Arthur Bremer had fame on his mind, as his diary revealed, when he tried to assassinate Gov. George Wallace, a Presidential candidate in 1972. He has now been released from prison.

Arthur Bremer, the man who stalked President Richard M. Nixon before shooting and paralyzing Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace in 1972, was released from a Maryland prison today, with 17 years shaved off his sentence.

State officials said that, under state law, Bremer’s model behavior and consistent work while incarcerated mandated he be released.

When he was last free, Bremer came to Maryland armed with a snub-nosed revolver and a plan to make himself famous. He stalked Nixon for weeks and then settled, reluctantly, on an easier target.

“Wallace will have the honor,” Bremer wrote in his diary May 4, 1972, less than two weeks before he opened fire on the presidential candidate at a campaign appearance in Laurel.

Although he yearned for fame at the time of the shooting, Bremer, now 57, has not spoken publicly since his trial that year, and he now appears intent on slipping back into society as quietly as possible.

David Blumberg, chairman of the Maryland Parole Commission, said Bremer is “certainly a different person.”

“At the time of his offense, he wanted notoriety,” Blumberg said, “and now he actively disdains it.”

[…]

On May 15, 1972, Bremer pressed through a crowd in a parking lot outside the Laurel Shopping Center and opened fire, striking Wallace and three others, all of whom survived. Bremer was convicted of four counts of assault with intent to murder and other charges after a jury rejected his insanity defense.

Wallace spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair and in constant pain. Before his death in 1998, he sent letters to Bremer saying he had forgiven him. “If you’ll accept Jesus Christ into your heart like I’ve done, we’ll be in heaven together, Arthur,” Wallace wrote, according to his son, George.

Here is a link to the May 16, 1972 Washington Post article reporting on the assassination attempt:

Surrounded by a crowd of 1,000, the 52-year-old governor was shot at close range following his speech at the Laurel Shopping Center, about 14 miles northeast of Washington.

Wallace, campaigning in his third bid for the presidency, was hit in the chest and stomach by two bullets that caused four or five wounds.

At 2:15 a.m., a spokesman for Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring said the governor was “awake and alert” in the recovery room. “At this point, his progress is satisfactory,” the spokesman said.

At 11 p.m., after five hours surgery, his wife told a press conference that, though he is seriously injured, “I feel very optimistic about him and you know his nature. He didn’t earn the title of ‘Fighting Little Judge’ for nothing … ”

Mrs. Wallace said he was conscious through the ordeal, except while under surgery, and remains in good spirits. “I feel very good that he is alive and he has a sound heart and sound brain … I couldn’t thank God more for that,” she said. Three persons traveling with Wallace were also wounded in the shooting.

Police immediately arrested a blond young man identified as Arthur Herman Bremer, a 21-year-old bus boy and janitor from Milwaukee, Wis. He was charged by state authorities with four counts of assault with intent to murder and was arraigned in Baltimore on two federal charges. One of the federal charges was interfering with the civil rights of a candidate for federal office, a provision of the 1968 Civil Rights Act. The Wallace second charge was for assaulting a federal officer; one of the four people shot at the rally was Secret Service officer.