Cop killer: A special criminal category. Cops: a special privileged class. You should respect them, obey them, defer to them. Don't harm them. Never, never kill one of them. If you do and have the misfortune to be caught, you're in for a world of trouble.

Now if a citizen should kill one of his children, what is the penalty? As reported in the bourgeois press (which I label as the plutocratic, pig, paid, puppet, prostitute press), these murderers are often sentenced to three to perhaps fifteen years, or in certain highly publicized cases more years. Nor are these infanticides rare; one account listed 4,000 such incidents a year.

Then there are the normal everyday murders in the U.S.A., family members killing each other, disputes among strangers with death resulting, and felony murders. And the penalty? In Washington state, in the 1950's, after 13 and a half years served, most killers were paroled; in Kentucky, so the word was, seven years served could put you back on the "bricks." Unless of course, you killed one of the untouchables. Then if you, by luck, by hook or by crook, escaped execution, you could look forward to endless years in the slammer. However, all killing isn't to be punished. Depending upon who you are, depending upon your employment, killing is sanctioned, even approved and applauded. The former Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, who was in a position to know, stated in his book, Crime In America, that for every policeman killed, cops kill approximately fifty people. (Reminds me of James Bond--licensed to kill.) When a state executioner, in a premeditated plan, with malice aforethought, murders some stranger, to show that murderers (or rapists or traitors) must be murdered to show that murder is wrong, then, quite often now, a celebratory crowd outside the prison applauds his feat. Then there's the military murderers (or in some cases, mass murderers). Percy B. Shelley described this as when two hosts of strangers meet, slaughter each other, and call the sad work glory. Ambrose Bierce said, "When your leader calls you to war, kill him first. Then go make peace with his enemy." So one might conclude that there's a considerable disparity in who kills whom and the resultant punishment or rewards.

But of course, now, with the capture of power by the right-wing, the Nixonites, the Ray-Guncrats, Bushites and their ilk, "the times they are a changin." The war on crime has been found to be a sure-fire ladder to electoral success, e.g., in that bastian of reactionarism, Tex-ass, the governors and wanna-be governors contend with each other via billboards, TV, etc. as to who has, or will, if elected, refuse to commute the largest number of death sentences. One county, Harris, if a state,would be number two in the number of executions in the land of the freeways and the homeless brave. However, these political positions have been brought about to a certain extent by the present crop of specimens spawned by our contempory milieu: gangbangers shooting up the neighborhoods from the safety of their cars, rapists, serial sex killers, purse snatchers, crack heads, and senseless macho-man shootings. Professional thieves, decent convicts (yes, they do exist) decry this type of behavior, but the victimized public lumps us all into the same criminal category. (Not that cop-killers are favored by the public either.)

In my case, after graduating from Selah High School in Washington State in 1948, after living for seventeen years as an honest "Square John," in 1949 I decided to try to become a professional thief--a quicker way to riches than working I thought. Unfortunately, my criminal studies consisted mainly of perusing True and Official Detective type magazines; after all, they're entitled True and Official, so they must be so. This naivet�, my lower-middle-class, law abiding background, combined with my inexperienced ineptness led to two years imprisonment in Washington State's Monroe Reformatory for a series of armed robberies (committed in an almost "big time manner" according to the prosecutor); my extradition from Philadelphia with an armed robbery charge pending, resulting in sixteen months served in Walla Walla prison for parole violation; five years for another attempted armed robbery; four years in McNeal Island and Marion federal prisons for interstate transportation of purchased firearms. Then it only got worse!

In the 1950's I had a dream in which I killed a cop with my brother's Victor .32 caliber semi-automatic pistol, then slung him over my shoulder and walked down the middle of the street. Part of this dream came true on October 27, 1967 in Northlake, a Chicago suburb, when two city cops were killed, two more shot, and two of our three man crew were shot.

This bungled caper happened after I had spent a month or two "casing" banks from the Northern to the Southern suburbs of Chicago, finding nothing suitable. I finally located one without large plate glass front windows, so I "laid on it" for several months. (Years later I met a professional bank robber who had made off with a few million. He had checked Chicago out and decided it was a "no-go.") Then another racial disturbance flared up in a nearby high school (only one of dozens in the 1960's and 1970's). With the area saturated with cops, we blew that score off.

Then my two partners were wanted for questioning when two cops were shot in Canton, Ohio.

Shortly after this some unknown varlets popped a National Guard vault in a southern Illinois city and made off with a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle), a fully automatic .30-06 machine gun, and several cases of ammunition.

Since our cash reserves were rapidly dwindling, necessity dictated that we replenish our supply. Ignoring the old adage that "when you have to caper--don't," we decided to "raw-jaw" a nearby bank. With one hot car parked in my garage, we went looking for another one to be seen and "made" leaving the score; it took until 2:30 A.M. to find a GM that our master keys would fit. After a few hours shut-eye we assembled our gear: the BAR; a .351 Winchester ten round clip rifle; a .45 Eagle Carbine with two thirty round clips taped together; my 12 gauge sawed-off with a bandolier crossing my chest, a la Mexican bandito style; .45 and 9mm semi-automatic pistols; .357 and .38 revolvers. (One of our lawyers said J.Edgar Hoover had displayed our weapons in his exhibition case where the visiting public could view them.) After serving time in the freezing cold "hole" in McNeal Island for-the federals, I had decided not to do any more time: no more Mr.Nice Guy for me!

