Deputy Sheriff Willis "Curley" Sheppard

Willis "Curley" Sheppard

Deputy Sheriff Willis Sheppard was fatally shot by the brother of a subject he had just arrested for being drunk in public in an area of Bartlesville known as Smeltertown.

He had taken the subject to jail and was returning to the area when he countered the man on West Fourteenth Street.

The man who shot him was later arrested, tried, and acquitted. On March 6, 1929, he was arrested in Port Arthur, Texas. He admitted to officials there that he murdered Deputy Sheppard. According to Oklahoma law he could not be charged a second time.