Arthur Bremer
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Arthur Herman Bremer (born August 21 1950), the son of a Milwaukee truck driver, shot US Democratic presidential candidate George Wallace on May 15, 1972 in Laurel, Maryland, leaving him paralyzed for life.
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[edit] Background
Arthur Bremer was the fourth of five children of truck driver William Bremer and his homemaker wife Sylvia. He grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in a working-class household. It was a family in which chilly silences were broken by screaming rows. 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. Arthur was closer to his father, who tried in his own way to be a good parent, by taking his children to parades and once to a vacation on a lake. His relations with both parents were distant though.
Arthur seemed developmentally delayed as he did not speak until he was four 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 itself was an ordeal. 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. In a diary Bremer 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 . . .".
Bremer also wrote "No one ever noticed me nor took interest in me as an individual with the need to receive or give love. In junior high school, I was an object of pure ridicule for my dress, withdrawal, and asocial manner. Dozens of times, I saw individuals laugh and smile more in ten to fifteen minutes than I did in all my life up to then".
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 him from when he was about nine years old. He often imagined lying down across the railroad tracks near his home and waiting until a train crushed him and thus ending 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.
Despite his obvious problems, he was not the type of youth who attracted concern. He was not rebellious and did not talk back to teachers. He did not drink recklessly. He took no drugs, possibly because he had no friends who would offer him any. He was the type of withdrawn teenager who was in deep emotional trouble but whose problems are easily overlooked because they do not involve the active sorts of transgressions authority figures focus on. Variously described as "strange" and "withdrawn", Bremer had no close friends and rarely, if ever, acknowledged neighbors' greetings.
Despite his toubles, Bremer graduated from high school in November 1968.
From 1969 Bremer worked as a busboy at the Men's Grill in the Milwaukee Athletic Club and also added an additional $2.70 an hour job as a janitor at Story Elementary School in the fall of 1970. At the time he obtained his second job, he also studied photography at the Milwaukee Area Technical College. However, after registering for the spring 1971 semester at MATC, Bremer dropped out and then moved out of his parents' home that October, after a fall-out with his father.
At the Athletic club, Bremer was described as "a very good worker, very dependable" but one waitress said he was as "weird as hell". However, just after moving out, he was demoted to kitchen work at the Athletic Club after patrons complained of such idiosycracies as his habit of mumbling to himself, talking to himself, his whistling and his marching in time to music being played in the dining room. Unhappy with this demotion, he filed a complaint with the Milwaukee Community Relations Commission which found Bremer was bordering on paranoia.
Residents of the apartment building at 2433 West Michigan Street to which Bremer moved noted that he always had the same wardrobe: blue suit, white shirt and gray tie. In the furnished third-floor apartment that rented for $137.50 per month, residents stated that he had no visitors other than his mother. He saw no member of his family from just after Christmas 1971 up to when he shot Wallace.
In one instance during a snowstorm in the winter of 1971/1972, Bremer chose to drive his car back and forth over the fallen snow, instead of shoveling it like everyone else.
[edit] Previous arrest
Bremer was arrested on November 18, 1971 after being stopped for carrying a concealed weapon. After undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, he was fined for disorderly conduct in December 1971. Despite this, Bremer was able to purchase a Charter Arms .38 caliber pistol on January 13, 1972 from Casanova Guns, Inc. He bought the gun the day after George Wallace announced his second run for the Presidency.
[edit] Romantic relationship
While working his janitor job, Bremer met Joan Pemrich, a 16-year old hall monitor. Despite the seeming impropriety of his feelings and Bremer's inappropriate behavior, the couple went out on three dates.
On their dates, Pemrich found Bremer's behavior odd and weird. 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 Pemrich and made graphic sex talk. He said he could help Pemrich with her hang-ups as he knew a lot about psychology.
