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Arthur Herman Bremer (; born August 21, 1950) is an American convicted criminal, who attempted to assassinate United States Democratic presidential candidate George Wallace on May 15, 1972, in Laurel, Maryland, leaving Wallace permanently Paraplegia from the waist down. Bremer was found guilty and sentenced to 63 years (53 years after an appeal) in a Maryland prison for the shooting of Wallace and three bystanders. After 35 years of incarceration, Bremer was released from prison on November 9, 2007.
Though he played football with the freshman-sophomore team and tried out for the wrestling team during the 1966-67 school year, Bremer did not make friends, and he remained a solitary student until his 1969 graduation from South Division High School. The New York Times, May 17, 1972
After graduating from high school, Bremer briefly attended Milwaukee Area Technical College, studying aerial photography, art, writing, and psychology; he dropped out after one semester. Pittsburgh Post Gazette, May 17, 1972 p.93
On September 1, 1970, Bremer got a part-time job working as a janitor at Story Elementary School, which he quit after almost 18 months, on January 31, 1972.
On October 16, 1971, after an argument, Bremer moved from his parents' house to a three-room one-bedroom apartment near Marquette University, where he lived until May 9, 1972.
Late on the night of November 18, 1971, Bremer was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon and for parking in a no-parking zone. A court-appointed psychiatrist declared Bremer mentally ill, yet stable enough to continue to live in the community. Bremer was released after paying a $38.50 fine.
On December 8, 1971, Bremer pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.
On January 13, 1972, Bremer went into the Casanova Gun Shop in Milwaukee, and bought a snub-nosed Charter Arms Undercover .38-caliber revolver for $90 (equivalent to $692.15 in 2025)
On April 10, Bremer traveled from Milwaukee to Ottawa, which Nixon was about to visit. Three days later, dressed in a business suit with a "Vote Republican" sticker on, wearing sunglasses and with a revolver in his pocket, Bremer went out intending to assassinate Nixon, but found no opportunity. Security was tight, making it impossible for Bremer to get close enough to Nixon, and he doubted whether any bullets would go through the bulletproof glass of Nixon's presidential limousine.
Three days later, on April 13, Bremer thought he saw Nixon's limousine outside of the Centre Block, but it had disappeared by the time he could retrieve his revolver from his hotel room.
Despite his lack of enthusiasm, early on the morning of May 9, 1972, Bremer took a car ferry to Ludington, Michigan, and visited the Wallace campaign headquarters in Silver Lake, Michigan, and offered to be a volunteer. That week, he attended Wallace rallies in Lansing and Cadillac.
On the afternoon of May 13, Kalamazoo police received an anonymous phone call saying a suspicious looking person had been sitting in a car near the National Guard Armory. When questioned, Bremer said he was waiting for the Wallace rally to begin and wanted to get a good seat. Bremer was photographed at the rally that evening, where he had a clear opportunity to shoot his target, but according to his diary, he did not do so because he might have shattered some glass and blinded some "stupid 15-year-olds" who stood nearby.
The following day, Bremer set off for Maryland and made his final diary entry.
At a second rally at Laurel Shopping Center, away in Laurel, Maryland, there was minor heckling, but it did not last. About 1,000 people were present; they were mostly quiet and it was generally a friendly crowd. After he had finished speaking, Wallace shook hands with some of those present, against the advice of his Secret Service guards. At approximately 4 p.m., Bremer pushed his way forward, aimed his .38 revolver at Wallace's abdomen and opened fire, emptying the weapon before he could be subdued. He hit Wallace four times. Wallace fell back and lost a pint of blood, going into a mild state of shock. One bullet lodged in his spinal cord; the others hit Wallace in the abdomen and chest. Three others present were wounded unintentionally: State Trooper Captain E.C. Dothard, Wallace's personal bodyguard, who was shot in the stomach; Dora Thompson, a campaign volunteer, who was shot in the leg; and Nick Zarvos, a Secret Service agent. Zarvos was shot in the neck, and his speech was severely impaired following the shooting.
Bremer had planned to yell his carefully chosen catchphrase, , as he shot Wallace. However, in the heat of the assassination attempt, he forgot to do so. The Crocodile Man: A Case of Brain Chemistry and Criminal Violence André Mayer & Michael Wheeler. p. 7 A television cameraman captured footage of the shooting.
