FBI FILES: Billie Austin Bryant

Billie Austin Bryant

On November 3, 1969, at 9:30 a.m., Judge Gerhard Gesell told Billie Austin Bryant that he \”would die in jail, but at the time God so appoints.\” A jury in Washington, D.C., had found Bryant guilty of two counts of first degree murder in the brutal slaying of two FBI agents. The jury had been unable to agree on a sentence, and this responsibility was placed on the U.S. District Court judge.

On August 23, 1968, Bryant had escaped from the District of Columbia Department of Corrections Reformatory at Lorton, Virginia, by crashing an automobile through a chain link gate in a temporary fence. He had been working on the vehicle in the automobile shop.

Bryant had been sentenced on April 5, 1968 to serve 18 to 54 years in the custody of the attorney general after his conviction in the U.S. District Court, Washington, D.C., for bank robbery and assault. This conviction resulted from Bryant’s participation in approximately six Washington, D.C., area bank robberies.