The Pinkerton Detective Agency

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: The Pinkerton Detective Agency

Episode Title: The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Release Date: April 3, 2025
Hosts: Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant
Production: iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction to the Pinkerton Detective Agency

In this engaging episode of Stuff You Should Know, hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve deep into the storied history of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. They explore the agency's origins, its rise to prominence, and the complex legacy it left behind. Through a blend of historical facts and entertaining banter, Josh and Chuck provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the Pinkertons’ impact on American society.

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Alan Pinkerton: Origins and Early Career

The story begins in 1819 in Scotland, where Alan Pinkerton was born into a family with strong law enforcement ties—his father was a police sergeant. As Chuck notes, "the Pinkertons are just so legendary, you know, like everybody knows what the Pinkertons are" (02:14).

At the age of 23, in 1842, Pinkerton immigrated to the United States, settling in Chicago. Initially, he pursued the trade of a cooper, making barrels, a skill he honed back in Scotland. However, his career took a pivotal turn when he discovered a hideout of counterfeiters while cutting wood for barrels. Demonstrating his knack for detection, Pinkerton rallied local citizens to capture the criminals, garnering significant local recognition. This led to his appointment as deputy sheriff in Kane County, Illinois, in 1846.

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Abolitionism and the Underground Railroad

From the outset, Pinkerton’s agency was involved in noble causes. From 1850, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency actively supported the abolitionist movement, aiding in the escape and freeing of enslaved individuals. As Josh explains, Alan Pinkerton worked to "assist the escape and freeing of enslaved people," even volunteering a stop on the Underground Railroad (08:45).

Pinkerton’s close friendship with John Brown, the famous white abolitionist, underscored his commitment. Together, they orchestrated daring rescues, such as assisting Brown's raid in Missouri, which resulted in the liberation of 11 enslaved people. Pinkerton financed their train ride from Chicago to Detroit, showcasing his dedication to the cause.

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Innovations: Hiring Kate Warne

One of the most groundbreaking aspects of the Pinkerton Agency was the hiring of Kate Warne, the first female detective in the United States. In 1856, after Warne persuaded Pinkerton of the unique capabilities women could bring to undercover operations, he hired her. By 1860, Warne was the head of the female detective bureau, making the Pinkerton Agency a pioneer in gender-inclusive law enforcement.

Josh highlights, "she was the first sworn policewoman in the United States" long before official recognition came, demonstrating Pinkerton’s forward-thinking approach (18:16).

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Role in the Civil War

With the outbreak of the Civil War, the Pinkerton Agency's influence expanded significantly. Abraham Lincoln, impressed by Pinkerton’s work with railroads, appointed him as the head of the Army of the Potomac’s intelligence division. Alan Pinkerton played a crucial role in uncovering Confederate spy rings, notably dismantling Rose O'Neill Greenhow’s espionage network (22:22).

However, Pinkerton's intelligence gathering had its flaws. He famously overestimated Confederate troop numbers, reporting up to 200,000 troops when General Robert E. Lee commanded only around 45,000. This critical miscalculation led to General George B. McClellan's cautious strategies, potentially prolonging the war unnecessarily. As Chuck remarks, Pinkerton "grossly overestimated" the troop strength (23:02).

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Post-War Pursuits: Outlaw Hunting

After the Civil War, the Pinkerton Agency shifted focus to tracking outlaws in the rapidly expanding American West. They became renowned for pursuing notorious gangs like the Reno Gang, who were responsible for numerous train and bank robberies. The Pinkertons' relentless pursuit techniques—often tracking suspects across vast distances into Canada and Mexico—cemented their reputation as formidable detectives.

“We hire agents who won’t give up until they catch the person,” Chuck emphasizes, highlighting the agency’s dogged persistence (27:53).

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Notable Cases: The Reno Gang and the James Gang

One of the Pinkertons' early successes involved dismantling the Reno Gang, who had amassed half a million dollars through their criminal activities in the 1860s. By leveraging their extensive network and investigative prowess, the Pinkertons captured key members, including John Reno and Charles Roseberry, recovering significant amounts of stolen money (32:26).

However, their pursuit of the James Gang, led by Frank and Jesse James, marked a turning point. Despite Pinkerton's determination to capture the James brothers, the mission faced tragic consequences. In 1875, a tragic accident occurred during a Pinkerton raid on the James family home, resulting in the deaths of an eight-year-old boy and the maiming of Jesse James' mother. This incident severely tarnished the agency’s reputation, as it was perceived as an overreach of private law enforcement (38:10).

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The Homestead Strike and the Rise of Controversy

The Pinkerton Agency's most infamous involvement came during the Homestead Strike of 1892. Hired by Henry Clay Frick to break the union at Carnegie Steel in Homestead, Pennsylvania, 300 heavily armed Pinkerton agents clashed violently with thousands of strikers and community members. Despite their superior firepower, only a dozen workers lost their lives in a brutal 12-hour battle. The public backlash was immediate and severe, leading Congress to investigate the incident and ultimately outlaw the Pinkertons in Ohio.

As Josh summarizes, "Congress urged states to pass laws to make it so that corporations couldn't hire private companies to break unions" (52:15).

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Legacy and Modern Operations

Despite the controversies, the Pinkerton Agency persisted, eventually evolving into a global security firm. Acquired by Securitas in 1999, Pinkerton continues to operate worldwide, providing corporate security services and consulting. Their legacy, marked by both heroic pursuits and contentious labor disputes, remains a significant chapter in American history.

Josh notes, "they trade on the name still for sure," referring to Pinkerton’s enduring brand in modern security operations (52:38).

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Conclusion

Josh and Chuck wrap up the episode by reflecting on the multifaceted legacy of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. From pioneering detective work and supporting abolitionism to their controversial role in labor disputes, the Pinkertons left an indelible mark on American law enforcement and corporate security practices. The episode serves as a reminder of the complex interplay between private agencies and public interests, highlighting the Pinkertons’ place in history as both protectors and adversaries.

