The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 4

A4 Akron Beacon Journal Friday. July 20. 1984 AT ODDS WITH THE WORLD Massacre in California Job losses made unhappy man more bitter I i. 9 Earl Huberty's home on Ohio 241, left; house at right was James VM, 1 Continued from page Al remain in the classroom while the others romped. During a minor flare-up, Huberty's geography teacher told him, "If you were a real man like all the other boys, you'd be out playing football." Huberty, a student, graduated from Waynedale High School in Wayne County's East Union Township in 1960, one of a class of about 75.

One of his closest friends in high school was Charles Malcuit, 42, who lives near Fredericksburg in Wayne County. They played chess almost daily during lunch. Malcuit won most of the time. "I was a pretty fair player, but Jim was no dummy," Malcuit said. County school Superintendent Edwin 0.

Thompson was principal of Waynedale High when Huberty was a student. "He was a very quiet boy who didn't make any waves and didn't participate in any activities," Thompson said. When news of the shootings broke, Thompson remembered Huberty's name and looked in the 1960 yearbook, but there was no photo of him. Huberty's mother, Icle, said the police who shot and killed her son had no other choice. "There was nothing else they could do," Mrs.

Huberty, 70, told the Arizona Daily Star in a copyright interview published today. The Star reported that Mrs. Huberty was a 10-year resident of Tucson and that she was caring for a recovering stroke patient at the patient's home. Mrs. Huberty said she had not seen her son "in two years or maybe three years." Mrs.

Huberty and her husband, Earl, separated when James Huberty was 7. She left to be a Quaker missionary to American Indians. The Associated Press quoted acquaintances of Huberty who said he had been deeply hurt by his parents' separation. Earl V. Huberty took his Amish neighbor to the Schaffter Bros, hardware store in Mount Eaton on Thursday morning to pick up supplies for the work they were going to do on Huberty's driveway.

It was about 8 a.m., Warren Schaffter said, and Huberty apparently didn't know what his son had done in California. Schaffter, who runs the hardware store his father founded in 1916, also has driven a school bus for 35 years. He remembered James Huberty as a "big, tall, skinny kid, always shy, maybe kind of backward." The entire family "keeps pretty much to themselves," he said. The elder Huberty suffered a fairly serious head injury in an industrial accident and took an early retirement. Earl Huberty and his wife, Rose, were at their Paint Township home on Ohio 241 between Mount Eaton and West Lebanon on Thursday afternoon.

An Amishman with a front-end loader smoothed dirt on the driveway while two Amish boys sat in the yard and watched. A woman yelled to reporters coming up the hilly drive that there would be "no comment from the house." Bertha Eggeman remembered James Huberty mowing the lawn at the farmhouse where he grew up in Paint Township. "When I first heard the name on television, I said it couldn't be him," said Mrs. Eggeman, 88, who lives across the street from the elder Huberty. James was in high school when the Eggemans moved into the neighborhood 24 years ago.

He and his father, sister Ruth and grandmother lived in a stucco-and-wood farmhouse now occupied by an Amish family who farm the surrounding land. James' grandmother raised him and his older sister, Mrs. Eggeman said. She said it was rumored that when Earl Huberty moved back to the farmhouse where his mother lived, his first wife refused to move to the country with him. Mrs.

Eggeman said no one saw much of James after he graduated from high school. She thought his father sent him away to school. Meanwhile, his grandmother died and his father remarried and built a house across the street from the farm. Mrs. Eggeman said that during breaks from school, James spent little time at his father's house.

He went to Massillon to see his future wife, Etna. He and Etna lived with his father for a short time after they were married. They came to the Eggeman house once. "He wanted to talk to my husband," Mrs. Eggeman said.

"She sat in the car with one child. She said she had another little one at home." In the early 1960s, Huberty, then in his 20s, was studying to be a funeral director. He attended Malone College in Canton, got a diploma from a Pittsburgh mortuary school, worked as an apprentice embalmer, then was granted Ohio licenses as an embalmer and funeral director. But Huberty never became a funeral director and his licenses expired because he didn't pay a $6 renewal fee for the funeral director's license in 1967 and a $9 fee on his embalmer's license in 1970. For a short time, he worked as ar.

apprentice embalmer at the Don Williams funeral home in Canton. Williams said Huberty wasn't cut out to be a funeral director. "He was rather a loner," Williams said. "He would prefer the embalming room rather than be out front meeting the public. He just didn't like people or crowds." Beacon Journal photo by Lew Stamp Huberty's boyhood home Waynedale High sophomore younger daughter, was nicknamed Bob-bi.

