4
Page 14/The Battalion/Tuesday, September 10, 1985
Dismembered
bodies found
near Houston
Warped
by Scott McCullar
Associated Press
HOUSTON — Investigators said
Monday they have no clues in the
gruesome discovery of three trash
bags filled with body parts along a
rural road northeast Harris County.
The discovery was made Sunday
by a Houston motorist who saw a
dog pulling what he thought was a
dead animal.
“I stopped the truck, and when I
looked, I saw it was a female head,”
Weldon Dobbs said. “When I saw the
head, it made me sick. I covered it
w ith a work shirt I had in the truck.”
J.F. Ebdon, an investigator for
medical examiner said there were no
new leads as of Monday.
Ebdon said the torso and legs ap
peared to belong to a woman in her
2()s.
He had no estimate on the man’s
THE. Y00NG PRINCE WAS CAST OUT,
BUT GREW TO MANHOOD W//TH AN
INTENSE HATRED AND LUST FOR
REVENGE UPON THE ONE .THAT
HAD SO CRUELLY STOLEN HIS
ROYAL PARENTS AND HERITAGE
FROM HIM. THERE WOULD BE A
HE SWORE IT...
THE BARBARIAN PRINCE TRAINED
HIMSELF INTO AN INCREDIBLY
SAVAGE FIGHTER, AND ALONE
TRAVELLED MANY LANDS, RILLING
WITH HIS HUGE BROADSWORD,
PREPARING TO FACE THE SORCERER.
FINALLY, THE PRINCE RETURNED
AND ENTERED THE SORCERER'S
CASTLE, CAREFULLY SEARCHING.
..AND WAS EATEN IN THREE SEPARATE!
CHUNKS BY ONE OF THE SORCERER’S J
MEDIUM'SIZED MOAT MONSTERS. 1
THUS, THE MYSTIC SORCERER '
LIVED AN UNWORMED LIFE
THEREAFTER.
Russell Long says
he doesn’t hate .
‘Kingtlsh’s’killers «=
Associated Press
moral: the prince was a
SWORD LOSER. A
(nor TO BE COWTIWue.»> Y A, r
Inmate ready for execution
Rumbaugh: 'I was an accident waiting to happen
Associated Press
age.
Detective Ronnie Phillips Sr. said
the woman appeared to have been
shot in the right cheek and near the
right eye.
An autopsy was scheduled for
Monday, of ficials said.
Phillips estimated that the bodies
had been dumped less than 48 hours
before they were found.
He said the bags could have gone
unnoticed because “this is a normal
dumping area.”
A lack of blood at the scene sug
gested that the bodies were dismem
bered somewhere else and then
dropped in the rural area, Sgt.
Rickie Williams said.
After finding the head, Dobbs
flagged down another motorist and
instructed the surprised but cooper
ative man to guard the grisly find
while he called police.
While waiting for police, Dobbs
said he spotted several large, green
trash bags lying near the head. He
said he didn’t touch them.
“I didn’t want to mess with it,” he
said. “The head was enough for
me.”
Ten deputies searched for almost
lour hours in a square mile area
near the site for more body parts or
weapons, but found nothing.
HUNTSVILLE — The scars on
convicted killer Charles Francis
Rumbaugh serve as a reminder of a
troubled youth that led to a cell on
Texas death row — and a date with
the executioner early Wednesday.
Rumbaugh bears at least eight
knife and bullet wounds. Some are
camouflaged by cosmetic tattoes of
the Grim Reaper, a dragon, a deto
nating pistol and his death row num
ber — 555. On bis back is the tattoo
of a winged skull.
His left eye is scarred and he was
left legally blind from a penknife
wound.
“I was an accident waiting to hap
pen,” said Rumbaugh, who worked
as a shoeshine boy in bars and night
clubs to help his financially strapped
family.
Rumbaugh, 28, admits his guilt
and says he is prepared to die by a
poison injection for the 1975 rob
bery and murder of Michael Fio-
rello, operator of a small jewelry
store.in Amarillo. He ordered his at
torneys to halt any attempts to block
his death date.
“It’s all a game I’m tired of play
ing,” Rumbaugh said. “What am I
supposed to do —just sit around for
the rest of my life waiting. I’ve
served a life sentence waiting for
them to kill me. I'm tired of waiting.
Time has to run out sometime.”
