THE PETER PAN PRINCIPLE

 

I assume you have heard of the most famous work by Dr. Laurence Peter, who created "The Peter Principle.” It states that in any hierarchy “every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence”. Well, I have observed a related behavior in human males which I call “The Peter Pan Principle”. 

Peter Pan was the theatrical character, the boy who never grew up, and my theory postulates that some males emotionally stagnate in adolescence.  And the example is the life long adolescent, Arthur Brown , second cousin to Calvin Coolidge, and a man whose dramatic life reached its pinnacle on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and its nadir ten years later and a block away, on the floor of a hotel bedroom. To put it another way - Arthur Brown slept his way to the bottom.

Arthur  (above) grew in up in the 1840's on a Michigan farm, with two older sisters - he was a baby Moses floating on the estrogen Nile. Family friends generously described him as possessing a “keen intellect” but less perceptive on “moral issues”.  

When Arthur was 13 his progressive minded parents dragged him to the center of Ohio so that his older sisters could attend the Unitarian funded Antioch College (above).  And Arthur eventually entered that institution as well.   As was to be expected given its progressive coeducational provenance, the academic standards at this institute of higher learning were high, while the standards of discipline were a bit fuzzy. 

The students did not pass or fail, they instead received a “narrative evaluation” for each class. It was the perfect environment for Arthur, giving him easy access to mother figures and women he could manipulate. In short he seems to have been confused as to the advice of the school's first President, Horace Mann; “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

After graduating from Antioch, Arthur earned a law degree and spent the Civil War years back in Kalamazoo Michigan, building a successful criminal law practice, marrying, and fathering a daughter. And when his mid-life crises came, Arthur's response was almost pre-ordained. 

He fell in love with a younger woman - Ms. Isabel Cameron (above), daughter of the powerful Republican State Senator, David “The Don” Cameron, and wife of a clerk.  Arthur bought his new mistress a horse and buggy, and rented her a house. 

Now, no rational person would have expected to keep such a high profile romance secret in a town of just 20,000. And one night in 1876 Arthur's offended spouse surprised the loving couple in his law offices. Mrs. Brown was armed with a loaded revolver, but luckily she proved a poor marks-woman. The entire town sided with the wife when she threw Arthur out on his ear.  The man-child Casanova now moved to Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, evidently under the mistaken impression that Mormons were open to open marriages. 

Arthur was expecting to be appointed the U.S. District Attorney for Utah, but the pall of smoke from the Republican bridges he had burned in Kalamazoo obscured his prospects. So he opened a law office at 212 South Main Street in Salt Lake City (above), where he quickly duplicated his Michigan success. The local newspaper judged Arthur to be “a good hater,.” and described him as “Gentile in faith, but a Mormon in practice.” Little did they know. 

By 1879, when he was rejoined by the still smitten Isabel,  Arthur (above) was a millionaire. And the instant his Michigan divorce was finalized, Isabel became the second Mrs. Brown. Arthur bought a fine house in the fashionable section of South Temple Street, and, in time produced a son - his second -  whom they named Max. 

In 1894 Arthur was sent to Washington as one of Utah's  first two senators. The New York Times described him as “an intense, bitter partisan...Always pugnacious...”  His honorary post ended after only one year, and he did not run for election. He returned to his profitable law practice and his family, in that order.  In 1896 Arthur was a delegate to the Republican National Convention held in St. Louis. 

And it was there he met his next mistress (that we know of), secretary for the local Republican party, Mrs. Anne Maddison Bradley (above). He was 53, and she was 23.  It became apparent that Arthur had a type - younger.

Annie was the editor of the Salt Lake City Woman's Club magazine, a member of the Woman’s Press Club and the Poet's Roundtable. She was also a charter member of the Salt Lake City Unitarian Church. She was everything a rich Unitarian might seek in a mistress, if you overlooked her clerk husband, Clearance A. "Ned" Bradley and their two children.  But wouldn't that just make her more likely to be discreet? 

