. One of the detectives was killed and the local Deputy Sheriff was killed. The only one that got away unscathed was pinkerton. This is kind of a monument about it. A little ways away from where it actually happen. This is the original monument that sits very close to where it happened. Two miles north of roscoe. That is why it is called the roscoe gunfight. They were on their way to the springs about two or three miles north. Next chapter concerns something i mentioned. This is a picture from around the turnofthecentury. You can see light post so you know it is not 1870s. Probably around 18 1900. You can see it was a hopping place around the turnofthecentury. A mining town, like many mining towns there were a lot of young, single men and anywhere there is a lot of young, single males there would be a lot of gunplay and drinking. That was the reputation. One thing that happened in the fall of 19 1879 was supposedly jesse james got killed by George Shepherd. Supposedly. Jesse james. George shepherd of course had been a former member of the james gang but had had a falling out with frank and jesse and offered his services to the law. They said ok. He infiltrated the game with the intention of trying to kill or capture jesse james and after the glendale train robbery which took place here in Jackson County at think someplace i dont even know exactly where glendale is maybe it is as far as independents now or something. After the glendale train robbery they were going south to texas for the winter, they got a little bit south and some kind of confrontation occurred. I do not know exactly what it was but shepherd went riding back into galena with a bloody, mingled leg saying, i kill jesse james. I just killed jesse james. The newspapers went and investigated and cannot find any dead bodies. The next day they said, either George Shepherd lied and jesse james is living or jesse james is dead. My own personal belief is that something actually did happen. I think maybe george thought he actually had killed him, he probably may be saw him fall out of his saddle or something but did not kill them. Obviously. Because he was killed two or three years later in st. Joseph. That is George Shepherd. A picture of him anyway. There was a Vigilante Group in missouri south of springfield. It rose up around 1883. They call themselves the law and order group and sometimes called themselves the citizens committee, Something Like that. They considered themselves and ok group. An honorable group. They kind of started out that way, the way a lot of groups do. They are trying to do something good but of course they went overboard. This was where their First Organization was held. This was their leader. Nathaniel kenney. When this picture was taken, he was a saloon keeper and springfield. But shortly after this, he moved and became a preacher. Started preaching in a church. Maybe started laying off the booze. I dont know. Again, cap about how some of the incidents were kind of carryover or at least the bitterness from the civil war carried over to aggravate some of these incidents. This is an ball harbor almost 20 years after the civil war. Almost all of them were northern soldiers. The others were almost all former confederate soldiers. There again, overtones from the civil war. They kind of killed each other, a couple members each. As far as the law and trying to apprehend them, and none of them were apprehended. However the ba bal harbour movement moved over a couple counties a couple years later. Dave walker and another of the main ones, john matthews, they had a nephew named wiley matthews. All four were eventually captured and tried for murder because they had killed a couple people of a family over by chadwick. They were convicted and is scheduled to hang but wiley, this mans nephew, escaped and was never recaptured. So only three of them hanged on the square in ozark in 1888. That was kind of the end of bal harbourism after that. This is a picture of one of the christian counties. They had secret signs, secret codes, and so forth. This is one of the masks. This is a picture of, malloy. When she was younger. You can tell she was an attractivelooking woman. She was a nationally known temperance revivalist. She traveled all over doing revivals. Trying to get people to not drink. She gave a talk in springfield, missouri, in the winter of 1854 or 1855. After it was over she moved on to a farm west of springfield a adopted daughter, a foster daughter named cora lee, and maybe one or two other People Living with her. She was always taking in people and trying to help them, as was her downfall. She had taken in this guy named george graham, who she first met in an indiana prison when she was doing prison ministry. She had taken him under her wing. After he got out they went into the business together of putting antidrinking newspapers whats the word best the temperance newspaper the word the temperance newspaper. Pretty soon after they started living on the brookline farm, he showed up and started romancing cora lee, the foster daughter. Actually, he resumed courting her because they had already started when they were back together