The judge's bench in Division 6 at the Buchanan County Courthouse in St. Joseph, Mo., is rumored to be the bench where Charles and Robert Ford pleaded guilty to the murder of Jesse James.

St. Joseph, Mo. ? Everyone knows the St. Joseph-Jesse James connection, but what about that “coward” who shot him?

There’s a Buchanan County Courthouse legend that the bench in Division 6 is the same the Ford brothers stood before when they pleaded guilty to a charge of first-degree murder for killing Jesse James.

Whether that’s true depends on whom you talk to.

The main point of contention is that the brothers were arraigned, pleaded guilty and sentenced to be hanged on April 17, 1882 – about two weeks after they killed Jesse James. But the courthouse was nearly gutted by a massive fire on March 28, 1885.

“The fire burned almost everything,” said Gary Chilcote, director of the Patee House and Jesse James Home museums. “All that was left were the walls of the courthouse. It pretty much wiped everything out, at least the contents.”

Chilcote said that a News-Press/Gazette pressman discovered the courthouse was on fire while walking home from work. By the time the first firefighter arrived, the courthouse dome had collapsed into the basement.

But how much destruction the fire caused is debatable. County Clerk Pat Conway, the courthouse’s unofficial historian, said the legend of the bench is perpetuated by the belief that the fire left a wing of the courthouse relatively unscathed.

But in “The History of Buchanan County,” printed in 1890 by The Daily News, it reads the “only thing left for the department to do was the salvation of the main walls, and this was accomplished by hard and heroic work.”

The legend of the bench in Division 6 is widely known, and courthouse officials are preparing for the possibility of a few extra tourists with the release of “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.”

To ensure the sightseers don’t interrupt the proceedings in Division 6 – one of the busiest courtrooms in the courthouse – officials will most likely place a picture of the bench outside the courtroom and a possible informational exhibit in the third-floor rotunda.

Associate Circuit Judge Ronald Taylor now sits behind the bench in question and said that tourists will occasionally visit the courtroom. He doesn’t know if the legend is fact, or even the age of the bench (although Taylor quips: “I’m so old, it’s my second bench.”).

Taylor said the legend is that the bench was originally located in a large courtroom in the southern side of the building where Division 3 is now located. Through the years, the courtrooms have shifted in size and locations, and at least doubled in number from around three to six. During the courthouse’s many renovations, the legend says, the bench eventually made it to its current location.

Presiding Judge Patrick Robb said that former News-Press courthouse reporter Harold Slater interviewed an elderly man in the late 1920s who was the clerk during the proceedings of the Ford brothers. Robb recorded conversations with Slater with the intention to preserve the courthouse’s history.

Slater, who covered the courthouse for the News-Press for about two decades until 1948, died in 1997.

“He told Harold that the brothers were very disrespectful during the hearing,” Robb said Friday in his courtroom about 10 feet from where the hearing took place. “It was a unique situation because the Ford brothers knew the deal was set …”

At the time, the bench was located where the witness stand in Division 3 now sits.

Beth Conway, communications director for the St. Joseph Convention & Visitors Bureau, said the courthouse is expected to be a draw with the release of the movie. It’s been added to a self-guided tour that the bureau has begun to promote.

“The courthouse is historical in itself,” she said. “It’s a rare example of architecture from that era.”

But the courthouse has no other claim to fame in connection with James or the Ford brothers.

As for the Ford brothers, after being sentenced to be hanged at the Buchanan County Courthouse, the two quickly received a full pardon from then-Missouri Gov. Thomas Crittenden.

“They had apparently worked out a deal to help capture Jesse James,” Chilcote said. “After they killed him, the first thing they did was send a telegram to the governor that Jesse was killed.”

But the Ford brothers received only a portion of the $10,000 bounty on James. And within two years of helping his brother shoot James in the back of his head, Charles Ford committed suicide.

Robert Ford dabbled in acting, Chilcote said, trying to live off the fame of being the person who killed Jesse James. About a decade after shooting Jesse James, Ford was killed by Ed O’Kelly in a saloon in Creed, Colo.

O’Kelly was later gunned down in Oklahoma City.