The convention (above) nominated William McKinley on the first ballot, allowing Arthur and Anne to consummated their affair so quickly that Arthur overlooked yet another impediment to his new mistress - a vine of insanity intertwining several roots of  Madison family tree.

Back in booming Salt Lake City (above), Annie at once separated from her husband, Clarence. He started drinking to excess, and then gambling to excess. A couple of years later Clarence conveniently ended up in jail.  Anne testified later that Arthur then “...began coming to my house at very unseemly hours, and I told him it must stop, but he answered. 'Darling, we will go through life together. I want you to have a son' and after several months we did.”  

Arthur Brown Bradley (above) was born 7 February, 1902. Shortly thereafter Arthur took a suite at the Independence Hotel. He informed Isabel - remember wife number 2? -  that he was going to file for divorce. He even took Annie with him on a trip to Washington, D.C,  staying in adjoining rooms at the Raleigh Hotel, just behind the Capital, at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 12^th street.

When the divorce papers arrived back in Utah, Isabel was finally spurred to action.  When hitting Arthur with a horse whip did not dissuade him from seeing his mistress, Isabel had both Arthur and Annie arrested and charged with adultery - four times in six months.  The Salt Lake City “Desert News" was present at the last arraignment. Said the News, “Arthur Brown On the Rampage...Says He Was Knocked Down By an Officer.” 

Arthur accused the police of notifying the newspapers in advance of his arrest - it was probably Isabel - and denounced the arrest of Annie -  in a very loud voice. “They dragged her through the streets", he shouted, "One on each side of her. Armed to the teeth. Cowards! Cowards! Cowards!” 

Judge Christopher Diehl asked Arthur, “How do you expect to keep such things out of the papers when you yell so you can be heard for two blocks?” Eventually the headlines would read, “Arthur Brown Goes Scot Free.”  But all the dramatics took a toll on Arthur's reputation and his income.  

His last arrest forced some reflection and re-evaluation upon Arthur. He moved back into the house on South Temple (above) with Isabel.  Annie was offered a house of her own and $100 a month to stay away from Arthur. To Arthur's great surprise, she turned it down. 

And a few months later Arthur slipped away to meet Annie in room 11 of the Pacific Hotel in Pocatello, Idaho.  Their passionate reunion was interrupted by Isabel banging on the door. Arthur admitted his wife, at the same time asking his law partner - what the hell was he doing there? -  to please, “Come in, I don't want to be left alone here with them.”

Annie, the mistress,  began civilly enough. “How do you do, Mrs. Bradley? I have wanted to talk to you.”  But Isabel's first instinct was not for conversation. She clamped her hands around Annie's throat and began throttling her. 

The men separated the combatants, and the women spent the next several hours screaming accusations at each other, while Arthur cringed in the corner, if not in the center of the room, then still the center of attention. Come the dawn, Isabel returned home and Arthur Brown stupidly gave Annie a .32 caliber revolver, should Isabel seek a second confrontation. It seemed Annie had won.

But upon Annie's return to Salt Lake City, Arthur's law partner informed her that Isabel and Arthur had “reconciled”.   The offer of a house and weekly stipend was renewed, and Arthur now pointedly denied his paternity of Annie's son, Arthur Brown Bradley.  And being three months pregnant with yet another gift from Arthur, Annie reluctantly agreed to cease and desist any contact with the adolescent lawyer.  She gave birth to her second child by Arthur, on 24 November, 1903.  But to prove she had not given up on her obsession,  she named the new child Martin Montgomery Brown Bradly. 

Despite promises to his wife, Arthur maintained a discreet contact with Annie, at least until August of 1905, when Isabel died of cancer. Abruptly the path seemed cleared for Annie and Arthur to marry. But they did not... that is, Arthur did not make any offer of marriage.

He was 63 years old now, and already had another mistress, someone closer to his own age for a change,  She was Ms. Annie Adams Kiskadden (above, left). She was the mother of Maude Adams (above, right), Utah's famed actress, best known for originating the stage role of Peter Pan. 

