362: The Pinkertons Part 3 with Rob Hilliard

Dan LeFebvre  01:56

We’re continuing from where we left off last time, which means our first episode today is episode number 15, and it’s also the first time we see the Pinkertons doing a cold case in the show. This one highlights an interesting angle for the Pinkertons, because for a while it’s actually Sheriff Logan who is the suspect of the crime. Of course, he ends up being innocent. But throughout the episode, we see the Pinkertons arresting Logan, which is very interesting to me, because earlier in the series, there was a point where they talked about how they were private detective firms. So they’re able to do some things that law enforcement can’t, but now we have them arresting the law enforcement as if they are the law themselves. So can you help clarify the Blurred Lines of the power that the Pinkertons had compared to actual law enforcement.

Rob Hilliard  02:45

Well, I could attempt to, but it’s, it is, as you said, there are some Blurred Lines, and there were even Blurred Lines then. So we’ve talked a bit in the in the previous episodes about jurisdictions and the fact that the Pinkertons, because they didn’t have a geographic restriction on where they could go or what they could do, that they could extend farther than local law enforcement and basically make arrests. And I probably should have clarified, and I guess it gets to the point here where if they’re arresting somebody, they weren’t, well, the rules in the 19th century were different than what they are today. And we think about it in modern terms, right? But a citizen’s arrest would have been much more common, way, way, way more common in those days than today. And part of the reason for that is something I think we talked about in the first episode, which is that there just wasn’t most of law enforcement was local. It’s almost exclusively local, and there were many areas where there was no law enforcement. So if you saw a crime committed, or you saw someone who was a criminal, who you knew was wanted, which is the whole like, you know, every Western, including this one, has wanted posters hang on a wall that you could actually make a citizen’s arrest and bring somebody in and turn them in, you know, in that case, for a reward, but regardless if you knew they committed a crime, you could make a citizen’s arrest and bring them in. In effect, that’s what the Pinkertons were doing, although there were instances where, as we’ve also talked about before, where they would have a specific writ from, let’s say the governor of some state to pursue Jesse James, for example, we talked about or other much lesser known suspects. So they could do that. I think I wasn’t able to find the specifics. But like, way back in my memory banks, from something I read a really long time ago about the Pinkertons, there was at least an In one instance, where there was someone who, as we would say today, was a crooked cop and was on the take. And so you. In the course of their investigation, they found out that he was involved with a larger crime ring, and so they did ultimately. Now again, I’m going from memory. I can’t recall whether they actually arrested him, or whether, just in the course of the investigation that came out that he was associated with this crime ring and someone else arrested him, but regardless, they were responsible for his arrest. But in an instance like that, if they’re let’s say that that you know, a sheriff in this case, if they were implicated in aspiring or suspected the Pinkertons would have had the ability to perform a citizen’s arrest. Now, what wouldn’t happen is, the way it was shown on the show, which is, they’re just like, Oh, I think you’re guilty. I’m gonna bring you in. There wasn’t a like, you had to have some basis for it. You couldn’t just go around randomly grabbing people, whether they’re a sheriff or not, off the street, and then saying, you know, I’m arresting, you come with me. So and as we’ve talked about repeatedly as well, the Pinkertons were more about carrying out a mission that they were being paid to do, or that they were, you know, that there was some financial remuneration was going to happen as a result of it. So again, even with all those qualifiers, the way it was portrayed, him to show you know,

Dan LeFebvre  06:29

did the Pinkertons ever do cold cases like we see in this episode?

Rob Hilliard  06:32

Not, not that I’ve seen now the again, the concept of a cold case is a little different now than what it would have been then, because there weren’t today, we have records of every case that’s been investigated. Right in that era, there might have been a piece of paper or two written down about something, but it wouldn’t be, I don’t want to say it, it wouldn’t be something that you could much later refer back to and say, oh, you know, we have this unsolved case from, you know, whatever, however many years ago that I’m going to Go back and pull it out and reinvestigate that. That wasn’t, you know, that wasn’t sort of how things happen. And as we’ve also talked about, like there weren’t, most police forces even didn’t have detective bureaus. So like, and I don’t want to this sounds a bit more pejorative that I mean it to be, but if kind of the beat cops were investigating and they were like, Yeah, I couldn’t come up with any leads like it just kind of went on the trash heap and they moved on, the only way that that this is, I guess, kind of a cold case situation is there were definitely cases where the Pinkertons were investigating someone or arrested someone. And then they found out they were also guilty of some other you know, like arresting for a robbery in 1866 and they found out, oh, he also committed a robbery in 1864 that had maybe a similar mo but they wouldn’t have been investigating it as a cold case. It would have been more incidental to whatever they had going on at that time. Oh,

Dan LeFebvre  08:23

this criminal also performed other crimes too.

Rob Hilliard  08:27

Not shockingly, right? Yeah, which I

Dan LeFebvre  08:29

guess also makes sense, just putting ourselves in in the historical context of the 1860s like or even after then, too. But you know, as far as the series is concerned, the Pinkertons being as mobile as they are, like those sort of records, like, if there are records in at even pinkerton’s headquarters in DC, or something like that. Yeah, we talked in the previous episodes that there probably was not a Pinkerton field office in Kansas City, but they wouldn’t have access to that in Washington, DC, like, unless it was mailed or something like that. You know, it’s not going to be something that everybody can, you know, look up on the website and see these are all the old cold cases that kind of thing. That’s sort of records and stuff. It’s just very different time period. Yeah, no,

