Uncle John’s True Crime

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Another part of the legend pairs Belle with Cole Younger. Not only were the two an item, she had his love child. Younger denied this; he did meet Belle in 1864 but didn’t see her see her again for four years. By then she’d married another man and was pregnant with his child.

  The Stopwatch Gang (active in the 1980s) could rob a bank in under 5 minutes, and once robbed two banks in one day.

  REED BETWEEN THE LINES

  Which is the truth? Historians speculate that after the Civil War, the Shirleys had moved to Texas, where Belle met her first husband, Jim Reed. Legend has it that Belle’s parents objected to their pairing, so the lovebirds ran away and got married on horseback, with the rites performed by a member of Reed’s gang. In reality, the elder Shirleys were fine with the match and the couple had normal nuptials.

  But their lives didn’t stay normal. Reed tried farming. He didn’t like that. He wasn’t much of a salesman, either, so he took to thieving. Reed hooked up with the gang of Tom Starr, a Cherokee outlaw of some infamy. During this spell with Starr, Reed shot a man and then took Belle and their daughter Pearl to California in 1869 until things cooled off in Texas.

  But Reed ran into trouble in California for counterfeiting. With the law hot on his tail, he moved his family back to Texas after the birth of their son in 1871. Reed continued his life of crime, but there’s little record that Belle was interested in joining him. She left Reed, who died in 1874, shot while trying to escape arrest.

  A STARR IS BORN

  Not much is known about the six years between Reed’s death and Belle’s second marriage in 1880. Hence, this is the period where Belle’s “biographers” peppered her history with wild tales of her life of crime. She burned down buildings, eloped with a deputy in order to spring herself from jail, busted up poker games with gunplay, and rewarded members of her gang with her...favors. The real explanation is probably much more pedestrian; she more likely spent time with her mother and the Reed family in Texas.

  In 1880 Belle married Tom Starr’s son Sam, who was nearly a decade younger than Belle. The couple settled in the Indian Territory near Arkansas in a place they called Younger’s Bend.

  HORSEPLAY

  One of Belle’s first verified events of lawful malfeasance occurred in 1882 when she and Sam were both charged with larceny for stealing horses. They were convicted and sentenced to a year in the pokey. The two were out in nine months, partially due to Belle’s “good behavior” with the warden. Another legend? Perhaps not.

  Over the next few years, Belle and Sam were suspected in a string of horse thefts and other robberies, but Belle usually managed to beat the rap. Sam Starr started spending a lot of time away from home. Lucky for Belle, she met John Middleton, with whom it is very likely she had an affair. Middleton died not long after Belle purchased a horse for him—which, it turned out—had been stolen. Belle was charged with larceny again, but the evidence wasn’t strong enough to convict her.

  FOR WHOM THE BELLE TOLLS

  Legends aside, the real story of Belle Starr was tragic. She lost Sam at a Christmas party in 1886 after he drew a gun on an old enemy and was shot to death. Still grieving, Belle had a brief dalliance with an outlaw named Jack Spaniard, who would soon be swinging from a gallows. Belle married her third and last husband: Bill July, the adopted son of Tom Starr and thereby, her late second husband’s brother. This marriage was not especially happy; rumor had it that Belle’s new husband had found a young Cherokee woman on the side.

  Belle’s children were none too fond of her, either. Her daughter Pearl became pregnant out of wedlock, causing Belle to boot her out of the house and break up her romance. Belle’s son Ed hated Bill July. Belle also wasn’t making friends with neighbors—she reneged on an agreement to let Edgar Watson rent her land for farming. She made the mistake of slipping into their conversation that she knew Watson was wanted for murder in Florida and chided him about what a shame it would be if the authorities found out.

  In 1889, while she was riding her horse home after visiting some friends, a shotgun blast rang out. Belle Starr was killed. Implicated in the murder were Watson, Bill July, and even her own son and daughter. The prime suspect was Watson, who had motive and opportunity (the shooting occurred near his home) and had done this sort of thing before. But officially the murder was never solved.

