On November 12, 1945, Life Magazine ran an unusual story. It was a photographic study of an FBI agent named Jelly Bryce drawing and firing his .357 Magnum in two-fifths of a second, faster than the human eye can follow. In the pictures Bryce dropped a silver dollar from shoulder height with his right hand then drew with the same hand and shot the coin before it reached his waist. What the article did not say was that Bryce could not only draw fast in front of a camera, but also in front of people who were trying to kill him. In fact, at that time, Bryce had already killed over 10 men in face-to-face shootouts as a city policeman and FBI Agent. In his era Bryce was undoubtedly the FBI's deadliest gun and may have been the best they ever had.
To paraphrase Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: who was this guy?
D.A. Bryce was born in 1906 in Mt. View, Oklahoma, a small town in southwest Oklahoma. There was a story that went around in later years that baby Bryce had been allowed to teethe on his daddy's pistol and had thereby imbibed some of his later ability with hand guns, a tall tale,obviously.
Not so, says Bryce's sister, Lila Dawson. "When he was a baby they let him teethe on Daddy's unloaded pistol. They propped him up with pillows there in the crib and let him go after it."
By the time of his retirement in 1958 Bryce had become so legendary among lawmen of the Southwest that a lot of apocryphal stories about him floated around, a surprising number of which turn out to be true. Two things about Bryce's childhood are certain: he was recognized early on as a prodigy with firearms and he was encouraged by those around him. In particular he was encouraged by a doting grandfather who furnished him with shotgun shells and Bryce himself once managed to save over a hundred dollars shining shoes which he then invested in ammunition. And in those days a hundred dollars would buy a barn-load of ammunition. In short, he practiced a lot, but there was more going on there than just practice. Bryce was born with an astonishing natural talent.
When Leah Rhymer met Bryce he was ten years old and owned a little .22 rifle he used for hunting rabbits and shooting tin cans. "And," she says, "he never missed."
Never? "No. Never. He was a perfect shot."
Bryce was the only kid that age she ever knew who had his own rifle and was allowed to use it unsupervised. He also had an air rifle he got a lot of mileage out of in town. He was seldom without one or the other. "He really just grew up down on the creek bank with a rifle in his hand," his niece, D.A. Dawson says.
In those days the army would hold something called a citizen's military camp and, after graduating from high school, Bryce attended one at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma along with several hundred other young men. While there he won first in pistol, first in rifle, and then went on to win the national rifle competition at Camp Perry in Ohio.
SHOOTING MATCH
Out of high school, it was time to think about the future and gainful employment. More than anything in the world Bryce loved hunting and fishing so later that summer he became a state game ranger in Oklahoma. Apparently he grew restless with that, though, because after only six months he resigned and embarked for the University of Oklahoma where he planned to enroll. While en route he caught wind of a pistol contest where they were offering a hundred dollars in gold as first prize. That got his attention fast.
The contest was in Shawnee, Oklahoma and was being held as part of the annual Oklahoma Sheriff's and Peace Officers convention. Bryce drove down, found the firing range, got out of his car and approached Clarence Hurt, then the Night Chief of Police and a member of the Oklahoma City pistol team.
"This contest open to anybody?" Bryce asked.
"You think you can shoot, huh?" Hurt said, eyeing him skeptically.
"I think I can, yes," Bryce said. Hurt thought the whole thing kind of flaky, this Joe College in white slacks and a sweater approaching him out of the blue and besides that he was shooting an old smooth-bore .38 that was practically an antique. But the Oklahoma City pistol team didn't have much chance of winning that day and Hurt, their best shot, badly wanted his team to win. And who knew? Maybe this kid would be a decent shot.
Hurt led him behind a nearby hill to see what he could do.
"What do you want me to shoot?"
Hurt took out an old envelope and stuck it in the cleft of a tree trunk and walked off the regulation distance. "Shoot that."
"Can I draw and shoot? I'm better if I draw first than just stand still."
"Up to you."
Bryce drew and put six fast shots into an area the size of a silver dollar.
