TL;DR: We continue our explorations based on characters in Timeless S1E12 "The Murder of Jesse James" (original release date 1/23/2017). We will find that these icons of The Wild West were something other than you surmised. The caveat here is that these historical figures seem particularly fake. Believe anything you like about what is said of them, but you should be aware of this “additional context”.

Our heroes travel back to April 3, 1882, to save (for some reason) the most famous outlaw of the Old West, Jesse James, from murder by the Ford brothers. They enlist the help of a US Marshal to find James—which they do—but he ends up being murdered anyway by the heroine. Much moral anguish all around.

First question: was Jesse Woodson James (1847-1882) a Salem Witch? Not so far as I can tell, no. But worse, I would judge, is that he was a fake person. That is, it’s nearly impossible to say what was true and what was not true about him. Fortunately, none of it is important. What is important is that he was embedded in the Salem Witch context. That’s all we need to know.

Why would I say he was a fake person? Aside from being a front for the Salem Witches, that is? Search up some pictures of Jesse. You’ll have to use the phrase “jesse james outlaw” to exclude the famous motorcycle enthusiast/tattooed person.

The first item to notice is that there are only a handful of distinct photos. The second item to notice is that none of these people look alike. In fact, by my eye, the two that look most alike contradict one another: the younger-looking “Jesse” has a receded hairline versus the older-looking “Jesse”.

Far worse is the purported photo of him that you’ll see many times but comes up second in my search: Famous Wild West outlaw - Jesse James, half-length portrait, facing front, holding handgun in left hand at his waist - 1864 – colorized. He is facing down the camera with a mean, cold stare.

Or should I say she is facing down the camera with a mean, cold stare. That is a woman, with the caveat that in 2026 that word still eludes definition. She is wearing a blouse with a ribbon tie, but if that were all I might have let it pass as a fruity fashion of the time. Just a cold-blooded killer who was light in his cowboy boots.

Worse, though, is that she’s wearing a scoop-neck sweater which I can’t say I’ve ever seen a gay man wearing. Also, look to the left behind her neck at what appears to be the side of a pony tail. She’s also rocking a tiny baby cowboy hat that, yes, I’ve seen gay dudes wear but only at a Halloween party paired with assless chaps.

Finally, if you still believe this person is a gunfighter, take a good look at that hardware. It is enormous compared to her body, as long as she is wide. Can you imagine someone of that size trying to draw that hogleg? You could draw your baseball bat and lunge across the ten paces before she cleared leather. Then you could knock her upside the head and tell her to stop dressing up like a sassy lady outlaw, FFS.

Since we’re here, think about this: that photo has been seen by (make up your own number) of historians and enthusiasts of the Old West, and I would bet my bottom dollar this is the first you’ve heard of any doubts raised about the authenticity of it. Or of James himself, for that matter. I’m saying we don’t need goo pods to live in The Matrix because, in a much more dismaying and terrifying sense, we already live in one we can’t get out of by just flushing our pods.

So how was Jesse connected to the Salem Witches, then? Well, he and his brother, Frank, ran the James–Younger Gang. You’ll notice that this context is often neglected. I don’t even recall it being mentioned in the show. It’s boring Old West nerd stuff, of course, pushed off into the shadows. But then, isn’t the shadows from where the Salem Witches prefer to operate? You bet!

The “Younger” axis of the gang refers to four brothers, the eldest and leader of them being Cole Younger (1844-1916). Seriously, I insist you go to that page and look at his profile pic. His eyes are deader than Kendall Jenner and Billie Eilish put together. Creepy AF! Is he a psychopath?

Yeah, probably, because he’s the one I accuse of being a Salem Witch. You see, “Cole” is indeed a given name, which is where everybody stops, but you find out on that page (did you look?) that his full name was Thomas Coleman Younger. Coleman is not a given name, but probably refers to a bloodline of his, probably his mother’s. Does that hold in this case?

We will probably not find out. If you refer to his WikiTree page, Thomas Coleman Younger (1844 - 1916) and look at the “Ancestors” tab, we see a somewhat incomplete tree back to his 2nd great grandparents but there isn’t a single Coleman in the woodpile.

Fear not: I recognized his name right off the dome. In the last post which concerned the previous episode, "The World's Columbian Exposition", I talked about the importance of the original settlers of Nantucket. That group was led by Tristram Coffin and we talked a little about him.