If she did not know about the past mistress, Annie Bradley must have suspected this one. She was now 33 years old herself, divorced, the mother of four, and had no income. Swallowing a little more pride she asked her millionaire boyfriend for $2,000 to start a new life.  Arthur Brown ignored that request, but did present her with a one way train ticket to California for herself and the children. Then he left for Washington, D.C. 

This slap in the face finally snapped something in Annie, just the way something had snapped in the two previous Mrs. Browns, one after the other, before her.  Annie traded in her ticket for herself and her sons to California for a one way trip for herself only to Washington, D.C.

Annie arrived in town on Saturday, 8 December, 1906. As she expected, Arthur was registered again at the Raleigh Hotel (above). Annie registered as Mrs. A. Brown, and took the room next to Arthur's. 

Conning the maid into opening the connecting door, Annie searched Arthur's room until she found letters from Annie Adams Kiskadden, which discussed marriage plans. No one should be surprised that after waiting for Arthur's return, Annie shot him with the very gun he had given her for self defense.  I guess you could say that's what she used it for.

What can you say about a man who keeps inspiring the women in his life to shoot at him? Once might be an accident,. twice might be an unlikely coincidence - but three times? And the last time, he supplied the gun!  When the hotel manager bent down over Arthur (above), he said only, “She shot me.” As if he was surprised. 

Indeed, she had. Judging by the powder burns on his hands the Unitarian gigolo was reaching for the gun when Annie pulled the trigger. And six days later the gentile polygamist  died -  13 December, 1906. His obituary in the New York Times noted with faint praise, that Arthur had been “intensely loyal to his male friends.” 

As final proof of his childish character, Arthur's will renounced both of his sons by Annie. “I expressly provide that neither or any of them shall receive anything from my estate.” It almost makes you wish he had lived, so somebody could have shot the S.O.B a fourth time.

A  jury agreed. Annie had entered a plea of “temporary insanity” but almost on the first anniversary of the shooting, and after just nine hours of deliberations, the jury instead found Annie simply not guilty. The misdirected Juliet walked out of the court room a free woman. 

Annie returned to Salt Lake City (above) and opened an antique store called “My Shop” And she made a success of it, running her own business, raising her two sons by Arthur on her own, until her death on 11 November, 1950.

Thus the life of Arthur Brown, who never seemed to get any older than he was at the age of twelve. And don't we all know at least one like guy like that? 

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LURID BYRON

 

I have often pondered the ids and egos which thrive in the moral swamp which passes for modern American democracy .  As an example consider Byron Anthony (Low Tax) Looper (above), a politician, who in the words of his own defense counsel, certainly knew how to lose an election. It is a skill more valuable than you might first imagine.

He might have been a gentleman by act of Congress, but in 1985, according to Byron, in his third year at the United States Military Academy at West Point (above), he was thrown from a horse and so badly injured his knee, he was given an honorable discharge. West Point has a "no comment" on the details of his release.

He finished his education at the University of Georgia, majoring in Political Science.  Then he might have been a Democrat, thanks to his uncle Max Roach Looper, a state Representative from tiny Dawsonville, Georgia. But Byron lost his first election there in 1987, and after three years as a legislative aide, legend has it, that he went to Preto Rico

He claimed to have worked there as the sober assistant to a university president. But the university does not seem to have existed, nor did the president.  So what was he doing on The Island of Enchantment", and did he really go there?  It remains a mystery, which doesn't actually interest many people.

According to Miss Modesta Blansett, who dated him for awhile,  Byron was a real charmer and a political junkie.  Except when he drank, which was often. On those occasions he “exhibited a dark, angry temper”.  Byron had two traffic tickets for drunk driving in Hall County, Georgia, and in March of 1986 he pleaded “no contest” to a third. In 1987 he picked up another DUI conviction in Atlanta. Then, like many people approaching thirty, Byron felt the need to re-invent himself. So in 1993 he returned home, one hundred miles north as the crow flies, to the 931 area code, to the Cumberland Plateau of central Tennessee.