Clarence Hurt, for once in his life almost speechless, could only say, "You are now a member of the Oklahoma City Police Department."
Bryce won the hundred dollars in gold that day and the pistol team won, too, largely because of his shooting. More importantly he won a new career.
OKLAHOMA CITY POLICEMAN
The strangest part of the story, though, was what happened his first couple of days on the job. Bryce told it often in later years and Bob Oswalt, retired FBI, heard it more than once. After reporting for work in Oklahoma City, Bryce, in plain clothes, was leaving a restaurant in downtown Oklahoma City at high noon. Once out on the sidewalk he saw a man sitting in a nearby car that looked suspiciously like a face he had seen on wanted posters in the Oklahoma City area. What's more the man was behaving in a suspicious manner, peering around, acting nervous.
Bryce walked over to the car, around to the driver's door, and opened it. The man inside looked up, startled. He had some tools and it looked like he was in the process of trying to start the car without a key.
"What are you doing?" Bryce asked.
"Who are you?" the man snarled.
"A police officer."
Without another word the man drew a pistol from under his coat and tried to aim it at Bryce. Before he could fire Bryce drew and killed him. The man slid out of the car onto the cement, dead.
The whole thing amazed Bryce. He hadn't expected the guy to draw on him at all. But worse was yet to come. The police were phoned by onlookers and when they arrived Bryce was so new on the force that the captain didn't know him. Worse yet, Bryce hadn't been issued a badge yet. He was summarily arrested for murder and taken to jail. Fortunately Clarence Hurt, who had hired him, showed up that night and turned him loose. "The man is a police officer!" Hurt roared. Bryce was free, but not before his father heard reports of his arrest on the radio news. His father arrived in Oklahoma City that night with a lawyer.
Bryce's father was naturally relieved that no charges were going to be filed but still wanted his son to come home to the safety of small town life.
Bryce told him, "I've never disobeyed you before but this is what I want to do. I want to be a policeman."
To understand Bryces career in Oklahoma City it is necessary to understand the world of the peace officer in the late 20's and early 30's. It was anything but peaceful. In 1924, just three years before Bryce began, Bill Tilghman, last of the great lawmen of the old west, was killed in Cromwell, Oklahoma, while trying to disarm a drunk. When Bryce's career began, the wild west was not a dim memory but a living presence.
How wild was it?
On New Year's Day, 1934, the Oklahoma City Times joked that the economy was so bad even bank robbery was in a slump. There were only 30 banks robbed in Oklahoma in 1933 as opposed to 59 in 1932.
Fifty-nine bank robberies? That's more than one a week.
In 1926, Bryce's senior year in highschool, there were 211 homicides in the state. The media was glamorizing bank robbers and criminals and, in a sense, it was open season on police officers; there were nine killed in Oklahoma City just in the decade of the thirties. It was the first hint of the depression, dust bowl and economic upheaval waiting in the wings.
One night in 1927 Bryce, alone on night patrol, saw two men in an alley trying to jimmy the back door of a furniture store. He swerved his patrol car into the mouth of the alley, skidding to a stop with his two front lights trained on the two men. He jumped from the car. The two men spun and both opened fire at the same instant.
Bryce killed them both instantly with just two shots.
What happened next was later told by Clarence Hurt, then still Night Chief of Police in Oklahoma City. He was in his office when Bryce came and asked him to follow him downstairs. Hurt followed Bryce down to his car where he opened the back door and revealed two extremely dead burglars.
"What you want me to do with them?" Bryce asked.
Hurt, a small, barrel-chested man given to chewing a crooked little pipe, explained, "Take 'em to the morgue, son."
Then, in later years when Hurt told the story he would inevitably add, "And you know what that Indian did then? Went home and slept like a baby!"
Bryce had killed 3 men his first year, all of them attempting to fire first.
On Memorial day, 1933 eleven convicts escaped from the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing. One of them, Wilbur Underhill, proceeded to go on a bank robbing spree in a three state area. He was wanted for at least three cold-blooded murders, earning himself the nickname "tri-state terror" in the papers. Underhill was so mean he once killed a drug store employee during a holdup for not raising his hands fast enough.