Rumbaugh’s trouble with the law
began at age (>, when he and an
older brother skipped school and
“/ gut in so much trouble
ns d kid that all the juve
nile officers knew me by
my nickname —Chuckie,”
— convicted killer Charles
Rumbaugh.
hear him lying there and saying,
‘Help me, please help me.’ I remem
ber saying something like, ‘You
should have thought of that before
you reached for the gun.’”
broke into an old building in their
hometown of San Angelo.
“I got in so much trouble as a kid
that all the juvenile of ficers knew me
by mv nickname — Chuckie,” he
said.
Eventuallv he was declared a juve
nile delinquent and committed to the
state school for boys.
At age 12, Rumbaugh pulled off
his first armed robbery, using a tire
tool to rob a San Angelo gas station
and making bis getwaway on a stolen
bicycle.
While awaiting trial, Rumbaugh
attempted to take his life by slashing
bis wrist with a razor blade and later
bv taking an overdose of drugs.
Rumbaugh, then age 18, was con
victed by a Potter County jury in
1976 and sentenced to death.
WASHINGTON — Fifty years al
ter the assassination of Huey ‘Kingf-
ish’ Long, Sen. Russell B. Long har
bors no hatred for those who wished
his father dead or even had a hand
in the deed.
“I don’t feel as unkindly as proba
bly many think I should about those
people who would engage in these
plots,” he says about those turbulent
times.
“I think you can see it more in
perspective now than you did then.
They had been convinced that he
was a tyrant and everything else you
could lay your tongue to in terms of
one unworthy of a proper exercise
of power. But they thought they
were doing the right thing, or at
least most of them did."
He would grow up in reform
schools, jails and mental hospitals.
On April 4, 1975, Rumbaugh’s
fate was sealed when he walked into
a Fiorello’s jewelry store, pulled a
gun and demanded money.
But Fiorello tried to grab a small
pistol he kept handy af ter a string of
holdups in the neighborhood. The
58-year-old businessman died in a
struggle for the pistol, which Rum-
baugn took with him when he left.
“It was a situation of kill or he
killed,” the inmate said. “I can still
“It kind of bothered me a little,”
said Tom Curtis, former district at
torney who prosecuted Rumbaugh.
“He was awfully young and he had
some tough breaks in life. But
Chuckie is very violent, a really
hardened killer and society has to
protect itself .”
Before a hearing on a request for
a new trial, Rumbaugh strapped a 7-
inch metal strip to his leg and tried
to smuggle it into the courtroom. He
said he planned to kill Curtis.
Three years later, the Texas
Court of Criminal Appeals reversed
Rumbaugh’s conviction and death
sentence. He was retried a year later
and again convicted and sentenced
to death.
In 1982, after his conviction was
upheld by the appeals court, Rum
baugh wrote State District Judge
George Dowlen and asked that his
appeals be dropped and that he be
executed.
Long was getting ready to enter
Louisina State University on Sept. 8,
1935, when Uncle Gilman McCon
nell telephoned the family home in
New Orleans.
“He said my father had been shot
and we all had better come to Baton
Rouge,” Long recalled in a recent in
terview.
Long remembered seeing his fa
ther constantly surrounded by body
guards. His mother lived in dread of
just such a phone call.
Just a month before Huey Long
had charged on the Senate floor
that, at c. secret meeting in a New
Orleans hotel, pals of “Roosevelt the
Little,” as he called President Frank
lin D. Roosevelt, had plotted his as
sassination with the assurance of a
presidential pardon.
Huey Long, Louisiana’s mercurial
governor and then U.S. senator,
died 30 hours after he had been
gunned down outside the governor's
office.
Huey Long’s accused asssailant.
Dr. Carl Weiss, a professor at Tu-
lane Medical School, conf ronted him
from behind a pillar and was imme-
ditely killed in a fusillade of bullets
from the ever present bodyguards.
nual
Still, a half century later, the si&
picion lingers in Louisiana ihai
Weiss was not the assassin, and at tht
most fired only a punch and non
bullet, but that Huey was killed by
his own bodyguards, either by mis
take or intent. The family declined
an. autopsy, which fueled the ru
mors.