As a small boy Byron had left Cookeville, the farming and industrial community bisected by Interstate 40, 80 miles east of Nashville and 100 west of Knoxville. But times and circumstances had changed Byron. His “pinstriped oxford cloth and double-breasted suits” and power ties no longer fit in among the 24,000 overhaul wearing farmers in the Putnam County capital, nor even with the 11,000 students attending Tennessee Tech, nestled in the center of town. 

Still, shortly after his arrival, Byron decided to register to run as a Republican against the popular local Democratic state Representative Jere Hargrove (above).  Mr. Hargrove remembered being puzzled just a few days after Byron had filed paperwork to run against him when he received a letter from "Low Tax", seeking help in getting a job with the Farmers Home Administration.   Hargrove says he never responded “because I thought it was crazy.” He remembered the campaign which followed as “dirty”. And for Byron it was unproductive. He lost. Again.

Still, Byron refused to give up. As the Republican county Chairman Scott Ebersole remembered, “He was playing politics all the time.” Byron even took out an ad in the political magazine, “Campaigns & Elections”, seeking the help of a consultant. 

Consultant William Lindsay Adams, based in Louisiana, answered that ad, but found his interview with Byron made him “uncomfortable”. “Byron told him that if a candidate wasn't in the race at the end, it wouldn't cost him very much to win”. Adams quoted Looper as saying it would just be “about 35 cents” – the price of a bullet. After that conversation, Adams stopped answering Bryon's calls.

Then in 1996, Byron found Republican backing for a run against the 14 year Putnam County Tax Assessor, Bill Rippetoe. Their support was understandable, since if elected, Byron would be the first Republican to hold a county wide office since the civil war.  Byron took part in no debates, and made no public appearances. But he did run a lot of negative radio ads, claiming that Rippetoe had fixed tax assessments for his friends.  There was no evidence for this, of course, so Rippetoe was not prepared to respond.

And to prove his philosophy on property taxes, Byron invested $4.95 to legally change his middle name from Anthony to “(Low Tax)” - parentheses included.  He did run one positive ad, promising he was “a new kind of leader”, and introducing his wife Terry to the voters. However, Terry Guess was not his wife, but merely his girlfriend, who was also his landlady. He was renting a room in her house. But by the time the truth had come out, Bryon had finally achieved his dream – he won the election by 1,100 votes. Sound familiar?

A week after taking the oath of office, on Thursday, 12 September, 1996, "Low Tax" (above) called a press conference to announce he had discovered $100 million worth of property taxes had not been paid. But before the reverberations from that headline had reached the farthest corners of Putnam county, from Hanging Limb to Muddy Pond, the County Commission, to which Byron reported, responded that $100 million was the “normal backlog” for property taxes at that time of year. They also suggested that Bryon should just do his job and stop holding press conferences. After further checking, Byron held a press conference to announce they were right. Then he left town – for Puerto Rico.  Or so he said.

This time Byron was gone three weeks, which in a town the size of Cookeville did not go un-noticed. When he returned he cleaned house, firing dozens of staffers, and hiring a “Security Chief”, who swept the office for listening devices. None were found. 

"Low Tax" also assigned three employees to photocopy more then 5,000 pages of County Commission records. When this expense was questioned, he held a press conference to announce he had uncovered “a good ol' boy network” and was suing to make the documents public. In response the County Commission revealed that the documents already were public. This time “Low Tax” was forced to issue a written apology.  Said County Executive Doug McBroom, “His attitude was that we're all dumb, and he was here to save us...but he kept getting caught.”

At one of his many press conferences, Byron was faced with an allegation that he had fired staffers because they were Democrats. But Byron had a ready answer for that charge. It was preposterous, he said, since he was secretly a Democrat, too. A quick look at the records revealed that for once Byron was telling the truth. He was a registered Democrat. Still. Whereupon, the Democratic Party  had him purged from their rolls. The Republicans were perfectly happy to have him as a member since, in heavily Democratic Putnam County,  beggars couldn't be choosers.

