Oliver Edward “Ollie” Mitts, 28, male, White/Caucasian, was a game warden with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission patrolling the White River near Batesville on June 9, 1937. With a federal game warden, he went to serve an arrest warrant related to fishing violations at a suspect’s riverside camp about a mile north of town. As their boat approached, the man opened fire, striking Mitts in the head and knocking him into the river.
He was pulled from the water and rushed to a local hospital, where he died that evening from the wound.
The shooter soon surrendered at the scene. He was prosecuted, convicted of second-degree murder, and sentenced to six years in prison. Contemporary memorial records and later summaries identify no additional suspects in the ambush and do not indicate broader conspiracy or accomplices; the case was treated as a single-offender killing during an attempted fish-and-game enforcement action.
Mitts’s death date is recorded in multiple public memorial sources as June 9, 1937, in Batesville, Arkansas; he is commemorated among Arkansas officers slain in the line of duty. A graveside memorial notes his age and service, and local and state remembrances continue to link his killing to the hazards of wardens confronting armed violators along the White River.
