September 14, 2003
Updated 9/19/07
The Attempted Assassination of
George Wallace
by
Denise Noe
(Editor's Note: Arthur Bremer is scheduled for release from prison by the end of
2007.)
"Send
them a message"
When Alabama Gov. George Wallace ran for the presidency in 1972,
he did not expect to win. His goal was summed up in the slogan he used to urge
his supporters to vote for him: "Send them a message!" The "them" referred to
was the Washington D.C. establishment that Wallace claimed had sold out white
working-class people to cater to racial minorities and a privileged liberal
elite. The flamboyant, folksy Wallace denounced school busing for integration,
courts he called soft on crime, and a tax system that he claimed bled the
average American without making the rich pay its fair share. He won many loyal,
even fanatical followers by claiming to champion the "taxi driver, little
businessman, beautician or barber or farmer" against the "pointy-headed
pseudo-intellectual."
The campaign was Wallace’s second bid for the presidency. He had
run four years previously on the American Independent Party (now called the
American Party) ticket but in 1972 he ran for the Democratic presidential
nomination. His candidacy was doing remarkably well, a development that
disheartened critics who thought his victories and strong showings in state
primaries were symptomatic of racism. They believed the "law and order" he
habitually called for was code for an anti-black agenda.
George Corley Wallace Jr. was born in 1919 in Clio, Ala., a
sleepy, impoverished, rural town in Barbour County where people typically went
barefoot in the summer, played dominoes, and enjoyed drinking on the weekends.
The Wallaces were not poor. As Stephan Lesher recounts in
his biography, George Wallace, American Populist, George C. Wallace Sr.
and his wife Mozelle prospered on a large farm despite George Sr. being plagued
by health problems. His first born son, George Jr., grew up closer to his
grandfather Oscar Wallace than to him. George Sr. and Mozelle would have three
other children but there was always a special bond between George Jr. and
Grandfather Wallace. Oscar was a physician and little George often accompanied
him on house calls. On these visits, the child saw the want and misery in which
so many of his neighbors lived. These sights made a strong impression but did
not blight his childhood. George was a playful and popular boy. In the third
grade, he got his first taste of politics when he ran for class president and
won. His victory was expected since, as the adult George Wallace Jr. wryly
recalled, he "ran without opposition – which is the best way to run."
The teenage Wallace was short, lean, feisty, and personable. A
natural leader, he organized a baseball league when he was 13 and was elected
captain of his football team at 17. He was high school bantamweight boxing
champion and boxed professionally to put himself through the University of
Alabama Law School.
During World War II, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. On May
22, 1943, the 25-year-old private married 16-year-old Lurleen Burns. She was a
slender, auburn-haired, soft-spoken young woman with a passion for fishing.
In the spring of 1945, Wallace was part of the crew of a B-29
named the Little Yutz that flew several dangerous missions against the
Japanese. His main job was to monitor fuel consumption on these 18-hour flights.
When he returned to civilian life in December 1945, Wallace was
the father of a baby girl named Bobbie Jo. He got a job as assistant attorney
general. The salary was meager but the position gave the ambitious young man an
opportunity to make the political contacts he would need in the future.
He decided to run for the state legislature. All of his earnings
went into his campaign so Lurleen, who was still not old enough to vote, went to
work as a clerk in the agriculture department. Wallace drove from house to
house, enthusiastically pressing the flesh and bonding with voters. He ran as
the candidate of the "little guy" and won by a big margin. Wallace served in the
state legislature from 1947 to 1953. Then he was elected state judge in 1953
when he 33.
In 1958, Wallace ran for governor of Alabama. By the standards
of the time, he was a racial moderate while his major opponent had the backing
of the Ku Klux Klan. Many sources quoted a disappointed Wallace as saying, "You
know why Patterson won? Because he out-segged me. And I ain’t never going to be
out-segged again." In some versions of this story, Wallace used the N-word
rather than "seg." Wallace always denied that he made that statement in either
version but his actions suggested that the sentiment was his.
In the 1963 governor’s race, he ran as a segregationist
firebrand. At his 1963 inauguration, he vowed, "Segregation now, segregation
tomorrow, and segregation forever!"
George Wallace catapulted into national fame – or infamy – later
that same year with a dramatic stand against integration. The U.S. Justice
Department ordered the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa to admit two young
blacks. The governor made his famous "stand in the schoolhouse door" to oppose
their entry.
"The unwelcome, unwanted, unwarranted, and force-induced
intrusion upon the campus of the University of Alabama today of the might of the
central government offers a frightful example of oppression of the rights,
privileges, and sovereignty of this state by officers of the federal
government," Wallace said.
The blacks enrolled despite his opposition. Wallace became a
hero to segregationists, an arch-villain to integrationists, and a household
name to Americans of all political persuasions.
In 1966 he was legally barred by Alabama's gubernatorial term
limits from seeking another term as governor. His wife Lurleen ran,
promising to "let George do it" if elected. She won but died in office of cancer
in 1968.
That same year, Wallace made his first bid for the presidency as
the candidate of the American Independent Party. Republican Richard Nixon
defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey. Wallace received almost 10 million votes and
carried five states in an extraordinarily strong showing for a third party
candidate in the United States. However, he failed to meet his goal of causing a
deadlock in the Electoral College so he could decide who the winner would be.
