Joe and Arville

As Police Sergeant Jerome Jasinski recalled on the witness stand last week, the man was weeping when he entered Detroit's Second Precinct at 2:35 a.m. on May 8. "I want to turn myself in." "For what?" asked Jasinski. "For murder," the man said, as he displayed two handguns tucked in his waistband. "I just murdered my daughter and her hippie friends."

Only minutes before, Arville Garland had shot down his eldest child, Sandra, 17, and the three boys with her: Scott Kabran, 18, Gregory Walls, 17, and Anthony Brown, 16. He might have taken even more victims in the student-hippie residence called Stonehead Manor near Wayne State University had not Mrs. Garland dragged him away. Testimony at his trial indicates that Garland, a stable citizen and a loving father, had been driven to desperation by attitudes of youth beyond his comprehension.

Immense Pride. Garland, now 46, was a Tennessee mountain boy who earned a college degree in education but considered himself inadequate to teach. So he came to Detroit to work in an auto factory, then found his career as a railroad-yard switching engineer. He owned a pleasant house, attended a local Baptist church regularly, joined the Detroit police emergency reserve. Of his four children, Sandy was his favorite, a source of immense pride.

Attractive, bright, a high school graduate at 16, Sandy was in her third semester of pre-med courses at Wayne State last spring. For her 17th birthday, Garland used all his savings to buy her a red Volkswagen; he permitted her to drive it only to church, school and her part-time job as a dentist's aide. Though not a hippie, she had experimented with pot and mescaline. Once she and a friend, Donna Sue Potts, were discovered high on mescaline. Garland forbade his daughter to see her friend, but later he relented. Still, Sandy found life at home intolerably restricted. Last year she left; her father brought her back and threatened to chain her up if she left again.

Last April, still determined to be independent, Sandy and Donna Sue rented an apartment at Stonehead Manor. The seedy building was close to Sandy's classes, bookshops, other student hang outs. But only a day later, her parents picked her up after work and forced her to return home. During the next month, she often stopped to have coffee with Donna Sue on her way to school, and during that time she got to know Scott Kabran, a former high school musician and poet with shoulder-length red hair.

An orphan whose foster mother died when he was six, Kabran spent three years in a military school before dropping out. With him in apartment 9 at Stonehead Manor lived Gregory Walls: black, kindly, holding two jobs and studying scriptwriting at nights at Cass Technical High School. Another familiar figure in the apartment was Anthony Brown, a rootless youth who slept wherever there was a spare bed.

It was not so much to see Kabran as to escape from home that Sandy again moved in with Donna Sue Potts on Sunday, May 3. During the following week, occupants of Stonehead Manor testified, Garland, sometimes accompanied by his wife Martha, visited the building in search of his daughter. She eluded them. Garland questioned her neighbors, encountered infuriating evasions.

Shortly after 2 a.m. on May 8, Garland returned. The statement he subsequently gave to police, which has been presented at the trial, describes the tragedy in agonizing detail: "I knew my daughter was in there with Scott. I broke down the door to apartment 9 with my right shoulder. I was carrying a flashlight in my right hand. They were both nude. I pulled out my .38 revolver and struck Scott over the head with the gun as hard as I could. The weapon discharged, killing my daughter, who moaned and fell back. My wife screamed, 'You killed my baby!'

"I said it was an accident. After I knew my daughter was dead, I shot Scott in the head two or three times. I don't remember shooting a colored man named Greg, who was in a bed in the same room, but I remember thinking he probably had been taking turns with my daughter. I remember seeing blood on Greg.

"I put the .38 in my belt and pulled out the Luger and walked into the other room and shone the flashlight at Tony on the couch, and I shot him, I believe, through the forehead. I believe he was having intercourse with my daughter also. They all ruined my daughter." Garland then tried to find Donna Sue in one of the other apartments. Finally Martha Garland got him outside. The couple drove immediately to the police station.

No Escape. The charges are first-and second-degree murder. The defense does not question that Garland killed the four but contends that he went to Stonehead Manor with the intention of bringing his daughter home. When the gun accidentally discharged, Garland went berserk and shot the others. The plea is temporary insanity.

Horrible as it may be, Garland's crime is not without precedent, at least on the screen. Before the trial began, Judge Joseph A. Gillis saw the movie Joe, and was struck by the similarities. He strongly suggested that both prosecution and defense attorneys see the film, and during jury selection, he carefully questioned the jurors to exclude any who had seen it.

Garland's brown hair has turned mostly gray since last May, and his weight has dropped from 250 Ibs. to under 200. He has received electroshock therapy to relieve his despondency, but still he sits in court, head bowed, wiping his tears away with pink tissues. He is living at home during the trial, free on his own recognizance. No one fears that Arville Garland will try to escape.

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