How Sheriff Was Killed

October 27, 1934

A diagram of the Dickens County jail, shows how Sheriff W. B. Arthur was slain with his own gun when he went to the end of a corridor surrounded by cells to repair plumbing. He was shot in the hall and fell through the door of a cell occupied by W.J. Yarbrough, under a seven-year sentence for wounding the sheriff the summer before. Yarbrough subsequently was taken to Lubbock for safekeeping. Virgil Stalcup and Clarence Brown, accused of the shooting, were playing cards in a cell. They walked out the unlocked door, slipping the sheriff´s gun from its holster while his back was turned. One of the prisoners fired the shot. They fled down the stairway to escape in Sheriff Arthur´s automobile.

• Trailing Texas Jailbreak Killers by Wade Hitson, May 1935 Dynamic Detective Magazine
• Dedication of Sheriff Memorial
• Bill Arthur on T "Squabble O" in front of Courthouse 1906