In 1970, he was again elected governor of Alabama. By now,
segregation had fallen out of fashion and he had moderated his rhetoric
accordingly. Law and order, state sovereignty, taking the tax burden off the
working and middle classes, and reining in the welfare state were his major
issues.
When Wallace ran for president two years later, he was an
energetic 52-year-old. Often the target of hecklers, he won accolades from his
sympathizers by pointing out the hypocrisy of those trying to boo him down:
"These are the so-called free-speech people."
On a sunny May 15, 1972, Wallace was speaking before a friendly
crowd of about 1,000 at a shopping center in Laurel, Md. There were few hecklers
in this group. The candidate spoke on a podium behind a bulletproof shield on
his familiar theme about the need to restore law and order and was greeted with
cheers and enthusiastic clapping. He usually wore a bulletproof vest under his
shirt but left it off because it was a hot, humid day. After speaking behind the
shield, the candidate wanted to press the flesh, an aspect of campaigning the
extroverted Wallace relished. He took off his suit jacket and rolled up his
sleeves to shake hands with people.
A blonde, smiling young man, wearing dark glasses and neatly
attired in red, white, and blue clothes with a Wallace button prominently
displayed on his jacket, made his way to the front of the crowd. He got close to
the candidate, then pulled a .38-caliber revolver out of his pocket and fired
five times. All five bullets hit Wallace. Some went through him to injure three
other people, two male security officers and a female spectator, as well.
The wounded governor fell backwards to the ground. His wife
Cornelia rushed to his side. She burst into tears and cradled her husband’s head
as his blood flowed onto her yellow suit jacket.
Bystanders Clyde Merryman and Ross Spiegel jumped on the
shooter, knocking the gun out of his hand and wrestling him to the ground. In
their fury, the two men slugged and kicked the would-be assassin. Then police
forced the bruised and bleeding attacker to a squad car.
Some Wallace supporters wept while others got into fistfights
with the few hecklers. Two physicians made their way through the confused crowd
to find the badly wounded governor gasping for breath.
An ambulance arrived and rushed Wallace to Holy Cross Hospital
in Silver Spring, Md. Cornelia rode in the ambulance with her husband, stroking
his head and comforting him as he asked in confusion, "Am I shot?" and said,
"I’m in pain." Realizing he was headed for surgery, he pled, "Make sure they
knock me out."
Doctors operated on Wallace for five hours. He had been shot in
both arms and in his stomach and intestines. The bullet that crashed into his
spine caused the most severe injury. It severed nerves that carry messages from
the lower body to the brain.
Wallace survived the assassination attempt but would be
paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. The other three people
shot recovered completely from their wounds.
Initial news reports invariably identified the 21-year-old man
who had tried to kill Wallace as "Arthur Bremer, white." The race of a suspect
is rarely mentioned in the United States when both victim and attacker are
Caucasian. However, Wallace’s reputation as a die-hard segregationist meant than
many people would have expected his shooter to be black.
Alone in the Crowd
The man who tried to assassinate George Wallace had been born in
Milwaukee on August 21, 1950. Arthur Bremer was the fourth of five children of
truck driver William Bremer and his homemaker wife Sylvia. He grew up in a
family in which chilly silences were broken by screaming rows. Affection was
rarely, if ever, expressed. This was not surprising, considering the sad
background of Sylvia Bremer.
Sylvia’s own mother had abandoned her when she was a child. The
girl spent several years in an orphanage. In that gray, regimented institutional
environment, Sylvia knew little of appreciation, acceptance or security. She
grew into a tense, brittle adult with little ability to express affection. She
may have married the uncommunicative William Bremer because he was steady and
dependable. But once wed, she was sorely disappointed by the lack of emotional
intimacy in her marriage.
The one-paycheck family of seven was financially troubled and
William soothed his tensions with drink. Booze exacerbated his tendency toward
withdrawal, a tendency that frustrated Sylvia and led her to lash out, causing
many noisy arguments in the household. Sometimes an infuriated Sylvia would lock
her husband out of the house. At other times, she got back at him by refusing to
cook meals.
In raising her own children, the affection-deprived Sylvia
carefully went through the routines of feeding, diapering, and clothing them.
She wanted to impress acquaintances that she was a "good mother" but was too
emotionally stunted to cuddle, coo, and talk with her children. Her maternal
methods were rigid. For example, she toilet trained young Arthur by putting him
on a toilet every half-hour.
The childhood of Arthur Bremer parallels that of another
would-be assassin Bremer would indirectly inspire: John Hinckley Jr. Hinckley
was born into very different financial circumstances: his father was a
successful oilman. But his father, like Bremer’s, was an emotionally
unexpressive man who was especially distant from his son. Hinckley Sr. was often
away from the family on business trips so the raising of the children was left
to his wife, homemaker JoAnn Hinckley.
JoAnn’s personality was sadly similar to that of Sylvia Bremer.
Writing in On Being Mad or Merely Angry, James W. Clarke describes her as
"an anxious, frequently intimidated woman who . . . appeared to cling too
closely, too long, to her baby son."
As a small child, Arthur was not a behavior problem but an
obedient boy. Like his parents, he was shy. He seemed to be developmentally
delayed since he did not speak until he was 4 years old. However, when he
entered school, teachers believed him to be slightly above average in
intelligence although his grades were never better than mediocre.
