The problem seemed to have solved itself when Frazer lost the next election. Stung, he left Pecos for new prospects in New Mexico. But the feud wasn’t over yet. Frazer returned to Pecos briefly to settle some personal affairs and ran into Miller on the street. This time, Frazer carried a Winchester, and Miller was packing his favorite weapon, a shotgun.

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Knowing Miller had been looking for him, Frazer opened up, nailing the Deacon in the right arm and left leg, then twice over the heart. Still, Miller stayed on his feet, and Frazer, apparently unaware of the steel plate, took to his heels.

Frazer was arrested, but his impending trial was transferred to El Paso. Miller called for assistance from yet another relative, the urbane ex-con and murderer-turned-lawyer Wes Hardin. But Frazer’s trial ended in a hung jury, and the retrial was put off for a year. In the interim, Hardin was killed in El Paso’s Acme Saloon by tough John Selman.

To complete Miller’s unhappiness, Frazer was acquitted and returned to his business in New Mexico. In September, Frazer visited his family in Toyah, Texas, about 18 miles from Pecos, carrying a specially made revolver loaded with what he called ‘explosion balls.’ It would do him no good.

Frazer sat playing seven-up at a saloon table on the morning of September 13. Miller, forewarned by a confederate, crossed quickly from the hotel where he had been waiting. Without a word to the unsuspecting card players, he slid his shotgun through the saloon door and squeezed off both barrels. The buckshot tore Frazer’s head off in a shower of blood and bone, leaving his body still seated at the table.

Miller saddled up and rode back to Pecos, where he was promptly jailed for murder. Before he went to jail, he grandly ordered all of Frazer’s supporters to leave the county. Barney Riggs, at least, stayed around town, but kept his powder dry. Instead, he tangled with two Miller henchmen in the Orient Saloon. One of them, Bill Earhart, was the man who had acted as lookout for Miller in Toyah.

Earhart got off the first shot, but Riggs drilled the man between the eyes. Chasing the second man into the street, Riggs blew off the back of his head. Scooping up a few of the brains, he promised to send them to the widow of the man Miller had killed for revealing the first Frazer ambush. Tried for murder in El Paso, Riggs was promptly acquitted.

Miller himself was tried in Eastland, Texas, for the Frazer murder. After the first jury hung 11-to-1, Miller spent the next few months helping his minister hold prayer meetings. After such a public display of devotion, a second jury acquitted Miller in January 1899.

Deacon Jim moved to Memphis, Texas, where he ran a saloon and worked as a part-time deputy sheriff. He began to openly boast of his murders–and even ‘predict’ them. He was soon convicted for suborning perjury after he urged a man named Joe Earp (no relation to Wyatt) to swear away an innocent man’s life in return for a $10,000 reward. Earp turned state’s evidence, but Miller’s conviction was reversed.

As he rode the train back to Memphis, Miller boasted: ‘Joe Earp turned state’s evidence on me–and no man can do that and live. Watch the papers, boys, and you’ll see where Joe Earp died.’ Three weeks later, Earp was ambushed and shot down. Miller apparently did the job himself, then galloped 100 miles in one night to establish an alibi.

Miller wasn’t through. Soon thereafter, the district attorney who had prosecuted Miller stayed overnight on business in a Memphis hotel. By morning he was dead, officially of peritonitis. Later, however, the doctor revealed that the ‘peritonitis’ had been arsenic. The temporary hotel cook had been a friend of Miller’s and had disappeared after the prosecutor’s death. The doctor did not make an issue of the arsenic; he knew Jim Miller’s charming ways.

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