After historians confronted him with compelling evidence to the effect that he definitely could not be the same man as Marshal Frank Dalton, starting in April 1948 in Lawton, Oklahoma, he took up claiming to be Jesse James (1847–1882) instead.
J. Frank Dalton was allegedly over 100 years old at the time of his first public appearance as Jesse James at Lawton, claiming in an affidavit that he had been a member of Quantrill's guerrillas during the Civil War.
[citation needed] While a resident of the Roper Hotel in Marble Falls, Texas,[7] in the early 1940s, J. Frank Dalton claimed to be the famous lawman of the Old West named J.
[citation needed] Contrary to J. Frank Dalton's claims, the marshal was shot and killed in the line of duty on November 27, 1887, in a gun battle with members of the Smith-Dixon Gang.
[11] Signing himself as J. Frank Dalton, the old man on April 24, 1948, executed an affidavit recounting the details of the historical Jesse James'a birth and claimed to be the famous outlaw.
[15] On hearing of the claim, Rudi Turilli, the manager of Meramec Caverns in Missouri, arranged to bring Dalton to his site and launched a major promotional campaign.
Dalton related that after Bigelow's murder, he fled to Kansas City, Memphis, New Orleans and Florida, then to Brazil, and later to Mexico.
He claimed to have eventually returned to Oklahoma, where he was elected to the territorial legislature under the name J. Frank Dalton before relocating to Texas.
After the daughter-in-law and grandchildren of the real Jesse James presented their evidence, it ended in a court case in which they were ruled to have satisfied the burden of proof, and Turilli was ordered to pay the reward.
However, when the contents of the steel vault were examined, they proved to be the remains of a one-armed Granbury resident named William Henry Holland, leaving the question of Dalton's genetic identity unanswered.