Of the twenty men that purchased the island, known as the Proprietors of Nantucket, would it surprise you to know that one of them was named Thomas Coleman? If so, did I really not telegraph it enough? Nor does he fade off into history. I’ve never written it up, but if you like camping you’ve probably used lanterns or stoves produced by one of his descendants.

Let me wind up the section on Jesse not with the guy that killed him, Robert Ford (outlaw) (1861-1892), but with the guy that killed the guy that killed him, Edward Capehart O'Kelley (1857-1904). This post has developed a motif of going from bad to worse, so here it is.

We first find out that, “O'Kelley reportedly married a relative of the Younger brothers.” Really? We just said the Youngers were of the Coleman bloodline so here he is marrying into it. Worse, though, is that you have got to take a look at Wikipedia’s profile pic for Edward Capehart O'Kelley. I mean, that other one of “Jesse” was a living female, but if someone told me this was a ventriloquist’s dummy carved from wood, I’d believe it. Again, you can believe anything you like about these tales of the Wild West.

One set of popular tales from the Wild West are those of the Lone Ranger, first as a radio show then as a TV series. I thought they were fictional, but was surprised to learn from Timeless that they were not entirely fictional. Well, the show dialog indicates that it is proven fact and not fake news that the Lone Ranger was based on a black guy.

The general consensus is that the character was very loosely based around real U.S. Deputy Marshal and not white guy Bass Reeves (1838-1910). Which of his exploits were real and which were not? You might gauge the veracity from this line:

He was never wounded, despite having his hat and belt shot off on separate occasions.

Try to work out the physics of that. Anyway, who cares, because what is deeply, deeply suspicious is how he got his start:

Reeves and his family farmed until 1875, when Isaac C. Parker was appointed federal judge for the Indian Territory…. Reeves worked for 32 years as a federal peace officer in the Indian Territory and became one of Judge Parker's most valued deputies.

Boom goes the dynamite. We haven’t seen Parkers since… the previous post. But was Isaac C. Parker (1838-1896) one of “those” Parkers? We’ll never know for sure because if you look at the WikiTree page for Isaac Charles Parker (1838 - 1896), someone spilled coffee all over it and washed away all Parkers but his father. Imagine that. But this Parker reminded me of another Parker lawman we talked about:

Ever feel like “To protect and serve” was a big joke? It is! We discuss that and other occultism at the LAPD, featuring Chief William H. Parker, a generational Satanist. (conspiracies.win 10/2/2024)

But how about Isaac Parker? Maybe the double-As are for “double awesome”, huh? Not likely. Isaac was the prototype for “The Hanging Judge”. You may have heard before that it was Roy Bean. Indeed, you may have gotten that idea from the 1972 film The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean starring Paul Newman and Ned Beatty.

Bean is portrayed as a cartoon villain, “dispensing his own kind of frontier justice”. He’s not malevolent but misguided and mercurial. The film is literally categorized as a comedy-drama. You think, “Okay, maybe this Bean guy got a bit carried away in real life, but this ‘Hanging Judge’ stuff from the Old West is overblown here for art’s sake.” Reasonable enough takeaway.

Well, making movies like that is exactly how They get you to believe shit that just ain’t true. They hand us Bean, tell us he was a joke, and leave Parker out of it. It’s that easy. Parker really was a scumbag and that “hanging judge” wiki tell us:

Parker sentenced 160 defendants to death during his 21 years at the federal bench, largely due to having jurisdiction over fugitives in the Indian Territory. Bean, although famously irregular in his administration of law, never had anyone hanged.

In stark contrast, Parker’s wiki tells us:

Forty-four cases in which Parker imposed the death penalty were appealed to the Supreme Court. It overturned and ordered a re-trial for 30 of them.

Like the model for the Lone Ranger, that entirely changes the complexion, does it not?

Genealogy Nerd Bonus: Surprisingly, Roy Bean is not just a historical footnote in this post. It turns out his mother was Anna Henderson Gore. I’ve been watching far ahead of what I’ve been writing, and a number of episodes in the future is S2E07 “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes” which concerns the suffragist Alice Paul.

You see, from various other clues I felt 99% certain she was connected to the Salem Witches, but I was having a hell of a time digging it up. I even dropped it but then OCD kicked in and I went back to the mine face. When I hit paydirt, it was—you guessed it—a Gore.

It’s a long story and there’s a lot of territory between here and there. Who knows if we’ll ever get to it. We talked a lot about his family in an older post, but I found out once again that Fat Albert Gore is not just some annoying climate hysteric.

Thanks so much for reading!