Original subtitles

Let the record show I killed 51 men. Get up there.

Please allow me to introduce myself.

I'm a man of faith and good taste.

Jim Miller is pure evil.

It's almost like a vortex of evilness that descended upon the West.

Tell folks I'm a businessman.

That's the truth.

But my main business is murder.

Jim Miller was ahead of his time.

He was Murder Incorporated before the gangster era.

He would have fit in perfectly with Al Capone's Chicago.

Killing just always came natural to me.

And I discovered that folks would pay handsomely for the service I provided.

A lot of people thought he was a man of God.

He may have sent a lot of people in God's direction, but he certainly wasn't

representative.

Most folks know me as Deacon Jim Miller, or just Killer Jim.

If you want somebody dead, I'm your man.

Describing Jim Miller in a couple of different words, cagey, smart,

deadly, at least outwardly upright and upstanding, but a

blackened soul.

Jim Miller was not what you expect a gunfighter to be like.

He didn't drink.

He didn't use foul language.

He was a family man.

He went to church. In fact, one of his nicknames was Deacon Jim Miller.

It is well with my soul.

But behind that man was a very, very deadly and dangerous man.

We don't have a thing to worry about, fellas.

I can't count how many times I've been on trial for murder.

One way or another, Jim Miller beat every murder charge that was ever

against him.

This local jail ain't so bad.

Anything you gentlemen want, you just let me know and I'll order it up for

We'll be out of here in no time.

In April of 1909, I found myself in a familiar predicament, enjoying

free overnight accommodations in another small prairie town where I'd been

accused of a crime no man who valued his life would dare try to prove.

Miller basically had a number of ways of dealing with potential witnesses. He

would scare most of them off just with his reputation.

In other cases, he would kill them or have somebody else kill them, or he

pay them to be quiet, you know, before they testified.

And so, you know, he basically felt bulletproof throughout most of his life.

Can I get you anything else, Mr. Miller?

Thank you.

You watch.

The case will be dropped for lack of evidence.

We'll all go home.

That's just the way it works.

I guarantee it.

I'd been locked up along with three cattlemen who hired me to kill a lawman

named Gus Bobbitt.

But everything was going just the way it should.

Just like all the other murder crimes.

I didn't know yet it wasn't the trial I had to be worried about.

is not sorry for his horrific sin.

It is the punishment that he cannot bear.

I've never feared punishment.

Even as a kid, I was a natural at avoiding it.

Miller's first real documented killing was his own brother -in -law.

We don't know exactly what the motive was.

But Jim Miller had something against his brother -in -law, John Koop.

And Jim, in fact, ahead of time had been telling people, I'm going to kill that

guy.

Miller had been living with this guy Koop and his sister. He set up a perfect

alibi for himself. He went to church.

And while he was at church, he slipped away.

The answer is evil.

He rode an incredible distance as quick as he could to get back to the home of

John Coop.

I told Coop I was going to kill him. He didn't believe me.

Told me I didn't have the nerve.

I guess we were both about to find out.

and there Coop was asleep on the porch.

And Jim Miller approached him with a shotgun and emptied both loads into his

brother -in -law, killing him instantly.

I guess I had the nerve just like I told him.

When the time came to pull the trigger, I never gave it a second thought.

Then he quickly got back on his horse, raced back, to the revival meeting and

went through the prayers and the hymns just as if nothing had happened.

I think if anybody was born to kill, Jim Miller was born to kill.

Church is the perfect alibi.

That wasn't the only time I killed a man when I was supposed to be in church.

The appearance of holiness can cover up a whole lot of sins.

Miller worked for years to cultivate the image of a good man

so that when he was brought up on trial, he could

get out because the jury and the citizens would have a good impression of

He was in church that day.

as witnesses will attest.

I was found guilty in my first murder trial.

Sentenced to life in prison.

Well, that's why the good Lord created lawyers.

And I had me a good one.

Got the whole damn case thrown out of court on appeal.

I was never found not guilty, mind you, but I was set free.