Rob Hilliard  09:17

you’re exactly right. And that, that is a case where that was kind of the point that I was trying to get at when I said, like, there might be a piece of paper somewhere down with a file on it, but unless you knew to go look for that, or you knew, Oh, this could be associated with this other thing that I’m investigating now, you’d never know to even go dig it out, right? So, yeah, to your point, you would have to there would have to be some way of connecting those dots. And now, one thing that that we talked a little bit in an earlier episode about innovations, one thing that the Pinkertons did start to do a good job of, was that record keeping and being sort of reference between so. Or they might say, you know, they’re, they’re pursuing somebody, or they capture somebody in, I don’t know, San Francisco. And they might telegraph the Chicago office and say, Do you have anything on record for, you know, do we have any previous crimes or wanted posters or whatever, for so and so and and they started checking those where that really wasn’t, that wasn’t as much of a thing that local law enforcement would do, other than to the extent that if somebody was wanted and they thought they might be able to make a little money off of it, right by, oh, I caught, you know, I caught him. I’m gonna check and see, as I used to say, I’m gonna check and see if he has any papers out on him, because I might be able to cash that in for, you know, $500 reward or whatever. But the Pinkertons really started looking at that larger geographic spread and saying, well, even if there’s not a reward for them, you know, they might have been investigated for some other crime over here. And and start to tie those things together in, again, a much more modern way than than what would have been done elsewise or otherwise in the 19th century. Well, we

Dan LeFebvre  11:19

touched a little bit on the jurisdiction element, if we go back to the TV show and episode number 16, it’s called mud and clay, after two liquor magnates named Cyril clay and Jeremiah Mudd. And the storyline for this episode has another lawman named Marshall Tucker in town with mud who was arrested for setting his own whiskey still on fire, then when it blows up, killed 13 squatters in the building. So he’s charged with 13 counts of murder. That would be mud, who was not the marshal, but thanks to a snowstorm in Kansas City, the marshal can’t take his prisoner out of town for trial. So essentially, in the show, we see that they have a trial at the Dubois hotel that mostly led by Kate and will leading this trial, mud turns out to be innocent. The fire was actually set by his rival serial clay in an attempt to get rid of his competitor. And while I’m guessing that this specific storyline is made up for the show, what really stood out to me in this episode was how the Pinkertons were basically able to override the charges against mud, because at the end of the episode, it’s clay in custody, and mud is set free. Marshall Tucker doesn’t really seem to be involved in any of the trial really is relied on or created by the Pinkertons, who are seem to be able to legally charge mud and then, or, I’m sorry, let mud go and then have the charges leveled against Clay. So did the Pinkertons have this legal power to hold trials and change charges against prisoners.

Rob Hilliard  12:42

No, even when we were watching this episode, I turned to my wife and I’m like, That’s they can’t do that. So, yeah, long before you know you and I talked, or you sent me the questions or anything like, yeah, I really think this whole episode was created as an excuse to be able to have a character named Marshall Tucker because of the Southern rock band, Marshall Tucker band. And so every time it came up, I’m like, Oh, there’s another Marshall Tucker reference. I honestly believe that whoever was writing this, that’s

Dan LeFebvre  13:17

what they’re listening to as they’re writing

Rob Hilliard  13:21

so anyway, they they absolutely couldn’t hold a trial. There were, I mean, nobody in the United States, even then, who was not a judge could could hold a trial and or was not appointed or elected judge. And so you see lots of times in, you know, in other movies and things where they maybe capture a criminal and they’re like, Okay, he’s gonna be held for trial. Go get judge so and so. And go get Judge Reinhold while we’re playing puns with title and and he is, you know, two weeks right away or whatever. And so they did actually have, like, certain they were literally called circuit riders, circuit judges, who would travel around because, as we talked about a couple times here, the long distances between settled locations and the fact that there probably just wasn’t enough crime to support having, you know, full time judge in one location, so they would ride around and and so you would have to hold somebody there for trial until judge got there to, you know, to carry out the trial. So, yeah, that’s not, I mean, I’m pretty sure I’m not that well versed on my constitutional law, but I’m pretty sure it’s against the constitution, but it would have definitely been been against state, you know, state laws at the time. Yeah, that whole episode was, you know, frankly, kind of a mess. Well, as an aside, like, why not just pick up and move to a different building that the roof wasn’t caving in? And because that’s

Dan LeFebvre  15:01

the only set they built. But, I mean, they did have, uh, where Sheriff Logan was, like, the little, you know, I guess you couldn’t have the, have basically the whole town in there, though. So, yeah, it was, it was kind of,

Rob Hilliard  15:15

yeah, that episode was, was, like, I said, kind of screwy. But, I mean, move it to the jail. They held trials in jails. You know, different different times, in different places throughout the West. Yeah, I was calling to BS on that throughout.

Dan LeFebvre  15:31

Well, on episode 17, we’re introduced to something, another new concept. This time, the crime revolves around the Buffalo Soldiers, which the show sets up as being a regiment of black soldiers in the US Army. And when they arrive, the Buffalo Soldiers arrive in Kansas City, they’re greeted with cheers from the black citizens and cheers from the White Citizens, suggesting there’s still some racism going on. And then, when one of the Buffalo Soldiers goes missing, the Pinkertons are called in to solve the crime, which, of course, they always do. Now, while I’m guessing most of the side characters in the series are fictional. I want to ask you about one of them in particular, because in this episode, we’re introduced to a member of the Buffalo Soldiers named Private William Cathy throughout the investigation of the crime, it’s will Pinkerton who finds out that private Cathy is actually a woman. And while I haven’t done a lot of my own research into Buffalo Soldiers, I’m pretty sure that William Cathy was a real person who was really a woman named Kathy Williams, and as such, was officially, I believe, the first female to enlist in the US Army, although she did so as a man. So my question for you is kind of a two part. Did I get that brief history of Kathy Williams correct, and were the Pinkertons, the ones who uncover that she was actually a woman pretending to be a man so she could join the army, like we see in this episode.

