A routine highway project, a family that rejected the state, and a day of gunfire that left two officers dead. Here is how the Bixby shootout in Abbeville unfolded and why it still matters.
How America Got Here: Rules, Permits, Control
I consider myself a fairly traditional American rugged individualist. I don’t expect a great deal from my government beyond some decent road maintenance and a bunch of dead terrorists. Beyond that, I just want to be left alone. Stuff like intrusive building codes, draconian speed limits, and gun control of any sort just makes me itch.
American Society: A Slow Tightening
There has indeed been a most insidious transformation in modern American society. When I was a kid, Americans were pretty much free to make their way in life. Nowadays, however, you can’t do anything without some kind of silly government writ.
That’s not hyperbole. You can’t practice medicine, teach school, build a house, or cut hair. You need a special government permit to drive a car, sell real estate, or install showerheads for money. Do you think you own property? Try not paying your taxes for a couple of years and see who owns all your stuff. Like some kind of creeping pestilence, the government has infiltrated almost every aspect of our lives. Just like the proverbial boiled frog, this process has been so relentless and insidious over time that we were all enmired in it before we realized it was happening. That’s not what the Founding Fathers intended for our great nation, not by a long shot.
Rules We Live By: The Oath and Reality
When I first donned the uniform of my nation’s military, I did not swear allegiance to the government, the President, or even the people. I promised to support and defend that document, the US Constitution, and all that it represented. That’s a big deal to me. I lost friends for that moldy old piece of vellum.
Now, I do genuinely believe all of those things. However, I am also a pragmatist. I will continue to renew my medical license every year. I will pay my income taxes on time, and do whatever it takes to remain in the good graces of the BATF. While I may not like all these rules, that is not a hill I am willing to die on. However, not everybody looks at life the same way I do.
The People: Meet the Bixby Family
Arthur Walls Bixby was born in 1929. He lived in Warren, New Hampshire, with his wife Rita and sons Steven and Dennis. The Bixbys never did much care for government involvement in any aspect of their lives.
Arthur was briefly jailed for failure to pay an $850 judgment. Rita inundated the local courthouse with frivolous lawsuits. In one case, she tried to gain title to land owned by her neighbors. This initiative failed, but Rita still staged a sheriff’s sale in which she attempted to sell the parcel anyway. When pressed, the Bixbys claimed to be sovereign citizens over whom the traditional courts held no power.
Things just kind of snowballed from there. In 1992, Steven was convicted of drunk driving. Of course, he didn’t have a driver’s license. Those rules didn’t apply to him. Eventually, Arthur, Rita, and Steven moved to Abbeville, South Carolina, and started a new life there.
The Setting: A Highway, An Easement, A Spark
The Bixbys set up on a modest parcel of land that just happened to be bordered by South Carolina Highway 72. Back in 1960, the previous owner of the property, one Haskell Johnson, had granted the state of South Carolina an easement authorizing the state to expand the right-of-way slightly if ever they should need to widen the highway. The documents supporting this easement were stored in a vault at the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) headquarters rather than the local courthouse. While legally permissible, this fact became a really big deal for the Bixbys.
In the early 2000s, SCDOT decided that it was time to widen Highway 72 from the Georgia state line to a spot just east of Abbeville. This project included the portion of the road that bordered the Bixby property. Doing so would consume roughly ten feet of dirt along the route. The Bixbys were having none of that.
Appreciating that the Bixby clan was unhappy with this proposed arrangement, SCDOT officials offered to sell them additional footage for the nominal consideration of a single dollar. However, by this point, the Bixbys were ready to make a stand. When SCDOT crews put out planning stakes, Arthur Bixby pulled them up and threw them into the highway. At the same time, the Bixbys began accumulating weapons and ammunition for a showdown with the evil South Carolina road people.
The Fuse Is Lit: First Shots On Highway 72
On the morning of 8 December 2003, SCDOT workers reported to their worksite only to be threatened by Arthur and Steven Bixby. They wisely retreated and notified the local sheriff’s office. When Abbeville County Sheriff’s Deputy Daniel Wilson reported to investigate, Steven Bixby shot him through the left armpit with a 7mm Magnum bolt-action rifle, narrowly missing his vest. The geometry of the wound was such that the cop was shot with his arm raised while knocking on the door. No matter, no soft body armor on Planet Earth could have withstood that. Deputy Wilson was 37 and the father of five young children.
The Bixbys then dragged the desperately wounded cop inside, cuffed his hands behind his back, and inexplicably read him his Miranda rights. Sometime over the next fourteen hours, Deputy Wilson succumbed to his wounds. When the dispatcher was unable to make contact with the Deputy, State Constable Donnie Ouzts was deployed to check on him. When 62-year-old Constable Ouzts climbed out of his car, Steven Bixby shot him through the heart, killing him instantly. That’s when the Bixby’s world went all pear-shaped.
