William Miller (criminal) William Miller (criminal) William "Billy the Killer" Miller (1906 – April 16, 1931) was an American bank robber and Depression-era outlaw. In his brief criminal career, he committed numerous bank heists in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Oklahoma, and teamed up with George Birdwell and Pretty Boy Floyd during the early 1930s. Miller was born in Ironton, Ohio in 1906. He first earned his nickname "Billy the Killer" when, on September 18, 1925, the 19-year-old Miller killed his brother Joseph in a fight over a woman. Tried in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, he was acquitted of murder on the grounds that he
Pretty Boy Floyd have been Miller's accomplices. Factors weighing against them included their apparent presence in Kansas City at the time, eyewitness identifications (which have been contested), Richetti's fingerprint said to have been recovered from a beer bottle at Miller's hideout, an underworld account naming Floyd and Richetti as the gunmen, and Hoover's firm advocacy of their guilt. Fellow bank robber Alvin Karpis, an acquaintance of Floyd's, claimed that Floyd confessed involvement to him. On the other side of the issue, the bandit alleged to have been Floyd was supposed to have been wounded by a gunshot to the shoulder in the attack,