  In the end, there was no denying that Starr’s life was eventful, just not as eventful as the pulp writers made it sound. Given the choice, which life would Belle Starr have preferred to live? A quote she once made pretty much answers that question: “I am a friend to any brave and gallant outlaw.”

  Why were treadmills invented? So that prison inmates could use them to grind grain.

  “COP KILLER”

  Ice-T pioneered the genre of gangsta rap—graphically violent and politically charged songs about life in the ghetto. But one of his songs in particular has become synonymous with controversy.

  ORIGINAL GANGSTER

  Ice-T (real name: Tracy Marrow) grew up in the tough South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles, was a member of the notorious Crips gang as a teenager, and even worked as a pimp. In 1984 he decided to channel his stories of street life into music. Albums like 6 in the Morning (1987) and O.G.: Original Gangster (1991) made him one of the bestselling and best known West Coast rappers.

  In 1990 Ice-T wrote a song called “Cop Killer.” Inspired by the 1977 Talking Heads hit “Psycho Killer” (a first-person narrative from the perspective of a murderer), the song is a young black man’s account of being so fed up with racially motivated police brutality that he murders a police officer. Sample lyrics: “I’m ’bout to bust some shots off / I’m bout to dust some cops off / cop killer, better you than me.”

  A METALLIC TASTE

  The song was so aggressive that Ice-T decided it wouldn’t make a good rap song, but was perfect for his heavy-metal band side project, Body Count. Based on Ice-T’s star power, the group signed with Sire Records (a division of Warner Bros.) and released their self-titled debut album in March 1992. The first single: “Cop Killer.”

  While the song didn’t get much radio or MTV play (neither thrash metal nor hardcore rap generally do), it was a single by a major artist at the peak of his career, so Warner Bros. did a fair amount of promotion for Body Count, including selling the CD in tiny body bags instead of the usual long cardboard boxes CDs came in at the time.

  But what really got “Cop Killer” noticed was its timing. In 1991 African-American motorist Rodney King had been severely beaten by several white L.A. police officers (and the incident was caught on videotape) and at the time of “Cop Killer’s” release, those officers were on trial for the incident. In late April 1992, the four policemen were acquitted, enraging the African-American community. Los Angeles endured three days of riots, fires, and looting.

  FBI head J. Edgar Hoover hated being called “top cop.”

  PROTEST

  As pundits weighed in on the riots’ causes, some blamed the song. The Dallas Police Association actually lobbied to get “Cop Killer” banned—it organized a boycott of all Time Warner products in an effort to force Warner Bros. to withdraw the album from stores because it “promoted violence” toward police. Decency crusader Tipper Gore publicly denounced the song, as did President George Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle (who also spoke out against the immorality of Murphy Brown, a TV sitcom about a single mother). Warner executives even reported receiving death threats.

  On the other side, one major police organization, the National Black Police Association, supported “Cop Killer,” arguing that the song accurately identified police brutality as the cause of the rise in anti-police sentiment. Other people said the song was blamed unjustly in the emotional aftermath of the riots. Criminologist Mark S. Hamm of Indiana State University pointed out that there was no controversy surrounding the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” or Eric Clapton’s “I Shot the Sheriff,” which was a #1 hit in 1974.

  COUNTERPROTEST

&n
bsp; Body Count was never actually banned or pulled from store shelves, but there were a few isolated incidents:

  • A small record store in Greensboro, North Carolina, stopped selling it after local police told them they would no longer respond to emergency calls at the store if it continued to stock the album.

  • When Body Count was scheduled to open for Metallica at a concert in San Diego, California Governor Pete Wilson demanded the band be dropped from the bill. As a compromise, the group was allowed to play under the promise that they wouldn’t perform “Cop Killer.” They took the stage...and played the song anyway.

  Ice-T thought the controversy was absurd, because “Cop Killer” was entirely a work of fiction. “I ain’t never killed no cop,” he said. “I felt like it a lot of times. But I never did it. If you believe that I’m a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut” (in reference to Bowie’s “Space Oddity”).

  No psychic has ever been recognized by U.S. law enforcement for helping to solve a crime.

