Four Lives to Flagstaff

He was 23, a two-time loser on the lam from the law; she was 16, a revival preacher's daughter looking for kicks.

They met after a tent meeting near her home town of Amesville, Ohio, and began dating. One night last month, after he had picked her up at home to get an ice-cream cone, they headed for Las Vegas instead to get married. Last week Donald Melvin Boggs, the studious-looking ex-convict, and Radcliff, his willowy, olive-skinned girl friend, were arrested in Flagstaff, Ariz., where he was charged with a six-day, three-state crime wave in which four men were bludgeoned and shot to death.

The nightmare began Friday before Labor Day, when Boggs and Dixie stopped at a roadside park on U.S. 9 outside Luling, Texas, in a car he had stolen in Houston two days before. Parked near by was a pickup truck belonging to San Antonio Contractor Harold Flory, 50, who was fishing in the San Marcos River. Boggs killed Flory with a hammer, then rifled his pockets, and slipped the body into the river It was found there by a motorist who saw a fishing line running from the river to some bushes, tugged on it and, to his horror, pulled out Flory's battered corpse.

"Don't! Don't! Don't!" Meanwhile, Boggs and Dixie had driven Flory's pickup truck, with a .22-cal. revolver in the glove compartment, to Oklahoma where they abandoned it, kept the gun and began hitchhiking. They were picked up by two Newport, N.H., men, Robert Willis, 23, and Halvor Johnson, 28 who were driving in Johnson's black Simca to Los Angeles to look for work.

Early the next morning--Labor Day --near Ash Fork, Ariz., Boggs killed both men with Flory's revolver and stole $29 and the Simca. Re-enacting the crime for Arizona authorities last week, Boggs said he tied both victims' hands and made them sit down on the ground. "At the time I had no real plans for shooting them," he said, "It just came into my head." Boggs shot Johnson once and Willis twice but, he said, Johnson got up and began running, yelling "Don't! Don't! Dont!" Boggs pursued him, hit him on the head with the revolver and a rock. After reloading, Boggs again shot Johnson, then pumped another bullet into Willis, who had stayed on the ground and was somehow still alive.

Headlight Trouble. Next, Boggs and Dixie headed for Las Vegas, where she helped him dye his blond hair a reddish-brown. Deciding that they didn't have enough money to get married after all, they began driving aimlessly, headed for Utah, where Boggs bought gas on the outskirts of St. George with a credit card belonging to Victim Willis.

That afternoon, near Parowan, Utah, Boggs met and murdered his fourth victim He was Warren George Lenker, 25 of Elizabethville, Pa., who was heading back for his senior year at Brigham Young University after a summer in California and had stopped a roadside park to nap in his car. Boggs said that he awakened Lenker, who got out, smiling. "This isn't a laughing matter " Boggs said he told him, then shot him twice in the head. He transferred Lenker's body to the Simca and propped it up "to make it look like he was sleeping." Lenker was killed, authorities said, because Boggs was having headlight trouble with the Simca and simply wanted to change cars.

Credit Card Clue. The couple then drove in Lenker's 1957 green Oldsmobile to Flagstaff, where they stayed overnight in a motel. By this time filling stations in Utah and Arizona had been alerted to watch for Willis' stolen credit card. Soon after Boggs bought gas with it at a Flagstaff station, Attendant John Harvey was interrogated by Coconino County Sheriff Cecil Richardson and recalled the couple. Same afternoon, out on a service call m his radio-equipped wrecker truck, Harvey spotted Boggs and Dixie in the car and followed them--keeping Sheriff Richardson advised of his whereabouts. When the couple stopped at a pawnshop three deputies closed in. Inside, they found Boggs trying to hock a camera, radio and typewriter that had belonged to his victims.

At a press conference the day after his arrest, Boggs told newsmen that he had killed "mostly for money." He had fled Ohio, he said, because he was wanted for parole violation as well as car theft. "I guess I'm gonna burn," Boggs said laconically. "If you don't burn me, Texas or Utah will."

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