Claude Lafayette Dallas Jr. (born March 11, 1950) is an American felon convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the deaths of two game wardens in Idaho.

He graduated from Mount Gilead High School in 1967, then headed out west, hitchhiking most of the way across the United States, finally landing in Oregon where he earned a living as a ranch hand and trapper.

Out of contact with his family back east, he claimed to have been unaware of draft notices mailed to his parents' home ordering him to report for induction into the U.S. military during the Vietnam War.

[citation needed] Dallas was charged with the murder of two state game wardens on January 5, 1981 in remote Owyhee County in southwestern Idaho.

[4] He eluded capture for over fifteen months, until he was arrested in northern Nevada by FBI Special Agent Franz Nenzel and SWAT officer Dave Gillan on April 18, 1982, north of Winnemucca, after he was shot and wounded in the leg during a car chase and shootout.

Some within the region regarded him as a folk hero, defying the government by defending his right to live off the land; while others, shocked and disgusted, saw him simply as a coldblooded cop killer.

The Bureau of Land Management had leased the area known as Bull Basin to Don Carlin's 45 Ranch as wintering ground for its cattle.

They rode to a nearby Indian reservation to use the telephone and called Conservation Officer Bill Pogue of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, at home and registered a complaint about the sage-grouse poachers on their land, but not Claude Dallas.

During his murder trial, Dallas testified that while Elms was inside a tent containing poached bobcats, Pogue drew his weapon, although there was no evidence to support this claim.

Dallas was charged with two counts of first degree murder,[17] but the trial in Caldwell quickly shifted focus to the alleged aggressiveness of one of the victims, Officer Pogue.

[18] The issue did sway the jury to convict Dallas in October of lesser charges of voluntary manslaughter and of using a firearm in the commission of a crime.