Hobbs Kerry Again

I've commented previously on the fact that 19th century newspapermen often offered wry commentary on the subject they were reporting on. I recently ran onto another good example from the August 17, 1876 edition of the Neosho Times. Hobbs Kerry, who had grown up in nearby Granby, had recently been arrested for helping the James-Younger gang hold up a train near Otterville in Cooper County, Missouri, and after his arrest he had named the other members of the gang. The Neosho newspaperman reported that, Kerry, who had recently been recruited to the gang by veteran members Charlie Pitts and Bill Chadwell, had "squealed, and his squealing will probably result in breaking up the band. But in squealing Hobbs forfeited all chance of securing a policy in any well-regulated life insurance company."
The next week, the same newspaper reported that the impression was gaining ground that Kerry confession, as far as implicating the Youngers and the James boys in the crime, was untrue. Such an impression did, in fact, gain ground during the weeks after Kerry's arrest. Many people did not believe his story. The Times reported that, according to Kerry's own admission, he had never met the Youngers or the James brothers until he accompanied Pitts and Chadwell to Jackson County a week or so before the July 7 train robbery, and the newspaper suggested that perhaps Kerry had merely been told that his partners were the James and Younger brothers in order to boost his confidence in carrying out the crime. The Neosho newspaperman questioned whether Cole Younger, who had "long head in crooked work," would have taken on a raw recruit for an important job on the mere word of Pitts and Chadwell. An alternative, the reporter suggested, was that Kerry had deliberately lied in order to deflect suspicion away from his actual sidekicks.
The fact was, as it turned out, Kerry was not lying at all and was not operating under any false impressions as to the identity of his partners. Apparently he was more concerned with trying to shorten his prison stay than with purchasing life insurance.
My book Ozark Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents contains a chapter about Hobbs Kerry, and I've also written previously about him on this blog, back in November of 2008.