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Notable Quotes

• Chuck Bryant at [03:30]: “Either they were pretty great and did some really great work, or they were evil from the start.”

• Josh Clark at [04:05]: “We will partner with local law enforcement when possible.”

• Chuck Bryant at [27:53]: “They would pursue them into Canada, sometimes into Mexico and beyond.”

• Josh Clark at [28:26]: “Best all around boy.”

• Alan Pinkerton at [37:03]: "They must die."

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Final Thoughts

Through meticulous research and lively conversation, Josh and Chuck offer listeners a nuanced perspective on the Pinkerton Detective Agency. They balance the agency’s early contributions to law enforcement with the darker aspects of its history, providing a well-rounded exploration of one of America's most enigmatic private detective organizations.

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For more fascinating explorations of history and beyond, tune into Stuff You Should Know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform.

Transcript

[Jeremy Scott]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley season one.

[Gilbert King]

Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

[Jeremy Scott]

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

[Gilbert King]

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

[Jeremy Scott]

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2, starting April 9 on the iHeartRadio app. App, Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's Chuck and there's Jerry. And this is stuff you should know. And we're keeping an eye on you. Sucker.

[Josh Clark]

Did I throw you off when I pre recording?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I'm always expecting anything from you.

[Josh Clark]

We do our usual countdown, everyone, so we can sync sound, and you do that. Here's a little how the sausage is made. You do that by counting down and then each of us clapping so you have a spike in the audio wav file that the engineers and editors can align so we match up.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And I clapped. But this time I also said, schlemiel.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hoping you would say, oh, you set me up, huh? I'm sorry. That's okay. Well, here, let me say it now. Schlamazel.

[Josh Clark]

There you go.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, are you ready to get on with our sausage party?

[Josh Clark]

Gross. Yeah, sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. That was nice of you to kind of give that behind the scenes tour to everybody, Chuck, you know, that's why everyone likes you.

[Josh Clark]

More trade secrets. That's not true. I've been on Reddit.

[Chuck Bryant]

Whatever. Everybody likes you. Including me. Especially me. At any rate. So we're talking today about the Pinkerton Detective Agency. And this one strikes me as odd that we waited this long, 17 years to finally talk about them.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And because they're just so legendary, you know, like, everybody knows what the Pinkertons are. And if you don't, I'm not taking that back. Because everyone else knows what the Pinkertons are.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency technically was the name of it, but they were generally called the Pinkertons, led by Alan Pinkerton. And they're. You know, what they're known for is being one of the first, or perhaps the first, and I say private detective agency, but not like we think of.

[Chuck Bryant]

PIs, like, not Sam Spade's stuff.

[Josh Clark]

No, no, no. Just a detective agency that's privatized. Like police kind of detective work.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And you know, they did a Lot of stuff. Including, as we'll see, busting up bank robbers and then later busting up unions.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it took a dark turn for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But they got their start doing God's work by working in the abolitionist movement. By helping to free enslaved people.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Yeah. That's one thing. So there's a lot of stuff you'll find when you dig into the history of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. It depends on who you're reading. Either they were pretty great and did some really great work, or they were evil from the start. And. And then apparently also one of the things that complicates it is Alan Pinkerton was known to kind of hype his own company, hype his own exploits.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And some people interpret that as, like, personal myth making. And whether that's correct or not, a lot of historians have delved into. And I think the answer generally is it's a case by case thing, whether it's actually true, whether it actually happened quite that way. But for the most part, from what I saw from researching, this is generally most of the stuff can be accepted at surface level, for the most part. It's not like if you buy into this story that we're about to tell you, that you're just being totally misled. So for the most part, just relax is what I'm trying to say.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So we'll go back in time and hop in the Wayback Machine to witness the birthday. It's 1819 in Scotland, so it's not a pretty sight giving birth back then. But little Alan Pinkerton is born in Scotland. He is the son of a police sergeant. So, you know, law enforcement was in his family roots. And he went to the United States in 1842 at the age of 23. And we should kind of mention just one thing he was involved in early on in Scotland before he left was something called the Chartist movement, which was. We're not gonna get super into it, but it was basically a movement of the working class over there that tried. One of the main things they tried to do was extend voting rights to all men, non landowners.

[Chuck Bryant]

That is right. Yeah. And election of parliamentary members, that kind of stuff. This basically democratic reform in England. And at the time, this was considered radical politics. And Alan Pinkerton actually fled the country with his family because the fuzz was looking for him, essentially. And they landed in the Chicago area, Dundee, Illinois, appropriately enough. And he decided that he would become a cooper, which is somebody who makes barrels. And I guess he was a pretty decent barrel maker because he did it For a little while.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It's a trade he learned in Scotland. So he opened up that cooperage in Dundee, like you said. And a fortuitous incident happened as a cooper when he was on, apparently, this sort of abandoned or maybe just not claimed land. Cutting wood, looking for wood for barrels. And he discovered a hideout of some counterfeiters. He rustled up a posse, got some citizens together and captured them. And for his efforts, got a lot of local notoriety. And they said, hey, how about you become deputy sheriff here in Kane County, Illinois? And this is in 1846. And he said, well, I guess dad was a. Was a copper, and so maybe I should be, too. Or a quasi copper, at least.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. This was actually before Chicago had an established police force.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it was a big deal to be a cop. And if you were a cop, they also called them watchmen, because in a lot of cases, that's what it amounted to. Like these. These men would not go into the highest crime areas, and they would avoid the most dangerous criminal. And there were just a few handfuls of them. But Pinkerton made a name for himself very quickly as somebody who had just, like, a sixth sense for just knowing when somebody was up to no good and following them and seeing what they were up to. For being fearless.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And for not accepting bribes. He was as honest as the day, as long as far as bribery is concerned. And that made him stand out. And he started kind of moving up the ranks pretty quickly. And it moved from King county to Cook county, where he worked in the assessor's office protecting Steven Spielberg.

[Josh Clark]

I'm not sure I get the reference from Blues Brothers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Remember, wasn't Steven Spielberg the Cook county assessor eating the sandwich when they come to pay the taxes?