After searching Bremer's car, police described it as a "hotel on wheels". In it they found blankets, pillows, a blue steel 9 mm Browning Hi-Power semi-automatic pistol with a 13-round magazine, binoculars, a woman's umbrella, a tape recorder, a portable radio with police band, an electric shaver, photographic equipment, a garment bag with several changes of clothes, a toilet kit, a 1972 copy of a Writers' Yearbook, and the two books he had borrowed from the Milwaukee public library ten days earlier.
In his memoir, Hunt reports that the day after the assassination attempt he received a call from Chuck Colson, asking him to break into Bremer's apartment and plant "leftist literature to connect him to the Democrats". Hunt recalls that he was highly skeptical of the plan due to the apartment being guarded by the FBI but investigated the feasibility of it anyway at Colson's insistence. G. Gordon Liddy also discusses the plan in his memoir.
Jonas Rappeport, the chief psychiatrist for the circuit court in Baltimore, who spent a total of nine hours with Bremer in June 1972 on four occasions, said Bremer had a "schizoid personality disorder with some paranoid and psychopathic features",The South-east Missourian - 2 August 1972 but also stated that this did not "substantially impair his capacity to understand the criminality of his actions."
On August 4, 1972, the jury of six men and six women took 95 minutes to reach their verdict. Bremer was sentenced to 63 years in prison for shooting Wallace and three other people. When asked if he had anything to say, Bremer replied, "Well, Mr. Marshall mentioned that he would like society to be protected from someone like me. Looking back on my life I would have liked it if society had protected me from myself. That's all I have to say at this time." The sentence was reduced to 53 years on September 28, 1972, after an appeal. On July 6, 1973, Bremer's second appeal to have the sentence reduced further was rejected.
A 113-page portion of Bremer's diary was published in 1973 as An Assassin's Diary; it covers the period from April 4, 1972—which, coincidentally, was the day on which George McGovern won the Wisconsin primary—to the day before Bremer shot Wallace.
On August 26, 1980, an earlier part of Bremer's diary, dated from March 1 to April 3, 1972, (pp. 1–148) was found where he had concealed it, heavily wrapped in a plastic suitcase at the foot of Milwaukee's 27th Street viaduct.Associated Press. "Finder can keep Bremer diary" Tuscaloosa News September 11, 1981, p. 2. In it, Bremer discusses his desire to kill Nixon (Wallace was clearly a secondary target) and fantasizes about killing unnamed individuals who had angered him. He also imagines opening fire at random at the corner of 3rd Street and Wisconsin Avenue downtown. The diary was eventually sold to an official of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who donated it to UAB's Reynolds Historical Library.AP. "Bremer diary traces nightmare journey". Tuscaloosa News June 16, 1985, p. 20A.
Bremer's assassination attempt did not end Wallace's political career. Wallace was subsequently elected governor of Alabama twice, in 1974 and 1982. However, the result of the assassination attempt, combined with changes in Wallace's personal and general political circumstances, ended his presidential aspirations. Public concerns over Wallace's health meant he would never gain the momentum he had in the 1972 campaign. He entered the presidential election race in 1976 but withdrew early due to lack of significant support.
Wallace forgave Bremer in August 1995 and wrote to him expressing the hope that the two could get to know each other better. "Pope-Wallace meeting remembered", The Decatur Daily, Decatur, Alabama. April 6, 2005. Retrieved December 23, 2006. Bremer did not reply. Wallace died on September 13, 1998. "George Wallace, Segregation Symbol, Dies at 79", The New York Times September 14, 1998.
According to 1997 parole records, psychological testing indicated releasing him would be risky. He argued in his June 1996 hearing that "shooting segregationist dinosaurs wasn't as bad as harming mainstream politicians." "Mourners praise George Wallace at vigil" , CNN. September 16, 1998. Retrieved December 23, 2006. Bremer was released from prison on November 9, 2007, at the age of 57, having served 35 years of his original sentence. His probation ended on May 15, 2025.
Conditions of his release included electronic monitoring and staying away from elected officials and candidates. He was ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation and receive treatment if the state deemed it necessary; he could not leave the state without written permission from the state agency that supervised him until the end of his probation.
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