2. Armed to the Teeth
Probably around the same time I also saved this article about a quadriplegic, which, along with the above story, makes any connoisseur of the ironic wonder about the concept of enabling the disabled. In some perverse way, I suppose, the advocates of groups representing the handicapped, crippled and disabled now politically correctly referred to as "people with disabilities" can turn to this and declare that indeed those with disabilities can rise above their limitations to dysfunction just like normal people.
I have also often recited this article, encouraging any among my audience to react to some of the sleazier, more unbelievable details. The main reaction is one of astonishment and an almost gleeful sense of relief and superiority.
Here is the story:
HOUSTON — A quadriplegic accused of killing his bride with three shots from a wheelchair-mounted gun claimed she pulled the trigger by pushing his head back.
James Burns could not explain how two more shots were fired, however, and police charged him with the murder of Bertha Mae Burns 37, his wife of two weeks.
The bizarre killing in a bar Monday night was committed with a 9-mm. pistol attached to a board on Burns' lap, with a string rigged to the trigger that he pulled with his teeth.
Police said Mrs. Burns put the string into her husband's mouth "because he couldn't do it himself." The gun fired three times; all three slugs hit her, including one in the neck. She died in the bar.
Two 'somehows'
Witnesses said that Burns' head jerked back to fire the gun. Burns insisted she pushed his head back "Somehow the string got pulled. ... Somehow she pushed my head back," he said.
Cops said somebody obviously helped Burns build the lethal device, but they do not know who. Burns said it was to protect his wife.
He also said his wife had asked him to kill her because she was depressed [about] her daughter's living in California with her ex-husband. But police said Burns was angry because his wife planned to go to her daughter.
Homicide Sgt. Dave Collier said Burns, who was left a quadriplegic after he was shot by a previous wife, had gone to several bars Monday looking for his wife. "He was upset. She told him she was going to California," Collier said.
"According to witnesses, they were sitting talking in quiet tones," said Detective A.J. Toepel. She then got up and put a string in his mouth and he jerked his head back once and the gun went off."
"She had to put the string in his mouth because he couldn't have done it," he said.
Mrs. Burns was sitting directly across from her husband.
One cannot be anything but miffed by the twists that destiny sometimes takes at the hands of human foible. Or this is how someone from another era may have described my astonishment. The many sordid details remind me of being at the beach and trying to dig a hole in dry sand. Each scoop of sand is replaced by an equal amount of sand so you never really get anywhere. The details here lead us further from answers and any feeling that we may be able to make sense of it.
The unanswered questions gained an air of mystery over time, becoming almost mystical — mythical even — and so it was with some trepidation that I began my research into these lingering questions:
- Who helped him build the gun platform: That remains unresolved although one likely suspect is his brother John;
- What did the "wheelchair-mounted gun" construction consist of: A New York Times article at the time described the contraption as basically a wooden board laid across the wheelchair armrests upon which a metal gun mount was screwed into the wood and "a string ran around two screws in the board ... With one end of the string running to the trigger."
- How did he convince people this contraption was meant to protect his wife: A Houston Chronicle follow-up article noted that his wife had been threatened by a jealous ex-boyfriend (not the ex-husband). But, Burns also suspected her of infidelity — let's reiterate, they had only been married two weeks when he shot her. What was their wedding ceremony like? Full of hope and a promising future? Dancing, joyous toasts?
- Who helped wheel him around in his desperate search for his wife: According to the aforementioned articles, it was his brother John who also spoke to the victim who, he noted, was very depressed about her 4-year-old daughter being taken to California by her ex-husband.
- How did they get into Houston's Hobo Lounge, armed as Burns was: His brother John had apparently covered the gun on the wooden platform with a shoebox.
- Why did his wife put the string in Burns' mouth enabling him to kill her because as witnesses noted "he couldn't do it himself"!: Witnesses mentioned that she wanted him to kill her? In fact, after the first shot wounded her in the neck, she reportedly yelled: "That's not good enough!" And then he shot two more times. There were further rumors that Burns was planning to kill himself but suddenly turned the gun on her (how?) and killed her. And why in the Hobo Lounge? Why not at home?
- And, what had Burns done to enrage wife number 1 and/or 2 so that one of them would shoot him, leaving him a paraplegic in the first place? And why would Bertha Mae even consider him marriage material?: These and other questions are addressed in the Houston Chronicle article "Quadriplegic was nobilled in '78 killing," which reports that the gun Burns used to shoot his wife was the same weapon he had used to kill Thomas Barfield in a 1978 barroom fight over a boat Burns had purchased from Barfield.
Although at least one witness contradicted Burns' claim that he shot in self defense and that indeed Burns' had shot Barfield before he could reach for his gun, Burns got off with a misdemeanor charge and a $300 fine for carrying a weapon into a liquor-licensed establishment. He was further nobilled, which in juridical terms means that the grand jury failed to indict Burns because witnesses claimed that Barfield indeed was reaching for his own firearm. The 9-mm. pistol was returned to Burns and was presumably the weapon that his then-wife used to shoot him with, leaving him a quadriplegic.
One can blame any number of factors including the Texas heat, lack of education, no job opportunities, no future, drugs, liquor, sin, destitution, despair, cigarettes, ill-health, junk food, stress, debts, lax gun laws, personal insecurities, infidelity, impotence, dysfunction ... But, regardless of the cocktail of causes, this can indeed be cataloged as a gruesome case of pre-stand-your-ground poetic justice, I suppose.
bart's novel Beer Mystic, has been excerpted a lot in Up Is Up And So Is Down [NYU Press] and was recently published in an online global pub crawl. Two of bart's books were published by Autonomedia: Wiggling Wishbone and Spermatagonia: The Isle of Man. "Psycho-Geo-Cato" originally appeared in Wiggling Wishbone: Stories of Pata-Sexual Speculation.
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