in washington, kansas, putting out this paper. They had gotten into cahoots putting up the temperance paper and when she moved to , springfield, he kind of followed her there and resumed the romance. Eventually he talked her into letting them get married. They were concerned because they knew he had been married to sarah graham, but he assured them he had divorced her or that she had divorced him when he went to jail. That was true but it turned out , they had remarried when he got out, so he was committing to me when hetting bigamy married cora lee. Things were ok for a little while but then sarah graham came , to try to get her kids. They had a couple kids, sarah and george did. When george realized he was going to be found out about the bigamy, he committed a graver crime to try to cover up the bigamy. He killed his first wife, sarah graham,dont her umped her in a well on the malloy farm. That is what this headline is talking about. He was of course arrested for murder when they finally found up. Cora was arrested as an accessory before the fact because they thought she was in cahoots and was arrested as an accessory after the fact because they thought she is kind of helped cover up. They thought when she got back from the revival she found out about it and try to cover it up. These are some the pictures of the people. This is george graham. These are all just sketches. Lee, the foster daughter that he married b igamously. This is the first wife he murdered. This is sarah and georges son, charlie, their oldest son. He figured prominently in the legal proceedings. George was arrested for murder. But actually cora lees trial , started taking place before georges and she was being tried , for being an accessory. He was the one who turned it into a sensational thing because he testified that not only had he seen cora and george, his father, in bed together in washington, kansas at one time he had also seen his father and with emmaather in bed malloy at one point. Not only that, he saw them both in bed with his father at the same time. [laughter] mr. Wood who knows . They couldve been sitting on the edge of the bed. He did say he saw them having sexual intercourse. I dont know what it was. Anyway, they like to the scandal back in those days. Anyway, it was such a scandalous deal that the springfield newspapers put out a special edition. Kind of a pamphlet having to do with nothing but the graham tragedy and the examination of malloy and lee. Anyway, while coras trial was still going on, graham was taken out of jail and lynched by a mob in springfield. Eventually, cora lees trial ended in a hung jury and when that happened, they dropped all the charges against emma malloy. Cora lee had to be tried at least twice. I cant remember exactly how many times. My own take on it is that i think emma malloy was kind of rash. Not very judicial in deciding who she was going to befriend. Always taking people and, always wanting to help people. I think that was her main mistake. Lee, i dont know for sure about her. [laughter] mr. Wood and other kind of similar type deal that involved a triangle or whatever, there was a guy named jj white. He had a friend named ed klum. They had been in the union army together in new york. Klum was married to a girl named scarlet. They called her lottie. Jj kind of liked her too. She was not in good health. She decided she was going to come to missouri to stay with her sister in lebanon. Not too long after that white , came to Missouri City and bought a farm. Instead of staying at lebanon with her sister, she started living with jj white at the farm. Klum got word of it and came down to investigate but in order , to protect his wifes name, he let them introduce him as her brother instead of her husband. People thought that is what they were. He convinced her to go back with them and they got as far as lebanon and she told him she did , not feel like continuing the trip, that she would stop at lebanon and come the next day, but instead she went back while he went on to rochester, new york. This happened once or twice. At least twice. Finally, he got word back in new york that lottie had died. He came back and even after lottie was dead, he still let people believe that they had been brothersister not , husbandwife. This went on for a few more months. It was 1866. There was a 17yearold girl who started keeping house in the white residence, and she and white announced their attention to get married. Klum kind of had a crush on her, too. That was the straw that broke the camels back. He ended up killing both of them. [laughter] mr. Wood they said if he had killed white earlier he wouldve , probably gotten away with it but by killing that 17yearold girl he ended up , getting hanged. This is his execution day in 1887. This is one of the banks that a that the dalton gang tried to hang up. The daltons were the cousins of the youngers and they were trying to outdo the cousins by trying to rob to banks trying to rob two banks at the same time in the fall of 1892 in kansas. The problem they had was they had lived there previously and they thought they knew the place but the problem was when they , got there, the hitching rail where they were going to hitch their horses was no longer there. So they had to hitch them farther away from the bank and that and to that ended up being their downfall. [laughter] mr. Wood the citizens on themselves and had a big shootout with them and four of the dalton members got killed. None of the citizens got killed. They laid them out and took pictures of them. And they buried them right there in the city. Bob dalton, grant dalton, a couple others. One of them they buried somewhere else. So, they hadfully a little museum. They do not call it the dalton museum. They call it the Dalton Defenders Museum because they want to emphasize that they are memorializing the defenders, not the criminals. After the dalton gang was shot to pieces and disintegrated, bill newman, who had previously ridden previously with the gang picked up the pieces and started his own gain from the remnants of the dalton gang and it was called she had a name for i dont anyway, the gang. In 1894, just two years after he tried to rob a bank in Southwest City. That is the very farthest you can get in southwest missouri. It is a little town in the corner of oklahoma and arkansas. This is what was the bank at that time. It is still there, no longer used as a bank, but that was the same building they tried to rob. It turned out to be almost a reenactment of the fiasco at coffeyville. In this case, the citizens got the worst of it. One of the citizens got killed. A couple of the outlaws got minor injuries, but not serious injuries. This is the road they came in on. This is a current picture of the road they came in on. A year or so later the others , got killed by a law man but not as a direct result of the Southwest City deal. This was a year or so later. I mentioned galena, kansas. Another notorious episode happened in galena, kansas in 1897. They found this guy named Frank Gallagher with his body stuffed in an abandoned lead mine. It was a big mining town. Thoughtfind out, they they arrested a gang. The problem was they had gone to the house late at night. It was known as a house of illrepute. He had gone there wanting to see a certain woman at 2 00 in the morning and they said it was too , late and would not let her come out and he kept insisting , so they finally got mad and , killed him and dumped him in the well. Anyway, the media got a hold of this and started exaggerating it. You can see here it says for , years they have applied their work of death. They thought they had killed as many as 10 or 12 people but , franks body was the only one they found. That was probably just a lot of exaggeration. ,his is a lady named nancy supposedly the one that had given the order to kill that guy. Anyway, they have a house in galena now that they call the spackleback house. Another notorious episode involving a woman was cora hubbard. She had to have sidekicks held up a bank. These are the two sidekicks. The one in the middle is it tennyson. The one on the right is john sheets. They hooked up in kansas around somewhere in southeast kansas. They plotted it out and wrote all the way to Southwest City to pull it off and came back to kansas and were arrested near their hometown in kansas and taken back to pineville for arraignment. Eventually tried, and they received varying terms and terms in prison, anywhere from 10 to 12 years. Second belled the star or something. It was sensationalized because she was a woman. Jumping from the old west to the gangster era, this is henry star. He started out in the old west, and outlaw. Rs nephew bystar marriage. He was a train robber during the old west, and graduated from fast horses to fast cars and started robbing banks. One that i talk about in my book , he robbed a Bentonville Bank in 1893, before cars. But then one with cars is the one i talk about most is when he tried to rob the bank of harrison, arkansas in like february of 1921, he ended up getting killed. That is the man that killed him. The former president of the bank he wasthe former president of the bank who just happened to be there on the day that this happened. He was the former president and he knew where there was a gun stashed and he grabbed a gun and , killed him. That is henry starr after he was laid out dead. A year or so later in the fall of 1922, about a year and a half later, the remnants of the starr gang try to hold up the Eureka Springs bank and again the , Citizens Armed themselves and and seriouslyo injured a third member of the gang. This is then after the thing was all over. They were celebrating the fact that they had broken up the bank robbery and captured or killed all of the bank robbers. That is one of the ones they killed. Another guy whose career also spanned the wild west era as was as the gangster era nicknamed arkansas tom. He was born and buried in missouri. That is where caswell is. He drifted into oklahoma and hooked up with the wild bunch. They pull off the shootout at angles at ingalls. He was really one that was captured, sent to prison for 50 years. But after about 20 years or so he got parole, and then he went the same way as henry starr, graduated to bank robbery in