Pinned Down: The Abbeville Bixby Standoff
While Arthur and Steven Bixby were busy murdering police officers, Rita Bixby was holed up at Steven’s apartment with her other son, Dennis. She had been talking with the Bixby boys on the phone. Rita inexplicably called the South Carolina Attorney General’s office and left the following voice message: “This is Rita Bixby, and I live at 4 Union Church Road…I’ve talked to you before, and they have; the state has decided they were going to come in and take our property. My husband and my son are there and there is a shootout going on because they’re not going to take our land. No one has approached us and asked us if they could negotiate or anything. They just simply came onto our land and started taking it and there is a shootout there.” She then began threatening to shoot random people in the apartment complex if the police harmed her husband or Steven.
How Law Enforcement Answered Fire
This next bit was pretty predictable. The cops staged an armored vehicle as well as a helicopter, and some 200 heavily-armed officers. Friends of the Bixbys tried to talk them down to no avail. In response, Arthur and Steven Bixby poured fire at the cops surrounding their home. The lawmen gave as well as they got, having to be resupplied with ammunition several times during the day. It was later estimated that, between the cops and the two lunatics in the house, tens of thousands of rounds were expended.
Late in the afternoon, a SWAT team finally got Rita to give up. Two hours later, the SWAT guys at the Bixby homestead breached the front door with an armored vehicle. They dispatched a robot that was thwarted from entry by a large collection of debris the Bixbys had stacked behind the door. The robot did produce a video of Deputy Wilson’s lifeless body, still handcuffed to the floor. The SWAT guys were able to get close enough to retrieve the body, but were unable to reach Arthur and Steven.
By this time, it was getting late. With all friendlies accounted for and about a zillion rounds exchanged, I rather suspect the cops were getting justifiably weary of fiddling with these two crazy people. As a result, they just pumped the place full of tear gas and let that simmer for a while. Eventually, Steven had had enough and gave himself up. His dad was badly wounded and was medevac’d to a local hospital, where he eventually stabilized. The cops recovered a total of nine firearms, including Deputy Wilson’s sidearm.
READ MORE HERE: The 2012 Empire State Building Shooting: Cop Carnage
The Aftermath: Trials, Diagnoses, Sentences
As you might imagine, the state threw the book at the Bixbys. However, Arthur carried a previous diagnosis of schizophrenia. Additionally, by the time the trials got cranked up in earnest, he was in a fairly advanced state of dementia. Arthur was committed to a mental institution, where he died of natural causes in September 2011.
Rita was sentenced to a zillion years in prison. However, she succumbed to cancer while incarcerated at the age of 79. Curiously, she died exactly a week after her husband.
Steven Bixby: On Death Row, Strange Claims
In 2007, Steven Bixby was sentenced to death for killing Deputy Wilson and Constable Ouzts. For the past 18 years, his case has plodded its way back and forth through the American legal system. Thus far, he has penned some 1,500 pages’ worth of letters to his girlfriend. He frequently signs his missives, “Chaotic Patriot Steve.” Were I being completely honest, the fact that he has a girlfriend is arguably the most inexplicable aspect of this whole sordid tale. What is she thinking? I clearly never will understand women.
Steven Bixby remains on death row in South Carolina today. South Carolina utilizes either electrocution or a firing squad to do the deed, so there aren’t any concerns about the availability of lethal drugs. The South Carolina Supreme Court recently issued an indefinite stay out of concerns over whether he was sane enough to be executed. They’re not necessarily wrong.
Since he has been incarcerated, Steven Bixby has claimed that prison officials have injected him with a tracking device and that death row inmates are “traded like hogs on the stock market.” Bixby also asserted that he regularly discovers divine messages in number patterns that justify his crime, that the blood found on his clothing contains the DNA of Jesus, and that crime scene photos demonstrate that an angel was present during the shootings. Wow. They walk among us…
Aftermath and Empty Lot: What Remains
Steven’s mental competency hearing is slated for the summer of 2025. We’ll see how that pans out. The Bixby home was eventually bulldozed and is an empty lot today. Though I haven’t checked myself, I suspect SCDOT did eventually get that highway widened.
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Case File Summary — Key Facts
| Location | Abbeville, South Carolina |
|---|---|
| Date | December 8, 2003 |
| Primary Subjects | Arthur Bixby, Rita Bixby, Steven Bixby |
| Victims | Deputy Daniel Wilson, State Constable Donnie Ouzts |
| Catalyst | Highway 72 right-of-way and easement dispute |
| Arms Recovered | Nine firearms, including Deputy Wilson’s sidearm |
| Outcome | Two officers killed, Steven Bixby on death row, home demolished |
Pros & Cons — Lessons From The Case
- Pros: Clear look at how small disputes can escalate, useful study for law enforcement response and negotiation limits, reminder of evidentiary rigor.
- Cons: Tragic loss of life, radicalization through grievance, property-law confusion feeding violence.
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