Did anyone else read this paragraph wonder wtf really happened...
"Bachman enrolled at Tulane University in the fall of 1975, but his time there was rocky and brief, ruptured by a horrific incident in January at the Sigma Chi house, just off campus. Although Bachman was not a member of the frat, he told Friedman he’d been hanging around the house with a friend from Elkins Park, a boy a year older named Ken Gutzeit. Suddenly, a man had appeared with a knife and slashed Gutzeit’s throat. “The word Jamison used was beheaded,” Friedman told me. According to news reports, Gutzeit was killed by a 25-year-old student librarian named Randell Vidrine. The two were said to have been feuding since the previous fall, after Vidrine called campus police on Gutzeit for eating a cheese sandwich among the stacks. (“I know it sounds incredible, but from what we understand they never argued about anything else,” a police spokesperson told a reporter at the time. “It was always about the sandwich.”) Gutzeit stumbled onto the frat-house steps and bled to death, surrounded by Bachman and some two dozen other witnesses. (A grand jury declined to indict Vidrine.)"
What a weird story. One strongly suspects that there must be more to it. As reported, to not even be indicted (which usually has a low bar) for stabbing someone to death in full view of numerous witnesses seems like a pretty abnormal outcome.
From the article it sounds like it happened in the course of a fight that the other guy started; the grand jury may have just viewed it as self-defense.
Maybe? Self-defense doesn't usually extend to "He shoved me while in a public space with other people around so I killed him." One has to believe that there were indeed extenuating circumstances but it's not really clear from the article what they were.
I'm extrapolating a bit from the article, but it sounds like he was walking past the frat house on the street when Gutzeit left the house approached him on the street and attacked him.
If you are minding your own business walking down the street and someone approaches you to physically attack you, especially with 10-20 fraternity brother behind them ready to jump in, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to use a knife in self defense. That is a life threatening situation, or at least a risk of grievous bodily harm situation.
The fact that he wasn't indicted makes it hard for me to believe the situation occurred otherwise. It seems to me like the Ny Mag article may have significantly misrepresented the event.
I worked on an ambulance rig as an EMT during college. My first night of working on the rig, around 7am, we were called to a house on the outskirts of Champaign, Illinois.
When we arrived, we found a man running through the street with a tiny pencil sticking out of his back. Turns out, his father-in-law had plunged a complete pencil ~6 inches into his back during breakfast. Why? He had eaten some of his father-in-law's hash browns. He wouldn't stop talking about it for the entire trip.
Sometimes, people have disproportionate reactions to slights against them.
You don't steal a man's baloney. Everyone knows that. I'm curious...why did he steal just the baloney and not the entire sandwich? Common decency dictates that if you steal a man's sandwich you take the entire thing. You don't leave someone with just two empty pieces of bread. That's probably why it escalated so quickly.
My coworker was a member of that fraternity in the 80s, and he said he had never heard about that event. He was skeptical that it even happened until he read the newspaper article you posted. I would think a knifing death is the type of thing to be passed down in stories, but apparently not.
Someone needs to figure out why the Grand Jury chose not to indict. This man was murdered in front of multiple witnesses. There must have been incredible extenuating circumstances if a Grand Jury chose not to indict.
Edit:
Come to think of it, the likely reason why the Grand Jury chose not to indict could have been self defense.
Thanks SO MUCH for this article. I hate it when questions like that go on answered in stories like this one. I am most threw the magazine across the room, but your research skills calmed me down.
Oddly not. Though, this Bachman guy was the direct cause of so much crazy stuff, I can hardly blame them for glossing over a proximal event (but wouldn't be surprised if he was somehow an instigator). If someone made a movie about this guy's life, I would watch. (also, just a trivial note, this is a NYMag piece, not NYT)
The newspaper article says the student was eating a bag of cheese snacks, which is COMPLETELY different than a cheese sandwich!
It's just NYMAG's liberal fake news 'sandwich hating agenda' peeking out again.
Edit: I was trying to make a joke, but as a former assistant librarian I can tell you, there really is a difference between someone eating a sandwich, and someone thumbing through books with Cheetos fingers.
Maybe not 'inconsistent' so much as neglected to include the key details necessary to understand why Vidrine was acquitted (or, 'not indicted'). I mean, it's presented as a heinous murder. But yeah, you are right, after a second read there isn't major inconsistencies.
The “key detail” is Bachman was close to a traumatic, seemingly-random violent interaction in his youth. Whether it was cheese snacks or a cheese sandwich, and who attacked whom first, are largely irrelevant to the main story.
1. had i said key details to the main story, yes, i'd agree
2. see my comment below, where i point out that, indeed the players and events that unfolded here are only proximal to not directly in the scope of the story about Jamison.
3. I already admitted there wasnt major inconsistencies, whaddayawant from me. A formal retraction?
"Bachman enrolled at Tulane University in the fall of 1975, but his time there was rocky and brief, ruptured by a horrific incident in January at the Sigma Chi house, just off campus. Although Bachman was not a member of the frat, he told Friedman he’d been hanging around the house with a friend from Elkins Park, a boy a year older named Ken Gutzeit. Suddenly, a man had appeared with a knife and slashed Gutzeit’s throat. “The word Jamison used was beheaded,” Friedman told me. According to news reports, Gutzeit was killed by a 25-year-old student librarian named Randell Vidrine. The two were said to have been feuding since the previous fall, after Vidrine called campus police on Gutzeit for eating a cheese sandwich among the stacks. (“I know it sounds incredible, but from what we understand they never argued about anything else,” a police spokesperson told a reporter at the time. “It was always about the sandwich.”) Gutzeit stumbled onto the frat-house steps and bled to death, surrounded by Bachman and some two dozen other witnesses. (A grand jury declined to indict Vidrine.)"
I looked into it...
The Times Shreveport, Louisiana 31 Jan 1976
https://goo.gl/E7za2q