Rob Hilliard  16:49

So the answer the first question is yes, with one small exception, and I’ll clarify that in a second, and the answer second question is no remotely involved. And again, the story is like miles off, but, um, but before I get into answering those questions, I want to back up for one second, because we talked a couple times about the racism of the time and, you know, right after civil war and things. But one thing that I think I failed to touch on is the location here. So they were in Missouri, which was effectively, you know, southern state, and I’m not going to get into the whole, you know, border wars with Kansas and Missouri and all that, but when you talked about the jeers and cheers of the Buffalo Soldiers coming in, there was much more, As you would expect, jeering in those southern states of the of the of the Buffalo Soldiers. And even prior to that, during the Civil War, it was the USCT, US Colored Troops. And they those regiments started being formed after the Emancipation Proclamation. Reference another based on true story. Movie here, Glory expert Ruby. Watch it. You will not hear these kind of complaints out of me on that one, because it’s very historically accurate. But they and it’s been a while since I’ve seen that one, but there’s a scene, if I recall correctly, where they were marching in Boston. It was 54th Massachusetts. Was the regiment, and they were being cheered as they as they marched through Boston. And that’s, you know, again, like geographically, kind of what you would expect when it wasn’t the 54th but when there was a regiment of the US Colored Troops was one of the first to march into Richmond after the capture of Richmond by Union troops in 1865 that wasn’t by accident, by the way that they sent in USCT troops to, you know, they knew what they were doing and but as you would expect, they certainly were not cheered there. So I just wanted to touch on that for a second that you know we haven’t really talked about where, you know, Kansas City and Missouri very close to that line. And those were kind of disputed territories. But Missouri was, you know, really a southern state, and for the in largest part, held southern sympathies. So I think the way they portrayed that was probably pretty, you know, pretty close to the truth. For once. So, so back to to Kathy Williams. She did disguise herself as a man. Did join and became one of the Buffalo Soldiers the she ended up where she volunteered was St Louis, so that was in Missouri, but where she served was in New Mexico, and she was there until it was 1867, she contracted smallpox, which was not unusual at the time, and they in the. So she was examined by at least two doctors prior to getting smallpox, and neither one of them noticed that she was a man or she was a woman, excuse me. And they kept like, oh yeah, that’s fine. Go ahead. Like, which shows you how much attention they were paying to like, basically, if you could stand upright and breathe, you were good enough to be a soldier. So anyway, but when she got smallpox, she went in for for treatment a couple of times, and at that point is when they found out that she was woman, and she was discharged. And then I think she she, she lived, actually, until close to 1900 so she lived on for a while. So I said the one small qualifier, you said that she was the first woman to serve, she was the first black woman to serve. But there were multiple cases of women during the Civil War, and there might have been some prior to that, that I’m not aware of, but there are multiple cases of women who disguise themselves as men and served in the US Army during its war. There’s a woman named Emma Edmonds is one that comes to mind, and there are at least one or two others. I’m kind of drawing a blank right now, but so she wouldn’t have been the first woman. And there’s actually a woman. I should know this. She was the first, and so far, only woman to win the medal of honor, and it was for service during the Civil War where she had discussed herself as a man. I’m just it was Mary something, and I’m just drawing a blank on her name now, but at any rate, she won the Medal of Honor. It was then later taken away from her, and then much later, I think maybe under the Carter administration, it was restored to her.

Dan LeFebvre  21:52

Correct me, if I’m wrong, the reason why they did that because legally, women weren’t allowed to enlist in the army, then right during this time period, yeah, that’s

Rob Hilliard  22:00

correct, yep. So all those instances that we’re talking about here were all that was all done secretly, and then, you know, they would serve until either somebody found them out or they mustered out of the Army,

Dan LeFebvre  22:15

right? Which is why they took the Medal of Honor away, I’m assuming, because she couldn’t legally be considered

Rob Hilliard  22:20

to be a soldier. Yeah, that’s correct. Please not to give you homework, but if you wouldn’t mind adding her correct name to the show notes, because it will make me crazy that I Yes,

Dan LeFebvre  22:31

I’ll make sure to look that up. This is Dan from after the interview to hop in. The lady’s name that we couldn’t remember is Dr Mary E Walker. In 1855 she was the only female Medical Doctor in the graduating class at Syracuse Medical College. And then in 1863 she became the first female surgeon of the US Army. She was captured by Confederate troops in 1864 and became the first and only woman to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1865 as Rob alluded to the Medal of Honor was rescinded in 1917 and then 60 years later, in 1977 President Jimmy Carter restored her medal of honor. I’ll add a link to the show notes, where you can see a photo of her and learn more about her life. Okay, now let’s get back to the interview with Rob. Well, if we dive back into the TV show, we’re on episode number 18 of 22 and this is the first time in the series that we see Kansas City’s high society. They’re doing a charity benefits, and the Pinkertons are called in to solve a murder of one of the or of the charities administrator, I should say. So this was kind of it’s fascinating to me, because the impression that I got is we’re close to about 80% of the way through the entire series, and the first time that we’re seeing the Pinkertons taking a case from high society. And that makes me think a grand majority of the cases the Pinkertons had were for lack of a better term for the working class, instead of the rich folks in society. Is that a fair assessment of the type of cases the pickertons took?