The Matechecks' baby sitter, Angie Goodnough, 13, said Huberty's girls used to brag about the seances, saying they had consulted with spirits about important family events. They claimed the spirits had told them when the family would sell their home and when they could move from Ohio, she said. Angie's mother, Linda Goodnough, remembered the summer day in 1982 when Huberty warned her husband, "One of these days, when you least expect it, I'm going to get you alone." Mrs. Goodnough said Huberty didn't get along with his neighbors, partly because some complained to the police about Huberty's German shepherds. The feud boiled over one day when some children, including two of the Good-noughs' daughters and the Hubertys two daughters, got into a scufflek "He got mad about it and said he'd get even," Mrs.

Goodnough said. "And he did, about two weeks later. He was in his yard, and he invited sonue kids over to have Cracker Jacks. Wel, he never did anything like that before, and as soon as the kids were all there, he went into his house. His daughter, BoDbi, walked up to my daughter and hit, her in the eye." Mrs.

Goodnough said her husband, -Art, asked Huberty why he had set up the fight. "He said, 'I believe in paying my debts, both good and "He said he'd get even with the rest of the kids eventually. "And sure enough, a couple of months later, my daughter, Katherine, was walking down the sidewalk and Bobbi crouched in the bushes, waiting, while he (Huberty) watched. Bobbi jumped out and hit her with a karate chop." Mrs. Goodnough and her husband went out to break up the fight, and Huberty called the police.

"He became furious when the policeman wouldn't arrest us," she said. "As soon as we got home, the phone rang. I said, 'Oh God, Art, that must be him. When Art picked up the phone, he (Huberty) said, 'One of these days, when you least expect it, I'm going to get you In more than 40 years in Stark and Wayne counties, the only criminal charge ever lodged against Huberty was in Massillon. for disorderly conduct.

On Oct. 15, 1980, he pleaded no contest and was found guilty in a dispute involving a gas station owner. Huberty was ordered to pay court costs. But other court records show Huberty was willing to wage legal battles, Huberty sued Jodi L. Johnson of North Canton for $135,000 after an Aug.

17 car accident. Bertha Eggeman once a neighbor Abe Yoder former classmate Details of the accident were not clear. Johnson and the attorneys could not be reached for comment. In a suit filed last year, Huberty claimed a real estate broker reneged on a promise to buy his apartment building at 510 Federal Ave. N.E., Massillon.

The suit, against real estate agent Harold J. Grant, claimed that Grant misled Huberty in 1982 into thinking he could arrange a $144,000 sale of the property with unnamed investors. The deal fell through, and Huberty eventually sold the building for $115,000. According to the suit, which is pending, Grant falsely claimed that "he had secured and committed investment partners who were interested in purchasing" the property. Huberty asked for $79,000 in damages.

Huberty also filed a complaint with the Ohio Department of Commerce, which ruled last fall that Grant violated state law by failing to identify the investors for Huberty and failing to give Marks Taylor Realtors a $4,000 check that Huberty put down for their fees. The commission suspended Grant's license for 30 days. Grant, who could not be reached for comment, has denied all of Huberty's claims in court. Another suit involves an attempt by First Investment Co. of Canton to foreclose on the home Huberty sold last year through an assumed loan.

Huberty didn't want to move from Ohio but claimed he had to go to escape his financial problems. "He loved this house, and he didn't want to move," said David Smith, who bought Huberty's home at 107 Sixth St. N.E. in Massillon in September. Huberty had purchased the house next to the one that burned down and built the apartment building on his old property.

"When it came time to sign the papers, I could tell he didn't want to sell, but he felt he had to." Smith bought the 15-room, three-story brick home to contain his growing family and limousine business. The Smiths put down about $12,000 and assumed Huberty's $38,000 bank loan. Smith said the privacy-loving Huberty lived behind trees, thick drapes and heavy wooden doors with triple locks: "He didn't like to be bothered by people. If he wanted to say something to you, he would say it in one sentence." Smith said Huberty sold the house because he had run out of unemployment benefits and couldn't support his family anymore. "There was darkness," Smith said, "at the end of the tunneL" Warren Schaffter 1 hardware merchant Linda Goodnough remembers feuding When Brother Dave Lombardi sized up Huberty, he knew he faced a challenge.