[Josh Clark]

Frank Oz.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, Frank Oz was the guy in the Captain property room.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, was Spielberg in that, too?

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, I'm pretty sure he was the assessor at the Cook County Assessor's office.

[Josh Clark]

I believe you. I just. I don't. I shamefully don't know blues brothers as well as clearly you do, so either.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm, like, really just making this stuff up. But we've had this conversation, and you were fully on board with Spielberg being an assessor.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, you know me.

[Chuck Bryant]

And, I mean, this was, like, two weeks ago.

[Josh Clark]

No, it wasn't.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, it wasn't two weeks ago. But we have had this conversation. I know we have.

[Josh Clark]

I've just turned 54, so things are slipping.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, I'll ease off.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So that's what happened. Eventually, he would also be A special agent for the U.S. post Office. And finally in 1850, he started the detective agency, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. That apparently was the first detective. He was named the first detective in Chicago, I think previous to this, at just 31 years old. And from the beginning, from 1850 till the end of emancipation, like I mentioned, from the outset, he worked to assist the escape and freeing of enslaved people. I think he even had a stop, like volunteered a stop on the Underground Railroad.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So there was one. He apparently was bosom friends with John Brown, as he put it. He had a real chance to coin the term bosom buddies, but he didn't do it. Bosom friends, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Doesn't have the ring, does it?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, it really doesn't. But John Brown, the white abolitionist guerrilla, essentially made a raid on a few farms in Missouri and ended up freeing 11 enslaved people and leading them to Canada. And one of the, one of the stops was with Alan Pinkerton in Chicago. And Pinkerton by this time was wealthy enough that he paid for, I guess, the train ride from Chicago onto Detroit for everybody who John Brown had busted out. So he definitely was an abolitionist. And from what I read, it was like from the moment he landed in the United States, he was an abolitionist. This wasn't like him pumping up his image years later.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So a lot of the other work they were doing, they were doing other work as an agency besides working in the emancipation or I guess the abolitionist movement. But this was, you know, again, in and around Chicago that didn't have a real police department at the time. And he, they didn't exactly work as cops though. It was sort of this weird hybrid of a thing like they were, it wasn't like police, it wasn't like a private detective agency, but they also weren't like full on cops. It was kind of hard to define at the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think one of the big distinction was they weren't out there like actively seeking crime as part of the public good. They were hired to find like specific things. Right. Specific criminals or to prevent specific crimes by corporations too, typically. And one of the early employers or clients, I guess, were the railroads. Because at the time people would steal from railroads left and right. There were just so many goods going across the United States. It was just too tempting. And they started, I think, the first railroad, possibly, if not one of the first, was the Illinois Central Railroad. And they worked security and did detective work for this railroad. And this would be a significant client for Pinkerton Deland throughout the rest of his life. Because the corporate attorney for the Illinois Central Railroad at the time was Abraham Lincoln and the president of the railroad was William McClellan. And when you put those two together, you have some high powered Civil War people on the Union side. And as we'll see, Allan Pinkerton joined them in the Civil War.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. If you've ever seen. There weren't a lot of photographs back then, but there's a very famous photograph of Lincoln at Antietam. Have you ever seen this one?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I was looking at it today.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So that's Pinkerton on the left. He's with two dudes standing in front of that canvas tent. And that's Pinkerton on the left and Major General John McClernand on the right of Lincoln, who always just not forget. But anytime you see a photo like that where you. And there aren't many where you see like full size. The full size Lincoln doll, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Or cardboard cutout. He's just impossibly tall for back then. And then that stovepipe hat just adds to it, obviously. But I don't know if he wore that hat to further intimidate people. But he was just such a tall, lanky guy. It's just odd looking for that time period.

[Chuck Bryant]

For sure. I have trouble anytime I say stovepipe hat, not saying stovetop hat instead of potatoes. I've traced on stovetop stuffing.

[Josh Clark]

Did you eat that stuff? Yeah, we never got to eat that stuff. My mom didn't buy that stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we ate that stuff for sure. We ate all sorts of weird stuff like that.

[Josh Clark]

Isn't it just like dehydrated bread crumbs?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, but very tasty with herbs and stuff.

[Josh Clark]

And what do you do? You just mix it with some or put it on a casserole topper.

[Chuck Bryant]

You put it in a pot with some. Wait, you boil a little water and then you add it to the water soaks up the water and then you add like 10 sticks of butter, which is really what drives the whole thing home.

[Josh Clark]

There you go.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then. Yeah, you put it in your mouth directly from the pot, typically.

[Josh Clark]

All right, well, this episode is clearly brought to you by stovetop stuffing instead of potatoes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, one other thing too. While we're on a tangent, I mentioned Sam Spade earlier. I cannot recommend enough the limited series Monsieur Spade. It's on Netflix, starring Clive Owen. Have you seen it?

[Josh Clark]

I have not.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, my God, it's so good. But at the same time, I've never seen such a tightly constructed show just come totally off the rails in like.

[Josh Clark]

The last hour in a Bad way.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, ultimately, compared to the rest of the show, it's bad, but it's almost like they forgot that they had to wrap it up and they just shot a scene and that was it. And it was, like, so totally improbable and just stood out so far from the rest of the series that you're just like, what? But luckily, the rest of the series is so great, it doesn't really damage it at all.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, well, you led me down the right path with Black Dove, so I'll give it a shot.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm really glad you guys like that. Did you finish it? Yeah, yeah, it's good. That one fell apart at the end, too.

[Josh Clark]

You think? Huh? I liked it. Maybe you just don't like things ending.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Maybe not.

[Josh Clark]

All right, back to. Who are we talking about here? Pinkerton. Not stovepipe or stuffing. So, like I said he was, or like you said, I guess he was buddies with Lincoln, pre Civil War, and had gotten to know. What was his name?