Rob Hilliard  24:01

I think it would have been, well, let me try and answer it this way, as we talked about before. I think most of their clientele would be, and we did talk in an earlier episode about the stratification of society being really greater than it is today. But most of their clientele would have been high society. I mean, you’re talking about bankers. You’re talking about, you know, officials within a railroad, if not the owner. So the very kind of upper cross the society and politicians, you know, we talk about them getting orders from governors and things of those nature. So now that’s, that’s the people that are paying the bills, the people that they’re pursuing, largely, I think I wouldn’t even have said working class. I would have said, probably, you know, the class below that. I don’t have a term for it. Sugar was a term in. You know, 1866 but, but there were a criminal class. Let’s just put it that way. And it really was a little bit surprising to me where, I mean, there are crimes of opportunity, right? But a lot of what the Pinkertons investigated, or at least what’s written, were what we talked about a little bit ago, where, you know, they arrested somebody and then they found out, oh, by the way, this person actually committed, you know, similar crimes here, here and here. So there definitely was a criminal class, but, but I think a lot of those people, at least in that era, were what we might call career criminals. So they weren’t, I’m making a distinction with working class because they weren’t working other than, you know, how do I rob a bank? They were working? What? Way, I guess, but, but it would have been, you know, like I said, more of the criminal class, and it’s surprising. And again, like, you don’t know, maybe it’s just the way it was reported. Like, it’s hard to differentiate that at a century and a half away, but it does seem like a lot of the people that they were they were catching were found guilty. These crimes were what I would call career criminals. Like they didn’t seem to be doing anything else. There were a few cases where, excuse me, they maybe pulled in somebody who, like, worked at a railroad, for example, because I gave them an entry into, you know, they needed somebody to get them in the door, if you will. And maybe literally, and so they might pull that person in. There was one series of cases that I read about where there was a guy who worked for a company that made safes, and so he understood how you could crack a safe, right? And so he got pulled in. He wasn’t physically committing the crimes, but he was giving the people who were career criminals the information on how to do it, and then, of course, they would slip him a few bucks, you know, at the end. And so the Pinkertons, you know, ultimately broke that ring, and including, including the guy that wasn’t physically committing the crimes. But so anyway, that’s kind of a very long and windy answer to your question, but it’s certainly not in any way to suggest that there weren’t criminals in the upper crust of society, because there definitely were. I’m not aware of any cases where the Pinkerton has found somebody there or arrested someone there, in what would again, kind of like you said, high society, like that upper crust of society. It was also, frankly, a time when you could buy influence, in a way. I mean, you can buy influence today, but you could do it a whole lot more back then. And graft was, was not at all uncommon. In fact, you know, in on the government side. It was kind of considered to be the way you did business with government contracts and so forth, which is something that plagued Ulysses Grant when he was the president. Not it wasn’t him involved, but it was people within his administration. So this was maybe one point to make here is, this was an important distinction for the Pinkertons, was they always, they were very careful in their hiring practices, and they were very careful in how they carried out their practices, that they would always be considered above board. They weren’t taking bribes. They weren’t, you know, doing some of those involving themselves in some of those things, so that you knew you were always going to get a fair deal when you hired them. So now people that are arresting might not have got a fair deal, but that’s a whole,

Dan LeFebvre  28:54

yeah, that’s a different thing, which makes me think of, you know, I don’t know how it was then with law enforcement, but you’re thinking of it now where they will do a background check and make sure you know you’re you’re not in debt too much. You know, are those kind of things where you you would be more prone to taking bribes and and be more prone to breaking the law and things like that. So it makes sense that the Pinkertons would have to have something along those lines made, you know, different than it is now, but back then as well, yeah,

Rob Hilliard  29:22

and certainly, that’s what they advertise, at least. I mean, I’m not going to sit here and tell you with a straight face that, oh yeah, they never hired anybody who had a criminal or anything like that. Like, I don’t know, but I will say that at that time period, the line between criminals and and and law enforcement was much more bordered than it is now much more and in fact, to the point where in certain places in the old west, like farther west, if they knew somebody who was handy with a gun, even if he had been a criminal, they would hire him to be the sheriff. And. On purpose, knowing that for two reasons. One, he was good with a gun, and they figured he could knock heads and get other people in line. And two, they figured if they paid him a straight salary, he would stop robbing. And that’s not, I mean, that’s really, that was a, you know, it was actually a strategy in some cases, which seems crazy today, but that was, you know, the Pinkertons tried hard to, at least from an image standpoint, to avoid any type of association like that. And they were very strict about, you know, firing people if they found out that they were crossing over the lines that they had established.

Dan LeFebvre  30:37

Well, if we go back to the show, the crime in episode number 19 revolves around what they call a Philadelphia special pistol that was used by John Wilkes Booth to kill Abraham Lincoln, and it’s being sold to a guy named Ezekiel Wyeth. By pronouncing that correctly, his name is kind of an odd one, but he says he already has the knife that killed Julius Caesar, the gun that killed Chief Pontiac, and the rifle that killed Peter, the third of Russia in the episode, the gun turns out to be a fake, which is why there ends up being three people killed that pull the Pinkertons into the investigation. Were there really people who tried to sell counterfeit pistols claiming that they were the one that John Wilkes Booth used to kill Lincoln? If

Rob Hilliard  31:18

there were the people they were selling them to were idiots, because it would be like me making a, I don’t know, a baseball rookie card for myself, and then trying to sell it as a, you know, as something valuable on eBay. My point being that most people in society then knew what had happened to the real gun, which we’ll get to here in a second, but so there wouldn’t have been any reason to to sell it, you know, for high price. This was another for me eye roll episode, because I’m like, you know, especially at the end, when he’s like, Well, I have the gun that that killed Chief Pontiac, and Pontiac was was killed by another Native American. And, like, they don’t even know who that person was, let alone his gun. And and then I’m like, the ninth that killed Julius Caesar, and I didn’t look it up. Maybe it does exist someplace. But I’m like, how would you authenticate that? You know? I mean, it’s whatever, 2000 years old. And so anyway, I and, but I guess what I really want to get to there is, even if that were the case, even if all that were the case, and even if the guy thought he was buying the real Lincoln Derringer, it wouldn’t have been worth any kind of value where you would murder, flat out, murder three people for it, right? It wouldn’t have been, it wouldn’t have been, like, $50,000 or $100,000 or, you know, whatever that would be at a level that would make it that valuable, which is a good segue, I’ll just go ahead and jump into the real gun. So when John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln, he dropped the gun on the floor in the theater. There was another patron who picked it up that night and turned it over to the War Department. And they kept it for the trial and of the Lincoln conspirators. Obviously, Booth was dead, but then it went into storage, I think, next to the Ark of the Ark of the Covenant in one of those big warehouses. But it went into storage for about 75 years, and then they started the effort to open Ford’s Theater as a museum where Lincoln was killed and in the 1930s and so they requisitioned the pistol back from the war department. There was actually a letter written by, it was like Ulysses S Grant, the third, I want to say, Who the War Department initially said. No, it’s, it’s, you know, too horrible of an artifact, you know, we don’t want to have it on public display. And what kind of, you know, crazy people wanted to track and that kind of stuff. And But ultimately, he wrote this, US grants, grandson wrote this letter asking for it to be returned. And in 1942 it was sent back to Ford’s Theater, and it’s been on display there ever since. So you can go see it today. You can look at a picture of it on their website. You can go see it in person. Can’t touch it, but, but, yeah, it’s and that’s why I said people were idiots if they paid money for because everybody knew that the. Army had it because it was at the trial. It was shown at the trial as evidence. So anyone who claimed to be such a knowledgeable collector as whatever that character’s name was would have clearly known, well, it’s sitting, you know, it’s sitting with the army, so with the War Department.