That's all that counts.

You don't have to be found innocent to get away with murder.

State has not met its burden of proof.

The case is dismissed.

It was so easy to get a murder conviction overturned on a technicality.

could be a misspelling in something.

There could be a date wrong. You talk about technicalities today where

get off. It was worse back in the 1800s.

I was only 17.

It was the first of my many courtroom victories.

But it wasn't the first time I got away with murder.

I can tell you for sure that lawmen don't know what the hell to do with a

suspect who's eight years old.

According to legend, his first victims were his grandparents.

You must have heard something.

A horse, a wagon approaching the house.

He started off as a child. There was a screw loose. He lost his father at a

young age, and he and his mother went to live with the grandparents.

The grandparents were murdered when he was eight, and everybody knew he did it.

You must have heard something.

This is how I found them when I came in for lunch.

Except there was no lunch.

And I'm powerful hungry.

Son, do you have a gun of your own?

I sure do.

All right, and I have one, too.

You want to see it?

Son, why don't you come with us until we figure this out?

He's never actually charged or brought to trial for that.

We didn't have much juvenile law enforcement in those days.

It would be very fair to call Jim Miller a psychopath. It was an awful excuse

for a human being.

Awful.

He had no regrets about any of his killings, and I regard him as

After being cleared in the killing of my brother -in -law, John Coop, I left the

scene of the crime and drifted across Texas for a few years.

Jim Miller in his younger years followed along with the pursuits and the kinds

of crimes that a lot of the other Oklahoma area outlaws did. You know,

crimes, stealing cattle, stealing horses, that kind of thing.

Then I hooked up with a rough frontier family who could appreciate my many

talents.

the Clements clan.

The Clements family were cousins of the Hardin family, John Wesley Hardin, and

they were known as killers themselves.

The man in Clements was a well -known gunfighter.

Jim started working for them somewhere in the mid -1880s on their ranch, doing

variety of jobs.

Manning had a son named Manny who would become one of Jim's favorite henchmen.

Jim would later marry Manny's sister, Sally.

Manny sort of was a chip off the old block.

And Sally, too. Sally had a lot of rough edges, herself.

Sally and me settled down in Pecos, where the sheriff was looking to hire a

deputy.

In 1891, Bud Frazier was elected sheriff.

And, of course, if you're a sheriff, you're always looking for good deputies.

One of the first people to apply for a job was Jim Miller.

And, of course, it was considered very rude to ask about someone's background.

Welcome, Jim.

Glad to have you here.

But that was part of the whole allure of the West. Everyone was reinventing

themselves. You didn't want to be asked about your past either.

You didn't look into what people had done before, and that's why so many

get hired as lawmen.

Pecos is a quiet little town. Not a lot of crime in these parts.

It's our job to keep it that way.

Bud Frazier, that poor bastard.

He thought I was just the man for the job.

You've got a real nice town here, Bud.

Sally and I have met a lot of fine folks.

Good Christian folks.

Just the sort of town we were looking for.

Jim Miller presented an image of an upright and upstanding citizen.

He went to the Methodist church every Sunday. So on the outside, he looked

the perfect gentleman.

So Frazier hires Miller. Pretty soon, you're starting to see Miller doesn't

to be arresting anybody, but more cows and more horses are disappearing.

Pecos was the land of opportunity, particularly for an outlaw with a badge.

Me and old Bud Frazier got along just fine.

For a while.

Until he got suspicious and stripped my badge.

From then on, as they say, Pecos wasn't big enough for the both of us.

The only question was, who would kill who first?

As time went on, they held the town in a grip of fear.

There was a reign of terror in Tampa.

Welcome, gentlemen.

You are looking at the new deputy of Pecos, Texas.

After drifting around Texas for a few years, I, Jim Miller, fell in with a

of like -minded outlaws who could support my business endeavors.

And I found the perfect base from which to build a criminal empire.

What about the sheriff?

I'll take care of Bud Frazier.

He won't bother you.