[Chuck Bryant]

William McClellan, who would become the general.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

The head of the Union forces.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. So that leads us to a story, a pretty major story, early on, I guess. It's not that early on. It's about 11 years into the detective agency, but Pinkerton learned of a assassination plot against President Elect Lincoln at the time. And there was a barber in Baltimore from Corsica. His name was Cipriano Ferrandini, and he wanted to kill Abraham Lincoln when he was coming through Baltimore, when Lincoln was on his way to Washington. And Pinkerton found out about this and was like, you're not gonna kill my buddy. I'm gonna thwart your plan.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he did. This was apparently like part of a general plan to prevent Lincoln from making it to his inauguration in Washington. Right. Just kill him in Baltimore. Right. So as Lincoln got toward Baltimore, they enacted a plan where he was taken off of the train at a stop, I think, like Harrisburg or something, right before Baltimore. And he was disguised, and he. He basically played the brother of a woman named Kate Warren, who is a detective who we'll talk about in a second. And she escorted him on another train through Baltimore that went through at night. Again, in disguise. No one knew who he was. And one of the things that kind of came out of the story that was so significant was that the Kate Warren stayed up all night and watched over Abraham Lincoln on this train ride to Washington, D.C. and that kind of coined this term or this slogan that they adopted, we never sleep. And Led to the logo, which was this open eye, like the all seeing eye that's watching you that never sleeps.

[Josh Clark]

And that. That eventually led to the. Just the term private eyes, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, exactly.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I imagine Lincoln was a pretty hard guy to disguise. Now that I think about his height, that mustacheless beard, and that hat, like, they're probably like, take off the hat to begin with.

[Chuck Bryant]

They did first things first.

[Josh Clark]

Get that hat off your head.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Get that stovetop hat off your head.

[Josh Clark]

Then they got a Sharpie. They drew on a mustache, and then they probably put him. If they would have been smart, they would have put him like in a wheelchair or something, which they may have been.

[Chuck Bryant]

As a matter of fact, I saw that he was. I guess the term that you would use today is like, he posed as a handicap brother to Kate Warne.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, there you go. Oh, and told him to lower his voice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. It was very good to meet you.

[Josh Clark]

It was very shocking still when everyone saw Lincoln and Daniel Day Lewis came out like this.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I know. It was quite a choice. And only Daniel Day Lewis would have been allowed to do that too.

[Josh Clark]

Totally.

[Chuck Bryant]

Anybody else, The Director have been like, what are you doing?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly. You don't question him. So you mentioned Kate Warne. Is it Warren and not Warny?

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it's Warren.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. W A R and E. She's very notable too, though, aside from just assisting in this plot to save Lincoln, or I guess action to save Lincoln against the plot. She was a detective like Pinkerton in a very forward thinking sort of way in 1856. Hired her after she convinced him, like, hey, you got. You know, there are things that women can do, places we can infiltrate, information we can get in ways that men cannot. And he saw the value in that, hired her, and then I think, but four years later, made her head of the female detective bureau. So they kind of staffed up with some women to work in these undercover roles.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And it's really like this was unheard of. So 1856 is when he hires her. The first actual sworn policewoman that I could find in the United States was a woman named Lola Baldwin. 86, Portland, Oregon, IN. Yeah, in 1908. Okay, so 44 plus 8 is 54. 52 years. Yeah, 52 years ahead of schedule. Pinkerton hired a woman and made her a very famous detective and just super.

[Josh Clark]

Smart, you know, because she was right on the money. I'm sure there were great assets to their cause, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

You want to take a break?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

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[Jeremy Scott]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season one.

[Josh Clark]

I just knew him as a kid.

[Jeremy Scott]

Long silent voices from his past came.

[Gilbert King]

Forward and he was just staring at me.

[Jeremy Scott]

And they had secrets of their own to share.

[Gilbert King]

Gilbert King I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott.

[Jeremy Scott]

I was no longer just telling the story, I was part of it.

[Gilbert King]

Every time I hear about my dad, it's oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

[Jeremy Scott]

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

[Gilbert King]

If the cops and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would have been in jail. I would have never existed.

[Jeremy Scott]

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now I need to tell you how I got here.

[Gilbert King]

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

[Chuck Bryant]

Bone Valley Season 2 Jeremy, Jeremy, I want to tell you something.

[Jeremy Scott]

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad free with exclusive content starting April 9th. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

All right, so we're back with more on Pinkerton. The Civil War would begin and Lincoln put George McClellan, who we've, you know, previously mentioned, as someone who knew Pinkerton through the railroad business, put him in charge of the army of the Potomac. And he said, hey, Pinkerton does pretty good work. I'm gonna bring this guy in as sort of a head spy. We'll call it like a Secret Service division. And he worked under Allen Pinkerton, that is worked under the codename Major E.J. allen and was pretty good at rooting out spies, but not so good at intelligence gathering and interpretation.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, he rooted out a spy ring led by a woman named Rose O'Neill Greenhow who was a southerner but was still like the to coast of Washington D.C. society. And she was really running a like very sophisticated and very developed spy ring for the Confederacy. And he found her out, busted everybody. It was a big deal. Yeah, but with estimating troop strength. No, he. He may have single handedly added years onto the Civil War when he told McClellan, General McClellan, that he estimated the Confederates had between I think 100 or 200,000 troops.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I saw 200.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So at the time, Robert E. Lee had 40,000 to 45,000 troops. So he grossly overestimated it. And McClellan had something like 76,000 troops. So they could have very easily overwhelmed the Confederacy early on had Pinkerton not overestimated the. The troops. And had. I also saw McClellan didn't vet that information at all. He just took it on face. And by the way, all of you Civil War buffs, if you can go back and unsend your emails, it's not William McClellan, it's George B. McClellan. I'm sorry, I misspoke.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I think I said William too, didn't I? Or did I?

[Chuck Bryant]

I led you down the wrong path.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so Pinkerton would eventually leave his role in military intelligence. I think this was in 1862, after McClellan, who had hired him, was demoted. Essentially. He lost his whatever not rank, huh?

[Chuck Bryant]

Position.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I guess he lost his position as rank leader or whatever.

[Chuck Bryant]

Those are made up terms.

