This is where it started: my first visit to the first community: Rugby, North Dakota, January, 2003. Why does one go to Rugby in January, you ask? If you want to see what a town is made of, you have to see it in the tough season, as well as the sweet, and January in Rugby is the tough season.
One story Lavik told
that I didn't get on tape was about the 1963 murder of a Rugby policeman. (I hate it how people seem to wait to tell the really good stuff once I've got the tape recorder packed away.) The murder occurred in a back alley downtown. Big Louie and his crime partner had pulled up behind one of the buildings along Main Street. The way the buildings were set, Louie's car was in a "box canyon" and when the policeman saw the car back there, he knew it was trouble. Big Louie had been in trouble before, he'd always been a bully and a petty criminal. "Yoo-hoo, boys," the cop reportedly called out, "come on out." Big Louie and the other fellow came out and when they saw the cop car had them boxed in one or the other of them shot the cop and shot him again and again. The criminals emptied one gun into the body on the ground, then took the cop's own piece and shot him again and again with that gun, a total of fifteen times. Then for good measure they shot up the buildings around them. They moved the cop car out of their way and took off. Road blocks were set up. Big Louie ran into a road block trying to enter Minot, west of Rugby. Louie's car had the back seat taken out and that made a cop suspicious enough that he took down the make and color of Louie's car and the number on his license plate. ("If you're going to steal merchandise," Lavik informed me, "you take the back seat out of your car so you can get more stuff in it.") A dentist who had been getting ready for work as Louie and his partner were shooting up the buildings had seen Louie's car. He hadn't had his glasses on, still he could see that it was a small car, reddish or pink in color. Big Louie drove a car of similar description and soon enough the cops put two and two together. When they arrested him, Big Louie broke into tears: "I can't go without my teddy bear," he told the cops. "Let me get my teddy bear...."
"How many bullets do you think you have to put into one cop before you get locked up for good?" Lavik asked me. "Big Louie went to prison. He got paroled, and later he died in a house fire. His buddy got paroled too, I don't know what happened to him."
The murder was written up in one of the "true crime" magazines, Lavik told me. A secretary at the Rugby school has a copy of the magazine. "You know I always thought they embellished those crime stories when they wrote them up," Lavik said, "but this one was word-for-word a true account of what had actually happened." I asked Lavik to get me a photocopy of the article for my reference. What he wants is a copy for himself of the actual magazine, but he isn't optimistic that he's going to find one.
Then Lavik remembers: "A few years before this murder, a bunch of us kids were out playing softball in the park. Big Louie's car drove up. Out came one big tree of a leg, then the other. Big Louie was walking towards us and we were trying to pretend that we didn't see him. Ha. We knew he was trouble. He wanted to play ball with us and what choice did we have. He batted and we chased the balls he hit, that's how he played ball. When he got tired of it he thanked us and drove off. Whew. You know I was worried the whole time I'd never get to grow up and become a school superintendent."
To be continued....
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