If we play our cards right, they'll never solve another crime in this town

again.

Bud Frazier had no business being sheriff.

I guess that's why he hired me, to put some muscle in the sheriff's office.

That's how I became the last person anyone suspected when a crime wave hit

Bud Fraser quickly found out it was the worst mistake of his life because Jim

more or less let crime run rampant around the city because he was

the crime. He'd become a godfather of sorts.

Pecos was a sweet city. We were wrestling all the horses and cattle we

take with impunity.

At first, we had our run of the place.

Did pretty much as we pleased.

Well, for a little while, anyway.

Until I shot a Mexican prisoner to keep him quiet about two mules I had stolen.

Even I couldn't talk my way out of that one.

Supposedly, this guy had information about him stealing the two mules, and

was typical Miller to kill witnesses.

He comes in and tells Frazier that I had to shoot the prisoner for trying to

escape. And Brazier really doesn't buy that at all.

What the hell happened, Jim?

A little bastard made a break for it.

There was nothing I could do.

Killing that eyewitness kept me out of jail.

But my lawman days were over.

For the moment.

And so when he's accused of all this, he's fired by Bud Frazier, and of course

Miller doesn't take that very well.

I had blown the perfect cover, all because of a couple of damn mules.

But there was no way I was going to let some pesky two -bit sheriff get in the

way of business.

Bud had to go out of town for a while, and when he did, vice and crime ran

rampant under Miller's reign.

It was convenient timing.

We kept up our operations while Bud was away and planned a nice little

homecoming party for his return.

Miller and his, you know, acolytes, they start conniving. How can we get this

guy out of the way so we can have this all to ourselves?

We got it good now.

But we got to kill Bud when he gets back to town.

You're going to shoot the ship.

I'm not going to shoot him.

You are.

By accident.

The conspirators were planning to stage a gunfight at the train station

as Frazier was getting off the train.

Their plan was that a gun would go off and mistakenly hit Frazier.

just accidentally catch a stray bullet as he stepped off the train.

Truth is, it was a pretty good plan.

Probably would have worked, too.

Except I had no way of knowing an old friend of Frazier's was within earshot.

And there's somebody named Con Gibson that overhears this plot.

Where's the horse? I don't know.

Where's the horse?

I told you he was going to be here.

Damned if Gibson didn't warn Frazier.

So when the sheriff stepped down off that train, he wasn't alone.

Ho! There ain't going to be no gunplay here today, boys.

You put him down.

Arrest these men.

He had a couple of rangers with him, and they spoiled us.

That's isolation, I tell you.

Who else you got with you, huh?

Who else?

So it saved his life, at least for the time being.

My cronies were charged with attempted murder, and Con Gibson was to be the

prosecution's star witness.

That is, if they could get him to the stand.

Con Gibson, who had alerted Bud Fraser to the plot, tried to get away. He went

to Eddy, New Mexico, to try and protect himself, to hide out until the trial was

held. It didn't do any good.

I sent my best hitman, John Benson, to track him down.

Needless to say, that was the end of Con Gibson.

Of course, once Gibson was dead, the state had no witness to testify about

plot to kill Bud Frazier.

So all the charges against us were dropped.

And if that weren't enough to put Frazier on his heels, you should have

look on his face when he saw me with a new badge.

Then Miller's appointed town marshal.

They can't really go over too well with Bud Frazier.

Town marshal's like a one -man police force. It's like the police chief of a

city. So he still had power. He still could let crime run rampant.

but he also made it known to a lot of people that Bud Fraser was going to pay

big price for what he'd done.

Brandt?

I believe I know your face from the assembly of the faithful.

Very well, maybe.

It just killed poor old Bud that most folks still thought of me as a

member of the community who they could trust to keep the peace.

And, well, he just sort of snapped.

Frazier decided he might be smart to just go ahead and kill the guy.

Frazier's walking back and forth, and eventually Frazier just comes up there,

pulls his gun, starts shooting.

You're a rustler and a murderer, Jim.

