I turned eighteen and went to prison. Robby Williamson got two years for car theft and we went together. We were both scared to death.
It was real lonely. First they threw us in a shower. It’s a real bizarre place. The guards were yelling. Doors were slamming and echoing all through the building. We got out of the shower and they dumped vinegar all over us, to get rid of bugs. You have to leave it on twenty-four hours. It’s all sticky and gooey and it mats in your hair. It was after dark by the time they took us to the cellblock. There’s five cells on each side, five guys to a cell. We walked through there and the guys behind the bars started whistling wolf calls at us. Oh no! I thought. I’d heard all this stuff about prison. It’s true. We’re going to get raped, I thought. We’re going to be beaten. We’ll get stabbed. We won’t ever get out. This is the end.
It was the end for four guys who got killed while I was there. Virginia State Prison in Richmond. It’s bad. We caught rats and mice for excitement. That’s how bad it was. We rolled up a religious pamphlet, tied strips torn from a sheet around it, propped up a cigar box with it and left bread underneath. We’d lie up in the bunk, watch the mice run under, yank out the pamphlet and the box would fall. We caught three and four at a time. We had a bunch of tobacco cans full of mice. A guard found them one day, took them to the shower and drowned them all. He threw them in a big tub and watched them swim until they couldn’t swim any more. They all died. I didn’t feel bad about it.
We took psychological tests almost every day to determine where we’d be transferred. We worried about whether we’d be shipped out to a road camp, a chain gang without chains; sent into the walls, the state prison itself; or whether we’d go to Southampton, a farm for first offenders. After about six weeks, they posted a list with our names on it. We were going to Southampton, the first offender farm.
The superintendent was Mr. McGraw, an old guy who loved that farm. It was the pride of his life. He called all the new guys, about twenty-five of us, into the television room and gave us a “Welcome to Southampton” speech, a lecture on what the farm was like, the food, general conditions, what to expect. Robby Williamson and I laughed while he was talking. We thought it was very funny that he would welcome us to his institution.
It was a real easy atmosphere. On weekends we’d squat on the grass between the cottages and get out in the window wells and play the guitar. Robby Williamson could really play a guitar. I used to just hang around and listen. My mother, stepfather, brother and sister came down from Richmond some weekends. I got to the point that I didn’t care whether they came or not. I took the farm so well it put their minds at ease. I didn’t like being in prison, but it was a nice place to do time.
I went home again on December 28, 1962. I’d served thirteen months. Mr. McGraw drove me to a bus stop. “Well,” he said, “what are you going to do now that you’re out?”
“I got a little brother out there,” I said. “I’d like to try to keep him out of places like this.” McGraw stared at me. That was an insult to him. He thought the farm was nice. He never grasped the idea that he was running a prison, not a boys’ camp.
My mother let me have her car that night. It was an old ’51 Ford, six-cylinder, standard shift, but it was wheels and I drove into Richmond, looking up the old gang. I picked up some of the guys and we went out racing and hot-rodding the car. I got home at four o’clock the next morning, drunk. My mother was just so glad to have me home she didn’t say anything. I drove into Richmond every night. We broke into a few places, being real careful not to get caught. It’s possible for a burglar not to get caught if he’s careful. I was hot-rodding my mother’s car, ripping it apart. She told me I couldn’t drive it anymore, then changed her mind and let me have it again. I was using her. She was drinking and fighting with my stepfather. Finally I didn’t want to go home anymore. I hated that house. I decided I was big enough and old enough to get out on my own. I decided I was not going to get in any more trouble. I’d find a girl and get married if it was the last thing I did.
I hung around a Phillips 66 station on Tull Street in Richmond. A big fat jolly guy who worked there gave me three or four dollars a day for helping out. One day this big fat guy, Joe Farmer, said, “By the way, Red, my daughter’s having a birthday party, she’ll be sixteen on March 7. Want to come over?”
Looking at him, I didn’t want to meet his daughter. He didn’t say stepdaughter, or I might have gone. He said daughter, and I wasn’t interested. No way. Joe looked like a 350-pound hobo. I figured his daughter would be the same.
I went to work for Richmond Auto Sales, for thirty-five dollars a week, washing cars and cleaning up. And I bought an old 1947 Chevrolet Fleetline sedan for twenty-five dollars. I drove around one night with a guy named Dale just goofing off. We saw a girl we knew, a blonde named Betty, walking down the street with a slim little dark-haired girl.
