The rented cottage where Robert Ford shot Jesse James on April 3, 1882 — the original bullet hole still in the plaster wall.
1202 Penn St, Saint Joseph, MO 64503
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Admission included with Patee House Museum ticket; check website for current pricing.
Access
Limited Access
Small 1800s cottage with period floors; some doorways narrow
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1879 · Jesse James Outlaw History · American Frontier Crime · Missouri Outlaw Era · NRHP Listed 1980
Jesse James had been the subject of a decade-long manhunt when he settled in Saint Joseph, Missouri in late 1881 under the alias Thomas Howard. He rented a small cottage at 1318 Lafayette Street — the structure now preserved on the Patee House Museum grounds at 1202 Penn Street — and lived there with his wife Zerelda and two young children while planning what associates later described as an upcoming bank robbery in Platte City.
Robert Ford and his brother Charley were staying at the house as guests. Both had secretly negotiated with Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden, agreeing to kill or capture James in exchange for a pardon and a share of the standing reward. On the morning of April 3, 1882, Jesse James removed his gun belt — reportedly to avoid the appearance of being armed, since a neighbor might see him through the window — and stood on a chair to straighten a picture on the wall. Robert Ford shot him in the back of the head. James was 34 years old.
The Ford brothers surrendered to authorities, were tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang — then pardoned by Governor Crittenden within hours, as agreed. Robert Ford was widely reviled for killing an unarmed man from behind, a fact that contributed substantially to Jesse James's posthumous rehabilitation as a folk hero.
The house was relocated from its original Lafayette Street site to the Patee House Museum grounds in 1977. The National Park Service added it to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. A 1995 exhumation of James's grave at the family farm in Kearney, Missouri — prompted by competing claims about the authenticity of his burial — produced DNA evidence matching his known descendants with 99.7% confidence, settling the question of whether James had faked his death, a persistent legend.
Sources
The Jesse James Home draws its dark atmosphere less from paranormal claims than from the physical fact of the preserved assassination scene. The bullet hole in the plaster wall — protected behind glass and confirmed in multiple contemporary accounts and the 1882 inquest record — is one of the few surviving material traces of a 19th-century American murder that entered national mythology within months of occurring.
Paranormal interest in the site follows naturally from its history: a violent death inside a domestic space, in a room small enough that visitors stand roughly where Ford and James both stood. Investigators working the Patee House complex have documented what they describe as cold spots and unexplained audio in the cottage. The Patee House itself — where James boarded horses and which served as headquarters for the Pony Express in 1860 — has a longer documented paranormal investigation history than the cottage.
The site does not market itself as a haunted attraction. The emphasis at the Jesse James Home is on documented history: the weapon, the hole in the wall, the inquest testimony, and the political circumstances that made Ford's act simultaneously legal (pardoned before conviction was recorded) and infamous.
Notable Entities
Walk through the modest clapboard cottage where Jesse James was living under the alias Thomas Howard when Robert Ford shot him on April 3, 1882. The original bullet hole in the plaster wall is preserved behind glass. The house was relocated from its original Penn Street address to the Patee House Museum grounds in 1977 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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