3. The Clay County Savings Association robbery in 1866 was never officially solved
On February 13, 1866, a Tuesday, a group of riders rode into Liberty, Missouri. The exact number of men who entered the town and gathered together in front of the Clay County Savings Association differs; according to accounts it was anywhere from ten to fourteen. While most of the men waited outside two men went into the bank, which was staffed by only two men at the time, father and son Greenup Bird and William Bird. One of the men asked for change for a ten-dollar bill, and as William opened the cash drawer the men produced pistols and demanded that a sack be filled with all the available cash. The Birds were then ordered into the vault and the two men left. As they were mounting their horses, shots rang out, and a nineteen-year-old college student was killed, evidently by a stray bullet. The riders escaped pursuit by a posse.
The two men had extracted roughly $60,000 from the Savings Association, and though many historians attribute the robbery to being led by Jesse James, it was never officially solved. James was not positively identified by any witnesses (though he was well known in the area), and none of the money was ever recovered. Local newspapers led the speculation that the robbery was the work of former Confederate guerrillas, others speculated that the robbers had been from Kansas, so called Redlegs who had been supportive of the Union cause during the recently concluded Civil War. At the time of the robbery, Jesse James was bedridden as he recovered from a chest wound, and while it is likely that the thieves were members of the gang with which Jesse later rode, he was most likely not present at the robbery which later became known as his first.