“Hey, stop!” Dale said. “There’s Betty.”
“So what?” I was going to go on by. She was stuck on herself.
“Stop, we’ll get a date.”
“You take Betty,” I said. “I don’t want anything to do with her.” We backed up and started talking to them. I looked at the other girl then. Her name was Joanne. Very pretty, about ninety pounds, hazel eyes. Great legs. But she looked about thirteen years old. Dale talked them into getting in the car. I wasn’t a bit interested in Joanne. Not the least bit. We rode around and talked and she turned out to be Joe Farmer’s stepdaughter. We drove up to a place called Boulder’s Dam. The dam stretches across the river and water runs over it. There was a full moon reflected on the water. It created sort of a mood. I’ll never forget it. We just sat talking and watching the water.
Dale and Betty hit it off pretty good in the back seat. But Joanne stayed on her side of the car and I stayed on mine, listening to music on the radio.
“Are you having fun?” she said after a while.
“I’m having a great time.”
“I’m glad you are.” I took the hint. I reached over and pulled her against me. We started necking and amazing things started happening. I really flipped for that girl. I was immature, still on the streets, fighting, not ready to hold a job to any degree. I was earning thirty-five dollars a week at Richmond Auto Sales. You can’t support a family on that.
We dropped the girls off at midnight. I went home and told my mother, “I’m getting married.”
“You’re what?”
“Yeah, I’m getting married.”
“When did all this come about?”
“Tonight.”
“Does the girl know about it?”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t you think you should ask her?”
“I will,” I said. “But I’m sure I’m getting married.”
There was never a formal proposal. We just started discussing it and it was understood. I was nineteen and Joanne was sixteen. We got married on May 24, 1963. The police were hot after me the night before. I’d collected something like twenty-eight reckless driving and speeding tickets since getting out of prison. I’d jumped several bonds. And every cop in Chesterfield County and the City of Richmond was looking for me. I was so broke the night before we got married that I was still trying to raise the money for the license. I needed only about twenty dollars and I had to work all day and into the night to get it. I finally hooked onto an old car, towed it to a junkyard and got fifteen dollars for it. I wanted to get to a jewelry store to buy a wedding ring before it closed. Joanne and I came back up U.S. 1 at five o’clock rush hour, weaving, cutting from one lane to the other, driving a 1954 Mercury station wagon that was all ripped to pieces.
Just at the Richmond city limits, a Chesterfield County cop pulled me over. He said he’d been chasing us for seven miles and told me to follow him to the courthouse. The magistrate was a fat old guy I’d seen many times before. He made a speech, then said, “That’ll be twenty-eight dollars, or jail.” The cop was smiling. He didn’t think I had the money. I reached in my pocket, pulled out the twenty-eight dollars, paid it and walked out.
We borrowed some money next morning, picked up my mother, and took the old Mercury with bald tires off to Emporia.
There’s a three-day waiting period in Richmond, but in Emporia you can get the blood test, the license and get married the same day. We were in a big hurry. We were very much in love. On the way we got stopped by the police, running seventy-five miles an hour in a fifty-mile zone. The cop asked where we were going.
“To Emporia to get married.”
“Well, I’m going to give you a wedding present,” he said. I thought he meant he was going to give me a ticket. But he meant he wasn’t. He let me go. We took the blood tests, got the license and drove to a Methodist minister’s house on the other side of town. We had a flat tire on the way. I didn’t stop. We drove up in front with pieces of rubber flying out from under the car. He looked out his window and couldn’t believe what he saw.
Joanne wore green, like a party dress. The material looked like curtains, you know. You could see through it and it had a silk lining underneath. It came down to just above her knees. She wore high-heeled shoes. She looked real nice.
The minister tried to talk us out of it. “The glitter will wear off after a while,” he said.
“No,” I said. “We want to get married.” He turned to my mother.
“Can’t you talk them out of it?”
“No,” she said. “I tried.” And she had. We wouldn’t listen.
“Okay,” he said, and started the ceremony. And Joanne started giggling. She couldn’t stop. Oh no, I thought, this is too much. He finally stopped, went to the kitchen, and got her a glass of water. “Try this,” he said. She drank some and still giggled. I started laughing then too, and couldn’t stop. He shook his head and just went on with the ceremony. He didn’t even care if we couldn’t say “I do.” We had no flowers. We didn’t even have a ring. We had spent the ring money on bond. It made no difference. All we wanted was that piece of paper. After it was over, I asked the preacher how much I owed him. I was a little worried.