Meanwhile, the work in the Tax Assessor's office became increasingly chaotic. Byron would disappear from the office for days at a time, and when he did show up, he spent his time trying to transfer properties to the tax rolls of neighboring counties – specifically properties owned by members of the County Commission who were giving him such a hard time. His new Security Chief got into a fist fight with a voter. Some property owners charged Byron had “shaken them down” for political contributions. And when they did not contribute, Bryon increased their property tax assessments. Under Byron's stewardship, records went missing, and his remaining employees had spent 90 hours working on his next campaign, for the congressional seat held by Democrat Bart Gordon.

His congressional campaign had barley gotten off the ground when in March of 1998, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation hit Byron with a 14 count indictment for official misconduct, theft of services, misuse of county property and misuse of county employees. In the primary Bryon came in third in a field of four Republicans.  

But the resourceful young man had an ace in the hole. In the same election, he was the only Republican who had filed to run against the popular five term Democratic State Senator, Tommy Burks (above) . By default Byron thus qualified for the general election in November.

Nobody expected Byron to win, evidently not even Byron. But Tommy Burks (above) had been a politician to long to ever be over confident. He told a friend, “This Looper boy is absolutely crazy. I believe he's capable of doing anything.” And then in August, another lawsuit was filed against Byron, from an unexpected source. 

It was filed by Byron's former girlfriend and landlady, Terry Guess. She alleged that in December of 1997, after they had broken up, Byron had assaulted and raped her. And when she thereupon ordered him out of her house, he had filed a false transfer of ownership, putting her home in his name. But Terry's breaking point came when she discovered she was pregnant. Now, with the baby due in a few weeks, she sued Bryron, asking for $1.3 million in damages and child support. 

Byron did his best to “handle” the suit. He held a press conference. He referred to Terry as “a former stripper”, and complained “She left me with heart palpitations, a small box of memorabilia, and a red G-string.” It was a good line, but it did not help his career.

But Byron had uncovered a “quirk” in the election laws of Tennessee which he felt certain would bring him victory. Early on the morning of 9 October, 1998,  Byron (Low Tax) Looper drove a black sedan onto a pig and tobacco farm, and stopped next to a pumpkin patch, along side of a pick up truck. Then he fired one 9mm round into the skull of State Senator Tommy Burks, killing him instantly.

According to Tennessee law, a candidate who dies within 30 days of an election, must have his name removed from the ballot. Byron figured he would win by default - emphases on "fault".  Because   Byron had not counted on  his clever cover up dissolving like salt in a Tennessee thunderstorm. 

In a matter of hours the cops had discovered that Byron had bought the sedan in Georgia, resold it there to a different Georgia car dealer a few hours after the murder. And worse, Byron had been recognized at the scene by two of Tommy Burk's farmhands. 

Plus there was his confession to a childhood friend (above) a few hours later after the murder.  

On election day Byron was in jail, and although he was still the only living candidate on the ballot, and although his radio ads continued to be aired, Charlotte Burks (above. left), Tommy's widow, received 30,252 write in votes against Byron (Low Tax) Looper's 1,531 votes. The lady finally retired from politics in 2014, after 4 terms in the state senate. 

Yup,  that Byron (Low Tax) Looper (above) sure knew how to lose an election. And a court case. He changed lawyers eight times, but in August of 2000,  Byron was finally convicted of first degree murder. Even after his conviction he tried to run  for another term as assessor from jail, until the State Attorney General removed him from office.

Eventually he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in the Morgan County Correctional Complex (above). And that was when he got yet another name change, becoming  inmate #323358 .  That name stuck until  26 June, 2013, when a female counselor informed Byron that he was losing his private cell and being transferred to the prison's general population.  Byron slapped her face, and was subdued by a guard. Later that day he was found dead in his isolation cell. 

A pair of autopsies revealed he died of a combination of high levels of antidepressant and "deterioration of his heart muscle". Just as if he ever had one.  His unofficial epitaph was provided by his last (of 8) attorney, McCracken Poston. He called Byron " a colorful character in both Georgia and Tennessee politics" . But Poston was forced to add, "The fact that Byron was an unusual, if often difficult, client is well documented."    Again, sound familiar?

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