Fifty Dollars and a Bus Ticket: The Robert Alton Harris Story

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Two sixteen year old best friends sat in a parking lot eating cheeseburgers and

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planning a fishing trip. But an hour later they were dead and the man who killed

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them drove back to his house and finished their food. He ate their cheeseburgers.

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Fourteen years later the state of California would build a legal storm around

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him that ended in the gas chamber. This is the story of Robert Alton Harris.

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[Music]

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Robert Alton Harris came into the world on January 15th, 1953, two months early

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because his father had kicked his pregnant mother in the stomach. He went straight

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into intensive care with fetal alcohol syndrome from his mom's heavy drinking

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throughout the pregnancy. Before this baby had ever even opened his eyes his brain

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was already wired wrong and the man waiting to raise him already hated him.

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That is the starting line of this story and we're not even at the crib yet.

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Robert's father Kenneth Harris was a World War II veteran who had earned a

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silver star and a purple heart. He came home from combat with what we would now

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diagnose as severe PTSD. Back in the 40s and the 50s a returning soldier with

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night terrors and a drinking problem was told you know get over it. Go have some

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beers with the fellas. There was no therapy and no support group. Nobody sitting

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him down and saying hey you watched your friends die. That is going to live in

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your nervous system forever. Kenneth turned every bit of that pain outward onto

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his wife and his children. His mom Evelyn was half Cherokee one of 11 kids from a

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dirt poor Oklahoma family. She was picking cotton to buy alcohol when she was

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still a teenager. She described herself in her own words as wild and vicious when

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she drank. The cycle was already spinning before Robert was even conceived.

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Kenneth had a particular hatred for Robert. He believed with by the way zero

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actual evidence that the boy was the product of an affair so Robert got the worst

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of it. At 18 months old his father beat him with a bamboo cane. Later on Kenneth

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would load a gun and tell his toddler son to run away from him for fun. A grown man

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in his 30s terrorizing a child who could barely walk and talk. When Robert was

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nine the family landed in a migrant labor camp in California's San Joaquin

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Valley. Within weeks his oldest sister Barbara got arrested for theft and while

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she was in juvenile hall she told the authorities that their father had been

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sexually abusing her and her sisters for years. Kenneth got shipped off to a

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state hospital and became a registered sex offender. A year later police walked in

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on him raping one of his daughters and sent him right back to prison. By age 10

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Robert was already on police reports for killing neighborhood cats but he

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insisted he only watched while the other kids did the actual killing which

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became his whole pattern in life. He always was at the scene but he was always

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pointing the finger at someone else. At 12 he got arrested for sniffing glue. At

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13 he did four months in a Santa Rosa juvenile facility for stealing a car. While

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he was locked in that place the place that was supposed to fix him he was

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repeatedly being raped by older kids older inmates. 13 years old and the

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system meant to correct him was actively helping him be brutalized not

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protecting him from the other inmates. Then in May of 1967 his mom did something

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Robert never really recovered from. She packed up his four youngest siblings and

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drove out of their Sacramento apartment and never came back. Robert was 14. He had

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been abandoned by the only parents however terrible she was that had never been

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incarcerated for child rape. From 14 to 19 he was award of the federal reformatory

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system. The records from those years eventually filled around 950 pages and

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reading what the counselors wrote sounds like a clinical study of a young mind

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coming apart. There were repeated suicide attempts, self-mutilation and

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documented diagnosis of schizophrenia. One counselor summed up Robert's future in

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a single word gloomy. When he turned 19 the federal government no longer had the

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legal authority to hold him so they handed him 50 bucks and a Greyhound ticket to

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Chula Vista, California and wished him well. That was the state's entire

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investment in reintegrating a young man with a documented case of schizophrenia

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brain damage and severe trauma. Against every odd stacked against him Robert tried

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to have a normal life. He got a welding job. He got married. He and his wife had a

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baby boy named him Robert Jr. in October of 1974. For a minute his life looked

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like the kind of life that he might have had if he'd been built somewhere else.

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It's different parents. The marriage lasted less than three years. By 1975 he'd

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lost that welding job. He was drinking around the clock and he was living on

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welfare in a trailer park out in Imperial County. That same year Robert and his

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younger brother Kenneth decided that their neighbor James Wheeler needed a

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lesson in how to fight. Both brothers were drunk and what followed went way past

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anything resembling a fight. Robert beat Wheeler poured flammable liquid on him

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and threw lit matches at him. He shared off some of his hair. Wheeler died because

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of that. Robert pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and served about two and

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a half years. Right before his parole the Imperial County Sheriff's Department

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sent a written warning to the parole board saying Robert was in serious need of

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psychiatric care. Nobody acted on it. Five months and 26 days after walking out of

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prison on parole Robert Alton Harris would kill two children. It was July 5th 1978.

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John Maysky and Michael Baker were 16 year old best friends. John had just gotten his

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driver's license and the car was his. The two were eating cheeseburgers in the

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parking lot of a Miramasa supermarket planning a fishing trip for that afternoon.

