Jim Miller

Jim Miller

Jim Miller - one of a number possible suspects for Pat Garrett's murder. For anyone in the Southwest wanting to hire an assassin, "Deacon" James P. Miller was a good selection. He was a real pro, effective, and clever in arranging his alibis in advance. His "cover" was as manager of a small but respectable hotel, and he was noted for his fervor when he joined in the hymn-singing at the church services which he attended regularly when not away from home practicing his favorite trade. His luck was uncanny; he was repeatedly acquitted on those occasions when he was caught and tried. After the Garrett killing, however, his luck ran out; at almost exactly the same time Wayne Brazel was tried and acquitted for the murder of Pat Garrett, Jim Miller and some of his fellow exterminators were lynched in Ada, Oklahoma. Concerning Jim Miller's role in the killing of Pat Garrett, Dee Harkey, Pecos valley rancher-lawman, had this to say: "I am certain in my own mind that Miller killed Pat Garrett, because he went to my ranch in Roosevelt County, N.M. and borrowed one of my horses from Joe Beasley, who was working for me, and rode the horse into Otero County where Pat Garrett was killed that night. He then rode the horse back to my ranch. The trip killed the horse. "I asked Beasley, 'What killed this horse?' and he told me about lending the horse to Jim Miller. He said 'Miller rode over and killed Pat Garrett, and told me what he had done. He said if he was ever indicted for it, he was going to expect to show by me that he was here at your ranch at the time Pat Garrett was killed." Dee Harkey's account may well be essentially true but some flaws are apparent. The killing was not in Otero but in Dona Ana County, and occurred in mid-morning, not at night. No horse that ever lived could have left the Harkey ranch and reached the Las Cruces neighborhood, three hundred miles away, the same day. The Harkey account sounds entirely probable, except for the time element. Miller had been seen on the streets of El Paso a week before the shooting, and in the First National Bank and the Park hotel at Las Cruces thereafter. He was not a hard man to notice and remember; his garb was that not seen every day in these towns, "a cross between a preacher and a dandy." It has been pointed out that his favorite weapon was a shotgun; it seems reasonable, though, that a man would have chosen a rifle if he expected to pick off, from some distance away, one particular man in a group of three. Jim Miller was around at the time all right, but was it he or was it someone else who left those cartridge shells behind the rim of Alameda arroyo?