Case of the Fired Professor

It was a legend at the Nebraska State Teachers College at Peru (enrollment 400) that a student could set his watch by the time when 54-year-old Professor Barney K. Baker started off for his office each morning and started home each night. He was a stooped and moody man who day after day did much the same thing, and year after year gave much the same psychology lectures. Students thought him an odd-sort, difficult to approach, and no man for after-class discussions. In all his 24 years on the campus, he had never made a close friend.

Several months ago Professor Baker learned that he would not be rehired for the 1950-51 academic year. The reason given him: he was simply not able to command the attention of his students. Baker appealed the decision to the president of the Nebraska Normal School Board, which controls Teachers College. He was turned down, told that when the new Peru catalogue came out his name would be omitted.

Last week, on the day the new catalogue was due, Professor Baker paid a call on Peru's able, amiable President William L. Nicholas. There were two typewriter salesmen ahead of him, but the president's secretary let Professor Baker go in first ("This won't take long," he had told her). Face to face with Peru's president, Baker drew a pistol, fired five times, left Nicholas dying at his desk. Before the salesmen and secretary grasped what had happened, Baker strode out; he walked downstairs to the office of his department head, Professor Paul A. Maxwell, and killed him too. Then he walked calmly across the hall, gathered up his hat and coat, smiled at a faculty member he met as he left the building, and hurried away.

The news stunned the campus. One alumnus suffered a heart attack. A posse was formed to track Baker down, on the guess that he might have headed for a wooded area near by. But Professor Baker had not gone far. Police found him dead in his own living room, his pistol beside him. Alongside was his final message: "Willy [President Nicholas] tried to fire the wrong person."

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