The Making of a Lonely Misfit

IN late November 1963, a reclusive 13-year-old boy named Artie Bremer sat transfixed before the TV screen watching the coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Suddenly there on the screen was Jack Ruby busting through a ring of bodyguards to shoot down Lee Harvey Oswald in cold blood. "I remember us watching that on TV together," recalls the boy's father, William Bremer. "Art was impressed with it. Could that have anything to do with what happened?"

Like Ruby, Bremer insinuated himself into the crowd surrounding his victim and, with no chance of escape, boldly broke through to accomplish his grim deed before the TV cameras. The difference is that Bremer, a failure at almost everything he tried, was unsuccessful even as an assassin.

The second youngest of five children, Arthur Herman Bremer was born on Aug. 21, 1950 and raised in a shabby, working-class corner of Milwaukee's South Side. According to court and various social service agency records, the Bremers were a problem family in which parental quarreling and neglect were common.

Variously described as "strange," "withdrawn," "uncommunicative" and "incredibly defensive," Artie Bremer had no close friends and rarely, if ever, acknowledged neighbors' greetings. His younger brother Roger, 18, says that Arthur, a short (5 ft. 7 in.), husky youth who lifted weights, "just stayed in all the time and had his own views. Ma got on him when he wouldn't go out. He just hated her I guess. I don't think he likes me either."

An average student with a 106 IQ, Bremer went out for the junior varsity football team when he was a sophomore at South Division High School. Though he was never more than a bench-warming, third-string guard, he stuck the season out until his mother pressed him to give up the sport. "I told him I wanted him to quit," says Sylvia Bremer, "because it seemed that someone was always picking on him. He was strong and had big muscles, but he was too quiet to give those guys who were picking on him what they deserved." Mrs. Bremer, an orphan who never attended high school, says that she is not totally convinced that her son shot George Wallace. "It's not kosher, you know? Why did those Wallace people permit him to walk into the crowds? It's their fault as much as it is Arthur's--or whoever shot him."

William Bremer Sr., 58, a truck driver who is blind in his right eye, says that "Artie may be 21 but he is still a boy." Hunched over a glass of Andeker beer in a dim South Side tavern last week, he grieved: "Oh, if only Artie'd shot me instead. I never pray, but last night I prayed and I prayed very hard." Bremer, a distraught, broken man who wore his silver-white hair in a ponytail until his wife cut it the day after the shooting, told TIME Correspondents William Friedman and Burton Pines that he also did something else he had not done in years. "I cried when this happened. I shouldn't say it, but I cried."

Perfect Frosting. His son was an "introvert" who desperately wanted to better himself, said William Bremer. Arthur's one passion was "books --books on math, books on psychology. He wasn't bright, but he read a lot and he passed most of his subjects. Honorablemention didn't mean nothing to him in a class. Jeez Christ, if his team didn't get a run or a score he'd come home and yell and kick at things." At other times "Artie baked a lot at home --cakes and cookies--and he made perfect frosting. He was a perfectionist. Artie would decorate each cupcake from a pastry-frosting bag, and if I dipped my finger in the frosting he'd be mad as hell."

Then, wringing his large rough hands, Bremer said: "I used to pound it into my kids, 'You've got to find yourself, you've got to find yourself.' 'Aw, forget it,' Artie'd say. He never paid any attention to that. Yeah, I spanked my boys. Roger got his cracks, and Artie got his cracks too. He must have been very sick. None of us knew it. But he must have been a very sick person." Draining half his beer, William Bremer concluded: "I just hope to God that no parents have to go through this same thing with a boy. Rather he should have gone out and shot his father. Rather he should have shot me."

Childish. Shortly after his 21st birthday last year, Arthur left home and moved into a dingy, three-room apartment near Marquette University. He studied photography for nearly two semesters at the Milwaukee Area Technical College, briefly tried to go into business making large campaign-type buttons with various catch phrases. He worked half-days as a busboy at the exclusive Milwaukee Athletic Club and as a janitor at the Story Elementary School. Cutting himself off from his family, he slammed the door in his mother's face on the two occasions she tried to visit him. "Arthur did it to Wallace on our wedding anniversary," Sylvia Bremer says bitterly, "and he didn't even know it was our anniversary."