Approaching the bank in a "take no stops" mode, we saw two patrol cars in front of it. I had a bad feeling (a premonition?) about this job, as did one of my partners, but what the hell, at this late date we can't "chicken out", so neither of us said anything. A phone call to the local cop-shop about an overturned gasoline truck sent the cop cars off and away. Little did we know that our target had been staked-out until four or five days before after some woman had telephoned in a tip that it was to be robbed. Nor was it our doing: we didn't know that we'd hit it four days before.

At this stage of a score, one's adrenaline is percolating, your nerves are sensitized, and you are acutely aware of your surroundings. Since we were "cowboying" this (no detailed plans laid), my partner just drove in and parked the car with the front fender near the bank: Cheerist On A Crutch--No! You'd have to back out and then drive forward to make your get-away. Those lost seconds could cost you your life. I screamed, "Don't park here," but I had to mask up and follow him in. After hitting the tellers for some $75 to $80 thousand in two minutes and fifteen seconds, we met cops as we were walking across the lobby toward the front door. According to later reports, bank windows, cop cars, citizens cars and houses were shot up. Squad cars from all available areas were converging: one stopped half a block away and directed aimed fire at us; one stopped several blocks away; one came in shooting with one hand and driving with the other. I recall only part of the episode due to .38 caliber amnesia, but I do remember leaving the bank first and blasting an apparently empty squad car which was parked approximately 15 yards away from the front door. I saw the 00 buck pellets penetrate the "Protect And Serve" type insignia on the front door. Then one cop behind the hood of his car shot at me, ducked down, popped up and shot again. I raised the .351 rifle (I don't know what happened to my 12 gauge) and pulled the trigger. Click Empty! How did I wind up with this piece? Hmmm. This could get one killed. I turned to throw it down and reach for one of my pistols when the cop, with a do-or-die expression, with a trickle of blood running down his face, raised up again and fired--with the .38 slug entering my neck, ricocheting off my spinal vertebrae, then exiting on the top of my right shoulder. I recall lying on my back on the asphalt saying, "I'm hit," and then blackness.

Meanwhile, my two partners, giving me up for dead, one with his arm half blown off (several entrance holes in it as if from a shot gun but with a rifled slug embedded in it) were trying to maneuver our car away from the squad car which had stopped behind it, blocking the escape. They were arrested five days later in Indiana with one near death from his arm infection.

I vaguely recall someone hollering, "No, no, save him, we need him." Who me? I regained consciousness in the ambulance briefly, but had enough sense to pretend otherwise. The cop beside me--between sobs--asked the driver to hit all the bumps he could: he said he would as he was on the force once himself. The cop then said, "What happens if I pull these tubes out?" Mr. Driver said, "he'll die." He then hit me on the chin and back I went into dreamland.

In the hospital, I woke up with a nurse screaming in my ear that I wouldn't get any medical treatment unless I told them my name. Okay lady, I'm in enough pain now without you rupturing my eardrums. Besides, I always give my interrogators a lead to pursue--it gives them something constructive to do.

My name is "blah-blim."

"Where am I living?"

"At a motel,... South." With my voice fading, "blip-blop street."

"Where am I from?"

"St. Louis." (sotto voce.)

Then, I may have been given an injection, because I went back to "no-pain" land.

Later, I heard a woman screaming; perhaps it was one of the officer's wives. I felt sorry for her.

One of the doctors said that I needed an operation to remove the shattered vertebrae exerting pressure on my spinal cord. But it wasn't forthcoming.

The F.B.I., not satisfied with having an iron-clad case against us, quite fortuitously, quite in keeping with modern police procedure, produced a witness who stood nearby observing the shoot-out--untouched by flying lead--who was prepared to testify that one of the dastardly bandits had walked over to one of the downed policemen and deliberately executed him. Yeh, and the moon is made of green cheese!

While awaiting trial, the judge, the U.S. Attorney, our lawyers, and the Marshals all agreed that we would be getting the death penalty. J. Edgar Hoover's public debate with Myrl Alexander, the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, over our case, didn't improve our chances of escaping execution either. But then, mirable dictu, the Warren Supreme Court, so maligned and hated by the right-wingers, handed down the Jackson decision, effectively ending the death penalty for such as us. However, since we had had experience with the "federales," knowing what awaited us, we weren't particulary overjoyed.

On July 16, 1968, after an appearance before the Chief Judge, my partner was jumped and disarmed of his .38 revolver in the Marshal's office; I then had my knife taken from me at the point of a shotgun. Giving this "out" up as a failure, we then pled guilty the same day and received 199 years. In the ensuing years, our several attempts to "bust out" weren't successful.

At my recent thirty year parole hearing, the examiner said that the officers had been dead for thirty years and in my case, bygones would never be bygones: parole denied. C'est la vie.

Could one conclude that it doesn't pay to be caught after killing cops?


I WAS TENTATIVELY PROMISED $100.00 FOR THIS IF INCLUDED IN A FORTHCOMING BOOK COP KILLERS. THE EDITOR QUIT...I WASN'T PAID...?

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