Dan LeFebvre  35:17

And you mentioned a feedback, I think this is an aside, but I remember, like, when the first Xbox came out, there were some people who took a box and wrote an X on it, and they were selling it as an Xbox on eBay. Like, I mean, I guess it was not the same thing, yeah.

Rob Hilliard  35:33

Well, I guess, to quote another famous 19th century person, there’s a sucker born every minute

Dan LeFebvre  35:40

you speaking of the snake oil salesman in an earlier episode, I guess, as a thing. Well, when we started this series at the beginning of the first episode, it gives a year of like 1865 and throughout the series, we don’t really get much of a timeline outside of you see the seasons changing, like this snowstorm episode. But as we move on to episode number 20, we find out that it’s time for will and Kate’s annual review. So that makes me think that everything up until this point was basically the first year for the Pinkertons bureau in Kansas City, and this episode seems kind of like a clip show, so we see a lot of flashbacks of things from earlier in the series. What’s notable, though, is that the review is conducted by Will’s brother, Robert Pinkerton, instead of the normal guy who does it, Alan pinkerton’s right hand guy, I think you mentioned him in an earlier episode, George bangs, yeah, we don’t, we don’t ever see him, but they mentioned in this episode that, you know, he’s the one who usually does it, but it’s Robert this time, and when they find out that Robert has also done reviews for other Pinkerton bureaus in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, will points out that those are all the bureaus with female agents. So it seems that Robert is trying to stage a coup, basically to replace his father at the head of the Pinkertons. And to do that, he also wants to close what the show calls the female Bureau, so all the female Pinkerton agents. It doesn’t work, of course, because will doesn’t want to turn on his father or Kate. But was there ever this plot to overthrow Alan Pinkerton by his own family, like we see in this series? No,

Rob Hilliard  37:16

absolutely not. And, I mean, I’m sure there were, you know, Alan Pinkerton was a bit of a tyrant. And I’m sure probably being his son was no bonus growing up, but, but, and he can be certainly difficult and arrogant, as we talked about a little bit, but his two sons? Well, for one thing that I kind of mentioned this in passing earlier, but one thing that I thought was a little strange was they, I don’t think they said it directly, but they made it seem like Robert was the older son and will was the kind of reckless younger son. That’s exactly the opposite. Will. Will was the older and he was the first one pulled into the agency by his dad. But by right around this time period, late 1860s Robert was was also really, just then pulled into the firm, because, like I said at the beginning episode, Will was only 20 at this point, I think Robert was three years younger than him, so he had been only 17 years old. So to have him doing reviews or anything like That’s weird. I mean, it just doesn’t respect a real life timeline at all. But with that said, later, maybe in the 1870s or 1880s Robert really did. I mean, they both will, and Robert were became the upper management of the firm, and they replaced their father before he died. But Robert was really more focused on the administrative side of things, as they kind of show in the episode here, not, you know, personnel reviews, I don’t think, but, but more the being in the office type of person and will was more the, you know, chasing after criminals, that that’s what he wanted to do. So they did kind of at least get the spirit of that accurately, but the idea that they would somehow, you know, want to stage a coup over their dad like they wouldn’t need to. I mean, first of all, again, at this point in time, if we’re talking about the timeline, they would have been ridiculously young to do it. They would have been 17. So that makes no sense. So if you set that aside and say, Okay, well, what if they were magically 3030 and 33 let’s say there wouldn’t have been any reason for them to, because they were already moving into the management of the firm at point, and so they basically do, you know, to an extent, what they wanted. So the whole, the whole thing, like you said, I think it was really just intended to give them an excuse to do a retrospective, because he talked to each of the employees, and then they. You know, show clips of each of their them doing whatever crazy stuff they were doing over the first few episodes. But it didn’t, yeah, it just didn’t fit. It doesn’t fit with real life. It doesn’t at all fit with any timeline that you choose, either their real ages, chronologically or where they were in management, you know, later in life. And I never found any indication, or seen any indication about them wanting to do away with the female Bureau within the Pinkertons. And on the contrary, that was something that they really kind of played up like, hey, you know, again, we’re able to do things or utilize our detectives in a way, our female detectives in a way that they could achieve things that men can’t, and they had specific examples of that by that time. And one other little piece in there, he, you know, Robert said something about, well, those, you know, those sections aren’t profitable, and I want to try and make more money. You know, was kind of a I’m paraphrasing, but he said that multiple times. But as we talked about, they were already extremely profitable, and they were focused as a company on becoming consistently more profitable. So there would be no reason for him to like, what change would you make to make more money? You’re already making more money, right? There’s nothing to so I don’t know. The whole thing didn’t wash for me. But did

Dan LeFebvre  41:27

I know, like today you think of annual performances, annual performance review at work. It’s a pretty normal thing. But did the Pinkertons actually do them back then in the timeline of the series I’ve