“Give me what you think she’s worth.” I handed him two bucks.
“Can I help you change that tire?” he said. I said no, I’d change it. I jacked the car up, changed the tire and we drove back to Richmond. We were in a hurry to go to bed.
Joanne looked so young, like the night I met her. And she was real childish in her ways. I think that’s what I liked about her. She was so cute. She had a couple of little traits. Like, I’d get mad at her and she’d cuddle all up to me.
I was nuts about her. That insane infatuation that drives your heart crazy. But maturity—accepting the whole thing the way it really is and looking ahead to what you’re getting into—neither of us had that. I know I didn’t. Marriage was the thing to do. Everybody else was doing it. Everybody tried to tell us and we wouldn’t listen. The first few weeks we were married, I started beating her real bad. All she had to do was look at another guy and I would beat her. At the same time, she seemed to want to make me jealous, to prove I loved her. We were two very sick, insecure people who belonged together, I guess—or didn’t belong together, although I’m not saying we didn’t have some happy years.
We’d been married only a few months when I went to court on the twenty-eight traffic tickets I’d accumulated. I served about sixty days in jail. When I came out I didn’t have any parole or probation hanging over me—and it felt good. I went to work for a construction company building a house on the other side of Richmond. I had no car and my mother took me to work. She and Joanne were supposed to pick me up at five o’clock one day. Joanne was about four months pregnant, just barely beginning to show it. They didn’t come at five o’clock. I was mad as hell by six and tired of waiting. I’d worked hard pouring concrete all day. I was filthy and I was tired and I was getting madder by the minute. I went out on the road and hitchhiked. I got back to the house about nine o’clock. Nobody was there. About ten o’clock they got home and my wife walked in the door.
“Where the hell have you been?”
She gave me a real sarcastic answer, like, “Where the hell do you think I’ve been?” I hauled off and slapped her. My mother ran up and said, “Oh no! Don’t hit her like that!”
“Go to hell!” I said. I drew back and hit Joanne again. My stepfather came running through the door and tackled me. I grabbed him, turned him around and pushed him down on the sofa. My mother ran into the kitchen and got the frying pan. Just as I drew my fist back ready to bash his face in, she crowned me with the frying pan. It sounded like a bell, with my head inside it.
I fell, and he pinned me down on the floor with my arms spread-eagled. It’s a hard position to break out of. I was mad and cursing him. Finally I lay still. “Let me up,” I said.
“You ready to behave yourself if I let you up?”
I said yeah.
“Okay,” he said. He let me up. I turned and went into the kitchen. I grabbed a steak knife and walked back into the living room. He started backing up when he saw the knife. I held it in my right hand and moved toward him.
“You don’t think I’ll cut you, do you?”
“Look,” he said, “put the knife down. What are you, crazy or something?”
“Yeah, I’m crazy. Come on. You want trouble? You’re going to get it.” My mother took off out the back door. Joanne just stood there, staying out of my way. I don’t think she really thought I’d cut him. He was scared. Obviously scared. I reached up and cut his face first. He threw his hands up and grabbed his face. When he did I cut him across the arm. Every time I cut him, I wanted to cut him that much more.
“Come on,” I said. “You want to fight?” He put his arms up to try to stop me and I cut him across the wrist. Then I slashed his side—not stabbing, just slashing, to torment him. He was bleeding all over the place. Finally he fell back on the sofa.
He owed me money. “You have my thirteen dollars?” I said.
“Yeah, yeah.” He reached in his pocket and yanked out his wallet. He had about twenty-eight dollars.
“Give me all of it,” I said. I took it, grabbed my wife by the hand and took off. I didn’t have a car. We ran down a dirt road in front of the house and made a left into the woods. It was pitch black in there. I made her run. Dragged her by the hand, really. I ran faster than she could and pulled her along. A Chesterfield County cop lived next door. I knew my mother had gone to get him. Four or five hundred yards through the woods you come up on Route 1. So we went down in there, down in the swamp water about a foot and a half deep. All of a sudden, a spotlight flashed down through the woods. I knew the cops had been called and they were looking for me. We kept going. Joanne was trying to keep up with me and she just couldn’t. “I can’t stay in here,” she said. “I’ll lose the baby.” She was really scared for the baby.