This one's for Con Dippin'. What the hell, bud?

And hits him in the chest.

Hits him in the arm.

Knocks him down.

Frazier figures, man, this guy's dead.

Jim Miller was shot point blank by Bud Frazier.

Now, anybody would think that the guy was long gone.

You know, the bullets do the weirdest thing. And it's so amazing who survives

and who doesn't.

This is for Con Gibson.

Everybody

thought

I was dead when Bud Frazier emptied his revolver into me. Point blank.

But everybody don't know Deacon Jim.

Stop it! Stop it! Get real bad!

Strong son of a bitch will give him that.

When they take Miller in, they pull out his coat.

They realize he's got a steel plate that protects his heart.

That's pretty smart.

So, Miller survives.

I still had to hurt, though. A .45 bullet hitting a metal plate is still

to hurt your chest a little bit. It's got to do some damage there to your

innards, I would think.

I don't think you're going to like it, but Frank, take me down.

You tell him he can't kill me.

Nor a man of town, either.

Next time.

Doc, cut me open. Get this bullet out of me.

I told the boys to keep quiet about the metal plate.

Bud Frazier had no idea.

The poor bastard had to be wondering what the hell do I have to do to get rid

this guy.

After their sheriff gunned me down in cold blood, the good people of Pecos,

Texas took away Bud's bag.

But by this point, Jim Miller's had enough. He said, I'm tired of this guy.

He says, I'm going to kill Bud Frazier if I have to crawl 20 miles on my knees

to do it.

God gave Moses ten commandments.

His wrath is merciless if you break them.

Thou shalt not steal, covet, or bear false witness.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt not kill.

For all who kill by the sword will in the end perish by the sword.

So, Miller found Fraser in a saloon.

Can you believe Miller?

He thinks I'm afraid of him.

I ain't afraid of no man.

Damn sure not afraid of no cowardly bastard like him.

I lost my badge.

My badge.

That ain't right.

Miller sticks his head and his shotgun barrel in the door and immediately cuts

loose.

Who shall kill us another person?

We'll be banished from the kingdom of heaven for all eternity.

Basically, he blows Bud Frazier's head off.

In fact, they say that the body is still sitting in the chair.

And Bud Frazier is no longer a thorn in Jim Miller's side.

Well, if I didn't disturb anyone, next round's on me.

And then Jim Miller left the saloon calmly, coolly, collectively.

as if nothing had happened.

This is the fate that awaits the man who taketh another man's life.

Hellfire and brimstone.

Eternal death, eh?

Fine sermon today, Pastor.

A lot to think about.

Father Frazier actually did me a favor.

Gave me a license to kill him.

After he gunned me down, no jury in the world would have convicted me.

It was a clear case of self -defense.

So Miller goes to retrial for this, and he's acquitted.

The judge said that Frazier's done far worse than what Miller did.

And so killing Jim got off scot -free from that as he did everything else?

Oh, the good old days.

I had beaten another murder charge, but I'd pretty much worn out my welcome in

Pecos.

For most of the time when he was living in Pecos, people believed Jim Miller was

a good guy.

They believed that he was honest and upright. He was a wonderful member of

Methodist Church.

But after the trial, the murder of Bud Frazier, although he was acquitted, he

found that he was no longer that popular in Pecos and decided

to move on.

It was after we left Pecos and moved east to a little town near Fort Worth.

that I realized I could make a career out of what I do best.

That's a killer for hire.

Wasn't long before I had all the business I could handle.

Me and the boys got away with an awful lot in Pecos.

For killing Bud Frazier was the last straw.

I'd worn out my welcome.

So I moved Sally and our four wonderful children to Fort Worth, where I got a

fresh start as a killer for hire.

It was known around Fort Worth that Miller was a hired killer.

You could hire him to kill just about anybody.

You want somebody dead, Jim knows the man you go to.

It's good for me that people knew what I did for a living. So I started to

spread around that I was open for business.

Before I knew it, I had a dozen contracts.