Bremer's inappropriate behavior also showed itself at a Blood, Sweat and Tears concert. Trying to act the suave lothario and attempting to demonstrate his new man-about-town cool, Bremer pressed a kiss on a woman who was not in their group whilst queueing to get into the concert. The woman promptly reported his action to a police officer who let Bremer off with a warning. Bremer foolishly attempted to impress Pemrich and her friends by dramatically dancing in his seat and clapping when no one else was and swaying back and forth during the concert. After the concert finished, Bremer excitedly whispered to Pemrich that his genitals were extraordinarily large and told her that he was so aroused he could hardly walk.
After this, Pemrich dumped Bremer. He repeatedly phoned her, begging her to see him again but Pemrich flatly refused. He then shaved off all of his long hair "to show that inside I feel as empty as my shaved head". Catching up with her, he pulled off his knit cap and showed her his bald pate (only his sideburns remained.) Pemrich walked away from him without speaking.
The now bald head caused another embarrassment for Bremer. 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 bald shiny head and burst out laughing at him.
[edit] Planning an assassination
Bremer quit his janitor job on 16 February and would be unemployed from then onwards. Two weeks later, on March 1, 1972 he began his diary with the words, "It is my personal plan to assassinate by pistol either Richard Nixon or George Wallace". His purpose was "to do SOMETHING BOLD AND DRAMATIC, FORCEFULL & DYNAMIC, A STATEMENT of my manhood for the world to see."
Three weeks later, on 23 March, Bremer attended a Wallace rally at Milwaukee's Red Carpet Airport Inn. The main focus of Bremer's activities though was to assassinate President Nixon. In early April 1972 he traveled to Canada in the hope of doing exactly that. However, when Bremer reached Ottawa, security was tight and he feared that getting close to Nixon would be impossible. His fears were proved correct. Bremer was furious with a group of Vietnam war protestors as they were attracting attention that he felt was rightfully his. Bremer also felt unsure whether any bullets would go through the glass of Nixon's Limousine, so he didn't shoot. As a result, the president sped past totally unharmed.
Bremer returned to Milwaukee on 24 April and took a break from writing but on May 4 he decided that Wallace would have the "honor" of being his victim, even though his diaries never reflected the same enthusiasm as they did with regards to assassinating Nixon. Four days later Bremer left his Milwaukee apartment for what was to be the final time.
[edit] Events leading up to the shooting
In the week leading up to the assassination attempt, Bremer headed east in the 1967 blue Rambler he had purchased on September 14, 1971. On 9 May Bremer visited Wallace headquarters in Silver Spring Md. and offered to work on the campaign.
Bremer stopped in Kalamazoo, Michigan on May 13. That day Police briefly questioned him when they noticed that he had shown up five hours before Wallace's appearance and was sat in his car all that time. Saying he only wanted to get a good view, Bremer was released to attend the rally that evening, which passed off without any incident, though he had the chance to shoot his target but didn't because, according to his diary, he could have shattered some glass and blinded some "stupid 15-year-old kids" who stood nearby.
[edit] The shooting
Bremer turned up in Wheaton, Maryland, for a noon appearance by Wallace at a shopping-center rally on 15 May dressed in dark glasses, patriotic red, white and blue and wearing his new campaign button which said "WALLACE in '72". He strongly applauded everything Wallace said during the rally. At Wheaton, the crowd were hostile and several of those present heckled Wallace, who would mix with crowds if they were friendly and well behaved. On this occasion, Bremer wasn't presented with any opportunity to shoot Wallace.
At the time of the shooting, which took place at a second Wallace rally in Laurel shopping center, 16 miles away, the crowd were friendly and listened quietly to what Wallace said. There were no hecklers present. After his speech, Wallace shook hands with some of those present. At approximately 4:00 p.m. Bremer stuck his gun in Wallace's stomach and opened fire, emptying the weapon before he could be subdued. He hit Wallace four times and wounded three other people: Alabama State Trooper Captain E C Dothard (Wallace's personal bodyguard), Dora Thompson (a campaign volunteer) and Nick Zarvos (a Secret Service agent).
