General Discussion

I have a few versions of it. The record company's lawyers asked for two lines to be changed before they released it, and Bob had sung it live a couple of times already. The changes made had nothing to do with Miss Patti Valentine, yet she sued because the song made her sad. It should have made her feel guilty about lying. I knew the second Patterson patrolman to arrive at the scene of the shooting. He told me that Valentine was not upstairs sleeping until the gunfire woke her, allowing her to look out her second story window and "identify" Carter and Artis by the back of their necks. Seriously. She was actually at a party down the street, and no one else there said it was Rubin and John -- in fact, there was a boxer at the party, who said it definitely wasn't them.

I also know a local man, the cousin of a good friend, who was in the bar earlier that evening. He was on leave from fighting in Vietnam at the time. He said that the white people he knew had long considered Rubin to be a scary man. And I have had someone say to me, "You can tell he is a murderer! Just look at him!" I think that is what convicted him, since the evidence couldn't.