“We’ll try to get across to Holiday Bowling Alley,” I told her. “We’ll go up there and call somebody to pick us up.” The bowling alley is across Route 1 about 250 or 300 yards back off the road. I’d thrown the knife away. I had the money in my pocket. We climbed up to the highway and lay on the bank watching the cars go by. As soon as I couldn’t see any cars in either direction, we got up and walked across the road, into the bowling alley driveway.
A car pulled up as we walked. It was the same cop who had arrested me the night before we got married. He had a police dog with him. “Don’t move!” he said. He had the dog by the leash and started dragging it out of the car. I started to run but stopped. The dog would get me anyway. I just stood there.
He took Joanne back up to the house and took me on to jail. They charged me with “felonious assault aimed to disfigure, maim or kill.” The cuts weren’t that deep, an eighth of an inch maybe. I just raked the knife across his skin. I didn’t try to cut him deep. I just wanted to frighten him right out of his wits. I think I did—and I went to jail for it.
“I’m not surprised he killed people. Bobby always had a bad temper. But I never believed he’d kill any children. He always got along better with children than anybody else.”
—Robert Carr’s mother
Lying in jail, I thought a lot about my wife. I’d been beating her something awful. She was scared to death of me by that time. But she still loved me. My mother still didn’t like her. My mother didn’t give a damn about me until I got married. Then she didn’t want any other woman to have me either. She was jealous. I asked the jailer to call an attorney for me. He came over about ten o’clock that morning and I explained everything. The next morning in court, he called me to one side.
“Bob,” he said, “I’m going to request a psychiatric evaluation. We don’t know if there’s anything wrong with you or not, but we want to find out.”
By the number of cuts on his body, the way they described it and by the way I’d been acting with my wife—they suspected something was kind of screwy. And it was. But I hid it. You can talk to a psychiatrist all day, but if you don’t describe your ailment, if you lie to him, if you know you’ve got a problem and you want to hide it—out of pride and fear of being hospitalized—he can’t diagnose it.
They sent me to Southwestern State Hospital for an indefinite period of evaluation—up to sixty days. My wife stayed with my mother. They didn’t get along. My mother’s a real bitch when she wants to be. And she drove my wife right up the wall. Joanne didn’t write me either. And I got mad. The day before President Kennedy was killed, I was looking for a letter from her. I didn’t get it. All I got was a carton of cigarettes from my mother. I slammed the carton on a table, cigarettes flew all over the room. They threw me into isolation. I slept on the floor for three or four days. I could hear a TV. Kennedy and Connally had been shot and rushed to a hospital in Dallas. They were speculating that the President wouldn’t live. I thought about his kids and his wife, and felt sorry. Sorry for them, and sorry for me.
A letter from Joanne was waiting when I came out of isolation, a good letter. I wrote her a real snotty one back. I was very insecure. I wrote my mother too, and blamed her for everything that ever happened to me in my life. It was a very effective letter, it hurt her very deeply. Because she knew there was a lot of truth to it. I had never really suffered before, not really. And I suffered that time because I loved Joanne. And I wanted the baby so bad. I did a lot of growing up. I came out of that hospital after fifty-four days and made up my mind right then that I was not going back to jail.
I walked back into court on a Friday. Nobody was there but me and Judge Murphy. He’d known me all of my life. He read the doctors’ reports, then looked down at me.
“Bob,” he said, “would it be any consolation if I told you you were sane?”
“Yes sir,” I said.
“You’re sane, Bob. I’ll see you Monday.”
My wife came to see me Sunday. She’d had so many problems with my mother that she’d moved in with hers. I was jealous, scared she was running around with everybody in town. Being pregnant didn’t mean a thing. I looked through a tiny glass window about twelve inches square and talked through a metal screen. We were in a hallway and the echo was awful. I could see her mother out there. Obviously they’d been talking. Joanne told me how much I owed her, how I’d have to prove myself to her. I stood there saying, “Uh huh. Okay. Yeah. Sure. Okay.” I didn’t argue. Then she left. I walked back to the cellblock, grabbed a cup and threw it against the wall. “I’ll kill her!” I yelled. “I’ll kill her!”