School was an ordeal for Bremer. Tongue-tied and self-conscious,
he could not make friends. Other children did not invite him into playground
games, choosing instead to either ignore or taunt him. His expression began
being distorted by the perpetual smile that would one day become infamous and,
according to Thomas Healey in The Two Deaths of George Wallace, his
schoolmates "bestowed on him the hated nickname ‘Clown.’" In a diary he wrote,
"No English or history test was ever as hard, no math final exam ever as
difficult as waiting in a school lunch line alone, waiting to eat alone . . .
while hundreds huddled & gossiped and roared, & laughed and stared at me . . ."
His loveless and tension-racked home offered no relief, but fantasy did as
Bremer wrote in a school essay that he often pretended he "was living with a
television family and there was no yelling at home and no one hit me."
Fantasies of suicide preoccupied Bremer when he was about 9
years old. He often imagined lying down across the railroad tracks near his
home, waiting until a train crushed him and ended his misery. The one bright
spot in his life was the neighborhood church that he enjoyed attending. He
contemplated entering the priesthood when he grew up. When his family moved from
that neighborhood, he stopped going to church. Lacking the solace church had
afforded him, Bremer’s spirits sank even further. He failed the fifth grade.
Later, he made up his mind to commit suicide by 13, but did not attempt it.
Adolescence aggravated the shy boy’s problems and sharpened his
pain. Despite his obvious problems, he was not the type of youth who attracted
adult concern. He was not rebellious and did not talk back to teachers. He did
not drink or drive recklessly. He took no drugs, possibly because he had no
friends who would offer him any. He was the type of withdrawn teenager who is in
deep emotional trouble but whose problems are easily overlooked because they do
not involve the active sorts of transgressions authority figures focus on. He
was not doing "bad" things. The problem was that he was not doing much of
anything.
The withdrawn teenager went out for football early in high
school. Healey records, "He made the third-string team, but his mother, afraid
he’d be hurt, forced him to quit." Here again is another parallel with Hinckley
who played football for a year, then gave it up.
Bremer’s hormones were active and he craved female
companionship. But to get that companionship he had to cross that classic male
hurdle of asking a girl out on a date and risking rejection and embarrassment.
Like many socially unskilled and insecure teenage boys, Bremer could not bring
himself to take that risk. The blonde-haired, bespectacled youth must have
frequently made small talk in high school hallways, desperately trying to read
the girl’s expression, hoping against hope that she "liked" him in that special
way, telling himself to ask her out, then cursing himself for his lack of
nerve.
Like Hinckley, Bremer never had a date in high school. Instead,
the solitary teenager spent his free time collecting sex comics and fantasizing
about the raw, acrobatic sex pictured in the magazines.
Bremer’s rigidly repressed parents never explained the facts of
life to him. His mother told him that she believed his frequent headaches were
brought on by "the oppressive odors of menstruating girls" at his high school.
In a passive-aggressive move against his domineering mother, who
was still inspecting his bed sheets and choosing his clothes when he was in high
school, Bremer left erotic comic books open in his room where she was certain to
find them. The offended Sylvia loudly chastised her son for possessing such
magazines, and he yelled back at her. Despite the evidence of her son’s sexual
interest, Sylvia clung to the belief that he was "clean" which, in her terms,
meant he never masturbated. She ignored the long periods he spent in the
bathroom. Bremer also criticized his mother’s cooking and fought with his father
over which television programs to watch.
Bremer found himself at loose ends as a young adult. Having no
specific career goals, he floundered through a series of low-paying jobs. He
decided he wanted to become a writer and enrolled at Milwaukee Technical College
as an English major. According to both Clarke and Healey, he showed up for
classes intermittently, made little impression on either teachers or peers and
turned in slipshod work. He dropped out.
About a year later, he again enrolled, this time as a
photography major. The pattern of indifferent work and poor attendance repeated
itself, as did his dropping out.
He suffered a searing humiliation in October 1971. Bremer worked
as a busboy at the Milwaukee Athletic Club. (Hinckley would also work busing
tables.) As Bremer wheeled his tray around, taking up dirty dishes and cups
along with soiled napkins, he often mumbled to himself. Patrons complained of
the distraction and he was demoted from that humble job to kitchen help. Bremer
filed a discrimination complaint. The investigator called it unjustified and
suggested psychiatric help for the complainant. An outraged Bremer refused such
assistance.
In November 1971, Bremer was a janitor in an elementary school
where he met, and was attracted to, a 15-year-old hall monitor. She was freckled
and pretty. Like Bremer, she was also blonde and wore glasses. The two of them
flirted until he was finally able to make himself ask her out. Flattered that an
older man was paying attention to her, she agreed. Bremer’s spirits soared. Now
that he was 21 and finally dating, he moved out of his family home and got his
own apartment. His desire to leave the family nest may also have been triggered
by a fierce argument with William Bremer that had ended with the son hitting his
father.
Bremer’s mother visited him at his new place regularly, often
calling at night to see if he was there. Her son thought she was continually
checking up on him. It was as if she feared the possibility that her son might
have a sexual relationship and wanted to make sure there was no "other woman" in
his life. Bremer desperately wanted there to be an "other woman." He was sick of
being a mama’s boy.
Knowing little of girls and women in the real world, Bremer
tried to arouse his teenage girlfriend with the sort of thing that excited
females in the crude sex magazines that constituted his sex miseducation.