automobiles. He robbed this bank north of web city or joplin, missouri. The ironic thing about this is 15 or years later, bonnie and 20 clyde also robbed this very same bank. In the early 1920s, he robbed joplin andtween pittsburg, kansas. While he was still on the lam in 1922, less than two years later in 1924 they finally tracked him down in joplin at this house. The house has been remodeled but it is still the same house. He was killed by a Joplin Police in buried in an unmarked grave 1924, in joplin. This is ma barker. She was born in missouri close to springfield. Her kids were mainly born in aurora, missouri. When they were little kids, they moved to web city which is where , joplin is. They mainly grew up there and that is when they first kind of started to get into trouble. Not serious trouble, but kind of serious trouble. She moved and took them away to tulsa because she thought by doing so, she could keep them out of trouble. After they moved to tulsa, the guided more and more trouble. Even after they moved, they kept coming back to missouri and kind of using it as a hideout and old stomping grounds. Probably one of the main things they did in the ozarks was one was win her youngest son and a notorious gangster killed the sheriff of Howell County in west plains, missouri. It is way towards the east, about 100 miles east from springfield. That is probably the most notorious thing they did in the ozarks. It was the first time that ma barker was identified as a member of the gang because in the house where they had been staying where they found the papers and stuff they found , pictures of her and the names of all of the gang members. That was when she became first notorious, really. This is where the barkers are all buried in welch, oklahoma. This is a picture of jennings. The jennings brothers in january 1932 killed Six Police Officers from springfield who came out to their house near brookline west of springfield. Like 10 Police Officers came out to capture them. There were just two of the jennings brothers, and they thought this shouldnt be any problem. What they didnt know is that the jennings brothers had really highpowered rifles, while the cops only had pistols. Anyway, six of them ended up getting killed. Even today it is considered the most law officers to lose their lives in a single shootout with outlaws. That is the house where it took place. That is their sisters, who helped them stealing cars but did not help them in the murders. They were also buried in joplin even though they were killed close to springfield. They were buried in joplin because springfield would not take them. [laughter] mr. Wood joplin had so many notorious characters buried there that they went ahead and took them. [laughter] mr. Wood last chapter i am going to talk about is bonnie and clyde. Bonnie and clyde of course were from texas but they did a lot of , their notorious stuff in missouri and throughout the midwest. You guys may be familiar with the one they did here in platte city. They had a big shootout up there. The one i am going to talk about is the in joplin. Onethis is the place where they holed up in april 1933. The apartment was up above. They parked their cars underneath in the garage. The local police first thought they were possibly bootleggers the didnt think they were bootleggers. They didnt think they were serious criminals or anything. They had four policemen and two separate cars excuse me, five policeman into separate cars. One of them pulled up into the driveway, and that is when all hell broke loose. Clyde and his gang started shooting, and they finally jumped in one of the cars and rammed the police car, knocking him out of the way so they could make their escape. In the process they killed two Police Officers. Clyde was slightly injured but nobody else in the gang was injured. But like i say, two Police Officers were killed. The thing about the joplin shootout is it is what really made bonnie and clyde famous because afterwards they found to rolls ofree undeveloped film. A lot with them taking pictures of themselves, playful postures. One of her pretending to be smoking a cigarette or cigar and posed up there and this one is w , d jones, the young guy with them with all of his guns. There are bonnie and clyde are playfully aiming guns at each other. There is clyde with his gun. So anyway, these pictures were splashed all over the United States and that is what really , made them famous when they started having pictures in the new yorkribune and times and stuff like that. If those pictures had not been retrieved from the joplin apartment they mightve gone on not being really wellknown. This was a picture of bonnie a couple years later after she was killed in louisiana. So anyway, and closing, i guess the thing i would like to reiterate is the idea that the ozarks and all of missouri, particularly western missouri, kansas city, the western border, we were very much part of the old west, especially in the first 10 to 15 years after the civil war. That reputation has continued clear into the gangster era. A lot of the gangsters, like the barker gang, continually came back to missouri to hang