Rob Hilliard  41:37

not seen or read anything that indicated that. Now, what they did do was they kept, as I kind of mentioned a little bit earlier, but maybe it’s bears repeating, they were Alan Pinkerton in particular, but he passed us on everybody within the organization. They were very strong on record keeping very strong. And Alan started to recognize the importance of those records, because, like we talked about you, if you have a record of somebody doing this here, or ultimately, you know, eventually a picture, right, then you can start to use that as a mug shot database. But those records became a very important database, also to start to piece together pieces of evidence or or criminal activity across different places and time periods, and you can start to join those. There’s nothing, you know, we live in the data age today, right? But there’s nothing stronger than than data, really, to be able to piece those things together. Well, they were doing that in a very rudimentary way, yet very advanced for the time period the Pinkertons were doing that. So it is a little hard for me to believe that they wouldn’t do all that stuff there and not have some type of a file on performance of their individual employees, right? Um, in fact, I would probably guess, given the more lax laws and things around personal privacy and those they were probably, they probably have way more information about their worries than than we would today, right? Because they were probably investigating them and following them outside of work and doing all those things to make sure that they weren’t committing criminal activity. So they probably have more more detailed than you’d be allowed by law to have today. But

Dan LeFebvre  43:23

if you go back to this series where, in episode number 21 we learn of a book written by a lady named Lila greenhouse, and the book is all about her mother, Rose greenhouse, who the show calls a quote, unquote, famed Confederate spy. And basically, according to the show, she uses pillow talk to gain information from her home in Washington, DC, and then pass it on to the Confederates. There’s apparently a spicy section in the book about rose and Alan Pinkerton having an affair despite him being a married man. Then, after the book’s publisher is murdered, we see Kate and will trying to solve it all while clearing Alan’s name as for Alan himself, he doesn’t really seem to care about it. He says something to the effect of how others have tried to make things up about him before, but did the Pinkertons ever try to combat defamation against their founder like we see happening in this episode?

Rob Hilliard  44:16

Not Not directly. So this was actually probably the rare episode where they leaned a little bit more on real life than the part. And you probably from reading my book and freedom of shadow, you recognize rose green, how talk about her and there and then she was, in fact, a famed or notorious, I guess, depending on which side of the Mason Dixon Line you sit on, Confederates by she did have three daughters, and Layla or Lila, or I don’t pronounce it, but was one of them. And again, timelines and ages all. Little out of whack here, because I didn’t write it down, but I think Layla would have been like 16 or something like that at the time period. Amount. So that doesn’t wash. But more to the point, Rose green, how never wrote a book, and her daughters never wrote a book about her spying activity. So it’s a little hard to answer your question. You know, did they try and combat defamation like they did showed here, because it didn’t happen in the first ones? Yeah, so there’s nothing to counter. So, but that said, certainly, when you’re talking about somebody like Alan Pinkerton, who became, as we talked about, a nationally known figure, internationally known figure, eventually and and he was combating crime. Certainly, he would have his detractors, right, and I don’t think I’m not aware anyway, the infidelity was one of the things he was being accused of. It was more like, Oh, he’s on the take and, and that’s kind of like the default, you know, response for like, a criminal who’s being pursued, right? First thing you want to try and show is the person who’s pursuing it was also a criminal or not, not straight and, you know, as they would in the terminology at the time, but they’re so they did try to, and we’ve touched on a little bit in talking here, to really point up the the honesty of not only Alan Pinkerton, but his agents, and really, you know, drive that home and to make sure that those people were, you know, weren’t doing things that gambling at the racetrack or whatever, that we’re going to give them a bad name or give a bad appearance. So in that way, they did, but it wasn’t sort of head on, like, Oh, you’re accused of this and, and so here’s the rebuttal to that. And, like I said, like, you know the infidelity thing, I don’t that that feels like some kind of nonsense.

Dan LeFebvre  47:19

It sounds like to kind of feed it back. It sounds like based on things that we’ve talked about so far. I mean, they’re a company making profits. And do you think of companies today, like they want to maintain a good image so that they can get more clients? And it sounds like that’s basically what they were trying to do, is maintain a good image. And, you know, obviously for the success, but the success then brings the money so that you know you’re getting more clients. And that’s kind of bottom line is, is really what it’s all about? Yeah,

Rob Hilliard  47:48

no, you’re exactly right. And to put it in modern terms, Alan Pinkerton understood his social contract right as an organization, and if and it set him apart from the competitors that existed at the time, because, as we’ve just talked about here a few minutes ago, there were a lot of blurred lines between criminals and and police, or detectives at the time, law enforcement opposite. And so he tried to make with his Pinkerton agents, a much less blurred, much more solid line, like criminals are over here and we’re over here. And he understood that if that became a social contract of his organization, that they were going to be above reproach at all times, or at least have the appearance of being above reproach at all times again. You know, I can’t speak to the veracity of all that, but that that was his social contract, and that people would and did hire them, partly because they expected him to be successful, but also partly because they expected him to be honest, right? And he grasped that from the very beginning and and that was, you know, that and the success combined, and then also the self promotion, those three things are really what, you know, what the company was built on, and how it achieved that massive fame and longevity that other, you know, other detective agencies at the time never even approached.

Dan LeFebvre  49:19

Well, we’ve made it to the final episode of the entire series, and it ends on a massive cliffhanger. Jesse James comes back in this episode. He starts sniping people in Kansas City with a stolen military repeating rifle as a means of trying to get will to go to a duel with him to stop the killings. Will agrees to do it. So at the very end of the episode, we see will and Jesse alone in the woods. Kate gets there just before they begin, but not in time to stop it. Will and Jesse both pull their pistols, and the smoke of both guns can be seen just before the screen goes black, and you see here Kate yell will. It’s a kind of ending that seems perfect to set up for season two, but this. Episode air back in, I think 2015 so I’m guessing there will not be a season two. So is there any truth to this gunfight between will Pinkerton and Jesse James?