RAID ON UNDERHILL
In late December of that year Underhill was spotted by police in south Oklahoma City and tailed back to Shawnee, Oklahoma, a town about forty miles east. A posse of federal and county detectives gathered quickly at the Shawnee police department and hurriedly mapped an attack strategy. The posse included Bryce and his old pal, Clarence Hurt.
By then it was dark. A scout car was dispatched to go and drive around the house where Underhill and companions were holed up. It was raining and the night was inky black but the officers reported a light was burning in the house and a drinking party was apparently underway. At three a.m. the police closed in, surrounding the house. The posse, under the direction of R.H. Colvin of the U.S. Investigation Bureau, consisted of six federal agents and eight deputies.
About three in the morning Hurt, Bryce and others took up positions at the rear of the house with the remaining officers positioned in the front and along the sides. A light came on in the rear bedroom. The officers approached. Hurt pressed his face against the screen and saw that it was Underhill and his wife. Hurt yelled, "This is the law, Wilbur, stick'em up
"Yeah, ok." Underhill said, raising his hands about halfway into the air. Then he suddenly whirled and grabbed two Lugers sitting on the nightstand beside the bed. Underhill and the police opened up at the same instant. Underhill was hit by a fusillade of bullets, knocked down, yet somehow managed to get up and charge out the front of the house through a pelting of gunfire, disappearing into the night. His wife fainted.
None of the officers were hurt but they knew Underhill had been seriously wounded, probably mortally. In fact, no one could believe he had managed to run away with so many bullets in him. Bloodhounds were summoned. They followed him. They found three places where he had fallen, full face down, in the mud.
A tip soon came in that Underhill was hiding in the back of a furniture store several blocks away, downtown. Hurt, Bryce and the others found him there, in bed, covers pulled up under his chin. He had been gut-shot with a gas gun several times. All the fight had leaked out of him. He surrendered meekly. Too mean to die, he clung to life for several weeks, finally succumbing in the state prison in McAlester, Oklahoma.
By 1934 the United States was truly in a crisis of lawlessness. After the Kansas City Massacre the FBI had been given the authority to carry firearms, the problem being they had few people well-trained enough with weapons to battle the more vicious criminals then operating. As one old lawman says, "You know, there's a lot of plain old sorriness around nowadays but, back then, there were some genuinely mean SOB's." Baby Face Nelson had managed to kill two FBI agents in one night in November of 1934, receiving mortal wounds himself in the process. J. Edgar Hoover's FBI went in search of lawmen skilled as "gunslingers."
Within 6 months they hired 3 detectives from the Oklahoma City pistol team - Jerry Campbell, Clarence Hurt, the Night Chief, and Oklahoma City's youngest detective, Jelly Bryce. Although Bryce had no college diploma, it was rumored that J. Edgar Hoover's mind was made up by the events surrounding July 18, 1934.
OUTLAW HARVEY PUGH
In fact, no story about Bryce has been told and retold more times or gained more mythical status among old-time peace officers.
Oklahoma City detectives learned that there were three known gangsters holed up at the Wren Hotel at 408 1/2 West Main in Oklahoma City. One was known to be Harvey Pugh, former companion of murderer and cop killer Clyde Barrow. Pugh himself was wanted for the murder of a police officer in McPherson, Kansas. Bryce and two other detectives were dispatched to arrest Pugh and question the other two men.
They arrived at the hotel at around 8 a.m. At the front desk was an elderly woman, Nora Bingaman, whose daughter owned the hotel. The officers asked to see the owner, Mrs Merle Bolen, 28 years old. Mrs. Bingaman agreed to take them to her daughter's room.
They followed the old lady up the dark stairs and down a dingy hallway to her daughter's room. The old lady knocked perfunctorily and opened the door. But before the detectives could enter the old lady looked startled and tried to step back and pull the door closed again.
Bryce jammed his foot in the door. "I told you we're police officers," he growled and shoved the door open. He stepped into the room.