[Josh Clark]

Not gonna be emailed by Civil War buffs at all. And then he said, all right, let me go back. You know, he still had his private detective agency, so let me go back to doing that. And I guess we can talk a little bit about some of the other innovations, you know, aside from hiring women to work as infiltrators and moles. And I believe we've talked about this in one of our crime episodes. Yes. Did we do one on mugshots or just.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it came up criminal databases maybe. Yeah. Alphonse Bertillon or Bertolan, he, in the, I think like the 1840s, came up with the idea of mug shots, fingerprints, using like head measurements to basically create a database of criminals so that they couldn't pose as other people. And I guess that Pinkerton heard about this and brought it to the United States.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, but when he brought it to the United States. He wanted to sort of codify it, I guess, and make it a more usable system and standardize everything. So he, you know, made all the pictures the same size. He essentially made little yearbooks. He made. Got handwriting samples, and he would make these books, and he would send them out. And they called it the Rogues Gallery. And it was sort of the beginning of the United States criminal database.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And each picture had a senior superlative underneath it. So there is, like, Most Likely to unnecessarily shoot someone you're robbing in the knee. Yeah, Stuff like that.

[Josh Clark]

That's good.

[Chuck Bryant]

I also saw that this was so sophisticated that it wouldn't be until the FBI was formed that something like a criminal database like this would be expanded upon, basically.

[Josh Clark]

Did you get a senior superlative?

[Chuck Bryant]

I did. Most likely to talk about criminal databases. Oh, did I? In reality, I don't think so, no. Because my senior quote was, leave me alone.

[Josh Clark]

We had fun ones and then real ones, like official ones. And I got one of each.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, what were they?

[Josh Clark]

I got. Actually, I got two of the unofficials. For the unofficials, I got Best Style.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, nice. That's really saying something in high school, man.

[Josh Clark]

I guess so. I'm not sure how I won that one, actually. And then I got Most Fun on a date, which was very ironic because I literally dated one person my senior year, and I was just the good friend to all the girls that I wanted to date.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

I was that guy. But then the official ones that were in the yearbook. Best all around boy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Jeez, man. I see you in a different light now.

[Josh Clark]

Well, you know, it's pretty. I still got my T shirt. I'll wear it occasionally.

[Chuck Bryant]

Best all around boy.

[Josh Clark]

Best all around boy.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think that's your new nickname.

[Josh Clark]

B A A. RB B? Well, best all around, technically.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh. I say all round. But then again, I call stovetop hats.

[Josh Clark]

So Best B A. Barb, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

All right. Just call me Barb from now on.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, Barb. I have a beloved aunt named Barb.

[Josh Clark]

I do, too. Or Emily does. So she's sort of my aunt as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, you can claim her.

[Josh Clark]

All right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So there's another thing that Pinkerton did to really kind of help establish his. His agency is, like, just nationally recognized and also kind of heroes. They were considered heroes across the United States because they went after bad guys, and they usually got their man. They were very persistent and dogged. Sometimes they would pursue criminals for years.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, it wasn't like. Well, we tried for a month and we gave up. Like, they would just keep going until they found the person. They would pursue them into Canada, sometimes into Mexico and beyond. And I guess one of the reasons why they were revered is because they had a code of conduct that was, like, strictly implemented. It was things like, like, we will take no bribes. Which is a big one at the time. Oh, yeah, probably still is now. We'll never compromise with criminals.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

We will partner with local law enforcement when possible.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

This one stood out to me. I thought this was kind of upstanding. They wouldn't take divorce cases or any case that could create a scandal for anybody. Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, pretty stand up. They also turned down reward money. And he paid his agents pretty well, apparently. And this is just sort of business nuts and bolts, but he had a pledge to never raise fees without the client knowing. Like, in other words, I'm not going to hand you a bill at the end. That's not what we talked about.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And also would just keep all of his clients very well informed. They had internal rules that were like, I think in the pamphlet, the General Principles of Pinkerton's National Detective Agency. They said things like, the agent must be of a high order of mind, must possess clear and honest comprehensive understanding, force of will, vigor of body. And you can't drink on the job unless you absolutely have to, as assumed. Assumingly, some part of, like, some mole situation where you're like, hey, do you want to go to the bar with us?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Or you better drink this rye whiskey or else we'll know you're a Pinkerton man.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

They also, unless you had a direct order from your superior to. You weren't allowed to use alcohol to get, like, confessions or anything out of.

[Josh Clark]

Suspects that you get someone super drunk.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, these are all pretty great, like, codes of conduct for back then.

[Josh Clark]

Totally. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I did not see any stories of, like, rogue Pinkerton agents or that this was all just, you know, a whitewashing and they actually didn't behave like this at all. They do seem to have been pretty upstanding. And then so the other thing that really expanded the legend of the Pinkertons, and probably in part of why we still understand or know them today, is Alan Pinkerton wrote a bunch of books, or at least published a series of books under his name that were like, true crime detective stories.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

This would have been in the 1860s, 1870s, I think. So this is like the dawn of detective stories.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I would think so.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't remember when Poe Wrote Murder in the Rue Morgue. Was that the first detective story?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know, but I mean, it was early on in the going for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was ahead of its time.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

One of the most famous ones was the detective and the somnambulist, Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. And that is one in which he as the character and Kate Warren as her character, they catch a murderer. They go undercover, of course, and catch a murderer and a bank robber using a Pinkerton agent, as always, that posed as a ghost to get a confession.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I saw there was another one where Kate Warren posed as a fortune teller to get a confession out of somebody.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that's pretty smart.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But these are like the books that they're saying, like, this is. This is what we did. And I mean, like, if this was even remotely close, it must have been thrilling to have been a Pinkerton detective at this time, because this is again, when they were just a cause celeb in America and did not have the blemished reputation that they have today.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And a book potentially being like a character in a book would be, you know, back then as sort of tantamount to like they made a TV show about us or something.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And we played like a semi fictional version of ourselves or something like that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