Rob Hilliard  50:10

Absolutely not, and not even like when you know, I know there’s an expression, it couldn’t be further from the truth. This could not be the other would be further from the truth is, if they said they flew to the moon, and that’s where they had their showdown at it was so I don’t even know where to start, but first of all, repeating rifles. They were like, oh, there’s this new repeating rifle. They were invented years before, repeating rifles used at Gettysburg and place it before that. So, so that’s a small point, but you know, they were off base there the I guess the biggest point is, Will Pinkerton any Pinkerton agent and Jesse James never met, as we talked about previously, they pursued him. Well, first of all, that pursuit didn’t start until about 10 years after the time frame of the show, but they pursued him for years and couldn’t catch him if he had somehow again, the timeline is completely off, but it’s somehow found and met Jesse James. He wouldn’t have gone out in the woods to have a showdown. He would have just arrested him because he was the most, probably the most wanted man in America at, you know, the later time so and same thing with Kate, like she wouldn’t have been, she rode out to Jesse’s farm and talked to his brother Frank a couple times like they would have been arresting people or staking out the farm or whatever. That not like going out and having a conversation and turn around leaving. But none of that made any sense. The one thing I did look up and I I’ll throw a plug in here for another author. There’s a really good book by an author named Tom Clavin called Wild Bill. That’s about Wild Wild Bill Hickok. That seemed like a tangent, but I’ll bring it around here. So the first, what we know to be like a showdown, type of gunfight that took place in, I want to get the date right here was 1865

Rob Hilliard  52:17

in July of 1865 and so prior to that, for, you know, more of a century, they had duels which had very fixed rules. And you know, of course, I was in Hamilton, was was killed, a duel, and so on. But they those had very fixed rules, where, typically you guys would start back to back, and then it would pace off. So when we think of the Old West, you think of a showdown. It’s more like they showed in the show, where they came out and they’re facing each other from, I think they said they were each gonna go 15 feet and, you know, so they’re about 30 feet apart. But the first of those was in July of 1865, with Wild Bill Hickok against a guy named Davis Tut. And the reason you don’t remember his name is because he died that day. But that really set the model, if you will, for what a showdown, the kind of hot noon, you know, meeting in the street type of thing. And the reason I looked that up. And I was because when I had read klavins book about that, I’m like, Oh, I know that was the first showdown. And I was in my head, I was thinking it was a bit later, after the timeline of the show, where, again, like, the whole concept of doing that wouldn’t even make sense, though it wasn’t that showdown was about, you know, maybe a year before the timeline of the show. But still, it wouldn’t have been a kind of commonplace thing for people to do, opposing people to do. Another thing to mention is Jesse James was, I didn’t exhaustively research this, but I don’t believe he was ever involved in any kind of a showdown like that. He guy was a bank robber, train robber. If he was going to shoot somebody, it was going to be, you know, unexpectedly, wasn’t

Dan LeFebvre  54:10

going to be a fair fight, right? Exactly. Yeah.

Rob Hilliard  54:14

Nor was he though, I guess, to the extent that I want to be fair, to be fair to him. Nor was he ever involved in, like, sniping people from a distance. So, so, yeah, I mean, it’s just, I could go on and on, but there’s just nothing about this episode. It was a disappointing finish to what was kind of becoming a disappointing, you know, series of shows. One other gripe, just because I can’t resist. But there was a scene in there where they showed him a map of the town, and John Bell was showing it, I think, to the sheriff, I can’t remember, and he said, well, that the range of that rifle is 2000 feet, which it’s actually, I think, more than that. But whatever. So 2000 Feet, and they showed a map, and they showed a circle drawn on the map, and they said so the shooter would have to be within this distance. But the circle was clearly the radius was like 200 feet. Maybe it was only encompassed one building or two buildings. Yeah, in the town, like 2000 feet is half a mile, half a mile, and on that map would have been most of the town of Kansas City. So they couldn’t even get, like, simple, you know, drawing a circle. They

Dan LeFebvre  55:31

didn’t have that big of a set bill. I think you’re exactly

Rob Hilliard  55:34

right, yeah. But even even the simple cartography was was more than they could handle. So anyway, I, you know, I look at a lot of maps for both for research and and in my daytime job, and soon as I saw that, I’m like, That’s not 2000 feet. That’s not

Dan LeFebvre  55:55

so that’s funny. It’s funny. You mentioned Tom. I had Tom Clavin on to talk about tombstone since we had talked about tombstones before, yeah, yeah, I’ve read that. I’ve read that book too. It’s a good talk, for sure. Well, we’ve talked about all the episodes, but since it does kind of set up for a second season that never happened, can you kind of give us an overview of how the true stories ended for the main characters in the Pinkertons?

Rob Hilliard  56:20

Yeah? Just hitting on those three or four main characters we talked about the very beginning. I’ll start with Kate. She was not living in Kansas City at that time. She was actually living in Chicago, and tragically in I believe it was 1868, she passed away. And there it seemed like it was pneumonia that she died from at the end, but you would think she was relatively young woman, 38 years old, that it was probably some underlying cause, but not clear what it was. So. So she passed away shortly after the timeline on the show, but she is still, you know, as we talked about very early on here, still known as the first female detective. And I think there I’ve read, you know, passing mentions, but I think they’re talking about developing either a movie or a series just focused on her. Oh, that would be cool. Yeah, so and again. Like, as we talk about a lot here, like there is a really good story to be told there. This wasn’t it, I mean, a historical, accurate one. And and she’s a fascinating woman that had, you know, led an amazing life, and must have been, you know, by all accounts, brilliant. And you know, as we also talked about, a woman in a man’s world, almost literally there. So anyway, that was like I said. She passed away just shortly after the timeline of the series. William Pinkerton, as I mentioned a couple times, him and his brother went on to lead the company. I think he passed away in the very early 1900s maybe like 1903 or something like that. I can’t recall off the top of my head, but in that ballpark. So he lived a long life and was very successful as the head of what again became internationally renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency with his brother Robert, who also lived and I think it was Robert’s son who then became the head of the company after that, and so that he actually incorporated the company for the first time around 1909 and and and they became anchored and incorporated so or anchored in the detective agency Incorporated, but so they both live long. I don’t know if they were happy, but less the lives Allen Pinkerton died in. I believe it was 1884 he wasn’t that old. He was. Let me see, what would he been about? 65 I guess so I’m doing my math right. I might be wrong on that. But anyway, weirdly, he was walking down the street in Chicago, tripped and fell and bit his tongue, and it bled really badly. They couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. And eventually he died, I think he died of, actually, of gangrene. He got it got infected and, and that’s what he died from, so very strange way for, you know, the world’s most famous detective to to go out all the