Judge Murphy wanted everybody in his chambers Monday morning. My mother, stepfather, Joanne, even Jackson, the damn probation officer, was sitting there. “We’ve had nothing but trouble with this guy,” he told Murphy. “He’s nothing but a troublemaker. It’s my suggestion to the court, Your Honor, that you send him away.”
I didn’t say a word. My stepfather didn’t open his mouth. The judge asked if he had anything to say.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Bob,” the judge said, “I’ve known you since you were ten or eleven years old. I’ve seen you too many times. You’re giving us a lot of trouble. What would you suggest I do with you?”
I’ll never forget what I told him. “Your Honor,” I said, “I’ve never really grown up in my life. I know I’ve given you a lot of trouble. But jail never hurt me like it did this time. I’m married. I have a child on the way. I’d like to have a chance for a new life. I’d like another chance to prove myself.”
He liked what I said. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to give you another chance. I’ll give you a year in jail. I’m going to suspend it and I’m not going to put you on probation.” He just let me go home. He turned to my stepfather. “Mr. Bass, if you want some advice from me—stay away from him. If you see him walking on one side of the street, you get on the other side. You and his mother have been the heart of his problems all his life. Why don’t you just let him alone? Let’s see if he can make it on his own.”
My mother took Joanne and me to Richmond and dropped us off at my in-laws’ house. We went inside, spoke to everybody and I walked into the bedroom. My wife followed me in and I closed the door.
“Remember everything you told me yesterday, in the jail?”
“Yes,” she said. “I meant it. You’re going to have to prove a whole lot to me.”
I hauled off and slapped her down, just like that.
“You had me arrested,” I told her. She did have something remote to do with my arrest. “If I’m ever arrested again, I’ll kill you!” She was scared. So I didn’t hit her again. I walked out and got something to eat.
Soon after, Joanne’s stepfather started talking about moving to Connecticut, and we all moved up there, to Norwich, to work for his brother-in-law Fred, who was in subcontracting, building houses. I painted. It was real cold. We slept in an upstairs bedroom and it snowed. I looked out and I couldn’t see a car that had been in the backyard the night before. All you could see was the antenna sticking up out of the snow. “This is no place for me,” I said. Joanne and I hopped a bus for Virginia.
I got in a union, painting, and did very well—and then I got hurt. I fell off a gas-storage tank I was painting and fractured my foot. It was very painful and they put it in a cast. I couldn’t figure out how I would make a living, so I started fixing TV sets. I didn’t know too much about them. If I could fix a set with a tube, okay. If not, I threw it away. I bought TV sets from the Salvation Army and Goodwill, worked on them at home and sold them to furniture stores. It paid the rent, but we were always broke, so we went back to Connecticut and got on welfare.
Our daughter Donna was born there, on April 1, 1964—a week and ten months after we got married. We hadn’t planned a family right away. We didn’t object to it either. We just didn’t care. We were that irresponsible. We had no idea how we were going to support this child. I was happy about the baby. Joanne was too. Donna was pretty, with blonde hair, blue eyes and a cute little personality. Ignorance is bliss and we were very blissful. But by the time we were married two years, I was beating Joanne on a pretty regular basis. I’d slap her, beat her, pick her up and throw her against the wall. I hit her with my open hand. It was very painful and very nerve-wracking for her. Many times she’d shake all over like she was going into some kind of fit and for some reason I’d keep it up, pursuing it, hoping she would.
I met Kathy that summer of 1965. I’d never been out on Joanne up to that point. I was dead set that I wouldn’t cheat on my wife—at all, under any circumstances. Kathy was sixteen and pregnant. I went fishing with her father and she came with us. The guy that got her pregnant was in Connecticut State Prison for statutory rape. Her father put him there. After she had the baby we all still went fishing together. Kind of a tomboy, she’d go everywhere her father went. We found we were pretty compatible. I went to pick up some bait one day and Kathy went with me. On the way back we stopped in a park and drove up in the woods. That was the first time we made love. We’d kind of played around before that. I thought a lot of Kathy and we started going together. Finally Joanne quizzed me about it.
“There’s nothing going on. I’m going fishing with her father. I can’t help it if he wants her to go along.”