One of the other things they were known for, Chuck, was nabbing outlaws in the Wild west. Because as the United States expanded westward in the frontier just kept going. It was a wild and raucous and lawless place. You might have a marshal. I know we talked about the marshal service serving as the law enforcement out west, but there it was kind of far and few between. So the Pinkertons filled a real need at the time. Because one of the first things that developed after the Civil War was train robberies.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, you got these, like you said earlier, it's a pretty good take when you rob a train and you get them out in the middle of nowhere. Which is kind of the great thing about robbing trains. Everybody is you can just ride your horses up. You've seen all the movies in the middle of nowhere where there's no one around to help. But in this case, the Pinkertons are there. One of the first gangs that they got was the Reno gang. After the Civil War, they started robbing trains in Indiana and Missouri and banks and other places, but not from Reno. But they were the Reno's John, Frank, Simeon and William reno. And in October 1866, for instance, they robbed the Ohio and Mississippi Express to the tune of $15,000 in 1866, money, which is a huge, huge haul, were arrested, but they posted bail and then started robbing again kind of right away. Trains and banks. And so the Pinkertons were like, we're on the job. I think the Adams Express company was like, we've had enough, we gotta hire these guys.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. In the two years that the Reno gang was active, they stole about a half a million dollars in 1860s money. Wow, that was a ton of cash. They were very successful. So yeah, they definitely caught the attention of the train companies. Adams Express hires the Pinkertons and they start hunting down the Reno gang. And this is a good example of them just using dogged persistence over and over and over again, they just kind of one by one, captured the gang members. The first was John Reno, not Jean Renault from Twin Peaks.

[Josh Clark]

I had that same joke.

[Chuck Bryant]

They got him first.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

He may have been the leader. As far as I know. They also caught a guy named Charles Roseberry who was a member of the gang. And I don't know if they were expecting this or not, but the, the locals who were with them when they caught Charles Robary strung him up and hung him right there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

When they, when they caught him. And I didn't see like what the Pinkertons thought about this kind of thing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of those guys were lynched and hanged and. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure if that's a good question actually, if that was. I mean, obviously it wasn't his call, but after he hands them over. But I wonder if he was like, oh boy, I mean, how about a trial at least, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

This doesn't seem to jibe with the code of conduct.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

I also saw they recovered about $300,000 in cash in at least one instance. So you definitely got your money's worth when you hired the Pinkertons to nab Wild west train robbers.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I bet they weren't cheap though. I tried to find out kind of how much they were paid. But if he was paying his agents, well, which he supposedly did, then I'm sure they were not a cheap hire.

[Chuck Bryant]

No. And then things kind of went pear shaped for the Pinkertons. As far as I can tell, this was the first time the Pinkertons reputation.

[Josh Clark]

Took a real hit with the James gang.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they went after the James Gang led by Frank and Jesse James. I didn't know this. Yeah, but they were terrorists, Confederate terrorists during the Civil War in Missouri. That's where they were from. And Missouri was This powder keg that actually kind of helped kick off the Civil War because I guess abolitionists and pro slavery people came together to settle Missouri and they did not get along. And during the Civil War, one of the things the James gang did was murder Union supporters in Missouri. Not even on the front lines. These weren't even soldiers, these were civilians. They were just running around killing and terrorizing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. And you know, after the war, of course, they gained further notoriety by robbing everything in sight. You know, trains, banks, stagecoaches, you name it. And Jesse sort of built up this, oh, what do you call it, like a sort of legendary status among the poor and working class, that he was some kind of a Robin Hood type, even though there's no indication that he was ever like robbing to give to the poor.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

But people would, you know, hide him and take care of him and stuff like that for some reason. But at any rate, in 1874, the Pinkertons were hired to catch these guys, Frank and Jesse, and they sent an agent in to infiltrate the gang. His name was Joseph Witcher. And he did a pretty good job until they found out that he was an informant and he was murdered, which kind of started the downhill tumble.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Alan Pinkerton took this quite personally.

[Josh Clark]

Oh yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's a quote from him saying that as far as capturing Jesse and Frank James, there's no use talking. They must die.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So if they were wanted dead or alive, he was going to bring them in dead for sure. And in 1875, early on in the year, they went to the James's family home in Missouri and Jesse and Frank James weren't home. They'd been tipped off that the Pinkertons with a bunch of local pro union supporters were going to be there to capture them. So they weren't there. But apparently the, the Pinkertons and their assistants didn't know this. Somebody the Pinkerton said this was a local that did this, that they did not do this. Somebody threw a lantern into the home. I saw. In the hopes of illuminating things better. Well, the lantern exploded. Yeah, exactly. The lantern exploded, killed their 8 year old half brother Archie and blew their mom Zerelda's arm off. So they've killed a young boy and maimed an older woman and the Pinkertons are the ones who took the hit, reputation wise.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And after all that, you know, PR work, a lot of that was undone or because of this, basically. But it's not like they've shut down or anything. And didn't they go after some other gangs too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, very famously. They were the ones that chased Butch Cassidy and Sundance, the Sundance Kid down to Bolivia where the Bolivian army killed them. And they were famous for catching and summarily executing all the members of the Apple Dumpling Gang.

[Josh Clark]

All right, we'll take a break now. I'm going to contemplate that joke and we're going to come back and talk about what the Pinkertons were kind of known for from this point forward. Right after this.

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[Jeremy Scott]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season one.

[Josh Clark]

I just knew him as a kid.

[Jeremy Scott]

Long silent voices from his past came.

[Gilbert King]

Forward and he was just staring at me.

[Jeremy Scott]

And they had secrets of their own to share.

[Gilbert King]

Gilbert King I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott.

[Jeremy Scott]

I was no longer just telling the story, I was part of it.

[Gilbert King]

Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

[Jeremy Scott]

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

[Gilbert King]

If the cops and everything would have done the job properly, my dad would have been in jail. I would have never existed.

[Jeremy Scott]

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now I need to tell you how I got here.

[Gilbert King]

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

[Chuck Bryant]

Bone Valley Season 2 Jeremy Jeremy, I want to tell you something.