Last September, Arthur began dating Joan Pemrich, a 15-year-old high school freshman, telling her that she was his first girl friend. Says she: "He didn't act like a 21-year-old. He didn't know how to bowl or rollerskate. I don't think he knew how to do anything." Bremer impressed her as "weird" and "childish" by insisting that they talk about her "hang-ups." One hang-up was her refusal to accompany him to pornographic movies. "He really needed some kind of love," she says of their breakup, "but it wasn't going to come from me."

Soon Bremer's behavior became increasingly erratic. On Nov. 18 he was arrested for carrying a concealed .38-cal. revolver. The arresting officer claimed that Bremer was "completely incoherent"; a court-appointed physician judged him "dull" but legally sane. Bremer paid a fine of $38.50. On Jan. 13, the day that George Wallace declared his candidacy, Bremer purchased another .38-cal. revolver, a five-shot, snub-nosed model, at a Milwaukee gun shop for $80. Bill Heeley, the maitre d'hotel at the Milwaukee Athletic Club, recalls that Bremer shaved off his longish blond hair at about that same time. "When I asked why, he said his girl friend 'didn't pay any attention to me, so I went out and shaved. Now she'll pay attention to me.'" On Feb. 16 Bremer left his job.

The actions of Arthur Bremer thereafter are sketchy. About May 9 a Wallace campaign worker, Mrs. Janet Petrone, says that Bremer visited Wallace headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., and offered to work on the campaign. On May 13, in Kalamazoo, Mich., he reportedly parked his car across the street from an armory where Wallace was scheduled to speak and sat there for more than ten hours. Responding to a "suspicious-subject" call, police questioned Bremer, who satisfied them with the explanation that he was there early to get a good seat at the rally.

On May 15 Bremer turned up in Wheaton, Md., for a noon appearance by Wallace at a shopping-center rally. Mrs. Petrone says that when she saw Bremer, who was wearing a red, white and blue striped shirt and a WALLACE IN '72 button, he said: "Hi, babes. How's it going?" At 2:15 p.m., William Taaffe, a reporter for the Washington Evening Star, saw Bremer at the Laurel rally 16 miles away. At 3:58 p.m. Wallace was gunned down with a .38-cal. revolver belonging to Arthur Bremer.

Daydreams. Searches of Bremer's effects showed the mystery of the man. In his messy apartment were Wallace campaign buttons, a Confederate flag, boxes of shells, old high school themes (see box), pornographic magazines, Black Panther literature, tax forms giving his 1971 income as $ 1,611, a booklet entitled 101 Things To Do in Jail and various newspaper clippings, including one on the difficulty of providing security for campaigning politicians. In notebooks and on scraps of paper there were such notations as "My country tiz of thee, sweet land of bigotry" and "Happiness is hearing George Wallace sing the national anthem, or having him arrested for a hit-and-run accident." In one muddled note entitled "A Critique of My Life," Bremer wrote: "TV radio the big books more books and more masturbation sex fantasy daydreams of the father reading newspapers looking at my parents."

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 Writer's Yearbook, two books on the assassination of Robert Kennedy entitled Sirhan and RFK Must Die, and a Browning 9-mm. semiautomatic pistol. With no hard evidence to support the possibility that Bremer was a hired assassin, investigators say that the merchandise in his car indicates that Bremer, who had only $2 in his pocket when he was arrested, might have financed his travels through petty thievery.

Bremer now faces a possible maximum penalty of life imprisonment or death. Markedly docile and indifferent after his arrest, he had one burning question. While being driven to the Baltimore county jail on the night of the shooting, Bremer asked FBI agents: "How much do you think I'll get for my autobiography?"

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