In the late hours of a Sunday in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the night patrol was a routine affair, but for one officer, it was his very first day on the job. Patrolman George Claud Holt Pickett, a 37-year-old man, was just beginning his career with the Pine Bluff Police Department. On April 28, 1901, as he and two fellow officers made their rounds through the quiet, closed-down downtown area, their attention was drawn to two suspicious men at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Pine Street.
What began as a cautious approach quickly escalated into a violent confrontation. The two men, who were brothers, engaged in a fierce pistol duel with the three officers. In the chaos of the gunfire, a shot struck Patrolman Pickett in the face. The wound was fatal, and the newly minted officer's career and life were tragically cut short on the very streets he had sworn to protect. He was survived by his wife and three children.
In the immediate aftermath, one of the brothers was apprehended the following day in Little Rock. On November 8, 1901, he was sentenced to four years for his involvement in the murder. His time in custody was not to be the end of his story, as he was one of 11 inmates who escaped from the stockade at Doyleton on June 29, 1902. Years later, in June of 1915, it was discovered that he had been killed in a sawmill accident in Clyde, Mississippi.
The other brother, the man who fired the shot that killed Patrolman Pickett, managed to escape that night. In a strange turn of events in 1915, the suspects' father, who was jailed on a bigamy charge, claimed that his son, the killer, was still alive and well, though he refused to disclose his location. The man directly responsible for the death of Patrolman George Claud Holt Pickett was never officially brought to justice and remained at large.