Joanne knew better. She showed up down on the river when we were fishing one day. Kathy’s father was with us. Joanne walked there from the house to see for herself what was going on. It was the first time she and Kathy ever saw each other. I told Joanne to go home and mind her own business. So she went home. I started taking Kathy everywhere. I thought more of her than I did of Joanne at that time. And then Kathy’s father caught us.
We were fishing and nothing was biting. “I’m going to walk down the river further and see if there’s something down there,” I said. That was an invitation to Kathy. “Anybody want to go with me?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I do.” It worked out the way I knew it would. And we went on down the river. He had us figured out, I guess. We had the lines in the water downstream from where he was fishing. Luckily we weren’t doing anything but necking. He came over the bank and caught us. Kathy was still under age.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.” We reeled our lines in and we each had a fish, which showed we’d been at it a while. That was embarrassing. He’d already put one guy in prison over her and I got scared. I drove home and told Joanne we were moving back to Virginia. I just walked off and left Kathy there. She was in love with me and I cared a lot for her but I had a daughter I loved too. I didn’t even tell Kathy we were leaving.
Joanne and I got an apartment in Richmond. Our son, Chris Alan, was born on December 16, 1966. We rocked along for another year. My mother was still drinking and coming to the house, trying to break up me and my wife. I despised her, but at the same time I loved her. Then everything started going wrong. My old ’58 DeSoto was giving out. The transmission was bad. The tires were bad. The engine was smoking. We seemed to owe everybody. One day I slipped two books of blank checks in my pocket and told Joanne I’d be back later. I went out and wrote two one-hundred-dollar checks. I came back with groceries, and that night we went out and bought all new clothes—and paid for them with checks. I bounced checks all over that county and bought a 1963 Impala Super Sport convertible. The car was like new.
The check business actually turned out funny. My father had been wanted in Virginia since 1954. When my bad checks came out with Robert F. Carr on them, they blamed him. The police in Virginia still want him for those checks, along with larceny, auto theft and some other things.
We hit the road on December 12, 1967, heading for California—Joanne, the kids and me and a dog named Spunky that we got from the pound for five bucks. I made up my mind I was never coming back. Virginia had never held anything but trouble for me.
We stopped at a motel right outside of Oklahoma City. It was a nice clear night. Next morning it was freezing and a blizzard was blowing in. We drove west on Route 66. Sheer ice coated the road and I had to slow down to a crawl. It started to snow as we drove. The snow got deeper and deeper. By the time we got into Holbrook, Arizona, we were pushing snow with the front bumper.
Holbrook is about at sea level. Flagstaff is 15,000 feet above sea level. Between the two is about eighty miles of steady incline. The road was unpatrolled by the police. Snow plows had run off the banks of the road. That’s how bad it was. Traffic had chopped up the slush which was a foot and a half deep. The slush froze into solid ice and we kept slamming into those deep ice ruts. We hit one so hard the sun visors broke off. It took us fifteen hours from Holbrook to Flagstaff. We were exhausted. It was freezing in the motel room. We got bundled up and put Spunky under the covers with us.
The next morning our car was under eight feet of snow. I got a shovel and started digging. The guy that owned the motel had a Jeep and was pushing snow with it. It looked like a teaspoon in all that snow, but he finally cleared it out to the road. I got up on a hill and could see black smoke circling up in the distance over a blanket of white. I tried to figure out what it was and then realized, it was a train. You couldn’t see it. The snow was so deep you couldn’t see the damn train. You could just see the caboose come off the hill, go down into a valley and come out the other side.
We took off again and just kept going, running at two miles an hour. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the road. Some places we counted fifty or sixty, bumper to bumper. Nobody in them. People couldn’t go on in that ice and had just left them.
It was scary. But it was fun. It was excitement. I’d never been through anything like it before. Joanne and I were getting along okay. We weren’t arguing or fighting. And I hadn’t hit her for a long time. The relationship had improved. It was snowing in L.A. when we got there. The first time in twenty-five years. We left L.A., went back to Phoenix and got trapped in flood water pouring down out of Flagstaff. We stayed in a motel for three or four days. I couldn’t get a job and money was running short. We went down through Tucson, into El Paso, didn’t like El Paso and went to San Antonio. From there we drove to Houston where I worked for a while setting up a car show, then to Alabama and then on to Miami. We slept in the car for about five days until I went to work as a house painter and we moved into a motel. I painted a man’s house, then the house next door and the house next door to that. People called me from all over the neighborhood. I had all the people in the motel working for me. I was making good money. Joanne and I got real close, because we didn’t have anybody but each other. We had to depend on ourselves. Those checks hanging over our heads in Virginia were probably good for us, because we couldn’t go back there. We had to be self-sufficient. I took pride in the fact that I could support my family without the help of my mother or anybody else. There’d been times when we had no food in the house, but Joanne stood right with me. She started growing up and really giving to the marriage and loving me. We loved each other. I wouldn’t run around on her. I had no desire to. But it got to the point where we started becoming bored with the marriage. Bored with each other. I know I did, and I could see it in Joanne at times, too.
