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| This article originally appeared in Murder will Out! A Unpublished Manuscript by the late Glenn H. Waight. |
Brother Shoots Brother
Joseph Miller
When it comes to callused, professional bloodletting, few could surpass a young man who shot his brother to death just east of the East Liverpool city limits and gained a chilling reputation in Midwest crime some 60 years ago.
Willis Miller was a frequenter of "Hell's Half Acre" -- that shady little state line neighborhood of 1920-50 -- and a bootlegger who killed his brother and became Pretty Boy Floyd's companion in crime.
Miller, originally from Ironton, confronted his brother, Joseph "Alabama Joe" Miller, over a woman in the autumn of 1925 a short distance into Pennsylvania from "The Half-Acre."
The slaying earned Willis the nickname "Billy, the Killer" throughout the Midwest.
Jake Eckert -- longtime proprietor of the state line tavern and husband of Jennie Eckert -- was a witness to the slaying, according to a newspaper account.
Billy, 22, was living in Midland when he and Joe, 29 -- known as the "King of the State Line Bootleggers" -- became infatuated with Mrs. Hazel Campbell Anthony. Jealousy turned to bloodshed Sept. 18.
ECKERT LATER told police he had met Billy and Louis Campbell of Michigan Ave., brother of Mrs. Anthony, near the state line on that evening.
Billy asked Jake if he had seen his girlfriend. Jake replied that Joe Miller and Mrs. Anthony were near a spring up the hill 200 yards east of the Ohio line. Billy and Campbell began walking up abandoned Island Run street car tracks, while Eckert headed toward the spring on a shortcut, planning to alert Joe and Hazel.
Jake said after he reached Joe and the woman, they spotted the two men coming up the path. Joe started down to meet his brother, Jake said, and when within a few feet, Billy pulled out a revolver began firing without saying a word
The bullet hit Joe in the chest, passing through his body. Eckert said he jumped behind a tree to avoid being struck by a stray bullet, and did not see what followed.
However, police reported Joe was apparently beaten severely about the head with the handle of the revolver after he fell and rolled into weeds along the path.
Eckert said he saw Mrs. Anthony run to Billy and throw her arms around his neck. They then walked down the path toward the streetcar tracks, Billy warning Jake to stay where he was.
Police, alerted around 7 p.m., found the body on the path, dragged there by William Llewellyn, operator of a stateline refreshment stand who heard the shot and went up to investigate. City officers along with Pennsylvania law men combed the area for the suspects. Billy, Mrs. Anthony and Campbell reportedly went to Campbell's home, then disappeared.
The Miller brothers, according to police, had arrived in this area about three years prior, and were blamed for a number of offenses linked with "Hell's Half Acre." Joe had been released from the Allegheny County (Pa.) Workhouse a month before, serving a year on a liquor charge filed in Beaver County for which he had been fined $1,000.
Joe had been sought several months for that violation, making several sensational escapes before he was captured. He had lived at the state line since freed from the workhouse.
His younger brother had earned a bad reputation as a youth around Ironton. Billy had returned to the state line area that spring after serving six months in the Allegheny workhouse for a liquor violation.
He reportedly had resumed his bootlegging enterprises, and a city illegal liquor charge was filed against him.
In June 1925 city Patrolmen Herman Roth and Chester Smith went to the state line looking for Billy, locating him on the Ohio side. When Roth told him he was under arrest, Miller bolted. Roth fired at him, the bullet hitting the suspect in the leg, and he surrendered.
Billy was admitted to City Hospital where, eight days later, he escaped, apparently with the help of outsiders, one a woman. He climbed down from a second story window using sheets tied together to form a rope. Police said friends took him to New Castle, Pa., where he recovered from his wound, and went to Midland where he got a job in the mill and took up residence.
JUST A FEW days before shooting his brother, Billy indicated he wanted to "go straight," and had almost arranged with police to turn himself in on the liquor charge and pay his fine in installments.
Miller later was tried in Beaver County for first degree murder in connection with his brother's death. He claimed in court he fired his weapon only after Joe attacked him, and the jury returned a not guilty verdict.
However, the trial judge ordered him held under an old English law that required a $2,000 bond as guarantee for future good conduct. Unable to raise the money, he spent a year in jail until the bond was reduced to $500. It was posted by his mother who, it was said, mortgaged her home in Ironton.
