A DNA analysis, a 38-year-old Pioneer Press and an old Henry rifle have helped researchers solve the mystery about a skeleton in Northfield and whether it belonged to a member of the Jesse James gang.
Turns out, the skeleton at the Northfield Historical Society Museum is not Charlie Pitts, one of the gang members who was shot in the foiled Northfield bank robbery of 1876 and died two weeks later.
Former Minnesota State University, Mankato researcher James Bailey reported Thursday that DNA from the skeleton did not match the DNA of one of Pitts' probable descendants — great-grandnephew Joe Wells, of Arizona. Carbon testing revealed only a 2.5 percent chance that the skeleton was from someone who lived in the 1800s and predicted the person lived in the 1700s.
"It was very rewarding to find out that it was not him," said Bailey, a criminology professor who has since retired to North Carolina. "Charlie Pitts is still out there. One day, he will be uncovered. He is probably in a museum or a medical office. He is probably out there somewhere as a medical specimen."
Bailey's team also uncovered some of the more recent history of the skeleton, which the Stagecoach Museum in Shakopee displayed as Pitts until its donation to the Northfield museum in 1981.
Reviewing a Pioneer Press article from 1970 and other documents, Bailey's team learned that a dentist had traded the skeleton to the Stagecoach Museum in exchange for a Henry rifle. The dentist had gotten it in the 1940s from a surgeon, Dr. Harry King.
Pitts' bones — wherever they are — have had as colorful a past as the infamous Pitts, whom historians have linked to bank and train heists in Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri.
After Pitts died in a shootout near Madelia, Minn., his body was displayed for three days at the state Capitol. When no relatives stepped forward, the state surgeon general, Dr. John Murphy, put Pitts' skeleton in storage and later gave it to a nephew and medical student, Henry Hoyt.
Hoyt submerged the bones in St. Paul's Lake Como to preserve them. Murphy later had to reclaim the bones from the coroner's office after someone discovered them in the lake, leading police to believe they had found an unsolved murder.
Legend has it the ghost of Pitts still haunts one corner of the lake, but historians can't be sure the submerged bones belonged to Pitts. At some point, Pitts' skeleton got swapped, mislabeled or possibly even mixed up with other bones in the assembly of an anatomical model for medical education.
"I have a feeling it happened much earlier," said Hayes Scriven, executive director of the Northfield Historical Society, which permitted Bailey's team to examine the skeleton. "I think it happened sometime between going to the state Capitol and ... Lake Como."
After reclaiming the bones, Murphy gave them to an unnamed medical student, who then went to Chicago. The mix-up could have occurred sometime after that, as well.
Though they tried, the Mankato researchers couldn't link this early history of Pitts' remains with the skeleton King believed to be Pitts.
Adding to the mystery are DNA results that Bailey's team ordered on a tooth from the skeleton. It didn't match the DNA from Pitts' descendant or from the bone sample that was used in the DNA analysis. It's possible teeth or bones from other remains were used to fill in the skeleton's gaps.
The Northfield museum at one time displayed the skeleton, but then removed it partly out of suspicion it wasn't Pitts, who also was known as Samuel Wells.
The size of the bones fit Pitts' frame based on historical photographs. A nick in the sternum also could have been from one of the bullet wounds Pitts sustained. However, even without DNA testing, Northfield officials had suspicions and found the size of the skull to be inconsistent with that of Pitts' head.
So just whose bones are they? Nobody knows at this point, but computer modeling has given researchers an approximate image of the man's face. He was white, about 5-foot-7 and died in his late 30s. Scriven was relieved he wasn't an American Indian — an expensive designation for the museum because it would have had to comply with federal laws governing such remains.
There is a slight chance the skeleton — or a part of it — is Pitts. After all, the researchers tested DNA from only one bone because of the cost and the need to preserve as much of the skeleton as possible. Perhaps one of the other bones belonged to the gunslinger.
The odds are small, though, so the museum is assuming it is not Pitts. A coming exhibit will explain the research and display a 3-D model of what the man's head probably looked like.
"Now, there's an actual face to this person that has been in the museum basement for 20 years," Scriven said. "I always felt uneasy having that thing down here without knowing who it was or the story behind it."
The infamous Pitts — or at least his skeleton — remains at large.
For the Pioneer Press story and photos go to http://www.twincities.com/ci_11744624?source=most_viewed
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