On his first date, he displayed pornographic pictures to the 15-year-old and
made graphic sex talk. On another outing, he took her and a few of her friends
to a Blood, Sweat, and Tears concert. Trying to act the suave lothario, he
pressed a kiss on a woman who was not in their group. She promptly reported his
action to a police officer who let Bremer off with a warning. Bremer foolishly
attempted to impress his date by dramatically dancing in his seat and clapping
when no one else was clapping. After the concert, Bremer excitedly whispered to
her that his genitals were extraordinarily large and told her he was so aroused
he could hardly walk.
Repulsed by his crudity, the 15-year-old broke off the
relationship after their third date.
The janitor was devastated. He repeatedly phoned her, begging
her to see him again but the girl flatly refused. He wracked his brain for a way
to communicate the depth of his pain at her rejection. Then he shaved his head
"to show her that inside I felt as empty as my shaved head." Catching up with
her, he pulled off his knit cap and showed her his bald pate. She walked away
from him without speaking.
His shaven head caused him another embarrassment. On Jan. 15,
1972, the school at which he worked had a dance. Bremer was on hand to help
clean up. Some of his ex-girlfriend’s friends visited the place to have a look
at his baldness. They got there when the lights were out. The lights went on,
the girls saw Bremer’s head and burst out laughing at him.
Nursing dreams of wrecking havoc on a world that seemed set
against him, Bremer went to Casanova Guns and purchased two handguns, a .38
caliber pistol and a 9-mm Browning automatic. He suffered yet another defeat
while target practicing when he shot holes in the ceiling. Soon afterward, a
police officer discovered Bremer asleep in his car with bullets strewn around
him. He was arrested for disorderly conduct and charged a small fine.
Bremer’s Murderous Role Models
Contemplating suicide and murder, he started reading extensively
about U.S. assassins.
During his diligent research, he must have learned that American
assassins differ markedly from those in other parts of the world. As Patricia D.
Netzley notes in her study, Presidential Assassins, assassins in the
United States are unlikely to strike at low level officials but aim for the
president, presidential candidates, and others of great stature. U.S. assassins
are rarely members of terrorist groups with clearly defined political goals.
The characteristics common to American assassins have led many
students of the subject to conclude that they are usually, or always, psychotic.
Netzley elaborates that "the most striking feature of those who attempt to
assassinate the president is their history of mental instability." She quotes
approvingly from scholars Albert Ellis and John M. Gullo who write that U.S.
assassins "almost always prove to be exceptionally deranged individuals." Ellis
and Gullo comment further that, "They generally have long histories of
emotionally aberrated behavior; they often suffer specific life crises just
before they kill; and they murder in a senseless manner as far as their
political beliefs and aspirations are concerned."
James W. Clarke is closer to the truth when he writes that
different assassins attack for profoundly different reasons – including rational
political motives. Clarke believes that America’s assassins fall into four
roughly defined groups.
The groups he calls "Type I" operate out of deeply held
political convictions. They are neither neurotic nor psychotic and often enjoy
healthy relationships with family and friends. John Wilkes Booth, who killed
Abraham Lincoln to avenge the South’s defeat, is representative of this group.
Assassins he labels "Type II" have "aggressive, egocentric needs
for acceptance, recognition and status." Deprived of success in any major area
of their lives, they project their personal frustrations onto political causes
and figures. They have unstable relationships. President John F. Kennedy’s
assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, is the best example of this group.
Clarke fits Arthur Bremer into "Type III." This group could
easily be described as "Type II only more so." Clarke describes them as feeling
"that the condition of their lives is so intolerably meaningless and without
purpose that the destruction of society and themselves is desirable for its own
sake." While Type II killers have at least a superficial political commitment,
Type III care nothing about social causes. They cannot form relationships with
others.
"Type IV" in Clarke’s typology are those assassins who suffer
from genuine psychosis, the deluded, hallucinating "crazy" like Richard Lawrence
who unsuccessfully tried to assassinate President Andrew Jackson. Lawrence
believed he was the king of England and Jackson was blocking him from his
throne.
Although Clarke is correct in concluding that assassins differ
radically from each other, it is striking that the closer they are to what we
have come to think of as a typically disturbed assassin, the more they resemble
Arthur Bremer. Netzley quotes "assassination expert John Douglas" as
"summarizing the assassin profile" by describing "a white male in his 20s – who
does not feel good about himself and never has. In some way, he sees the violent
act as the solution to his problem." Douglas also maintains that "the violent
act is the result of a deep-seated feeling of inadequacy on the part of the
assassin." This description fits Bremer.
After Bremer decided to target then-President Richard Nixon, he
confided to his diary, "Got to think up something cute to shout after I kill
him, like Booth did." Booth famously yelled "Sic semper tyrannis!" (Latin for
"Thus always to tyrants!) after shooting Lincoln.
As Bremer wrote, "Ask me why I did it & I’d say ‘I don’t know,’
or ‘nothing else to do,’ or ‘Why not?’ or ‘I have to kill somebody.’"
After reading Aziz Shihab’s Sirhan, Bremer phoned the
author and asked if Shihab believed a murderer was justified "if his love fails,
or his girlfriend jilts him." Shihab said he did not and an angry Bremer hung up
on him.
