Somebody asked me why didn't the Federals just summarily execute the 13 out in the Missouri bush like they did so many others caught in the vicinity in the weeks afterwards. "Captured and mustered out," was one euphemism. So the Federals probably didn't do this with the 13 because they didn't know what they had when they captured them. Here's my thoughts--those guys who were executed upon capture were caught out in the boonies, alone or in small squads. They could be dispatched with relatively no spotlight. On the other hand, a large number of Confederates involved at Centralia went on to join up with Sterling Price's main invasion force. Especially Caleb Perkins' command, the members of whom were actually sworn Confederate soldiers under a sworn Confederate commanding officer, and consisted of a large part of the Centralia force (Perkins had been wounded at Goslin's Lane four days earlier, with Tom Todd taking command of his men at Centralia and becoming famous in the process).

Anyway, large swaths of Confederate forces were captured within weeks at Independence, and Westport, and Mine Creek, etc etc. Undoubtedly a number of those captured involved Perkins men, and other Centralia Confederates. But they weren't immediately identifiable in the mass of men. They were just a small number of men grouped into a large number of men. Needles in a pile of needles. Once they reached Gratiot or Alton prisons, and were processed, they could be identified and separated for special handling. But by then these guys were on the books. They weren't nameless men out in the wilderness. There wasn't any taking them out into the forest and shooting them. So they were shipped off to Tullahoma where it could be done, and was being done, on a breathtakingly large scale.

They are probably identifiable. Someday. At some point maybe the archival historical repositories in Missouri can task summer interns into establishing a modern database of Missouri prisoners of war for a project like this, and a vast array of other projects utilizing the information. Interns and volunteers could cull through primary source documents and era newspaper reports. Update the database over years as more names are found -- track individuals by unit and name, from capture, to transfer, to release on bond, or release on parole, or release by exchange, or release because the war was over, or died because of disease. Or other disposition. With something like that it might be able to establish who went into the system, and never came out.

This would be a years long project, but could be done inexpensively as outlined I would think.