Now Sen. Long is retiring from
the Senate seat that had heenheldb;
his father and, af ter the asassination,
by his mother, Rose McConnell
Long. She served out Huey’s unfi
nished term until Long was old
enough to fill the seat. In 1948,adai
before reacing the minimum ageul
30. he was elected to the Senate and
has been tliet e ever since,
Huey was proposing his own solu
tion to the Depression. He promised
every family a radio, a car, a home
stead worth $5,000, a $2,000 ann
income and a S30-a-month old age
pension, all of which the govern
ment would finance by coniiscaling
through taxes all income over 51
million a year and all inherttan
over $5 million.
"From a conceptual point of vie*
most of what he advocated has com
about, but with this important ex
ception.” Sen. Long says. “We nevtt
have focused on distributing tlx
wealth of this country in any fashion
that we could be proud of."
Long feels no resentment again
current Gov. Edwin Edward («
eliminating bis lather's birthdavas
state holiday: “I thought all alohgxt
had too many holidays in Uiuisiam.
and those who want to coflp
orate Huey Long's birthday an
each in their own way."
A few days ago, Long let it be
known that he had sought out Dr
Carl A. Weiss Jr., son ofhisfatM
assailant, on July 25 and met wth
him in New York City for two Iwff
“Neither of us had the powern
shape the events that happened on
Sept. 8. 1935,” he said in a
statement, “although each of us in
his own way paid a price for song
thing he was powerless to control.”
nem-
vdot
Former Cowboy on trial for assaulting police officer
Associated Press
DALLAS — A Dallas police offi-
iJAt.i.Ao — A uailas police olti-
cer testifed Monday that she thought
former Dallas Cowboy Ron Springs
was going to toss her and another of
ficer over a balcony when they tried
to arrest him at a topless bar.
Cpl. Vanessa Pitz was the first
prosecution witness called in the
running back’s trial on charges of
aggravated assault on a police offi
cer.
Attorneys picked through pro
spective jurors for four hours Mon
day, questioning them about their
loyalty to the Dallas Cowboys.
One woman was rejected after
asking Springs, a six-year veteran
who was cut f rom the team last week,
for his autograph. The final panel
includes nine women and three
men.
Springs, 28, faces a maximum
punishment of 10 years in prison
and a $5,000 fine if convicted of the
third-degree felony. He was indicted
Feb. 14.
The charges stem from an at
tempt by Dallas police to eject
Springs from a topless bar called the
Million Dollar Saloon on Jan. 18.
During jury selection, Springs’ at
torney, Richard Corbitt, listed 19
Cowboys who may testify in Springs’
behalf. The trial is expected to con
tinue through Thursday.
Pitz said Springs, who outweighs
her by about 100 pounds, hit her in
the face, kicked her in the shin,
“body slammed” her against a bar
and threw her over some bar stools
when she tried to handcuff him.
She told the jury she “latched”
onto Springs’ neck as the ballplayer
held another officer, Cpl. James F.
Hughes, in a headlock. She said
Springs then began kicking her.
“I did not let go and he began
running forward toward the rail,”
she said. “I thought he was going to
thnw myself and Officer Hughes to
the ground floor.”
Pitz also testified outside the pres
ence of the jury that Springs tried to
bribe her and Hughes after he was
arrested. She also said Springs
threatened them.
“He kept asking me if there wasn’t
some other way we could work this
out,” Pitz said. “I asked him to elab
orate. He never did.”
Springs denied the accusations af
ter the trial recessed for the day.
“I didn’t talk to the police offi
cers,” Springs said. “Except I asked
one time would they ease the pres
sure on the handcuffs.”
State District Judge Michael
Keasler said he would rule later on
whether the jury will be allowed to
hear testimony about the alleged
bribe.
Today 7 weatherman
may get his own show
Associated Press
LAKE OZARK, Mo. — Willard
Scott says if a television pilot he
filmed over the weekend in the
Ozarks becomes a hit, his days on
the “Today” show may be over.
“Great Scott,” a half-hour pilot
taped Saturday before an audi
ence of about 100 people at a
lodge, will spotlight good deeds
done by Americans, the affable
weatherman on NBC’s “Today"
show said.
Network officials agreed to
take a look at the pilot, Scott said,
and if NBC does not pick it up,
producer Columbia Pictures
hopes to sell it to other television
executives, he said.
“I’d like to say I would never
leave the ‘Today’ show,” he said.
“If this show is a complete disas
ter and never makes it. I’ll stay on
the “Todav" show forever.
“If, on the other hand, it’s a
success, there may be a time down
the road when I II have to leave
the show.”
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Vol. 81
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