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?

- 30 -

POETRY AND MURDER

 

I believe I have stumbled upon a way to spot a deranged maniac before they get the gun and shoot innocent people, You just criticize their poetry, and the unbalanced murderous mind is instantly revealed. 

My case in point  -  in early 1910 Mr. William Mossman,  the manager of the Pittsburgh Orchestra (above), observed that his employee Mr Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough had once again “insisted on inflicting his home-made poetry and epigrams on all who would listen".  According to Mr. Mosman,  experienced members of the orchestra always listened politely to Fitzhugh, and kept their spit valves firmly closed until his latest maudlin verse was over. But one day a member of the brass section,  Otto Kegel,  could no longer resist trumpeting his opinion that Fitzhugh wrote the worst poetry ever written .

Fitzhugh's response was to grab his own $400 violin and smash it over Kegel's  head.  Fitzhugh then fled screaming from the building.  He sulked for 72 hours, and when he returned he was not a better poet.  That, I believe, was a certain indication Fitzhugh was a lunatic destined to shoot somebody.

Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough's story began inside 1331 K Street Northwest, Washington, D.C.. The  mansion (above) stood just across the street from Franklin Square Park.

In this wealthy abode resided the imminent Dr. Edmund K. Goldsborough, his wife Julia and their children - two sons, Fitzhugh Coyle, the eldest, and Edmond the youngest child, - with two daughters in-between – Francis the older and Ann the younger girl. Julia doted on all her children, and denied them nothing,  But F.C. was her favorite.  He showed real talent with the violin and he loved poetry, which he produced in prodigious quantities.  He composed, by his own admission, a new ode to Venus about once a week. And his mother assured him every line was sheer genius.

In 1898 Dr. Goldsborough decided his son F.C. needed a profession. And that year the would-be poet was dispatched to Harvard College, to become an attorney.  After just one year however, F.C.  dropped out of law school, and returned home. Tensions in the house on K Street immediately began to rise.  F,C. (above) told his diary that he was being followed by private detectives, and increasingly  the volatile young man would intervene when his father tried to discipline Francis or Ann,  eventually even threatening violence if the doctor “so much as laid a hand” on either girl. There is no record, Dr. Goldsborough ever did.

After two years of this, in 1901, and by mutual consent, F.C.  left home again,  this time for Europe, to study the violin.  Here he met with considerable success, and he did not return for four long years, coming home briefly during the winter of 1905-06. That spring he left again, first to Montreal, Quebec where he worked as an instructor, and then in 1907 he followed a Berlin acquaintance, Karl Pohlig, who had been hired as the new conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The city of brotherly love offered F.C. his best chance for normality, and he became first chair violinist.  However, at the same time he altered his signature to a multi-pointed star, with his printed name forming all the spokes. But then in 1909  half the Pittsburgh orchestra quit in a dispute with their new cold intellectual conductor, the Frenchman Emil Paur.  F.C. was offered more money and stayed,  but the labor tensions had an impact upon F.C., as shown by his attack upon the head of the unfortunately outspoken Mr. Kegel.

As the orchestra teetered on the verge of bankruptcy early in the 1910 season, the 31 year old Fitzhugh learned his little sister Ann had become engaged to William Stead, and the pair intended on moving to England. Shortly there after F.C. Goldsborough disappeared from Pittsburgh, leaving behind only a note of explanation. “The Pittsburgh smoke has driven me crazy”, he wrote. “You will never see me again.” He confided to his diary that he had decided to murder a man he had never met, the journalist, social novelist, and affected eccentric, David Graham Phillips.

The tall, handsome and beryl eyed Phillips once said he would rather be a journalist than President. His 1906 series “Treason in the Senate”, serialized in the magazine “Colliers”, was such a scathing indictment of political corruption that it led by 1912 to the 17^th amendment to the Constitution, requiring the open election of senators. Phillips was a workhorse,  writing late into the night while standing at his desk (above), grinding out 6,000 words a day.  He said, “If I were to die tomorrow, I would be six years ahead of the game”  And beginning in 1901 he also produced six popular pot boiler novels like his 1909 best seller “The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig”.

His characters were little more than caricatures, but because Phillips (above) told interviewers he based them on living people, readers were intrigued. Phillips described his female protagonist in “Craig” , the wealthy “noodle-head” Margaret Severence, in venomous terms. 

“To her luxurious, sensuous nature every kind of pleasurable physical sensation made keen appeal, and she strove in every way to make it keener.” In reality Phillips wrote from his fertile imagination, and what he knew his readers wanted. The hint of slander was a marketing ploy, like the white suits with a mum in the lapel Phillips always wore in public, or his crumpled alpine hat. The problem was, F. C.  Goldsborough had fallen  for every ploy.

