Gus Bobbitt
Allen Augustus “Gus” Bobbitt was a prominent stockman and U.S. Deputy Marshal assassinated in Oklahoma.
Bobbitt was born in Alabama in January 1862, but when he grew up, he lived in Oklahoma. He owned a saloon in Corner, Oklahoma, for a time but was living in Center, Oklahoma, in the Chickasaw Nation when he was commissioned in 1888 as a U.S. Deputy Marshal under Marshal John Hammer.
During his career, Bobbitt brought in several criminals, including Jim Harbolt, who was wanted for train robbery and killing a sheriff. Sometime after the turn of the century, Bobbitt retired as a deputy marshal but was causing trouble for two men named Jesse West and Joe Allen. They were conning area Indians by getting them drunk and buying their land for nearly nothing. When Bobbitt tried to get their unethical practices stopped, West and Allen hired gunman “Deacon” Jim Miller to kill him.
After Miller had been paid a fee of $1,700, he shot Bobbitt when the ex-lawman was riding home on February 27, 1909. Bobbitt survived long enough to make his way home and identified his killer to his wife. Miller was arrested in Texas by a Texas Ranger and extradited to Oklahoma to stand trial alongside Jesse West, Joe Allen, and Berry Burrell, who had acted as a middleman in the killing. While the four men were awaiting trial in Ada, Oklahoma, the jail was stormed by a vigilante mob who removed the four men and hanged them.
Jim Miller, infamous killer
© Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated October 2023.
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