Plotting suicide and mass murder
A depressed and increasingly agitated Bremer decided to kill
himself. He wanted to commit suicide in a way that would maximize the shock to
bystanders. He took a blue felt marker and wrote "KILLER" in capital letters
across his forehead. He wrapped a noose around his neck. As James Clarke tells
it in American Assassins, "His plan was to tie the rope to the railing of
a busy midtown bridge, then shoot himself while perched on the rail so that he
would drop to hang as a grisly spectacle for passing commuters." He pulled a
knit cap over his forehead, buttoned his coat up so it concealed the noose, then
went to a Milwaukee diner.
Thomas Healey’s account of this incident varies from Clarke’s.
In Healey’s book, Bremer intended to make the title on his forehead a reality.
He planned to "take out his guns and shoot people indiscriminately. The last
bullet would be fired into his own head. Even if he somehow survived this shot,
he would still fall off the bridge and hang himself."
In both accounts, Bremer wanted to enjoy a last meal and visited
a diner where he got a friendly waitress. Bremer experienced the server’s kindly
eyes and friendly smile as surprise gifts.
Later, he was at the bridge about to put his plan into action
and the waitress, who had just finished her shift, happened by. She smiled at
the customer who had left her a generous tip. Bremer’s spirits got a boost and
he no longer wanted to die, at least not that night.
Like Hinckley, who would become obsessed with Taxi Driver,
a film Bremer inspired, Bremer was powerfully influenced by a movie. The film he
fixated on was A Clockwork Orange. He fantasized himself as the
sociopathic and sadistic Alek. According to James W. Clarke in On Being Mad
or Merely Angry, "After first considering a mass murder in his hometown,
Bremer decided that assassinating a prominent representative of that 'silent
majority' would be a more spectacular, more outrageously perverse act."
Bremer’s motivation of generalized rage, like that of John
Hinckley Jr. and perhaps Lee Harvey Oswald, had more in common with those
attributed to a subgroup of mass murderers than politically committed assassins
like Booth and Sirhan Sirhan.
It is important here to distinguish between serial killers and
mass murderers. Serial killers hunt human prey and are usually specific as to
characteristics such as gender, race, age, and other qualities of their victims.
Serial killers try to avoid being caught so they can kill again after a cooling
off period. Mass murderers kill a group of victims all at once and usually kill
themselves or are killed by police. While most mass murderers slaughter those
they know, either their families or people in their (often former) workplaces,
there are some who choose random targets.
Both Bremer and Hinckley considered mass murder. As well as the
planned slaughter-suicide derailed by a waitress’s smile, Bremer (according to
Clarke), thought of "hijacking an armored truck, parking it in a busy Milwaukee
intersection, and then shooting as many people as possible from its slit
windows." Hinckley mulled over the possibility of a mass murder at Yale, where
Jodie Foster was a student, or going into the U.S. Senate chamber and shooting
as many people as he could.
There are at least two mass murderers who probably toyed with
the possibility of assassination. James Huberty killed 21 people at a California
McDonald’s in 1984. His widow said Huberty blamed President Jimmy Carter for his
unemployment and business reversals and she believed he wanted to kill Carter.
Mark Jimmy Essex, who shot six people to death from a roof in New Orleans had
plastered his room with anti-Nixon slogans.
Arthur Bremer settled on assassination. He started a diary in
March 1972. Riddled with spelling errors, the document opens a window into a
tragically disturbed and dangerous mind. The first entry reads, "Now I start my
diary of my personal plot to kill by pistol either Richard Nixon or George
Wallace." His purpose was apolitical: "to do SOMETHING BOLD AND DRAMATIC,
FORCEFULL & DYNAMIC, A STATEMENT of my manhood for the world to see." He latched
onto these two men because they seemed to represent the "middle America" that
had rejected him. In these writings he debates whether he should murder Nixon or
Wallace. He observed that the former target was a bigger one but the latter
would be easier to get.
He decided to kill Nixon.
Nixon was scheduled to make an appearance in Ottawa, Canada and
Bremer planned to shoot him there. Before he left for his trip to Ottawa, Bremer
buried his diary in a landfill.
It would remain there until 1980 when a construction worker
named Sherman Griffin happened upon a cheap briefcase as he was running a grader
through the landfill. As Healey writes, "He didn’t think too much about it at
first. Lost or discarded objects, the detritus of people’s lives, were
frequently uncovered during excavations." However, "something about the
briefcase held his attention. Throughout the day, he kept looking back at it."
He finally had to open it up. Inside it he found a school composition book that
had been "tightly wrapped with protective aluminum foil and bound with masking
tape."
Griffin opened the book and was stunned to read, "Now I start my
diary of my personal plot to kill by pistol either Richard Nixon or George
Wallace."
Soon after Bremer chucked the first part of his diary, he
started the new one that would be published in 1973 as An Assassin’s Diary.
Then he flew to New York and engaged in a series of sordid
misadventures. He was unable to rent a car. Wanting to divest himself of his
virginity, he made a trip to a massage parlor but did not have enough money to
get the masseuse to do more than fondle him. Back in his New York hotel room,
his Browning .38 automatic went off accidentally. The next day, he slipped the
gun under a mat in the trunk of his car, then put the automatic so deeply down
the right wheel well that he could not fish it back out again.
Bremer had a sense of humor. He wrote in his diary that when the
Canadian customs inspector asked if he had anything to declare, he planned to
say, "I declare it’s a nice day." When actually asked the question at customs,
he lost the nerve to be "cute" and simply replied, "What should I declare?"