  A FORCED HAND

  In late 1992, Ice-T asked Warner Bros. to pull Body Count from stores and re-release it—without “Cop Killer.” Warner agreed, but not before it flooded stores with over half a million copies of the intact version of Body Count, ensuring there were plenty to meet demand for the “banned” album. Ultimately, it was one of the bestselling albums of Ice-T’s career.

  So why did Ice-T voluntarily recall “Cop Killer”? Strangely, it was out of respect for his record label. As he explained in his autobiography The Ice Opinion, “Warner never censored us. But when the cops moved on Body Count, they issued pressure on the corporate division. So even when you’re in a business with somebody who might not want to censor you, economically people can put restraints on them.”

  Nevertheless, in 1993 Warner’s corporate division tried to make the music division censor songs and artwork on Ice-T’s next album, Home Invasion. In response to the pressure, Ice-T left Warner Bros. and signed with Priority Records, a small hardcore rap label. Body Count moved to Virgin Records.

  AFTERMATH

  The original 1992 recording of “Cop Killer” is no longer commercially available, although there is a version on a 2005 Body Count live album. And Ice-T has only recorded two albums in the last 10 years (along with two Body Count albums). Following an appearance in the hit movie New Jack City in 1991, he took on more and more acting roles. In 2000 he joined the cast of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. The characters in both projects are, ironically, cops.

  * * *

  “The gangster and the artist are the same in the eyes of the masses. They are both admired and hero-worshipped, but there is always present an underlying desire to see them destroyed at the peak of their glory.”

  —Stanley Kubrick

  Only 12% of those arrested for murder are female.

  DUMBERER CROOKS

  Our favorite crooks are the ones who do something dumb, and then do something even dumber.

  EMPTY YOUR BRAINS IN THIS TRAY

  “Clyde Lamar Pace II made two mistakes. The first, Polk County sheriff’s deputies say, was when he emptied his pockets to pass through a courthouse metal detector and apparently forgot about the small bag of marijuana. He threw it in a baggie without realizing it, and the person working the security post said, ‘Hey, what’s this?’ Chief Deputy Bill Vaughn said. ‘He gave that old “uh-oh, I’ve-been-caught” look, and the chase was on.’ The second mistake was when he ran away from deputies, directly into a locked revolving door. Pace, 18, was arrested for drug possession and resisting arrest.”

  —The Des Moines Register

  THANKS, MOM

  “Trilane A. Ludwig, 24, of Vancouver, was arrested after a traffic stop early New Year’s Day. At 5:30 a.m. he called his mother, Angela Beckham, and asked her to bail him out with the money in his wallet. She handed $500 to a clerk, who suspected the money was phony and called police. The police report described the counterfeit bills as bad copies that were the wrong size. Beckham said she wasn’t going to shell out any real cash to bail him out. The case has been referred to the Secret Service.”

  —Kansas City Star

  THEY’LL NEVER FIND ME HERE...OR HERE

  “In December 1999, Christopher S. Newsome broke into the Delaware County Courthouse in Muncie, Indiana, and stole $25 from the receptionist’s desk. He then hid in a closet, where a janitor found him. When the janitor went to call authorities, Newsome sprinted out of the courthouse, through a parking lot, and toward a nearby building. Unfortunately for Newsome, that building was the county jail. Moments later, the 26-year-old was in handcuffs.”

  —Realpolice.net

  Country with the most prisoners per captia: the US (1 per 143). Least: India 1 per 3,940).

  HOW’D YOU GUYS FIND ME?

  “Police didn’t have much trouble finding Joshua W. Kochell, 27, who they say robbed two Lafayette, Indiana, gas stations. They tracked him through the monitoring device he was ordered to wear on a 2001 sentence for theft and habitual offense. Kochell was being held in Tippecanoe County Jail on $60,000 bond.”

  —Associated Press

  GUILTY AND GUILTIER

  “A New York woman who was given probation for robbery faces four years in jail after punching a juror outside the court. Octavia Williams came face-to-face with juror Geraldine Goldring just after Goldring and the other jurors found her guilty of stealing $160 from a woman in Times Square. Williams ran off after the assault but was caught and returned to the courtroom, where she was charged with assault and contempt of court for ignoring the judge’s instructions to report to probation immediately after the verdict.”