There was a do -good lawyer making trouble for some rich ranchers.

the small farmers and homesteaders I could handle.

I started charging $50 per job.

That number just kept getting higher and higher.

As you gentlemen well know, I was soon getting top dollar.

At first, he got a fee of $50 for killing people. For a while, he was

kill people for $150, and ultimately he was paid $2 ,000.

For him, it was more than an occupation.

I think it was a recreation.

It was something he enjoyed, not just the killing.

The planning part of it, it challenged him. The fact that he could get away

it and thumb his nose at the authorities, he loved all of that. It

even more superior than he felt already.

Jim Miller was the perfect contract killer.

No matter how many times they tried, they could never convict me of killing a

man.

By this point, Jim Miller's thinking that he's pretty much invincible.

I mean, he can start bragging about killing people, and no one's going to do

anything about it. If he's charged, he's going to get off on a technicality or

an acquittal.

As time went on, In Fort Worth, Jim Miller just continued to live the high

life, wearing the absolute finest of clothes.

At this point, he was starting to give up this clean image.

He didn't need it anymore.

People were too scared of him. They weren't going to do anything against

why not drop the facade and just be who he was?

There are lots of ways to get away with murder.

Paying witnesses to lie for me was part of the cost of doing business.

I'd always give them that option first.

If they refused, I'd have to get rid of them.

A lot of the witnesses against Miller either decided that they hadn't seen

anything and didn't know anything, or they simply disappeared from the planet.

But only one witness ever agreed to lie and then double -crossed me.

So... The testimony you gave in that case against Jim Miller was false.

That's right.

Jim Miller paid me to lie.

I paid Joe Erp a lot of money to lie on the witness stand.

And he was so bad at it, he got caught and then proceeded to tell the

everything.

Joe Earp was caught in a lie, and he was going to go to jail.

What he did was he turned state's evidence on Jim Miller.

Uh -oh, you don't do that. You don't turn on Jim Miller.

And then Miller tells people, read the paper, boys. You'll learn where Joe Earp

is dead, and Joe Earp is soon dead.

And then there was that damn prosecutor who flipped Joe Earp.

He must have been out to make a name for himself by putting Jim Miller in jail

any way he could.

So when he couldn't get me on a murder charge, he charged me with perjury.

According to his autopsy, he died of some disease with long name after eating

a fancy restaurant one night.

And wouldn't you know it, a friend of mine worked in the kitchen at that

restaurant.

Once the prosecutor and his star witness were dead, that case went away, too.

I was making more for one murder than most folks make in a year.

Then I got hired to kill Pat Garrett.

That changed everything.

You'll no doubt remember Garrett for his cowardly killing of Billy the Kid.

Oh!

There are lots of stories about what really happened to him that day, but I

guess I'm the only one who can tell it true.

One thing's for sure, he was dead by the end of it.

Garrett was always dead broke, poker mostly.

So he desperately needed the money when he leased some land he owned to a guy

named Wayne Brazil.

He just had no idea it was a setup from the start.

Oh, just a minute. Nature calls.

He gets off the buckboard and he's unzipped his fly and urinating on the

the road.

Everybody's got a theory on who killed Pat Garrett. Probably the least likely

person to have killed Pat Garrett is the person who actually confessed to doing

it.

So you're saying he drew on you first.

But he shot in the back of the head.

Brazil told the sheriff that Garrett flew into a rage and grabbed for his

I had no choice.

It was going to be him or me.

But the truth is, Wayne Brazil was paid to confess, knowing he'd get off on self

-defense.

Wayne Brazil's story was, Pat Garrett threatened me. Pat Garrett was going to

kill me right then and there. I had to shoot him.

How could a man be threatening to kill somebody else when the guy making the

threat was relieving himself?

The only time in the history of the West that a person was...

that someone got off on self -defense.

So that's a weird story to begin with. But there is every indication that Wayne

Brazel was just a patsy and that a hired killer was brought in and that it was

Jim Miller.

