Legends of the Old West - OUTLAWS Ep.4 | Jim Miller: “The Downfall of Deacon Jim”

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

Jim Miller’s killing spree continues. He targets his own business partner, and a lawyer, and a Deputy U.S. Marshal, and possibly the famous sheriff, Pat Garrett. Miller stays out of trouble, as usual, until he travels to Oklahoma to dispose of another Deputy U.S. Marshal. The evidence against him is damning, and the vigilantes won’t wait for the courts to deal with Jim Miller. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Noiser+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On February 27th, 1909, former Deputy U.S. Marshal Alan Augustus Bobbitt trundled through the hills around Ada, Oklahoma in his wagon. He had retired as a marshal and was now a cattleman and a farmer. The sun was setting as he was returning to his ranch. Suddenly, from a clump of trees, a shotgun blast roared out of the tranquil evening. Buckshot ripped into Bobbitt's legs. There was another boom, and a second load tore into his side. Bobbitt toppled from his wagon and fell into the pasture below. His neighbor, Bob Ferguson, was following in his own wagon. Ferguson jumped down and took cover behind his rig. He watched a figure walk out from the trees and approach Bobbitt. Ferguson shouted at the man to leave Bobbitt alone. To Ferguson's

surprise, the man did. He retreated without firing another shot. The only other sound was that of a horse galloping away from the thicket of trees. The assassin either panicked or figured he had been successful or both. Ferguson was sure he knew the rider. He didn't know the man's name, but he felt certain it was the same man he had seen just a few minutes earlier. Bobbitt and Ferguson had passed a lone rider on the road. The rider had greeted Bobbitt, but it was an odd meeting. The stranger wore a rag that was tied around part of his face so that it covered one eye. The stranger could have been protecting his face from dust, but it was a weird way to do it. The man had been riding a scruffy brown mare and had something that looked like a folded poncho tied behind his saddle. It might

have been a poncho, but the poncho was wrapped around a shotgun to hide the weapon from view. When the stranger rode away from the ambush, Bob Ferguson rushed to his friend's side. Ferguson hauled Gus Bobbitt up into the wagon and drove Bobbitt home to his ranch. Despite Bobbitt's pain, he was able to instruct his wife about how to dispose of his property. He told her he had set aside $1,000 in his will as a reward in case he was ever killed. Now she should take that money and use it to find the killer. Bob had survived for another hour before dying in his wife's arms. Between her determination to catch her husband's killer, the reward money, and Ferguson's eyewitness testimony, a posse was going to pull out all

the stops to bring the killer to justice. But that was only half the deal. It turned out that the citizens of Ada, Oklahoma were even more determined than the legal system to punish the killer. It wasn't long before they figured out who killed Gus Bobbitt. 21 years before Al Capone was declared the first ever public enemy number one by the city of Chicago, and 25 years before John Dillinger became the FBI's first public enemy number one,

Jim Miller was public enemy number one for the people of Ada, Oklahoma, and it became a race to see who could punish Miller first, the law or the mob. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the stories of three outlaws, California bandit Joaquin Murrieta, Texas killer Jim Miller,

and train robber Black Jack Ketchum. This is Jim Miller, Part 2 of 2, The Downfall of Deacon Jim. Nine years before Gus Bobbitt's violent death, Jim Miller had moved his family to Fort Worth, Texas. They had been living in a small town in the Panhandle, but Miller decided it was time for another change of scenery. And those moves were after he had essentially fled West Texas. He had killed a county sheriff, almost killed a deputy, and then likely organized the murder of a man near Waco.

killed a deputy, and then likely organized the murder of a man near Waco. By 1900, in Fort Worth, Miller and his wife Sally had three children. They were running a hotel, and by all accounts, it did very well in spite of Miller's increasing notoriety as a killer. It helped, as usual, that Miller had made himself a prominent member of the Methodist Church. He went three or four times a week and was the loudest singer in the congregation. And it wasn't just for show, though the display certainly helped deflect all the claims of violence against him. Miller was truly obsessed with religion. He rarely drank, didn't smoke, and never cursed. But the legend says that between his piety and his hotel business, he was accepting contracts to kill sheepherders in the Fort Worth area.

