The remains of a man some believe was the Wild West outlaw Jesse James were exhumed yesterday for genetic testing to settle claims that he died in Texas 69 years later than history books say.
James was believed to have been shot and killed by a member of his own gang on April 3rd, 1882, in St Joseph, Missouri, his home state, where a grave-marker bears his name.
But many people in Granbury, south-west of Fort Worth, believe James faked his death in Missouri and lived in Texas until 1951 - when he would have been 103. "After he died, several of the local residents here did a visual post-mortem on his body and they found several old bullet holes as well as a rope burn on his neck," said Ms Mary Salterille of the Granbury Convention and Visitors Bureau.
After decades of speculation, the exhumation was sought by a Jesse James researcher, Mr Bud Hardcastle, and three reputed grandsons of the outlaw who live in Arkansas.
DNA samples from the Granbury remains will be compared with those of the James descendants. A DNA test in 1995 determined that James's body lies in the Missouri grave.
Funeral home workers used a backhoe and shovels to remove dirt from a burial plot whose headstone reads, "Jesse Woodson James" and a death date of August 15th, 1951. In smaller letters below it says, "Supposedly killed in 1882".
James learned his fighting skills as a guerrilla raider for the Confederate side in the US Civil War. After the Union won in 1865, James and his brother Frank launched a 16-year outlaw career by banding with eight other men to rob a bank in Liberty, Missouri, in 1866.
A botched Minnesota bank robbery in 1876 destroyed the gang, with all but Jesse and Frank dead or captured.
The brothers kept on robbing with new partners, and in 1882 Robert Ford was said to have shot Jesse James in the head in hope of a $10,000 reward.