"When I first met him, he was kind of atheistic. He was bitter against God." Lombardi, pastor of Trinity Gospel Temple of Canton, said Huberty "seemed to be a person who had deep inner conflicts. "He was pent up. He was a loner, and he had kind of an explosive personality. When you talked to him, you knew he had nervous anxiety and he was wound up inside," Lombardi told the Associated Press.

That was in 1964, when Huberty was attending church because his fiancee wanted him to be a part of the church that her family loved and supported. They were married the next year, and, for quite a while, James and Etna Huberty attended regularly. That continued a family tradition for Mrs. Huberty. Her father, Ewell Mark-land, had been Sunday school superintendent for many years.

Her mother, Mary Ellen, was director of the junior church. Both died in the mid-1970s. Lombardi said he could never describe Huberty as devout, a term that applied to Huberty's wife and her family. But in the four years after the Huber-tys' 1965 wedding, he said, it appeared that Huberty "tended to accept God." Then the Hubertys stopped attending church. Anger, depression, fear.

Those were the words that former coworkers used to describe Huberty, the loner in their midst. Huberty worked at Babcock Wilcox's Canton plant from 1969 until the plant closed in 1982. Laid off from Huberty worked at Union Metal Manufacturing Co. in Canton from May 2 to June 10, 1982, when he was laid off again. Oscar White, vice president and a shop steward of the United Steelworkers local at the plant when it was closed, said Huberty was depressed.

"He didn't know what he was going to do," White said. "He talked about going overseas and putting his money in a bank in Mexico. "He wasn't going to have anjthing to do with the United States. He was down on the United States, and too." He said Huberty talked often about the Soviet Union and said he would be prepared for a Soviet attack. But, said White, "He was very intelligent." A worker who asked to remain anony-.

mous called Huberty a man of grudges. Huberty and his wife once picketed the Canton Insulation Co. because they, were angry about work the firm did. The company settled its dispute with 1 Huberty is first in back row as the Hubertys by agreeing not to charge them the remaining $1,900 on their bill. "I told him once I never wanted him to get mad at me," the worker said.

It was 5 degrees below zero on the night of Feb. 1, 1971, when Etna Huberty left home to pick up her husband at the plant. She didn't know she was leaving a fire smoldering in the ductwork of her kitchen stove. By the time she and her husband returned, their three-story home a landmark of sorts in Massillon was a pile of rubble. Massillon Fire Chief Thomas Matthews recalled that drapery hardware and window frames were found on the lawn across the street when firefighters arrived at the home, at Sixth Street Northeast and Federal Avenue.

Matthews said he guessed there might have been an explosion after Huberty said he had a gun collection and a supply of gunpowder. In dousing the blaze in sub-zero weather, firefighters sealed the remains with a coating of ice, hampering the work of investigators. The fire was ruled accidental, but Matthews said it probably would have been less severe had it not been for the gunpowder. Amid the ruins, firefighters found the remains of Huberty's collection, including a machine gun. Huberty's former neighbors remember him as a strange, short-tempered man who often seemed on the verge of exploding.

"He was weird," said Betty Mate-check of Federal Avenue, who lives across from the former Huberty home, which once was surrounded by "No Trespassing" and "Beware of Dog" signs. "I can remember him losing his temper and screaming like a madman," she said. "You had to be here to understand how strange he was." When bills arrived in the mail, the rest of the family sometimes hid them in a doghouse in the back yard so he wouldn't see them and lose his temper, she said. Mrs. Matecheck said Huberty loved his dogs; the family baked cakes and held birthday parties for the animals and fried the dog food before serving it.

She said neighbors often complained to the police about Huberty's dogs and the complaints infuriated him. She said Huberty's daughters claimed the family worshiped Satan. "Their two kids always used to talk about devil worship and witchcraft, and they'd tell our girls they held seances at night," Mrs. Matecheck said. The Hubertys had two daughters, Ze-lia and Cassandra.

Cassandra, the 1.