Finally, he got to Ottawa and the Nixon rallies. He could never
get close to his target. He was upset that anti-Nixon demonstrators got all of
the media attention while he was ignored. Writing in his second diary of a
photographer at the rally who focused on the protestors, Bremer remarked, "What
a dope! Those noisemakers were all on news film! He should of photographed the
quiet ones." This observation may be significant beyond what it said about a
photographer. Bremer had always been one of "the quiet ones" – and always
ignored. As a shy, introverted child, he had been left to fend for himself
between rejecting schoolmates and a chilly home. When he was a quiet teenager,
adult attention had focused on the noisy, doping party crowd. As a man, he was
trapped in silence by his lack of social skills. Gunfire would break that
silence
Frustrated by his failure to assassinate Nixon, Bremer again
turned to his diary. In it, he indicated that he did not expect to survive his
victim’s death. "I was supposed to be Dead a week & a day ago," he wrote, "Or at
least infamous." He added that he believed his diary would be examined as
closely as the Dead Sea Scrolls once he took his victim down.
He considered assassinating George McGovern but decided the
liberal candidate who represented hippies, minorities, and anti-war protestors
was too marginal of a figure.
Bremer wrote that Wallace would "have the honor" of being his
victim and began stalking the governor. He also decided on a "cute" declaration
to shout when he gunned down the candidate. It was, "A penny for your thoughts."
He fretted that his second-choice victim would not bestow on him
the infamy he craved. The assassination would lack the greatest impact if
Wallace’s most liberal rival for the Democratic presidential nomination gained
popularity. "The whole country’s going liberal," a distressed Bremer wrote in
his diary. "I can see it in McGovern. You know my biggest failure may be when I
kill Wallace."
Bremer concluded that killing the right-wing Wallace would still
be his statement against the society that rejected him. Again, the theme of
breaking the silence showed up in his diary. Just before the shooting, he wrote:
"Hey world! Come here! I wanna talk to ya! If I don’t kill – if I don’t kill
myself I want you to pay through the nose, ears, & belly button. . . when I kill
Wallace, I hope everyone screams & hollers and everything!! I hope the rally
goes mad!!! The silent majority will be my benefactor in the biggest hijack
ever!"
On May 15, Wallace spoke at a rally in Wheaton, Md. There were
many hecklers in the audience shouting "remember Selma!" and "Hitler for
vice-president!" along with various obscenities. Wallace coolly commented that
he thought well-educated young people would have a better vocabulary. The
hecklers did not stop at taunts but tried to pelt the governor with a variety of
missiles including rocks and tomatoes. None of them hit the target and Wallace
told a tomato thrower that a baseball team might want to get him to pitch for an
opposing team.
One of the people in that crowd who threw neither epithets nor
tomatoes was Bremer. Ever smiling, the neat young man with the Wallace button
conspicuously on his lapel applauded the candidate strongly and often. He told a
Secret Service agent that he wished the candidate would come down to shake hands
with him.
Bremer would be at the next rally that afternoon in Laurel. The
man who felt smothered by a lifelong silence broke that silence with an
explosion of gunfire. After he shot Wallace, he forgot to say his "cute" phrase,
"A penny for your thoughts."
Court Trial, Life Trial
At trial, Bremer pled not guilty by reason of insanity. Shortly
after his arrest, several psychiatrists and psychologists examined him. They
found him to be of slightly above average intelligence and to have no delusions
in the classic sense of hearing voices and seeing visions. No doctor could find
evidence of organic brain damage. His most bizarre responses were to the
Rorschach tests. These famous tests involve 10 inkblots. The person being tested
is asked to describe what he or she sees the blots as representing. Bremer’s
responses were abnormal for the sheer number of them. The average subject gives
between 20 and 45 interpretations; he gave over 800 interpretations in his first
test and 500 in his second.
Bremer’s trial was swift. It started less than three months
after he shot Wallace. Judge Ralph Powers presided and moved things along at a
fast clip. The trial ended after only five days.
Defense attorney Benjamin Lipsitz argued passionately that his
client was sick and could not be held responsible for his actions. He was,
Lipsitz asserted, "a schizophrenic . . . a psychotic . . . sick from the day he
was born, maybe even before he was born."
State’s Attorney Arthur Marshall Jr. countered that the
defendant’s planning and foresight showed he was sane.
Eight psychiatrists and two psychologists testified. They were
evenly divided between witnesses for the prosecution and those for the defense.
During the trial, the defendant usually showed little emotion
but often smiled the same eerily fixed smile that had been captured in so many
photographs. On at least one occasion the testimony about his sad life broke the
giddy façade and, according to Healey, the defendant "was reduced to convulsive
sobbing."
Lipsitz read Bremer’s diary into the record in an effort to
support his client's plea. Most observers believed the diary did not show he was
insane although its writer was obviously disturbed, full of hate and feelings of
intense humiliation, self-rejection, and a generalized misanthropy. On at least
one occasion, Bremer was able to act morally. He had a chance to shoot Wallace
but did not take it because it would have meant seriously injuring two
teenagers.
The jury convicted Bremer, convinced that he understood the
illegality of his actions and their possible consequences in his own death or
imprisonment.
