This is from an excellent article by our own Mr. Supica. Maybe he'll chime in:
"Compare this to “the gun that killed Jesse James”, which was also recently sold at auction. For most of the 20th century, the S&W has had the reputation of the gun used to do the wicked deed. In fact it reportedly went back to the S&W factory for engraving of the inscription on its side commemorating the event. However, a look at the supporting documentation raises some questions.
The story is that the gun was given by Bob Ford to the young son of t he Marshal who briefly jailed the Ford brothers after the shooting, in appreciation for kindness to the imprisoned Fords by the boy. The date of the earliest documentation appears to be a 1904 affidavit and newspaper article. Yes, this is along time ago, but it is also twenty two years after the incident in question!
The waters are muddied further by the fact that there is another gun out there with the same claim – a Colt Single Action Army mentioned by Ford in a newspaper article a month after the shooting. It helps not a bit that an 1882 newspaper account of the incident records the gun variously as a “Colt’s .45” AND a “Smith & Weston” (sic).
Where does that leave us? I’d give the gun a solid “B” as a Bob Ford gun, and it certainly approaches “B by publication” status. However, given the conflicting claim, it seems to exist in some sort of schizophrenic “B/D” limbo as the gun that laid poor Jesse in his grave."
Evaluating the history of a gun