Dan LeFebvre  59:43

close calls I’m sure he had, or, I mean, like, all the ways he could have died, that’s just wow, right,

Rob Hilliard  59:47

exactly, and all the enemies he had, and, yeah, all those things so very, very strange. But that was, that was his ending. And as I mentioned. Before, at least in passing, he kind of moved away from detective work in the mid 1870s and started writing books. And he wrote something like 12 or 15 books or over that next 10 years. So they’re they’re interesting reading, if you can get through them, very difficult. Like I said before, he’s a horrible writer, but, but if you can kind of go through and kind of pluck out the, you know, the facts that are in there, there’s some interesting information in there, but it’s a tough slog. So, and we’ve already kind of talked about John Bell or John Scoble, that really is nothing known about him after the period of the Civil War.

Dan LeFebvre  1:00:44

But as we, as we close out, our look on the Pinkertons takes kind of a step back on the entire series. One last time, was there anything else that we didn’t get a chance to cover that stood out to you?

Rob Hilliard  1:00:55

No, I think, um, I mean, certainly you do. One of the reasons I’m a fan of your show is you do an excellent job of being thorough with, you know, with your question. So I think we, I think we hit on most of the key points. One, just, just a tidbit that I failed to mention. We were talking about rose green, how a bit ago, and Confederates by and this is talking about people who ended up with odd demises late in the Civil War. I want to say it was 1864 but I might be wrong in a year, but she had gone to England. She had been returned to the Confederacy parole the Confederacy went over to England and was coming back to America. And the ship that she was in, she come back to maybe North or South Carolina. Ship that she was in ran onto a reef close to shore, very close to shore, and they got out and got into a rowboat, a lifeboat, effectively, and started running the shore. And then somehow that capsized, and she sank and drowned because she was carrying gold sewn into the hem of her dress that was intended to support the ongoing Confederate War effort. But of course, gold is extraordinarily heavy, and it’s not a good plan to be rowing in a boat in the ocean, even if you’re close to shore with with gold in your in your clothing. So it dragged her to the bottom, and that’s how she died. So yeah, just a kind of a weird, you know fact about one of the one of the characters that popped up in the show, but,

Dan LeFebvre  1:02:39

well, thank you so much for doing this whole series covering the Pinkertons. Many of the characters that we’ve talked about throughout our own series are featured in your book. They’ll hold up here. Once again, maybe I’m a little bit biased, but I think the storyline in your book is better than in the Pinkertons. So I would encourage anyone who wants a fresh story with some of the same characters that we’ve talked about to go back and check that out. I’ll make sure to add a link to that in the show notes. But can you share a sneak peek of your book for our listeners, sure,

Rob Hilliard  1:03:04

and thank you very much for the kind words. I appreciate it. And for anybody who does pick it up, if you flip it over, look at the back cover, you’ll see Dan LeFebvre name on there. So I his words were so kind that I put them in writing and put him on the cover of the book, so I really appreciated that, and in the time and effort that you put into reading it, the book itself is is about John Scoble, and it’s the story of his escape from slavery, how he made his way to Washington DC. Was interviewed by Alan Pinkerton, and Pinkerton was so impressed with Goble that he actually brought him in as a Pinkerton operative, and He then served as a spy for the Union for about the next year or so, and went back on multiple undercover missions as a slave into the Confederacy. And so it was taking that true story, part of it that I just described, and fleshing it out a bit more into you know what happened in between those, those few facts that we know, and try to make it as more of a comprehensive story. One thing that I’ll mention here quick Dan that shortly after I started work on the book, I was talking to my son, who’s also a writer. His name is Jake, and we were talking about different plot points. And I said, Oh, you know, I think it might be interesting if we did this or did that. And he stopped me in the middle of it. We were driving in the car, and he just interrupted me and goes, Dad, listen, you have to write this book. And I said, yeah. I’m like, that’s what we’re talking about, right? Yes. I mean, finally you read this book. And he’s like, Well, no, no, you don’t understand what I’m saying. And he said, John Scoble is an American hero, and people have forgotten who he is. And he risked his life, he risked his freedom, he risked everything to help, you know, to help himself, to help his people, to help his country, do all those things, and people have forgotten that. And and then what he said next, I really stuck with me the most. He said, You need to give him his voice back. And so that was really my intent with writing the book. Was that, like, anytime you’re working through something like this, like you get to points where you’re like, is this worth it? Do I need to keep going, you know? And so the thing that really spurred me was, was what Jake said, like, you need to give him his voice back. And the reason I share that here is that’s also a reason why it was important to me to stick as close to what’s known as possible and not veer up, because I don’t want some idiot like me. You know, five years from more reading my book and going, Oh, geez, well, he didn’t, you know, this isn’t right, and that isn’t right, and it kind of detracts from the whole impact. And I really didn’t want that to happen. And there are lots of also like me, lots of civil war nerds out there who, you know, will pick things apart like that say, Oh, this wasn’t right, that was really this, but that I didn’t want to detract anything away from the opportunity of giving John Scoble his voice back. So that’s why it was important to try and stick to the historical record. For me,

Dan LeFebvre  1:06:35

it was fantastic. I will make sure to add a link to that in the show notes. Thank you again, so much for your time. Rob. I appreciate

Rob Hilliard  1:06:40

Dan, thanks a million for having me on it’s been a pleasure.