Beer Party Bride Held in Torso Slaying

How it all began...

“In the bleak midwinter, frosty winds made moan,” the poet wrote. “Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone…”

The month of March, in Indianapolis. Christmas is long gone. Summer is a promising speck in the distance, but first you have to get through endless basketball games and a 500-mile auto race.

Rain or snow will slam the city on average from 15 to 22 days during the month, and it is cold and clammy. This is me, sugar-coating it.

I was 23 years old and doing okay at the Indianapolis News, getting occasional front-page bylines in one of the largest newspapers in the state. I was on my way, and I was feeling pretty fortunate.

One day, in March 1971, I answered the phone at my desk, and it was the editor of a newspaper in Bloomington, Indiana. He said he wanted to meet to offer me a job.

Normally, journalists didn’t move from a big newspaper to a smaller one, but this job came with a neat title and a raise. Bloomington was the home of Indiana University, so there would be a lot of smart people around. I liked smart people.

Dinner with the editors went well. We liked each other. I asked for a couple of days to think it over. They said they would need me to start on March 29, just two weeks away.

I met with my Indianapolis News editor the next day, to give notice. He offered to match the higher salary and said I had a great future, so I caved in and turned down the Bloomington job.

I then spent a miserable couple of weeks filled with regret and remorse, wondering what might have been.

On the fateful day, March 29, when I would have started the new job, I resigned myself to living with my spineless decision to stay. I sat at my desk, pounding out crime stories about what the rapscallions had been up to overnight.

In the periphery of my field of vision I saw the door to the ladies’ room swing open, and she walked out. I had never seen what cosmopolitan looked like close-up, but I suspected this had to be it. Well-dressed but not flashy, she had an air of polished confidence, a smart smile that said, “I’ve got this.”

I thought to myself, “Bob, now that looks like a girl who has been to New York City!” It was my supreme mental compliment.

She glided into an office about 30 feet from my desk and sat down. It was then that I proved, beyond any and all doubt, that I didn’t have a single clue in life. I stood up and walked into that office to get introduced.

If that act alone doesn’t sound lame enough – and it certainly should – maybe some color commentary will help. I was wearing red denim jeans and a garish flowered terrycloth necktie. I badly wanted to be a hippie, but my hair had to be cut short for my National Guard meetings.

I had a wispy little lounge lizard mustache.

I was quite the catch.

Standing at the desk next to hers, I made eye contact with the paper’s fashion editor, who was a friend. I made a jerky motion with my head, as if I were being tased. My friend rolled her eyes.

“Barbara, this is Bob Basler, one of our reporters.”

“One of our reporters?” Thanks for the huge build-up.

Barbara stood up at her desk to shake hands and I welcomed her as if I were a greeter at Walmart. We chatted briefly. She had just moved here from the Houston Chronicle, but she said she was from Westchester County, New York. I nodded sagely as though that meant something to me, which it didn’t, and I left.

Later that evening she would tell her brother, who was in town helping her get settled, about “this dork who hit on me,” and she would describe my attire, embellishing it slightly with jumbo clown shoes and a red rubber nose.

For my part, I would tell the salivating guys out in the newsroom, who had spotted her the same time I had, that the new girl seemed like kind of a snob.

If there is such a thing as love at first sight, this wasn’t it.

I slunk back to my typewriter to produce more tales of local hooliganism.

The next morning, I was called to the managing editor’s office, by his secretary. This could not be good news.

It wasn’t.

The new girl, who also had been summoned, was already sitting there.

“Bob, this is Barbara,” said the editor.

“We’ve met,” Barbara and I said, in unison. Neither of us sounded too thrilled about it.

The editor told Barbara that one of her duties would be to edit a weekly tabloid insert filled with news from our high school correspondents. He explained that I had done the same job as a cub reporter, and that I would be working closely with her for a couple of weeks until she got the hang of it.

This was news to me, and it was how I came to be sequestered in a small conference room redolent of Chanel Number Five Perfume and Flying Dutchman pipe tobacco.

There were two clunky Remington typewriters, reams of copy paper and a stack of turgid news stories written by pimply-faced Hoosier high schoolers.

I knew one thing. If we were both going to come out of this room alive, the atmosphere would need to lighten up. Reading through an especially awful story, I began to chuckle.

“What is it?” Barbara asked, being polite.

I read her a sentence. Bad syntax, baffling word choices, total gibberish. This was a test. I figured either she would just stare, wondering what the hell was wrong with me, or else she would laugh.

She laughed, and it was music to my ears. Our first genuine moment of levity. Two writers, mutually appreciating bad writing.

She then shuffled through her stack, read me the lead on one of the stories, and we shared our second laugh. Maybe this would be bearable, after all.

The next few days were a surprise. More laughter, every day. But something else was happening, as well. As I double-checked the stories she had edited, I saw that she had made them readable and engaging. She was making these students look good.

Whatever else I thought of her, this snobby girl could write, and she knew her way around the English Language. I tend to communicate mostly in sarcasm, and she was fluent at that. She punctuated her thoughts with the occasional f-bomb. She was not the frosty elitist I had first taken her for.

By the time she was ready to take over the teen tabloid solo, we were friendly.

Will these two crazy kids get together? What does a torso slaying have to do with it? You’ll just have to wait for the exciting conclusion of the Beer Party Bride Saga, one week from today. Meanwhile, feel free to make your predictions in the comments below…