[Jeremy Scott]

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to hear the entire new season ad free with exclusive content starting April 9th. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. So after the Wild west kind of came and went, they got into corporate affairs firmly on the side of the corporation. At the time, there was a lot of labor movements, a lot of workers rights stuff going on. And don't forget, Alan Pinkerton had to flee the UK because he was such a radical labor supporter. Now his agency is the premier security group and labor organization. Infiltrators. This is what they started doing, and this is where the bad name, the blemish on their name that's still around today, really started to develop because they would, at this point, do whatever corporations wanted them to do as long as they paid them.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And you know, what corporations generally wanted them to do was bust up the unions, was to infiltrate the companies and bust up unions, which is what they ultimately started doing for a lot of money. It started out as an employee testing service in 1855 and sort of grew over the next few years. And initially it was like, hey, let's get some moles in there and see if we can uncover, like, illegal activity, people stealing from the company and stuff like that. But then it's.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's understandable.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, totally. But then that sort of expanded, and I guess the people hiring were like, hey, since you're in there, why don't you kind of let us know what's going on and what they're talking about and, like, if they, like, management, if they're discontented, and if they're, you know, most importantly, if they're starting to organize and talk about forming a labor society, which, you know, of course, would ultimately be a union.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. This became such a part of their job that the order of railway conductors started warning their members that there's Pinkertons undercover who are watching you. And not just watching you to see if you're stealing, they're watching you to see if you want to form a union. And this was the. I mean, this was a terrible direction for them to start to go down because this was such a militant time. I mean, there were, like, anarchists running around, like, throwing bombs in the United States. There were labor unions, unions that soldiers were sometimes brought out to shoot. I mean, it was a really rough time as far as, like, labor and management goes, because there was just the struggle to say, who owns the. The fruit of our labor? Yeah, you, who's paying for the raw materials or us, who's actually turning those raw materials into the end product? And maybe it's not one or the other, but I guarantee it's more than the share that you're Giving us factory owner and this. So this struggle became violent and many times. And again, like I said, the Pinkertons landed firmly, or started out firmly on the side of corporations, and they stayed there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. We should probably highlight the Molly Maguires. That was one of more famous cases. They were a secret society in Ireland initially, And then in 1860s in Pennsylvania, kind of reemerged from Irish immigrants because they were coal miners there. And at the time, they were facing a lot of discrimination. The job conditions were not good. Working long hours, they were very dangerous. And they were a lot of times living in company housing, paid in company scrip that they could only spend at the company store. They were just completely folded into this corporation as almost enslaved people in some ways. Ultimately, they had their freedom, of course, but they were owned by the company, essentially. Finally, in the 1860s, supervisors started receiving these coffin notices, basically, from the workers, saying, hey, we're the Molly McGuires. And coffin notice means that your time on earth is nigh and you're not going to be around very long. So the writing was on the wall that things were about to turn violent.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And it did start to get violent. And I saw that the Molly McGuires started murdering and assassinating some of the. Some of the members of the corporation, like Foreman.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Who were the people they worked with the most directly and who were the most brutal toward them. But I also saw that this was in retaliation for members of the Molly McGuire's being murdered first.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Either way, it turned violent pretty terribly. What the Molly Maguires did not know is that there was a Pinkerton man who they Knew as James McKenna, but whose real name was James McParlin, who had spent two years by now working undercover and ingratiating himself with the Molly Maguires, or even beyond the Molly Maguires, just the Irish coal miners who worked and lived in this area. So much so he became the secretary of the local lodge of the Ancient Order of Hiberians, an Irish Catholic fraternal organization. So he really worked his way into it, and he got a lot of intel on them and ultimately turned state's evidence and got 20 men executed almost exclusively on his testimony.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. On charges of murder, arson and kidnapping. Ten were hanged in 1877. Ten were then hanged in 1878, I guess. And this is one of the most, like, insider jobs of all time, I think. There was a historian, Harold Arand, who said it was one of the most astonishing, astounding. Excuse me. Surrenders of sovereignty in American history. Because what happened was Franklin Gowen who was the guy who ran the company, who hired the Pinkertons to begin with? He was the chief prosecutor. So it was all this inside job. These guys were arrested by a private police force and then the coal company's attorneys prosecuted them. And the only thing that the state did was like, here, use this courtroom and use our gallows or whatever. And other than that, it was all just a private job to find and execute these guys.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Many of whom who were considered to have been innocent. They were innocent men who were executed, again, almost exclusively on James McParlin, this Pinkerton man's testimony. And yeah, it was just a total travesty from start to finish. And Pennsylvania did pardon one of the men, John Kehoe, in 1979, about 100 years too late for John Kehoe. But it was kind of a symbolic thing saying like, yeah, we really screwed up in letting this company essentially form their own court and trial and executions. Probably more famous, though, is the Pinkerton's role in the Homestead strike in Homestead, Pennsylvania, at one of the Carnegie Steel mills.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So in 1892, there was a union contract that expired for that steel company in Pennsylvania there in Homestead. And Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Carnegie, a couple of robber barons we've talked about in the past, said, all right, we're going to cut wages back. We're going to break this union, which was the Amalgamated association of Steel and Iron Workers. And Carnegie said, I'm out of here. I'm gonna leave the country. Henry Clay Frick got involved, sort of doing the dirty work on the ground. And he said, all right, I'm gonna hire the Pinkertons. We're not even negotiating yet. I'm gonna bring these guys in to essentially act as guards to lock these people out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And so 300 Pinkertons showed up on July 6, 1892. They were pulled down the river on barges and they were all armed to the teeth with Winchester rifles and Colt.45s and all the modern guns you could hope for. And when they arrived, they were met with, I think, two or three thousand Homestead. Not just steel workers, but neighbors, community members, just people who were supporting the strikers.

