Jim Miller: The Killer Who Wore Steel Under His Coat

For fifteen years James Brown Miller wore a long black frock coat through the Texas summer, with a plate of steel sewn inside it. It stopped a sheriff's bullets in Pecos in 1894. He went to church every Sunday, did not drink, and was paid to kill men from ambush for most of his adult life. No jury ever made a conviction stick. On his last night, in Ada, Oklahoma, he asked for three things. The coat was the only one refused. *Sources* Jim Miller (outlaw) — Wikipedia, on his birth in 1861, the Coop case, the Frazer feud of 1894 and 1896, the killings for hire, and the events in Ada on 19 April 1909 James Brown (Jim) Miller — Encyclopedia of Arkansas, on his family, the marriage to Sallie Clements in 1888, the dates of the later killings, and his burial in Fort Worth Deacon Jim Miller: Killing in Deacon's Clothing — HistoryNet, on the steel plate, the church, the fees, and the trials in Eastland County