I bought a ’57 Chevy station wagon, and we picked up and took off, back out West. The car threw a rod in San Antonio, so we had to stay there. After three weeks of sleeping in the station wagon with no money and getting food from a black family next door, I finally got up ten dollars and bought an old ’47 Dodge with no hood, no grill and no right front fender. I mounted a headlight on the radiator frame and drove that darned car out of San Antonio all the way to L.A. One headlight, one fender and no hood. We collected a stack of yellow warning tickets from police in New Mexico and California.
We bummed churches. That’s a racket. Every two hundred miles we’d hit another church, or we’d hit another town and hit every church in it, until we got a tank of gas, a few dollars and some groceries. And we just kept going. In California you can go to a police station and they’ll give you five dollars’ worth of gas to get rid of you. You just sign your name and they pump five dollars’ worth of gas in your car. The gas gauge didn’t work and once I pulled into a police station, gave them a hard-luck story, and they agreed to stake us to five dollars’ worth of gas—but the tank was already so full it took only a dollar’s worth. That was embarrassing.
We went to Sacramento, through Bakersfield and back through Reno, Nevada. We were looking for a home. Just looking for a home. We were discontent. We were like gypsies. I just wanted to move, just move and keep going. That’s the way it was from then on.
That car made it all the way back across the country to Pittsburgh, where I picked up a ’47 Plymouth for twenty-five dollars. We hit a few churches and picked up a few more dollars. We made it into Connecticut, left, went back to San Antonio, stayed overnight and drove back to Miami in that old Plymouth. We’d been gone three months. I went right back out, hired more guys and went back into painting. No problem at all. We moved into a trailer park and I started going into TV repair. A guy named Harlan Fecht owned a TV shop and we made a deal. If I helped him, I could use his shop. I started fixing my TVs there. I was working in the shop one day when I got a telegram. My stepfather had died. He had come home from work and died of a heart attack.
I felt no sorrow. None at all. I wasn’t glad he was dead. I wasn’t sorry either. I don’t think anybody was sorry that man died. Except my mother.
Every Sunday I sold seven or eight TVs at a swap meet and made two hundred, three hundred dollars, which was a good living. Then I bought a ’63 Dodge, we took off for Connecticut and stayed with my wife’s mother and stepfather for a few weeks. Then Joe Farmer and I fell at odds and we picked up and went back to Florida. We bummed churches all the way down. We got to Miami and all of a sudden I didn’t like it there either.
I traded the Dodge for a hundred and fifty dollars cash and a ’59 Chevrolet. The floorboard had rotted out, and there were two holes on each side in the back. We stuffed suitcases over them so the kids wouldn’t fall out—and took off. We hit I–75, kept going north and ended up in Columbus, Ohio. We went to Cincinnati and Dayton and blew an axle in Middletown. We fixed the car, went across the lake into Erie, Pennsylvania, drove across the top of the state and headed back into Connecticut.
We’d only been gone two weeks and there we were again with Joanne’s mother and stepfather. I worked at a gas station and found a ’59 Chevy that ran good but had been wrecked in front. I took the front end off my car, put it on that one and pushed my car over a bank. Then I beat up Joe Farmer’s brother real bad. I picked up Joanne, the kids and Spunky and got out of Connecticut fast.
We went to New York, hit the welfare department for three hundred dollars and headed for Virginia. That’s where Spunky got pregnant. With my sister’s dog. In about ten minutes. That’s all they were together. My sister Sandra was married, with two kids now. We left there, went to Savannah, Georgia, and took the kids to an amusement park. As we drove back out onto the highway, I was a little scared to tell Joanne, but I had the urge to go back to California.
“Oh no,” she said.