Before sentencing, the judge asked the defendant if he had
anything to say. Bremer replied, "Well, Mr. Marshall [the prosecutor] mentioned
that he would like society to be protected from someone like me. Looking back on
my life I would have liked it if society had protected me from myself. That’s
all I have to say at this time."
The judge sentenced Bremer to 53 years in the Maryland State
Penitentiary. He had intended to die in a hail of bullets as he killed a
representative of the "Silent Majority." He thought such evil glory would redeem
his life of petty failures. He did not kill Wallace nor did he get killed.
Instead, he added more failure to his lengthy record of bumbles.
The shooting ended neither Wallace’s life nor his political
career. But the bullets that tore into him sentenced him to a life in pain and
paralysis.
For the next six presidential primaries of 1972, Wallace was
hospitalized and unable to campaign, an absence that undoubtedly cut into the
strength of his showing. He finished third behind the Democrat nominee McGovern
and former Vice President Humphrey.
Although Wallace was still in terrible pain, he wanted to attend
the Democratic convention and did. The candidate addressed the convention from a
wheelchair. Many delegates stood to applaud the courageous candidate. He spoke
for nine minutes, telling the convention that the Democratic Party must "become
what it used to be – the party of the average working man" and urged tax relief
for the middle and working classes.
The Democrats nominated the anti-war, liberal McGovern who was
Wallace’s political polar opposite. In the general election, Republican
President Nixon trounced McGovern in a record-breaking landslide.
Wallace sought reelection as governor in 1974. A change in the
law permitted incumbents to succeed themselves so he did not need a stand-in as
he had when Lurleen ran for the office in his place. The governor was determined
to attract black support. Critics wondered if that would be possible given how
long his name had been linked to racism.
Exactly a decade after his famous "stand in the schoolhouse
door," the students of the University of Alabama elected a black coed as their
homecoming queen. Wallace went to the college to crown her. He appointed several
blacks to state positions and energetically reached out to black groups,
speaking to many.
It surprised some observers that blacks were receptive to his
overtures. A conference of black mayors gave him a standing ovation. Several
black officials and groups endorsed him.
Wallace easily won reelection with 64 percent of the total votes
cast and 25 percent of the black vote.
In 1976, Wallace ran again for the presidency on the Democratic
ticket. He did not do well. Part of his appeal had been his physical vigor and
the shooting had stolen that. Perhaps more importantly, Georgia’s Jimmy Carter
was running and the South saw a chance to send a president to Washington instead
of just a message. Carter won the nomination and went on to win the presidency,
ousting President Gerald Ford who had served out the remaining portion of
Nixon's term.
For Wallace, woes on the home front followed this political
failure. Tensions grew between him and his wife Cornelia. Both suspected the
other of infidelity. Cornelia moved out of the governor’s mansion in June 1977.
They were divorced in January 1978.
Wallace’s term ended in 1979; he did not seek reelection. He
lectured at the University of Alabama and elsewhere. He also apologized to
blacks for his segregationist past. He made that apology at the Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church in Montgomery from which Martin Luther King Jr. had preached when
leading the civil rights movement. Wallace spoke to the congregation from his
wheelchair and claimed his disability had led to a change of heart. "I have
learned what suffering means," he told them, "in a way that was impossible
before. I think I can understand something of the pain that black people have
come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask for your
forgiveness."
The disabled man also publicly forgave Arthur Bremer. He also
said he was not obsessed by his attacker but "I rarely think about Arthur Bremer
except when people ask me about him."
Wallace remarried in 1981. His bride was 32-year-old Lisa
Taylor, a pretty woman who had been a singer at some of his rallies.
Pining for the political life, Wallace ran for the Democratic
nomination for governor in 1982 against incumbent Lt. Gov. George McMillan.
Wallace spoke to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and on Alabama
television to repeat his apology for having acted against black interests. He
won the Democratic nomination with the help of about a third of the party’s
black voters.
His Republican opponent in the general election was Montgomery
Mayor Emory Folmer, a candidate widely perceived as pro-wealth and anti-working
class. Wallace beat him easily with 60 percent of the total vote and virtually
all the black vote.
Soon after his election, Lisa left him. She had never enjoyed
the political life with its never ending round of public functions.
It was the final term he would serve. His health deteriorated
while he was in office and he retired from politics in 1987. Wallace died of
respiratory failure and cardiac arrest on Sept. 13, 1998.
By the end of his life, the segregationist firebrand had become
a symbol of racial reconciliation. John Lewis, a black congressional
representative from Georgia who grew up in Alabama, wrote in The New York
Times shortly after Wallace’s death, "With all his failings, Mr. Wallace
deserves recognition for seeking redemption for his mistakes, for his
willingness to change and to set things right with those he harmed and with his
God."
Life into Art into Life
Writer Paul Schrader was intrigued by the sad, ugly story of
Arthur Bremer. This apolitical assassin inspired his script for the movie
Taxi Driver. Directed by Martin Scorcese, this fascinating film contained
many parallels to the life of Arthur Bremer. Its anti-hero, Travis Bickle
(Robert De Niro), is a bitter loner. Like the original, the socially inept
Bickle tries to impress a woman (Cybill Shepherd) on the first date by showing
her pornography. She is not a teenager but an adult named Betsy who works for a
politician. She is utterly turned off just as Bremer’s date was and ends the
relationship. Again like Bremer, Bickle futilely attempts to renew the
relationship. He also shaves his head, arms himself, and stalks a political
candidate. The film departs from its inspiration in some major respects. Bickle
forms a relationship with Iris (Jodie Foster), a 12-year-old prostitute and ends
up murdering a group of people instead of shooting a politician. Finally, Bickle
gets away with the slayings, being mistaken for a hero because his targets are
involved in pimping and pandering.