At that time, in that part of Texas, there was a similar combative situation that existed in places like Arizona and Wyoming. Cattlemen were angry that sheepherds were moving into the area and taking the grazing land. Jim Miller moved to Fort Worth right around the end of the year 1900 or at the very beginning of 1901. That meant that as he and his wife were running their hotel in Fort Worth in 1901, Tom Horn was about to kill 14-year-old Willie Nickel, the son of a sheep rancher in Wyoming. Miller may have killed as many as a dozen men, sometimes anonymously, sometimes on the excuse of self-defense. As usual, the rumor was that he charged $150 per murder, which was a bargain price compared to the

$600 that Tom Horn charged. Miller soon expanded his line of work to include murdering farmers whose fences got in the way of the great cattle herds. That work was what led Miller to target James Jarrett. Jarrett was a young lawyer who had been settling his family and other homesteaders on uninhabited lands in Hockley County, west of Lubbock. The center of Hockley County is the small city of Leveland, and for those like me who are lovers of Texas singers James McMurtry and Robert Earl Keene, Leveland should sound familiar.

Jarrett worked the system to get that slice of no-man's land opened for settlement. And, as in other parts of the West, the big ranchers in the area weren't happy about homesteaders moving into their territory and fencing off land that used to be used for grazing cattle. They focused their anger on the young lawyer who'd made it happen. Several ranchers took Jarrett and the homesteaders to court to force them to leave, but the ranchers lost every time. Jarrett had used friends and loopholes in the law to open the land for settlement, but technically speaking, everything he did was legal.

So the ranchers kept losing court cases, and Jarrett kept moving homesteaders into the area, and tension outside Lubbock began to follow a familiar pattern. Usually, that pattern didn't end well for the little guy. On August 2nd, 1902, Jarrett loaded a wagon with grits and groceries for a homesteader named John Doyle. As was the custom for would-be homesteaders, Doyle himself was camped on Jarrett's property, while Doyle's family stayed at a hotel in Lubbock. Later, when Jarrett didn't show up at his property after helping Doyle, Doyle and another man rode out in search of the lawyer. It took two days, but they found James

Jarrett lying next to the road, with three gunshots to the body and one to the head, execution style. Almost immediately, the community figured out that Jim Miller had done it. He had ties to the powerful ranchers, and he was seen nearby at the time. Jarrett was a father of four, and he didn't go down without a fight. Later, Miller bragged that Jarrett was the hardest damned man he'd ever had to kill. He also bragged he made $500 for the job. ever had to kill. He also bragged he made $500 for the job. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch, and organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce

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circumstantial. Then Miller started dabbling in real estate, which is how he met Frank Foer. Unfortunately for Frank, he was an honest businessman who learned too late that calling attention to Miller's activities could cost a person their life. In 1904, 50-year-old Frank Foer had already had several careers. He was a saloon keeper and a deputy U.S. Marshal in Indian Territory. Then, he worked as a special detective to try to catch counterfeiters. At the time he met Miller, he was tasked by the territory to investigate land deed forgeries. Since he was somewhat in the business anyway, he also dabbled in a little bit of his own real estate ventures. Frank ended up in business with Jim Miller, and Frank soon

realized that Miller was selling plots of land that were actually submerged in the Gulf of Mexico. Frank planned to turn Miller into the authorities, but Miller found out about it. authorities, but Miller found out about it. On March 10, 1904, the Delaware Hotel in Fort Worth hosted an annual Cattlemen's Convention. Miller followed Frank to the convention. In the hotel, Frank went to the washroom. Miller followed him inside and shot him. Then Miller calmly walked out of the washroom, strolled down the street to the sheriff's office, and shot him. Then Miller calmly walked out of the washroom, strolled down the street to the sheriff's office, and turned himself in. Frank Ford died from his wounds two days later.

When he did, Jim Miller hired an attorney. An initial hearing happened a few days later. Astoundingly, Miller argued for self-defense. He provided witnesses who said that in the days leading up to the shooting, they had heard Frank Four threatened to kill Jim Miller, so Miller was merely saving his own life. Miller was released on $10,000 bail and left the courtroom with his wife. The trial took two years to get underway.

The prosecution thought it was a slam dunk. After all, Miller admitted ambushing Four. There was no mistaken identity, and certainly there was premeditation. But Jim Miller was able to find even more witnesses to argue that he feared that Frank Four might take his life. One witness said that as he ran into the bathroom after hearing the gunshot, Miller was draped over his victim. The witness said Miller had tears in his eyes and said, I did everything I could to keep him from reaching for his gun. Once again, a jury believed Jim Miller, and he was found not guilty.

