Bobby Randell Wilcoxson

[http://www.bobbywilcoxson.com] Bobby Randell Wilcoxson was born July 10, 1929, in Duke, Oklahoma. [FBI Wanted Poster; February, 1962] In 1949, Wilcoxson was in a head-on traffic accident on a stretch of California’s Highway 101 near San Jose, then known as "Blood Alley." The driver of the other car was killed. Wilcoxson suffered head injuries and spent nearly a year in a full-body cast. He was well respected as an efficeint crew foreman in the lettuce fields of the Salinas Valley in California, and worked in the produce business in Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. [Reader's Digest; July, 1962] Wilcoxson also worked as a house painter, service station attendant and a used-car salesman before turning into a professional criminal.

An FBI agent pursuing Wilcoxson once called him "the most wanted man since Dillinger." "One Eye" Bobby Wilcoxson and his crime partner Albert Frederick Nussbaum- Albert Fredrick Nussbaum of Buffalo, New York, were prolific bandits between 1960 and 1963, knocking over at least seven banks in an eighteen month run. They stole at least $250,000 which by some estimates is roughly the equivalent of $2.8 million in 2008. Peter Columbus Curry of Quitman, Georgia, joined Wilcoxson and Nussbaum on December 15, 1961 - the trio holding up a branch of the Lafayette National Bank in Brooklyn, New York. Wilcoxson entered the bank and pumped four rounds from a Thompson Submachinegun into the chest of bank guard Henry Kraus. [Reader's Digest; February 1963] In February, 1962, Curry was arrested by the FBI. Under interrogation, he implicated Wilcoxson and Nussbaum. The FBI instantly named the pair of bandits to the famous "Most Wanted List" and circulated over 1 million "wanted" posters. The G-Men declared the robbers as dangerous, warning the pair were armed with hand-grenades and 25 submachineguns. "They will not hesitate to open fire," the posters warned. [FBI Wanted Poster; February, 1962] When rumors placed the robbers in Canada and The United Kingdom, the Canadian Royal Mounted Police and the Bobbies of Scotland Yard joined the manhunt. Over 6,000 FBI agents searched worldwide for Nussbaum, Wilcoxson and Wilcoxson’s 19 year old "paramour," Jacqueline Ruth Rose of Paoli, Indiana. Nussbaum was captured by the FBI after a highspeed car chase through Buffalo on November 4, 1962. Midmorning on November 10, 1962, Wilcoxson and Rose came out of their rented home in Baltimore, Maryland, triggering a swarm of 30 FBI agents. [Argosy Magazine; September 1963]

To avoid a death sentence, Wilcoxson pled guilty to seven bank robberies and the murder of Kraus. He was sentenced to life in prison in April, 1964 with eligibility for parole in 1979. Wilcoxson went to the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia on March 3, 1964. On July 11, 1980, he was transferred to the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Wilcoxson was paroled to Chattanooga, Tennessee in early 1982. His freedom was short lived. On October 23, 1982, Robert Mosher, a chemical engineer of the Dupont Corporation was murdered. A piece of plastic tarp and 10 inches of a mop handle were shoved down his throat. Wilcoxson was indicted for the homicide on December 19, 1985. He was convicted on November 1, 1986 in the Hamilton County Tennessee Criminal Court of first degree murder for killing Robert Mosher. Mosher’s wife, Evelyn, allegedly hired Wilcoxson to murder her husband so she could collect life insurance benefits of $209,000. Evelyn Mosher never paid Wilcoxson. She was convicted for contracting the murder of her husband and received a life sentence. Wilcoxson was sentenced to death by electrocution on February 13, 1987. In 1999, his death sentence was reversed on appeal for defective legal representation. While awaiting an appeal of his conviction, Bobby Randell Wilcoxson died of natural causes on December 9, 2006, at the age of 77 while in the custody of the Tennessee State Prison. [IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEEAT KNOXVILLE; C.C.A. No. 03C01-9804-CR-00134; Filed October 18, 1999]

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