Taxi Driver was a masterfully made and popular film. One of
its most devoted fans was a psychologically unbalanced young man named John
Hinckley. He watched it at least 15 times with an increasing identification with
its lonely, homicidal protagonist, and a growing fixation on Jodie Foster.
Hinckley invented a girlfriend modeled on Betsy and tried to pursue a
relationship with Foster. Foster, then attending Yale University,
rebuffed him. Finally, Hinckley armed himself, then attempted to assassinate
President Ronald Reagan outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. Like
Bremer, Hinckley failed to kill his intended target. Reagan fully recovered from
the life-threatening gunshot wound he sustained. Hinckley’s bullets, like
Bremer's, left a victim paralyzed for life, in this case presidential press
secretary James Brady.
Hinckley’s connection with Bremer went beyond the fiction
inspired by him. Hinckley read Bremer’s published diary and easily identified
with the man behind the character. The two were from very different
socioeconomic backgrounds but had much in common. As noted, they were both
reared by tense mothers who may have been overly involved in their sons’ lives,
thus not permitting them to really grow up. They were both outwardly passive
personalities, loners who failed to establish romances, had academic records of
underachievement, and intermittent work histories at menial jobs. Indeed, both
had worked at the identical occupation of busboy. Both were alienated from their
families and from people in general. They had no significant others, at least in
reality, and no friends.
Both pled not guilty by reason of insanity. And there their
stories diverge for Hinckley’s defense, unlike Bremer’s, was successful. Many
public officials and commentators harshly criticized Hinckley's jury for its
verdict. It is possible that Hinckley was far more seriously ill than Bremer and
both juries came to correct conclusions. It is also possible that Hinckley
benefited from the fact that his affluent parents were able to afford better
legal representation for their son than Bremer received.
Hinckley remains, as of this writing, confined at St.
Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C.
Although all of Bremer's requests for parole were denied
over the years and he was sentenced to 53 years, he will be freed in late 2007.
Following prison rules has enabled him to cut 18 years off his originally
scheduled release date of 2025. Instead of at age 75, Bremer will leave prison
as a 57-year-old.
According to an Associated Press article by Ben Nuckols
that was published in ABC News, "Bremer has shaved nearly two decades off
his 53-year sentence with good behavior and by working jobs in prison." The
article continues that he is a clerk at the medium security Maryland
Correctional Institute-Hagerstown where he has been confined since 1979. The
article discloses that "he's scheduled to be released in mid-December [of 2007]
and could get out even sooner."
During a parole hearing, Bremer explained why he has never granted an interview
during his 35 years of incarceration. "I shy away from publicity," he stated.
"There's nothing I could say, and if I did say something, it could be
interpreted in the worst possible way against me."
Nuckols quotes Ruth Ogle, program manager for the Maryland Parole Commission,
describing Bremer's conduct behind bars as exemplary. "He was a model inmate,"
she commented. "He never had an infraction the entire time he was incarcerated."
However, neither has Bremer expressed remorse for the shooting that left his
victim permanently paralyzed and in pain. Indeed, according to an Associated
Press article by Jay Reeves that was published in U. S. News, this
attempted assassin, whose motives are known to have been profoundly apolitical,
wrote a letter in 1997 to parole officials in which he seemed to suggest that
Wallace's politics mitigated against the seriousness of Bremer's crime. Bremer
asked for early release on the grounds that "segregationist dinosaurs" are
different from other politicians. Bremer wrote, "They are extinct, not
endangered, by an act of God."
Nuckols's article quotes Wallace's son, George Wallace Jr., as stating, "I've
forgiven Arthur Bremer and my family has, so I think God's law has been adhered
to, and we're comfortable with that." Nonetheless, the younger Wallace cautioned
against investing any disproportionate sympathy to this criminal: "I don't
believe that given the suffering my father endured all those years from the
gunshots and the constant paralysis, I don't think Arthur Bremer's incarceration
comes close to that type of suffering."
Reeves reported that the Alabama attorney general's office announced that "it
would like to block the early release" of Bremer. Reeves continued, "Maryland
parole official Ruth Ogle said there was nothing Alabama officials could do
about Bremer because Maryland law allows inmates to reduce their prison terms
with good behavior."
Nuckols wrote, "Bremer's plans for life outside prison
were unclear. Maj. Priscilla Doggett, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Division of
Correction, said inmates are required to indicate where they plan to live after
their release. Any money they've made from prison jobs is paid in a check, and
they're given at least $50 in cash."
Bibliography
Gribben, Mark,
"James Earl Ray: The Man Who Killed Martin Luther King",
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Wessel, Rhea,
"Forgiveness and Repentence", The Anniston Star.
Who2, "The Taxi
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World Book Online, "Assassination" and "Wallace, George Corley".
PBS,
"Portrait of an Assassin: Arthur Bremer".
CNN,
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Grieder, William,
"Wallace Is Shot, Legs Paralyzed: Suspect Seized at Laurel
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Newsweek, August 14, 1972, "Guilty – and Sane."
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