Those Scum-Sucking, Pea-Brained, White Trash Nordstrom Brothers. By Jeff Smith THIS IS JUST crazy. David Nordstrom told a reporter from The Arizona Daily Star that if the newspaper had a nickname it would be "Puff," because people blew this whole multiple-murder thing way out of proportion. Allow me to bring some sense of proportion to this matter. David Nordstrom and his brother Scott and a chum of theirs needed some money. Well, they wanted some money; whether they actually needed it has been lost in all this blowing things out of proportion to which Dave alludes. Now we are conditioned to expect that when young men of Northern European extraction, good boys with names like Nordstrom or, say, Jones (more on this shortly) are pressed for cash, they get jobs and earn it. We are also conditioned to expect that if their names end in vowels, are misspelled, or sound like over-the-counter medications (Romilar, Chloret) they may apply for welfare or obtain it from strangers at knife-point, but our better instincts chasten us to resist such leaps of bad faith. But Scott and David and their pal did not do what boys of their breeding are expected to do. Instead they robbed a smoke shop and a bar and shot six people to death, to get whatever fives, tens and twenties and loose change happened to be in the till at the time. The time was late spring of 1996, and for the next seven months the people of Tucson and its police were literally clueless as to who could have been vicious enough--and stupid enough--to have done such a thing. Then in January of this year David Nordstrom went to the cops and told them he'd been restless of late, and that his appetite wasn't what it should have been. Ordinarily the police might have suggested a glass of warm milk at bedtime to kill both birds with a single stone (two-for-the-price-of-one pun intended) but in this case David said the trouble was a guilty conscience. It was bothering him, Dave said, on account of he had driven the getaway truck in the smoke shop robbery, when his brother Scott, and buddy Bob (Robert G. Jones, to distinguish him from any other Bob who might not wish to misappropriate the spotlight because, after all, stealing is wrong) murdered two people and wounded a third while robbing the Moon Smoke Shop. David told the police also that Scott and Bob did the job at the Tucson Firefighters Assoc. Union Hall a couple of weeks later. They murdered four more people in that one, those scamps, but they didn't wound any extras. Of course everybody except Scott and Bob was already dead, but for the sake of proportion let's give them credit for not shooting each other. The case came to trial in October, and most witnesses, David Nordstrom chief among them, testified that Scott Nordstrom seemed to be a lad with serious behavioral disorders. And a way of looking at people that could give a fellow looseness of the bowels. Scott didn't smile much, but then there he sits, accused of murdering six people in entirely cold blood, for chump-change. And his own little brother is the prosecution's chief witness. And still he sits. Glowering. Giving witnesses the same evil eye they're recounting, in chilling detail, having gotten from him the day of the smoke shop hit. But I mean what sort of moron mutant elects to rob Moon Smokes, when within a half-mile radius there's a hundred burger joints and convenience stores with way more cash on hand? Ah, but there I go losing my sense of proportion. Not since Hagar the Horrible has anyone of Scandinavian extraction been portrayed in the local papers in so barbaric a light. Dave Nordstrom himself said so, though not in those precise terms. "Every bad thing (reporters) could find out about they wrote," he told Heather Urquides, of the Star. "A lot of people really put me down, and they didn't know all the facts." Well by golly I just hate it when that happens, but when you're up against deadline, and what with the shrinking newshole in your typical daily newspaper, and the suits back in St. Louis and Rochester or D.C. or wherever are telling you that a decent reporter can cover the Second Coming of Christ in a take and a half, and you've got Tom Hardman, Clarence Odell, Arthur and Judy Bell, Carol Noel and Maribeth Munn, shot to death and Steve Vetter wounded, it can be tough to find the time and the space to get in the warm fuzzies about Scott and Dave and their dog Spot. Assuming they didn't set him on fire. But for the sake of proportion let me just say that in the eyes of the law David Nordstrom is innocent of murder because he cut a deal to rat-out his brother and Bob (Robert G.) Jones. Even though, under Arizona's felony murder statute, the fact that Dave freely admitted to driving the getaway truck in the Moon murders, would make him technically guilty of murder one. Even though--proportion again--he didn't actually cap anybody. In that one. Or anybody else. That we know about. And let me further make plain that Bob (Robert G.) Jones has yet to stand trial in these matters, and that he therefore remains cloaked in the gown of purest white innocence. It also is worth noting that his chief accuser at trial in March will be David Nordstrom, whose presumed bona fides will be no more sterling than they were when he gave up his dear brother. But as has been hitherto noted in matters of capital murder: Your typical associate of your typical Neanderthal who murders six people for less cash per capita than a half-day's wages bagging groceries at Basha's is not of the highest caliber. Sorry, David, but since you invoke the Muse of Proportion, you do lay yourself and your family, including Mom, Dad, and the elder brother to whom you profess such abiding admiration, devotion and love, open to scrutiny. In one particular, I entirely agree with you: Your brother should not be sentenced to die for his part in this sad affair. But not, I think, because of the redeeming qualities your curious set of values finds in him. I just don't believe in capital punishment because it makes cold-blooded killers of the rest of us, through the agency of our elected and appointed public officials. The less I have in common with you and Scott, the better I like it. But beyond that, Dave, I find your comment about the media blowing this case out of proportion to be, shall we say, surreal? Six people are dead, blown to pink clouds of blood and brains and bits of bone by your brother and some buddy. For what, a couple weeks' minimum-wage? Your brother hires a lawyer name of Harley. Smart move. Makes a good impression on a jury. Apropos of which, I thought your mother's Green Bay Packers T-shirt the day the verdict was read was a deft touch too. Was that Harley's idea? Proportion, my ass: Take a fool's advice, and if they ever let you out of jail--if your brother doesn't have you whacked first--look into the witness protection program.

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