Cole Younger, also known as Thomas Coleman Younger, was an outlaw who robbed banks and trains accompanied by his gang and Frank and Jesse James. It was called the James-Younger gang. He was born on January 15, 1844, and died in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, on March 21, 1916. Cole Younger’s family was quite large, as he was the seventh of fourteen children. His dad was Henry Washington Younger, and his mom was Bersheba Leighton Fristoe. His brothers, Jim, John, and Bob were also outlaws who joined him on his robberies. He was the oldest of the four thieves. His father was a Union supporter in the Civil war, but he was shot anyway by a Union soldier, after Confederates started wrecking Missouri. His mom’s house was burned down, too. Cole …show more content…
It is also the one where he was caught. It was bad for the townspeople and the gang, as both groups were killed or injured. There were eight outlaws left in the gang, and three of them went inside to rob the bank, while Cole and four more provided cover and kept watch on the street. Everything went wrong as soon as someone hit the alarm, and all the townspeople ran for their guns. They began to fire from behind walls, killing two gang members and badly injuring Bob Younger. One other member escaped and rode off. The gang killed two people, and ran away empty-handed, the robbery a complete failure. Hundreds of people from Minnesota chased them, and the gang split up. The James brothers actually did make it back to Missouri, but the Youngers did not. Them and Charlie Pitts, another gang member, waged war with a posse. Charlie was killed, and all three Youngers were wounded and captured. They were sentenced to life in prison in 1876. I think it’s the worst, because it was the only crime I could find where innocent people were killed. Cole Younger did not die in a gun battle or in prison, as he was released in 1901. Bob Younger died in 1889 of tuberculosis, and Jim commited suicide in a hotel in 1902. Cole did not return to crime, and he wrote an autobiography making him look like a Confederate hero more than a criminal (of course he did.) He also toured the south,