Jim Miller (outlaw) - Professional Assassin

Professional Assassin

Miller would become a Texas Ranger, despite his legal issues, working as a resident ranger in Memphis. Later he served in Hall County, killing a man in a neighbouring county of Collingsworth. The Miller family moved to Fort Worth in 1900 and Sallie would open a boarding house. It is here that Miller would advertise himself as a professional assassin, charging $150 for each murder.

Miller would kill two men near Midland that year. Miller was arrested for the murder of one of them. Miller's partner on the trip, Lawrence Angel, was convinced to take credit for the killing. Miller, now as a witness, claimed that Angel acted in self-defence.

During the summer of 1902, Miller claimed that he caught three men stealing cattle in Ward County. He would kill two of them using his Winchester but one escaped, shot, by clinging to his horse. Miller killed lawyer James Jarrott August 28, 1902, who was successful at working cases for area farmers that were raising fences that disrupted the business of ranchers near Lubbock. Those ranchers hired Miller for the murder paying $500. Miller caught Jarrot while watering his horses near his farm. Miller had to shoot Jarrot four times: "He was the hardest damn man to kill I ever tackled."

In 1904 Miller took a contract for the murder of Frank Fore. He would follow him to the Westbrook hotel. Miller had been accompanied to the hotel by three other lawmen: Dee Harkey, Jinx Clark and Tom Coggins, whom he left in the lobby. Miller would shoot Fore in a restroom upstairs. Immediately after the shooting Miller attempted to surrender to Harkey, but the latter refused to participate. Clark and Coggins would later claim that they witnessed the shooting and that Miller acted in self-defence. Fore was shot on March 10, 1904 and died March 13, 1904

On August 1, 1906, Miller killed the Bureau of Indian Affairs Lawman Ben C. Collins in Oklahoma as retribution from the friends, the Pruitt family, of an outlaw, Port Pruitt, shot and killed by Collins in 1903. Miller was reportedly paid $2,000 to do so by unknown persons for that murder, which he carried out in front of Collins's home in front of Collins's wife. Miller shot Collins with No. 8 buckshot, Collins returned six shots but was hit in the face by a second No. 8 ball. Miller was arrested for the murder, but he was never convicted and was eventually released.

On February 28, 1908, ex-lawman, and killer of Billy The Kid, Pat Garrett, was travelling near Las Cruces, New Mexico with fellow ranchers Jesse Wayne Brazel and Carl Adamson, who was married to a cousin of Miller's wife. Garrett stopped his buggy to urinate when Miller, supposedly hired by an enemy of Garrett, fired from cover. A .45 slug struck Garrett in the back of the head and exited above his right eye. Spinning around Garrett was then hit in his stomach by a second shot. He died immediately. Miller escaped the scene quickly on horseback to establish his alibi. Brazel would hysterically confess to the killing but would later be acquitted on the grounds of self defense. After the acquittal blame for the crime would return to Miller.