And it seems pretty clear that none of the brushes with the law phased Miller. He either was smarter than everyone, or thought he was, or he was incredibly lucky, because he kept going. Right after he was done with the Frank Four situation, he carried out a contract killing in the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma Territory. The target was Ben Collins, a deputy U.S. Marshal who also served as an Indian policeman. Three years earlier, in 1903, Collins tried to arrest a man named Port Pruitt. Pruitt was a prominent citizen in Oklahoma, so the newspapers didn't print the reason why he was wanted for arrest. But when Collins tried to take Pruitt into custody, Pruitt resisted,

and Collins shot Pruitt during a scuffle. Pruitt was badly wounded, and he suffered from the effects of the gunshot wounds for the rest of his life. Those wounds did eventually take his life, but before that happened, Pruitt and his brother swore revenge against Ben Collins. Pruitt and his brother swore revenge against Ben Collins. They paid Miller $1,800 to kill the deputy U.S. Marshal. Again, all of that was back in 1903, and it's not clear why it took Miller so long to finish the job, but in the summer of 1906, he did.

Miller and an accomplice traveled to a tiny hamlet called Ore in the Chickasaw Nation, about five miles north of the Red River and the Texas-Oklahoma border. They infiltrated Collins' farm and waited for the lawman to arrive. On August 1st, Collins was riding home and had almost reached the gate of his property when Miller took aim and fired his shotgun from the cover of a nearby fence. The buckshot knocked Collins off his horse. Collins' wife appeared at the front door of the house and screamed for her husband. Collins crawled toward her and managed to fire four rounds back at Miller. But Miller crept closer and fired another round and killed Ben Collins.

The people in the Chickasaw Nation revered Ben Collins, and they were outraged by his murder. They demanded an immediate and thorough investigation. In the days following the killing, scores of witnesses came forward claiming to have seen various combinations of four men watching the Collins residence. Lawmen eventually arrested all four men. The first was the accomplice who had been with Miller on the day of the murder. That man didn't pull the trigger, but he was heavily involved in the reconnoitering of Collins' farm. Two of the others were the Pruitt brothers. They had financed the murder by paying Miller $1,800. And the final arrest, of course, was that of Jim Miller. He didn't resist arrest. By that time in

his life, he'd beaten every charge against him, so he had every reason to believe he'd beat this one too. As usual, Miller hired a good lawyer and experienced a healthy dose of good luck. In the months between his arrest and the trial, one of the conspirators died. One of the Pruitt brothers was killed by a lawman in an unrelated incident. Miller spent some time in jail, but by Christmas of 1906, he was out on bail. And, like most of the other criminal cases against Jim Miller, the murder of Deputy U.S. Marshal Ben Collins just fizzled out and faded away. After spending time in jail, Miller was low on cash. When he returned home to Fort Worth,

he received a message from one of his relatives in New Mexico. The message said there was a big job if Miller wanted it. The target was high profile. The pay was good because of the target. And that target was the famous sheriff Pat Garrett. Garrett became a household name 15 years earlier as the sheriff of Lincoln County and the man who had tracked and killed Billy the Kid. 40 years in the future, Garrett's claim of killing Billy the Kid would be called into question by the sudden appearance of an elderly man in Texas who went by the name Brushy Bill Roberts. Brushy Bill claimed to be Billy the Kid, alive and in the flesh. Brushy Bill's fantastical tale of being one of the most famous outlaws in American history was riddled with holes, but it did contain a few elements that cast doubt on Garrett's story.

Brushy Bill said a few things that genuinely seemed like they could only be known by the real Billy the Kid. The mystery about the truth of the end of Billy the Kid's story still persists today, but in the early 1900s, everyone believed Pat Garrett killed Billy. And now someone wanted to kill Pat Garrett. In 1908, Garrett was 57 years old and the sheriff of Doña Ana County, New Mexico. Garrett was apparently in dire financial trouble. His son made a deal with rancher Jesse Brazel for a five-year lease of Garrett's ranch. There doesn't seem to be a consensus about the pronunciation of Brazel's name. It's either Brazel or Brazel, and my sources in Lincoln County, New Mexico,

say Brazel is more common down there, so we're going with that. Brazel said he planned to use the land to graze cattle, but instead he used it to raise goats, which was unacceptable to the Garretts. In the opinions of most cattlemen, goats were even more destructive than sheep. So now, Pat Garrett and Jesse Brazel had a legal problem about Garrett's ranch, and they weren't alone. To make the situation more messy, a man named Carl Adamson was involved. Garrett, Brazel, and Adamson all ended up in court to try to sort out the mess. Ultimately, they decided to try to settle it out of court, possibly in more ways than one.