[Josh Clark]

Angry too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they were really mad. Not just because they were in the midst of the strike, but because the spike private police force had shown up to intimidate them or possibly kill them the way that they were armed. And so a battle ensued like there's no other word for it. It was a 12 or 15 hour battle. Only a dozen people died. But that's amazing to me as Violent as this battle was, they tried to, or I should say they pushed a flaming train car at the barges to try to kill the Pinkertons. Like that was just one thing that the strikers did. Like it was really violent.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean it is shocking that only a dozen people died. I guess it's a testament to how bad of a shot they were.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it really was.

[Josh Clark]

Collectively, of course, the workers, you know, they surrendered, the Pinkertons did because they were just so far outnumbered, even though most of the, I think most of the dozen were the workers that died. But the Pinkertons knew that they were vastly outnumbered.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So they surrendered, but the workers lost because Henry Clay. Frick, man, I have a hard time with that one.

[Chuck Bryant]

You keep wanting to say, people I.

[Josh Clark]

Know Henry clay people got 8,500 National Guard troops sent in after the Pinkertons left. And of course, you know, they broke the union and said, we're going to decrease your wages, we're going to increase how much you have to work. And this just became sort of a cyclical thing that was happening. The people, the Pinkertons, early on they were pretty good at infiltrating, but when it came to breaking these unions, the federal government would come in with the troops and do a far better job at doing so.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Because strikers typically recognize federal troops as more legitimate than a private police force showing up, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And just more people with more arms.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They had Gatling guns like as demonstrated at the end of the Wild Bunch.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

You don't want to mess with those. So. Yeah, from those of us, like looking back today, you might think, well, that's just what they did back then, which is messed up. But that's just the norm. Not true. Congress actually investigated this incident. They were like, that is pretty screwed up that you hired the Pinkertons and brought in the National Guard to essentially put this town under martial law. And as a matter of fact, Congress urged states to like pass laws to make it so that corporations couldn't hire private companies to break. To break unions. And Ohio went so far as to say the Pinkertons themselves are now illegal here.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, that's true. So I mean that really changed everything for the Pinkertons as far as strike breaking goes. It took a huge hit. Couldn't get a lot of work after that. But they did go on. They did anti union espionage work. Of course, this is something I never knew at all was that they, they just, they kept going. They were acquired in 1999.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

By Securitas. And I had no idea that they went on that that much further after Pinkerton's death. After Allan Pinkerton's death.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They trade on the name still for sure. But it's. It's a massive company, I think, with like 50,000 employees and offices all over the world. But they still use the Pinkerton name. Like you can hire Pinkerton for corporate security. Apparently they'll ride along on container ships to protect against pirates.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

They've served as guards at Marilyn Monroe's funeral back in the 60s. I also saw that same year they escorted the Mona Lisa from France to the US.

[Josh Clark]

Oh. Which is, you know, they could probably just do that under an overcoat. That thing's pretty small.

[Chuck Bryant]

It is fairly small. And then one other thing where they pop up. And this made me wonder if this is where this idea came from. Apparently they're bad guys in the video game red Dead Redemption 2, which I know for a fact that you've played.

[Josh Clark]

They very much are. Figure very heavily into that storyline if you play the story. Part of that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is that where you got the idea to do one on them?

[Josh Clark]

No, because I haven't played that in a long time. I'm not sure where I got it. It may have been. I don't know. I'm not really sure. They also figure in a bunch of movies. Of course. They were in Deadwood. They were in the Long riders in the 80s. And friend of the show Paul Schneider was in the great, Great movie from 2007, the assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. And the Pinkerton's figure pretty heavily in that movie too.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was a good movie. We should talk about the death of Alan Pinkerton real quick, Chuck.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's pretty unusual. He died July 1, 1884, right before his 65th birthday. And as the story goes, he slipped on a street in Chicago and bit his tongue. Something which I did when I was a kid. I had 12 stitches across the center of my tongue to put that thing back together when I was like 12. But I did not die because I'm still here. But Pinkerton died as a result of this because it turned gangrenous.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he wouldn't go get it treated and it just kept getting worse. And that was it for him. Yeah, he was put to rest near his wife. And very interestingly, he also, in his family plot, buried Kate Warne because he's so admired. This is the first female detective ever hired. He so admired her and her work that he had her buried with him. She was still alive and was very unhappy about this. But he admired her that much.

[Josh Clark]

That's super cool. So she's there with, with him maybe, I guess some of his sons are there and his, his wife, Joan.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

Wonderful.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nice. Chuck, you got anything else?

[Josh Clark]

I got nothing else.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's it for the Pinkertons, everybody. At long last. And since I said at long last, I just triggered listener mail.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. This is a little follow up on the GPS episode. Toward the end, I kind of poked fun at Garmin as being something that, you know, like my mom uses and not like a more modern system. But it turns out Garmin is still very popular because Deanna sent me an email saying, hey, a lot of cyclists use this stuff. And I asked her why. I was like, oh, that's super interesting. I said, do you know why they have, you know, they're used by. Cyclists are still around in that capacity. And she said, good question. I think there are a couple of reasons why it's still the go to for gps. They've been around forever. They've been making GPS for planes and boats since the late 80s. So they had a really big head start. And then number two, constant refinement. While others are just starting to develop their products, Garmin was already fine tuning theirs and they had a 20 year head start. So they packed in a ton of extra features. For example, they introduced the first bike radar system years before anyone else. And the radar still blows the competition away. I even have a buddy, he works for Wahoo, and he still uses a Garmin radar.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very nice.

[Josh Clark]

Also, Deanna says they built a lot of brand loyalty, especially in the cycling world. Many of us still use them even though the quality has slipped just a bit in recent years. We don't like using phones on our bikes because they're bulky and drain the batteries really fast. And Garmin just feels more polished and reliable for our needs.

[Chuck Bryant]

Who was that from?

[Josh Clark]

That was from Deanna.

[Chuck Bryant]

Deanna Garman.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thanks, Deanna. We appreciate that. That was a great email. And if you want to be like Deanna, you can email us too. Send it off to [e-mail].

[Josh Clark]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to.

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Jeremy Scott]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season one.

[Gilbert King]

Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

[Jeremy Scott]

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

[Gilbert King]

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

[Jeremy Scott]

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2, starting April 9 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.