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That was the whole agenda for the day. Two teenage boys on a sunny summer Saturday

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afternoon. Robert Harris and his younger brother Daniel had spent days planning

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to rob a bank that happened to be right across the street. They had stolen guns.

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They'd run their drills and burned eye holes into ski masks but they needed a

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car. Robert walked up to the boys vehicle, got into the back seat with a pistol,

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and told John to drive toward Miramar Lake. He promised them nobody would get hurt.

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The boys suggested that they could just walk up that hill, wait for the brothers to

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leave, and then report the car stolen with a fake description of the thieves.

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Robert thought it was a good plan. He said so. He agreed to all of that. And then he

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shot John in the back and then again in the head. He chased Michael who ran who was

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hiding and screaming in a bush and shot him four times. He then walked back to

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John, fired into his head again at point blank range. And then that apparently

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wasn't enough. He picked up as brothers rifle and shot John one final time. What

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he did afterward is the moment that defined how the public would see this case

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for the next 14 years. He drove back to his house with Daniel and he finished the

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boys half eaten cheeseburgers. He laughed while telling Daniel what he had done. When

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Daniel pointed out there were bits of flesh stuck to the pistol from the contact

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shot. Robert flicked them off and bragged about it. About an hour later the

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brothers robbed the bank across the street and got away with around $2,000. A

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witness saw it, followed them, and then called the police telling them where they

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were. They were under arrest within the hour. You know the strange way the

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universe works. One of the officers who arrested Robert that afternoon was named

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Steve Baker and he was Michael Baker's father. He had no idea his son was dead.

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No idea that the man he was handcuffing had killed him. He would find out later and

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he would then spend the next 14 years of his life fighting for this man's

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execution. Robert was convicted in March of 1979. Two counts of first degree

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murder and sentenced to death at 26 years old. What followed was one of the

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longest and most contested death penalty cases in American history. 16

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habeas appeals over 14 years. A Supreme Court case, pulley versus Harris, that

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became binding national precedent on how death sentences get reviewed.

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Defense attorneys eventually paid out of their own pockets for neuropsychological

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testing and found organic brain damage, fetal alcohol syndrome, and severe PTSD

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that had never been presented to the original jury. Mother Teresa personally

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called the governor Pete Wilson twice to ask for clemency and Wilson denied

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Mother Teresa both times. When actual Mother Teresa calls you and you say no

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thanks. You've got your mind made up. At 6 o' 1 a.m. on April 21st 1992, Robert was

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led into San Quitton's pale green gas chamber for the second time that morning

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because hours earlier he had been strapped in, then unstrapped after a last

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minute stay, and then walked back in. In the viewing room, Steve Baker stood

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about six feet away. Robert saw him and mouth the words "I'm sorry." Baker nodded.

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Robert's final words were lifted from the movie Bill and Ted's bogus journey.

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"You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the grim reaper."

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He was declared dead at 6.21 a.m. His father Kenneth, the man who started all of

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this, had killed himself with a shotgun a few years before. Someone once asked him

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about his son's crimes. He paused for a long time, then asked, "How could that

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bastard do that?" He was talking about his own boy. Two years after the execution,

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the gas chamber that killed Robert Alton Harris was declared unconstitutional.

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The only videotape of an American execution ever recorded was destroyed on

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January 15th 1994. That was Robert's birthday.

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Thanks for listening to 10-minute murder, binge-able true crime stories.

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Hello, I'm Joe, I'm the host, and here's an email, subject to brand new listeners.

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Hey Joe, my wife and I drove from Louisville to Cape Cod a couple weeks ago.

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That's a long drive. And somewhere along the way we ran out of podcasts that we'd

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been saving for the trip. So I searched, true crime, and found your show. We

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figured we'd listen to maybe one or two episodes and check it out. By the time we

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got to New York, there was no telling how many we'd gone through. At the end of

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each one, it became a running joke that we would say, "Okay, maybe just one more."

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You've definitely got two new listeners. Ben and Louisville Kentucky.

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Big Ben, I appreciate it man, that's the second most popular way people will find the show.

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The first one is when you tell your friends and your family about 10-minute

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somewhere in that mix. No matter how you found me, I'm super glad that you and your wife

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did. Hope your trip to Cape Cod was nice. And I really appreciate you reaching out.

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Hey, if you're a brand new listener to this podcast, welcome. Make sure you hit

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subscribe wherever you're listening right now. And go back and listen to some of the older episodes

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the show on social media if you want to. And before you move on to another episode or

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move on with your day, let me let you know that if you want more information about the episode you

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heard today, the Robert Alton Harris story, I did another episode on my other podcast. It's called

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True Crime Blueprint. It's much longer. It goes into way more detail than the episode that you heard

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today here on 10-minute murder. So search True Crime Blueprint or go to the links in the show notes

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of this episode and you'll find True Crime Blueprint where you can listen to that podcast.

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But I hit it a lot longer. It's a deeper dive into Robert Alton Harris's story and it's very

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interesting and I encourage you to go check that out. True Crime Blueprint is my other podcast.

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Now that's going to do it. That's your episode for today. Really appreciate you listening and I'll

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see you next time.