[edit] Aftermath
Bremer's apartment was searched. In it were found Wallace campaign buttons, a Confederate flag, boxes of shells, old high school themed pornographic magazines, Black Panther literature, a booklet entitled 101 Things To Do in Jail and various newspaper clippings, including one on the difficulty of providing security for campaigning politicians.
Police described Bremer's car as a "hotel on wheels." In it they found blankets, pillows, binoculars, a woman's umbrella, a tape recorder, a portable radio with police band, an electric shaver, photographic equipment, a 1972 copy of a Writer's Yearbook, two books on the assassination of Robert Kennedy entitled Sirhan and RFK Must Die, and a Browning 9-mm. semiautomatic pistol.
Bremer was well aware of the magnitude of his act. As he was being taken to jail after the shooting, he turned and asked, "How much do you think I'll get for my autobiography?".
During his subsequent trial in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, which was condensed to a 5-day morning to twilight event to accommodate presiding Judge Ralph W. Powers' upcoming vacation plans, the defense argued that Bremer was legally insane at the time of the shooting and that he had "no emotional capacity to understand anything", but the jury rejected this argument after the prosecution countered that he was perfectly sane. Arthur Marshall for the prosecution, told the court that Bremer, whilst obviously disturbed, had been seeking glory and was still sorry that Wallace had not died, saying, "he knew he would be arrested... He knew he would be on trial". The jury of six men and six women took just over an hour and a half to reach their verdict and Bremer was sentenced to 63 years in prison for the shooting. The sentence was reduced to 53 years after an appeal on 28 September.
Part of Bremer's diary was published in 1973 as An Assassin's Diary. In the book, he states that he was not particularly opposed to Wallace's political agenda, which was notable for his pro-segregationist stance, but that his primary motive was to become famous, and that he had also stalked President Richard Nixon. Among his comments, Bremer wrote, "Happiness is hearing George Wallace sing the National Anthem or having him arrested for a hit and run traffic accident", a reference to Wallace saying in 1968 that if any protestors laid down in the road to block traffic, he would run them over.
Despite the existence of many conspiracy theories, no one other than Bremer has ever been charged in connection with the shooting. One reason for talk of a conspiracy stemmed from the fact that Bremer's 1971 income tax return stated that he had earned only $1,611, bringing up the question of how Bremer paid for his travels while stalking Nixon and later Wallace. Another theory was based on the owner of Bremer's apartment building allowing reporters into the alleged assassin's apartment the night of the shooting. Some journalists were later seen leaving with items from Bremer's apartment.
Bremer would serve as the inspiration for the Travis Bickle character played by Robert DeNiro, in Taxi Driver (1976). That film would subsequently be termed as a motivating factor in John Hinckley, Jr.'s decision to shoot President Ronald Reagan.
Arthur Bremer is serving time at the Maryland Correctional Institution. If not paroled, he will be released in 2025 at the age of 75. With time off for good behavior, Bremer could be released in 2015, but according to 1997 parole records, psychological testing indicated releasing Bremer would be risky. He argued in his June 1996 hearing that "Shooting segregationist dinosaurs wasn't as bad as harming mainstream politicians".
Wallace forgave Bremer in August 1995. The former Alabama governor died in September 1998.
[edit] Trivia
- Bremer's apartment was three blocks away from the apartment where Jeffrey Dahmer killed many of his victims.
- Bremer had a carefully chosen catchphrase of "A Penny For Your Thoughts!", which he decided to yell as he shot Wallace. In the heat of the assassination attempt, however, he forgot to yell it.
- Peter Gabriel wrote a song, "Family Snapshot", based on "An Assassin's Diary."
[edit] External links
- "Wallace Is Shot, Legs Paralyzed; Suspect Siezed at Laurel Rally", William Greider, Washington Post, May 16, 1972
- "George Wallace's Appointment in Laurel", Time Magazine, May 29, 1972
- "Bremer case still a riddle because of Judge's haste" (abstract), Michael Olesker, Baltimore Sun, January 28, 1996pl:Arthur Bremer
