On this day, Nov. 12, in 1966, honor roll student Robert Smith massacred five people at an Arizona beauty parlor to make a name for himself.
Smith, 18, walked into the Rose-Mar Beauty College in Mesa and fired a shot into a mirror. He ordered five women and two children to lie in a circle so they looked like the spokes of a wheel.
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One of the women hid her baby under her body. Another warned him to leave because 40 beauty school students were expected to arrive.
Smith replied, “Sorry, I don’t have that many bullets.”
He then shot each twice in the back of the head, and waited for police.
When police asked him why he’d did it, he replied: “I wanted to get known, to get myself a name.”
Four women and a 3-year-old girl were killed. The baby, who had been shot in the arm, survived under her mother’s dead body.
Smith was sentenced to life in prison where he remains at the age 61.
— Scott McCabe