out. Same thing with bonnie and clyde. They thought this was kind of a good place to hideout. We had more than our share of not only wild west incidents, but also gangstertype incidents. You guys here are all familiar with the jeremy mentioned about one the shoot out at the train, the central train station. Any questions . As jeremy said, if you have questions, please line up and i will be glad to answer questions if i can. Lets first thank larry. [applause] i do have a question. Guns belonging to bonnie and clyde recently sold at auction for over 250,000 each. How did those wind up in private hands . Shouldnt they have been state evidence . Mr. Wood i honestly cannot answer that question. I agree they probably should come up but i do not know the answer to that. I do not know how they ended up in private hands. Does anyone know how they ended up in private hands . What . [indiscernible] mr. Wood he said one of the officers that was there when they killed them, one of the Police Officers there when they killed them in louisiana kept some of them. They just kept them . They should have been state evidence. [indiscernible] thank you. Mr. Wood thanks. Family, your mentioned they killed 10 or 11 people. Mr. Wood i think they dug up 10 or 11 bodies. Was their speculation as to what the motive was . Mr. Wood the only motive anybody could come up with was greed. What they theorized they were doing was the travelers would stop there at the wayside inn to get something to eat or drink and they would kind of position , them, they kind of had a partition and would position them sitting at the table with their backs to the partition and somebody on the other side would put them out of commission with a hammer or whatever and then , they would finish them off with a knife or gun if they needed to but i do not think , they wanted to use guns because there was noise. All i could figure out was they were just robbing them taking , whatever money they mightve had, you know . If only we had undeveloped rolls of film for other gangsters of that era with pictures like that. Those were wonderful pictures. I do have a question. You published many books. You have many articles published on the ozarks in your blog. You regularly publish articles there. Some of these people are fairly well known but others are not. , i notice from the newspaper clippings, you get a lot of information from the newspaper. Is there a library archive, a place where you do most of your research . Mr. Wood nowadays i do most of it online. I subscribe to newspaper. Com , which is a Subscription Service that entitles you to all kinds of newspapers from all across the country. What i run into, ive been researching some precivil war stuff that happened in misery. In the past that has been very hard to do because most missouri newspapers before the war are no longer in existence, or very few of them are. Iat i started finding out is find something published in the Baltimore Sun repeating something published in the st. Louis global or in the new repeating something that was published in maybe the springfield newspaper or whatever. So you can find stuff that way, you know . I have heard that pendergast had a Hunting Lodge in the ozarks near sedalia. Did he do any of his shenanigans down there or did he just keep , them up here . Mr. Wood i am not too familiar with tom. But i have heard that, that he had some kind of Hunting Lodge somewhere in the ozarks. I wasnt even sure where it was, see you know more about it than i do. I have a brother that lives in Lake View Heights and it is supposed to be in that town. Larry, this will be the last question. One of the audience members was curious how you became interested in ozark history. Mr. Wood i was an english major in springfield at smsu. Like a lot of english majors, i kind of a spire to be a writer. I wanted to write the Great American novel. I wrote over and over but i found myself having much more success with nonfiction and i , wrote a lot of magazine articles. I found that i could just kind of if the framework was already there i could tell he really good story. As far as coming up with great of ideas myself i had more troubles. I finally gave up the idea of writing the Great American novel, started concentrating on nonfiction and i particularly started concentrating on the historical nonfiction. After i started doing my own genealogy research, i guess. Started in got me that field, i did my own history and i just kind of wanted to branch out from there, you know. So i started doing local history. 25, 30 about probably years ago that i started branching out and doing mostly then. Y up until i started writing just straight out of college pretty much. Almost 50en writing years but because im 70 years old now. Last 25 at least ive historicaltrating on stuff. I would like to thank out today. R coming [applause] to remindd like everyone that he will have books for sale. Ill be setting up out there some morealk to you and if you want to buy my book great, if not, we can just talk, i guess. [laughter] youre watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. 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