Billy drifted to other parts of Ohio, engaging in illegal activities, but keeping himself out of prison to which he swore he would never return.
Six years later Billy himself was slain in a gun battle he and Pretty Boy waged with police at Bowling Green, Ohio. Floyd escaped, but a cop was fatally wounded, Floyd's girlfriend was hit by a bullet and Billy's girlfriend was captured.
Young Miller had joined up with Pretty Boy in 1930, not long after Floyd escaped from a train taking him to the Ohio State Prison in Columbus to serve time for a bank holdup in Sylvania. Pretty Boy and his holdup pals had been captured in Akron in a raid in which a policeman was killed.
Fugitive Floyd made his way by back roads to Kansas City, where he and Billy Miller became partners. They were seen together in Kansas City and in small Oklahoma oil towns.
Glendon Floyd, Pretty Boy's nephew who visited here in 1994 for the 50th anniversary of his uncle's slaying near Sprucevale, is quoted in Michael Wallis' book about Floyd. Glendon recalled that Miller was always rubbing his revolver. He had also refashioned the cylinder of the weapon so the cartridges would not rattle to alert unsuspecting victims.
Miller and Floyd along with George Birdwell, a veteran Oklahoma outlaw, held up the bank at Earlsboro, Okla., March 9, 1931, getting away with some $3,000.
At Kansas City, Miller and Floyd went to Sadie Ash's boarding house where Floyd had stayed before. It was where he had met Sadie's daughter, Beulah, who, according to Wallis, gave Charles Arthur Floyd the name Pretty Boy.
Wallis said Beulah came in the room to serve beer, saw Floyd with a new haircut and spiffy clothes, and sat down beside him, saying, "Hello, pretty boy, where did you come from?"
In the winter of 1930, Floyd again was drawn to Beulah, now 21 and married to Sadie's son, Walter. Miller turned his attention to her sister, Rose, wife of another son, William. The Ash brothers were smalltime hoodlums who were also thought to be police informants.
Jealous tension naturally sprouted between the Ash boys and the two men who attracted their wives. Soon the two women left their husbands and took their own apartment.
After near capture by Kansas City police in a bootleg raid, Floyd sensed someone had snitched on him. In March 1931, Walter and Will Ash were seen in a car racing up a street, chased by another auto holding Pretty Boy and Billy.
THE BODIES OF the Ash brothers were found two days later in a ditch in nearby Kansas, bullets through the back of their heads -- a style more Billy's than of Floyd who had not previously been tied to a killing.
Floyd with dark-haired Beulah and Billy with Rose left Kansas City for Oklahoma, then traveled through Kentucky and were soon seen in northwest Ohio and southern Michigan. They were suspected of bank jobs in Kentucky and at Whitehouse, Ohio, but were not found.
At Bowling Green, Ohio, police became suspicious early in April 1931 about two couples spending large sums of money in various stores for a week or so. The foursome left town, but when on April 16 they reappeared, police were convinced they were casing a bank.
Police Chief Carl Galliher and Patrolman Ralph Castner, 28, drove to the bank site, and got out to approach the suspects. Suddenly the two men began to shoot, and the law men scattered, returning fire. Miller was struck in the stomach by three bullets, falling dead after getting off only one shot of his .45 caliber revolver.
Patrolman Castner was hit in the abdomen by one of Floyd's shots, and collapsed but continued to fire. One of Floyd's ricocheting bullets hit Beulah in the skull, but Rose was taken into custody unharmed.
Floyd kept firing until his gun was empty, then raced down an alley to his car, and drove away. Galliher chased him, but netted only the license plate number.
Patrolman Castners wound took his life in a few days. Beulah recovered from her wound, and Rose was released when nothing could be proven against her.
Billy Miller, suspected of several robberies and the Ash brothers' murders, had kept his vow never to be taken alive.
Probably the last evidence of his link to East Liverpool came three years later when Pretty Boy was shot down near Sprucevale, and his body brought to the Sturgis Funeral Home on Fifth St.
Among the items in Floyd's pockets were his watch with Billy's lucky 50-cent piece attached to it -- set aside for next-of-kin.
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