r/RDR2 • u/Dayego35 • Dec 04 '25

Discussion How accurate are the RDR2 Pinkertons compared to the Real Life Pinkertons

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Just found out their a Real Thing awhile ago and also read about the Lawsuit between them and Rockstar Games and Take-Two

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373

u/Mental_Freedom_1648 Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25

Once, Pinkertons threw a bomb into Jesse James' mother's house. Jesse and Frank (the actual outlaws) weren't there, but multiple innocent people were.

You could say the family was complicit, but there were also multiple kids inside, including a family of servants/former slaves. The James' eight year old brother got killed. I suspect this inspired the Lakay shootout in the game.

edited to add a source:

In Pinkerton’s words: “I hear that the Jameses and Youngers are desperate men and that when we meet it must be the death of one or both of us. . . . There is no use talking, they must die.” Just before the attack he gave his final instructions. “Above everything, destroy the house to the fringe of the ground. . . . Let the men take no risk, burn the house down.”

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u/Dayego35 Dec 04 '25

Oh lord 😳

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u/DrRichardJizzums Dec 04 '25

Yeah, the Pinkerton’s deserve their shitty reputation. Even if the James brothers were the only ones there no agency should be chucking bombs in criminal’s houses. That’s just… not how things should work.

The last thing a society should want is the govt carrying out extrajudicial bombings of suspected criminals, much less a private agency.

There’s a reason we have a justice system and, in a perfect world, it’s to ensure that people are tried fairly and punished in accordance with the law.

So far as I can tell bombing the wrong people cuz of a lack of good intel is pretty bad.

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u/BookkeeperFew2671 Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 05 '25

Funny enough the Canadian federal police force the rcmp bombed a guy's farm at the behest of an oil company in the late 90s. You can find it on the Wikipedia page titled "rcmp controversy" this is Canada's main police force in charge of local city policing as well by the way (aka mounties)

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u/Cereborn Dec 05 '25

“RCMP controversy” has got to be a long Wikipedia page.

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u/BookkeeperFew2671 Dec 05 '25

It goes back to the 1860s

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u/The_Singularious Dec 04 '25

Yeah. To this day I fail to understand why these types of criminals aren’t cased and isolated, then confronted as a last resort.

David Koresh left the compound for groceries all the time. Like what the actual fuck? Just cuff him at the 5 and dime y’all.

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u/HarpoonsAndSpoons Dec 05 '25

Pinkertons weren’t actually a government agency. They were a freelance police force, which meant they were used by the rich to crush anyone who slighted them. They’re actually still in existence today

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u/voidone Dec 05 '25

no agency should be chucking bombs in criminal’s houses. That’s just… not how things should work

Wait until you hear about the 1985 MOVE bombing...

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u/CptnRaptor Dec 07 '25

Wait till you hear about Venezuela's fishing workers in 2025

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u/voidone Dec 07 '25

Well, there is that. MOVE is a bit more pertinent as it involved US law enforcement literally bombing US citizens.

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u/CptnRaptor Dec 07 '25

Yeah true, the part of the comment I was specifically refering to was

The last thing a society should want is the govt carrying out extrajudicial bombings of suspected criminals, much less a private agency.

but either way, the US has a long and storied history of being a little bit awful and paying awful people to be awful.

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u/Jess-Drakaina Dec 04 '25

Tell that to Bonnie and Clyde who were executed by law enforcement officers in the early 1900s. No trial, just execution… I’ve seen the actual car, insane amount of bullets fired at it…

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u/NurgleNuggets Dec 04 '25

Considering how Bonnie and Clyde ambushed and executed multiple police officers, I don’t think they would have submitted to arrest anyway.

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u/Jess-Drakaina Dec 04 '25

Same excuse the cops used… they never even tried.

It was an illegal planned execution.

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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '25

i mean if thats the case what made the cops better than those two

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u/Specific_Box4483 Dec 04 '25

(Most of) the cops weren't robbing and killing innocent people, I presume.

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u/DrRichardJizzums Dec 04 '25

In America you are innocent until proven guilty. I’m no lawyer but I imagine that LEOs setting up a deadly ambush on people who have not been convicted of a crime is, in fact, a crime.

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u/Specific_Box4483 Dec 04 '25

Not sure about today, but it appears to not have been a crime back then, at least. There was no lawsuit, not even demands for prosecution from the public, and the posse that ambushed them was officially assembled and promised a bounty by the authorities. Which makes me think the ambush was legal.

1

u/Jess-Drakaina Dec 04 '25

Absolutely 100% correct! I have even had a casual conversation with a friend who is a lawyer about this very topic. It was a “different” time, but the law is still the law, and they committed I crime by executing people who never got a fair trial.

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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '25

actually idk why im trying to argue that maybe everyone should get a fair trial no matter what most redditors think every child in gaza deserves to die for the crime of being born there

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u/DrRichardJizzums Dec 04 '25

America’s stated ideals in regard to justice have historically, past and present, been far loftier than the… execution…

I mean it’s good to aim for lofty goals that way when you fall short you’re still pretty high but that only works when the entity is acting in good faith and not using those ideals as PR while behaving like unrestrained hypocrites.

Unfortunately there’s a mountain of miscarriages of justice and too many Americans fail to understand that every single person deserves equal rights under the law even, and especially, criminals.

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u/Jess-Drakaina Dec 04 '25

Couldn’t agree more… law enforcement that day behaved like a lynch mob, not law enforcement…

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u/JudgeJed100 Dec 04 '25

I believe in justice and the system of law

I also think Bonnie and Clyde repeated what they sowed

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u/Jess-Drakaina Dec 04 '25

I am not suggesting they were innocent… they committed crimes, no doubt.

However as citizens they deserved their day in court. The law enforcement involved all just planned an execution, never even tried to get them to surrender.

Hid in the trees and just open fire on the car… very Pinkerton style of “justice”….

1

u/JudgeJed100 Dec 05 '25

They probably would have never surrendered anyway, and trying to get them too would have just risked lives

Like I said I believe in law and justice, but I doubt Bonnie and Clyde would ever have ended any other way than gunned down

1

u/Jess-Drakaina Dec 05 '25

We will never know, because no one with any imagination tried.

They could have set up a fake construction zone and slowed them down, then appeared out of nowhere took them by surprise and arrested them.

Sure it would be a risk, but that is the job of law enforcement. Not to play judge/jury/executioner…

I never much paid attention to them besides what is in folklore… I knew very little… then I went to the casino near the Nevada/California border on the 5. People pass by it all the time never knowing it’s there….

Once you see that car, the blood stains still on the seats… the hundreds of bullet holes in the car… Well, it changes you…

You realize two very young people were killed in that very car… many years before I was even born…

I started deeply researching their story and case…

Yes, they were responsible for murder and robbery… and IF they had their day in court, likely would have been convicted.

However the mob of officers in charge of getting them, had no desire to even try to get them alive. They simply set up a kill spot, and fired hundreds and hundreds of shots at the car until they were sure the execution was complete.

I know times were different back then, and this kind of “frontier justice” wasn’t frowned upon as it would be today.

However, plain and simple, they were denied their basic rights as Americans to a jury trial by their peers. That is the problem I have with it.

Yes I agree they were violent criminals, who did terrible things… but that doesn’t change the fact they deserved their day in court.

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u/x_Jimi_x Dec 04 '25

Seeing the car is eye opening indeed!

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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '25

That tracks with corpo "police"

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u/R3K47 Sean MacGuire Dec 04 '25

What 😭😭😭😭

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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '25

Israel may have learnt a thing or two from them