Garrett made a deal with Adamson to sell Adamson the ranch. Brazel was opposed to the deal, but he agreed to go with the two men on a trip to Las Cruces, New Mexico to finish the agreement. Carl Adamson claimed he had a business partner in Las Cruces, and when they got there, the four men could hammer out a deal that would make everyone happy. And the mysterious business partner is one of the many suspicious parts of the story. Adamson said his partner's name was James P. Miller. That name is remarkably close to the full name of Texas killer Jim Miller. Miller's full name was James B. Miller, as in James Brown Miller.

Now, it could have been a coincidence that the names were so similar, but the odds fall after what happened to Pat Garrett. Introducing the Miller Optics 2KW Handheld Laser Welder. It's so simple to use, even a rookie can weld like an expert, allowing you to boost your shop's productivity up to 5 to 10 times more than with traditional arc welding processes. Expand your workforce so you can start doing more and making more. Get the Optics Laser Advantage now and start changing the welding game. Introducing the Miller Optics 2KW Handheld Laser Welder.

It's so simple to use, even a rookie can weld like an expert, allowing you to boost your shop's productivity up to 5 to 10 times more than with traditional arc welding processes. Expand your workforce so you can start doing more and making more. Get the Optics Laser Advantage now and start changing the welding game. On the morning of February 29, 1908, Carl Adamson and Pat Garrett piled into a buckboard wagon and set off for Las Cruces. Jesse Brazel rode on a horse next to them. and set off for Las Cruces. Jesse Brazel rode on a horse next to them. According to Adamson,

Garrett and Brazel argued constantly as the trio made the slow trek. Then the arguing abruptly stopped when gunshots cracked close to them. The first shot hit Pat Garrett in the back of the head and probably killed him. The second hit him in the chest and certainly finished the job if he was still alive. The man who was famous for killing Billy the Kid died on a desolate road in southern New Mexico, but that's about all that the historians can agree on when it comes to the murder of Pat Garrett. Jesse Brazel claimed he killed Pat Garrett in self-defense, probably as a result of their non-stop arguing. But Brazel didn't have a good explanation for how he killed Garrett in self-defense by shooting Garrett in the back of the head.

So the door is open for alternatives. In addition to the questionable claim of self-defense, there was the second gunshot wound. The bullet that hit Garrett in the chest moved at an upward angle and exited his back between his shoulder blades. The coroner was only able to recover that bullet, not the one from the headshot. And the coroner said the bullet could have come from a Colt revolver, which might support Brazel's story, but just as easily, it could have come from a Colt revolver, which might support Brazel's story, but just as easily, it could have come from a Winchester rifle. So, thanks to many more inconsistencies with Brazel's

story, another theory has come to light. That Jim Miller hid next to the road and shot Pat Garrett in the back of the head with a Winchester rifle. Garrett crashed to the ground, then Miller walked up and shot Garrett in the chest. If Miller was standing above Garrett when he fired the second shot, it was easier to understand how the bullet hit Garrett in the chest and traveled at an upward angle. But the only two witnesses were Carl Adamson and Jesse Brazel, and Adamson supported Brazel's story of self-defense, even though an investigation uncovered tantalizing possibilities about Miller's involvement. Witnesses said they saw a whole group

of conspirators, including Miller, at the St. Regis Hotel in El Paso months before the murder. Other witnesses said they saw Miller scouting the area where the murder eventually happened. One man demonstrated how it was possible for Miller to have committed the murder and still made it to the afternoon train from El Paso to his home in Fort Worth. But as always, the speculation and conjecture and theories didn't amount to anything. Jim Miller seemed to be able to walk between the raindrops. Less than a year after Pat Garrett was killed, Jesse Brazel was found not guilty at trial. Jim Miller's name is associated

with the crime, but of course, there's no hard evidence to connect him, though Miller's lucky streak was coming to an end. The next time there might not be hard evidence as we would think of it today, but there were two witnesses, and they were confident in their accusations against Miller. If the legend is to be believed, he killed his grandparents when he was eight years old. If you set that one aside, he killed his first man, his own brother-in-law, when he was 22. Now, in 1908, he was 46, and his total murders were hard to count. They might have been 12, and they might have been much higher. And he was still a devout Methodist with a wife and three kids. And within one year of the murder of Pat Garrett, neither Miller's