When the mad young Mr F.C. Goldsborough read the “Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig” he was convinced the unflattering character of Miss Severence (above)  was based upon his own younger sister, Ann.   Fitzhugh wrote to Phillips, claiming libel and asking for an apology. However, since he did not sign his name and failed to provide a return address, Phillips could not apologize, even if he had wished to. Fitzhugh took the lack of response as arrogance, and wrote a series of increasingly angry and threatening letters, eventually signing them in Phillips' own name,  convincing the novelist his mysterious correspondent was a lunatic - which he was. Clearly this miss-communication could not continue.

With his sister Ann's wedding day scheduled for 25 February, 1911,  F.C. rented a top-floor rear room for $3 a week at the Rand School on East 19^th Street in New York City.  His check in date was 2 November, 1910.  He informed no one of his new address.  His family thought he was still in Pittsburgh. In fact he was now just a block away and just around the corner from the brownstone National Arts Club at 16 Gramercy Park South – where David Graham Phillips lived. And almost directly across that small private Gramercy Park was the Yale Club, where Phillips received his mail.  F.C. spent the next two months stalking his victim.

As was his usual habit, the 42 year old David Phillips rose late on Monday, 23 January, 1911. He had been working the night before, grinding out his six thousand words, and after breakfast and dressing, it was well after 1:00pm before he took the elevator to the first floor and hurried down the front steps of the Arts Club (above) . He carried with him the corrected proofs of his new short story, “Susan Lenox:  Her Fall and Rise”,  ready to be mailed to the Saturday Evening Post magazine.

Rather than cutting through the gated park, Phillips turned left and walked the few steps to the corner of Gramercy Park West, and then turned right.  It took him less than a minute to cross 21^st Street, or Gramercy Park North, where he turned right again, walking the half block toward Lexington Avenue, which “T”ed into Gramercy Park. At the corner was the mansion that housed the Princeton Club (above).

As Phillips approached 115 East 21^st Street a man stepped away from the cast iron fence he had been leaning against, and blocked Phillip's way. From his coat pocket the assassin pulled a ten shot .38 caliber pistol (below), and was heard to announce, “Here you go.”  Then, with a sweep of his arm he fired six shots, each one hitting Phillips, once in the right lung, once in the intestines, the left forearm, the right hip and both thighs. 

Phillips staggered backward against the fence, almost falling into the arms of John Jacoby, a passing florist. Then, according to two other wittiness who had just come out of the Princeton Club, and without bothering to look at his victim,  Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough stepped into the gutter and, announced, “And here I go”. F.C. then shot himself in his fevered brain.

The Princeton Club's paper recorded the incident as follows. “David Graham Phillips, (class of ) '87, editor, publicist and novelist,  was shot six times today as he approached the Princeton Club, by Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, a Harvard man...”

The three witnesses carried Phillips into the club's foyer and laid him on a settee. There the victim said he had no idea who his assassin was, and begged them not to tell his mother of his shooting because “the shock might kill her.” Out in the gutter F.C.'s body lay under a sheet for hours while police tried to understand. In Fitzhugh's pockets they found two short story manuscripts, and a membership card for the American Federation of Musicians. Now they knew the who and what, and after they read Fitzhugh's diary found in his room at the Rand School, they understood the why. He was a lunatic.

Three days after the shooting, David Graham Phillips died in a fever of septicemia. He was survived by his sister Caroline, who had been sharing his apartment at the Arts Club after leaving her abusive husband. She finished up her brother's final short story, and it was published posthumously. And in 1931 it was made into a motion picture, staring Clark Gable and Greta Garbo (above) . The Goldsborough family sent their sincere regrets to the Phillips family. The Goldsboroughs held the mad man's funeral service in the family home, and a month later held Anne's wedding in the same rooms. After the wedding, Mr and Mrs. William Stead moved to Nottingham, England, where he served as the United States Counsel.

The only positive outcome from the shooting was the passage of gun regulation, named after its co-author, State Senator Tim (Big Feller) Sullivan, which went into effect in August, just seven months after the shooting. To this day, the Sullivan Act requires a license to carry a hand gun in New York State, and allows each county to set their own limits on handgun licenses. Possession of an unlicensed gun in New York City results in an automatic one year in jail. Similar murders have occurred since, of course, but then crime prevention does not have to be 100% effective. Every life saved is of value, even if it is the life of an arrogant obnoxious lunatic and bad poet like Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough

- 30 -