I talked her into it and we took off, San Francisco and everywhere. Turned around, drove through the Colorado mountains and across the Painted Desert. We criss-crossed the country until we hit something like forty states. We went back to Virginia, stayed a few days, then went to California again. It was our third time. I didn’t like it any better. We went back to Virginia and stayed at my mother’s in Richmond. We were there just a day. I came home that night and Joanne had bad news. A girl living next door was going with a cop and Mama had told them—the cop and the girl—about the bad checks I’d written.
We hopped in the car and took off for Miami. I didn’t talk to Mama for about three years after that. I wouldn’t speak to her. I wouldn’t write her. I got into TVs and got into it big. I started buying them. I made big money, darned good money, selling those TVs and helping Harlan on Saturday. I took home about four hundred dollars a week. No taxes. I’ve never filed an income tax return in my life. Never. I don’t like the government. I made monkeys out of them. I feel like I did, anyway. I made a lot of money. They never caught me, never questioned me or anything. We rented a nice house with a fireplace and took a lot of pride in furnishing it, putting in new carpets and everything. I mowed the grass, trimmed the shrubs and took care of the house. We had a new color TV and all new furniture. I had more money than I could spend, I guess. I love cars, and it seems when I’ve got money I’ve got to go someplace. I put new tires on my ’61 Buick Special, fixed it all up and told Joanne we were going to Connecticut.
We rented a U-Haul, sold part of our stuff, left part of it there, just picked up and moved out. We stayed a few months, came back to Florida, stayed a couple of weeks, then picked up and went back to Connecticut again. We stayed there through the winter, and I walked into a gold mine.
I went to Colonial Chrysler-Plymouth and asked the manager if he had any old cars to sell. He did. I paid one hundred and twenty-five dollars for four cars: a ’64 Mercury convertible, a ’64 Plymouth, a ’62 Ford and a ’62 Falcon. I sold them and made two or three hundred dollars’ profit.
Then they sold me a couple more cars, then a lot of cars. I traded one for a red ’66 Mustang convertible. It was beautiful. I know a good car when I see it, believe me. I wish I had a nickel for every car I’ve owned. They’ve been my life. I got the Mustang all fixed up, like brand-new inside and out. What better place to drive a flashy convertible than Miami? Right?
So we went back to Miami and stayed at a motel on Biscayne Boulevard. I went back in with Harlan—who went on vacation for the summer and left me with the shop.
I couldn’t seem to keep my mind on work anymore. I was bored with my life. All the aimless moving around was a part of it. I was tired of my marriage. I got married when I was twenty. Now I was twenty-seven and dying of boredom. I felt incapable of loving anybody—my wife, my children, my mother. Instead of love, I felt a drive. I wanted sex.
I’d thought about rape since I was twelve and I was always scared to try it. Reform school had educated me to anal sex. My wife found it quite painful. It caused problems in my marriage. I wasn’t homosexual, but I wanted the anal part, although vaginal sex was also very attractive. I wanted both. I had trouble working. I’d fantasize about some good-looking chick I’d see at the TV shop. While I had sex with my wife I would fantasize raping somebody else. After a while I got more satisfaction out of masturbating and fantasizing than out of sex with my wife.
I heard on the car radio one day about a girl being found dead. They said she had been hitchhiking, was picked up, raped and murdered. I thought a lot about that. It stuck in my head. I heard the same thing another time. I kept hearing about the rapes and murders of hitchhikers. I started watching hitchhikers and thinking about it. It became part of my fantasies.
I started driving around in my red Mustang convertible, watching. It became so pressing on my mind that I had TV sets in the shop that I could sell—and yet I wouldn’t fix them. I spent most of my time concentrating on this other thing. I couldn’t get my mind on work or my family. The rent was due and I just didn’t care. I hid it from Joanne.
I drove up and down Biscayne Boulevard. By now I was obsessed with the idea of kidnap and rape. I put my whole plan together. And it became very urgent that I carry it out—and get away with it. I knew what I would do. What bothered me was what the girl would do.
Would she grab the door handle and dive out? I figured if I ran sixty miles an hour and held a knife on her, she probably wouldn’t. That was one mistake.
Would she grab the steering wheel? Or snatch the keys out of the ignition? Or try to slam on the brakes? I had no idea of what to expect. Would she jump on me and cause the car to run off the road? What would her reaction be?
I bought a butcher knife and decided to find out.