Someone went out to the site a couple days later and found a couple of half

-smoked cigarettes and a shell case from the rifle that Jim Miller liked to use.

That's pretty compelling.

The evidence didn't matter.

Wayne Brazil was acquitted on self -defense.

Just the way it was planned.

And nobody would ever know for sure who killed the lawman who killed Billy the

Kid.

Done right. Murder should be the perfect crime.

There's never enough evidence to convict anybody.

A smart killer would walk away from every murder trial a free man.

When I went to jail for another routine job in Oklahoma, I'd gotten away with

every murder I'd ever committed.

Except this time, it wasn't the law I had to be worried about.

Well live by the sword, die by the sword.

And it seems as if spit in the sky comes back, and this is one of those stories

where at least in my mind, it has a happy ending.

I can kill anybody and get away with it.

Gus Bobbitt was no different from any of the rest of them.

I knew Bobbitt was making trouble for a lot of the rich ranchers around Ada,

Oklahoma. What I didn't know was that he was a hero to the rest of the town.

Gus Bobbitt was one of the most outstanding lawmen.

The people who were law -abiding just loved him.

People on the other side of the law did not.

The cattlemen decided to go hire Jim Miller to get rid of Bobbitt.

The wife comes out, cradles her dying husband in her arms.

Now everybody knew who killed him, and everybody found out pretty quickly who

hired him.

Miller, who's usually very careful and cautious, had kind of thrown any type of

care to the wind in this particular episode, and it almost seemed like he

he was too invincible, and he made a number of mistakes.

Miller had become very careless and overconfident. He just thought he could

anything.

But the situation in Ada was particularly bad for Jim Miller at that

because Gus Bobbitt was an upstanding citizen.

He'd been a protector of people, and he was dead.

Miller is tracked down and is accused of the crime. They arrest him.

He was then thrown in jail, and as usual, he was going to await judicial

and get himself off, just like he was used to doing.

I've never been in jail in Oklahoma before.

They're all pretty much the same.

They don't just land Miller. They get his accomplice, they get the people that

hired him to kill Bobbitt, and they all wind up in jail.

I had to figure this case was just like all the rest.

This would all be over soon enough.

It was the only time I was ever wrong.

Enough is enough, my friends.

We can't let more killers go free in our town.

We have to protect our families and see that justice is served.

Let's go.

I want to see them hang.

Let's go.

The local population, they're convinced that this is going to be a hung jury.

Not to make a pun.

There were rumors that Miller and company were going to hire a man named

Pruitt. And Momin Pruitt was the best defense attorney in the Southwest.

And if Momin Pruitt was brought in, chances were those guys were going to

off.

There had just been an acquittal of the killer of a lawman at Norman, Oklahoma.

This all contributed to the citizens' blame. The only way for justice would be

to take it.

into their own hands.

I want to see them hang. Right now!

Let's go, gentlemen.

Tonight, justice will be served.

They demanded the keys to the cell.

The prisoners, with the exception of Miller, they began begging for their

Miller seems to just take it all in stride.

The psychopath is basically fearless.

So they haul all four of the prisoners out to this abandoned livery stable.

string up the first three, and then it's Jim Miller's time to go.

Let the record show I killed 51 men.

And they saved Miller for last because they wanted him to do some confessing.

He took off his diamond ring and asked somebody to get it to his wife.

Let's get on with this. It suits me.

Put my hat back on and put it on straight.

I'd hate to face eternity with my hat on crooked.

Miller was a calm, cool, and collected individual, even in the face of death.

Your time's come, killer.

What kind of guy is that cool and calm as he's about to die?

Jim Miller had no fear, even as that rope was put around his neck.

Okay, gentlemen, let it rip.

His passing was an impressive one for a lynching, and he was almost in charge of

it himself.

He kicked the stool out from under himself and went to his reward.

I guess you couldn't kill Jim Miller. It took Jim Miller to kill Jim Miller.

Well, they buried Miller face down because that was undoubtedly the

was going.

Straight to hell.