  —New York Daily News

  NOTE TO SELF...

  “Police in Hillsborough, North Carolina, responded to a call from a bank about a man who was acting suspiciously. Capt. Dexter Davis confronted the man and asked if he had a weapon. ‘He pulled his book bag off his shoulders, opened the bag up and held it open to me to show he didn’t have a gun,’ Davis said. When Davis looked inside, there was a note in clear view. It read, ‘I want $10,000 in $100 bills. Don’t push no buttons, or I’ll shot [sic] you.’ Davis laughed out loud, and then arrested Christopher Fields (who also was carrying a 10-inch knife) and turned him over to the FBI.”

  —Durham Herald-Sun

  CRASH TEST DUMMY

  “In Springfield, Illinois, Zachary Holloway, 20, and a pal were arrested and charged with breaking into one car and stealing, among other things, a motorcycle helmet, then attempting to break into another car. To try to get into the second car, Holloway put on the helmet, stood back from the car and charged into it, head-butting a window, unsuccessfully, twice.”

  —“The Edge,” The Oregonian

  In the US, bounty hunters catch about 30,000 bail jumpers per year—a 90% success rate.

  HOLLYWOOD

  SCANDAL, PART II

  When we last left Silver Screen star Fatty Arbuckle (page 141), he was preparing to stand trial for a murder he didn’t commit. Now back to the case.

  EXTRA!

  Much like the Menendez brothers trials and the O. J. Simpson trials of the 1990s, the media—which in the 1920s consisted mostly of newspapers—had a field day with the Arbuckle trial. Unlike the Simpson trial, however, the lack of evidence in the Arbuckle trial led most newspapers to conclude that Arbuckle was innocent. Most papers, that is, except for those owned by media baron William Randolph Hearst. His papers loudly attacked Arbuckle’s character, insinuated his guilt, and ran as many as six special editions per day to keep readers up to date on the latest developments in the case.

  The Hearst papers published the most lurid accounts of the crime and the trial, and even stooped to publicizing totally unsubstantiated rumors about the case—the most famous of which was that Arbuckle, supposedly too impotent from booze to rape Rappé himself, had used a Coke bottle (some accounts said it was a champagne bottle) instead, causing her bladder to rupture. “Nowhere in any testimony in the court transcripts
, police reports, or personal interviews did this story appear,” Andy Edmonds writes in Frame Up! The Untold Story of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. “Everyone connected with the case vehemently denied it, yet it is the most popular story, and one of the most ugly lies, still connected with the ordeal. The fabrication haunted Roscoe throughout the remainder of his life.”

  GOING TO COURT

  As Brady prepared his case, one of the first things he did was see to it that Maude Delmont would not be able to testify. He knew that the other witnesses would prove she had lied in her police statement. Furthermore, Delmont had changed her story so many times that Brady knew she would be caught in her own lies during cross-examination. Rather than let that happen, Brady had her arrested on an outstanding charge of bigamy. Delmont—the only person who claimed that Arbuckle had committed a crime—spent the next several months in jail, where Arbuckle’s attorneys could not get at her.

  What is the only crime defined in the US Constitution? Treason.

  THE TRIAL

  The People v. Arbuckle lasted from November 14 to December 4, 1921. More than 60 witnesses were called to the stand, including 18 doctors. According to Bernard Ryan in Great American Trials,

  Through defense witnesses, lawyer Gavin McNab revealed Virginia Rappé’s moral as well as medical history: As a young teenager, she had had five abortions in three years, at 16, she had borne an illegitimate child; since 1907, she had had a series of bladder inflammations and chronic cystitis; she liked to strip naked when she drank; the doctor who attended her in the several days before she died concluded that she had gonorrhea; when she met Arbuckle for the first time on Monday, she was pregnant and that afternoon had asked him to pay for an abortion; on Wednesday, she had asked her nurse to find an abortionist....Medical testimony proved that Virginia Rappé’s bladder was cystic—one of the causes of rupture of the bladder.