Unbeknownst to James, Robert Ford had been plotting with the governor to betray the outlaw. One day, while James stood on a chair to right a crooked picture hanging on the wall, Ford shot him in the back of the head.

Then the Ford brothers hurried to the local sheriff to claim the ten-thousand-dollar reward. Much to their surprise, they were arrested for first-degree murder, indicted, and sentenced to death by hanging, all in the same day. Fortunately for the brothers, the governor interceded and pardoned the two men.

History, while heralding the outlaw, has not been as kind to the Ford brothers, painting them as traitors and cowards. After receiving a portion of the reward money, Robert Ford earned a living by posing for photographs in dime museums as “the man who killed Jesse James” and appeared onstage with his brother Charles, reenacting the murder in a touring stage show, which was not well received.

Two years after the killing, Charles, suffering from tuberculosis and addicted to morphine, committed suicide. Robert Ford was killed a few years later by a man who walked up to him in a bar then said, without explanation, “Hello, Bob,” and unloaded both barrels of a shotgun into his neck.

As I purchased a book on Jesse James at the home’s souvenir counter, I wondered why it is that we humans have such a fascination with outlaws. From Billy the Kid to Al Capone, we have always revered gangsters. Do we do this because it makes us feel good, that we are not that bad—or because deep inside, we’re really not that good? Or maybe we’re just obsessed with fame—whatever its source.

On the way back to my hotel I stopped at the third most advertised site: The Glore Psychiatric Museum. I wish I hadn’t. There was something about the museum that reminded me of those haunted warehouses that pop up in cities every Halloween.

The four-story museum is a collection of horrific, life-sized dioramas, the role of the mentally ill played by mannequins donated by a local department store. The second-floor exhibits follow the history of the treatment of the mentally ill, from witch burnings and devil stompings (the idea being that evil spirits could be stomped out of a person) to the more scientific Bath of Surprise (a device not unlike the dunking booths found at today’s carnivals, except employing a massive vat of ice water).

There was also a working model of O’Halloran’s Swing, in which insanity was spun out of the mentally ill who were strapped into the device, which could make up to a hundred revolutions per minute.

On the third floor, the more contemporary exhibits held their own horrors, including mannequins strapped to tables and covered in sheets, lobotomy instruments, a hospital cage, and a fever-cabinet used for heating syphilis patients.