Former Officer Was Once Sentenced To Hang

March 25, 1915—The Oklahoma Leader—Oilton, Okla. March 24—John Dossett, for many years one of the bet known peace officers in the Southwest, is in Oilton to contract with the citizens to install a fire department and handling it together with being city marshal. Ever since the opening of the Iowa-Comanche country, Dossett has been on the police force at Lawton, also serving at different times as deputy United States marshal. Prior to that time he was for many years in the Osage nation as cattle ranch foreman and officer. It was during his residence in the Osage that he was arrested on a charge of giving poisoned whiskey into another cowboy. Dossett was tried, convicted and sentenced to hang, and while he waited the day of execution he could hear the carpenters building his scaffold just outside the old federal jail at Guthrie Dossett got a new trial just in the nick of time and was acquitted, it being proved beyond a doubt that a third cowboy, who was jealous of both Dossett and he man he killed, prepared and passed the poisoned liquor.

Transcribed & submitted by: Mollie Stehno

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