Hi Pinwheel and everyone. Several people investigated the man known as J. Frank Dalton and most of them confirmed that he was the real Jesse Woodson James. Three who confirmed this were Rudy Turilli, Henry J. Walker, and Bud Hardcastle. I came to my conclusion that Dalton was Jesse James after carefully reading the books by Turilli, Walker and many others and from extensive conversations with my friend Bud Hardcastle. One of the most convincing pieces of evidence came from a very surprising source. While I was still studying Jesse Woodson James, I ordered an old Frontier Times magazine that had an article by Carl Breihan in it called "The Last Pretender". Breihan was a well-known Dalton naysayer but he made a grave error when he chose the two photos to put at the top of his article. He chose a photo of a young Jesse Woodson James and put it side-by-side one of "J. Frank Dalton". The first thing I noticed when I opened the magazine up to that article, were the very visible identical scars that ran down the left side of both faces! Later copies of the younger Jesse clearly show where efforts to paint over or disguise this telltale scar were made but Breihan's article included the earlier untouched version.
~Texas Jay
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