involvement in Garrett's murder, nor his religious commitment, nor his his family would matter to the people of Ada, Oklahoma. Miller had killed lawmen before, but when he went after celebrated Deputy U.S. Marshal Gus Bobbitt, he signed his own death warrant. Almost exactly one year after Pat Garrett was killed, retired Deputy U.S. Marshal Alan Augustus Bobbitt, who went by Gus, was ambushed outside his ranch near the town of Ada, Oklahoma. Six years earlier, in 1903, Deputy Bobbitt and his neighbors in Ada forced two con men and notorious whiskey peddlers out of the area. Their names were Jesse West and Joe Allen, and they didn't take kindly to being run out of the area. Their names were Jesse West and Joe Allen,

and they didn't take kindly to being run out of the territory. It took a long time for them to put their plan of revenge into motion, but by February of 1909, they were ready to go. By that time, Gus Bobbitt had retired from the Marshal's service and was living on his ranch outside Ada with his wife and four children. On February 27th, he was driving a wagon home to his ranch when he was ambushed. Gus was nearly to the front gate of his property when Jim Miller stepped out from behind a clump of trees and fired both barrels of a shotgun. The first load hit Gus in the leg and the second hit him in the side. Gus Bobbitt lingered for an hour and then died of his wounds. The outrage in Ada over the murder of a beloved

lawman was loud and forceful, and it was the last crime of Jim Miller's career. Jesse West and Joe Allen had hired Deacon Jim Miller, as the killer was known, to exact revenge on their nemesis, Gus Bobbitt. Miller had tried to hide his identity by tying a rag around his face, but the disguise was weak. There were two good witnesses to the murder. Bobbitt's wife, who had seen Miller from the front door of the house, and Bobbitt's friend, who had been riding behind Bobbitt on the road. Authorities quickly arrested Miller, and then captured West, Allen,

and a man named Burrell, who was also implicated in the plot. In Miller's experience, an arrest and maybe some tepid legal proceedings were nothing new. He'd never faced any real consequences. But that was about to change. In many ways, Oklahoma was ground zero for the lawlessness of the Old West. It was truly wild. But by 1909, Oklahoma had been a state for two years, and its citizens were tired of the chaos. The court system was crippled by technicalities, false witnesses, and juries that wouldn't convict the worst offenders. So, increasingly, Oklahoma residents turned to vigilantism. Less than two weeks after the capture of West, Allen, and Burrell, the people of Ada

decided they weren't going to take a chance on the courts. On April 18, 1909, around midnight, a mob of about 100 people broke into the jail and trampled the deputy sheriff, a part-time deputy, the jailer, and at least one guard. The deputy sheriff told the local newspaper that the mob forced him to open the door to the cells and then tied his hands with wire. The mob dragged the four prisoners to a barn in downtown Ada. A few hours later, after sunup, people flocked to the barn and found a shocking scene. The four prisoners hung from the rafters with crude nooses around their necks.

Before the dead men were cut down, someone took a photo of the scene, which can easily be found online. Oklahoma's governor called for a special grand jury to investigate the lynching. The grand jury interviewed about 30 people, but not surprisingly, none of them could or would identify members of the mob. The grand jury concluded by saying it deplored the lynching, but strongly felt that it happened due to, quote, the tardy administration of justice by the court. Jim Miller, assassin for hire, was dead at the age of 47. Exactly one month after he was lynched, an old-timer wrote to the El Paso Times about a recent article that discussed the worst of the bad men who had infested the city. The article had mentioned notorious outlaws like

John Wesley Harden, Sam Bass, George Scarborough, and others. The old-timer criticized the newspaper for its list. He said, far and away, the hardest bad man to ever walk the frontier was the assassin Jim Miller. Next time on Legends of the Old West, it's the first of two episodes about the infamous outlaw Thomas Blackjack Ketchum. He roamed some of the same territory as Jim Miller, but he specialized in robbing trains, though his fate would be similar and somehow worse

than Miller's. Blackjack Ketchum's story starts next week on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week to receive new episodes. Thank you. blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Julia Bricklin. Original music by Rob Valliere. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details and join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And all our episodes are available on YouTube. Just search for Legends of the Old West Podcast.

Thanks for listening.