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Steve Mueller, the chiropractor who sparked Robert's interest in the profession, sensed how deeply withdrawn he was. "I called him Bob and treated him like a pal," says Mueller, "trying to coax him out of his shell." Once Robert invited him out to the farm to practice firing his .45-cal. Magnum. "I was struck by this mild young man's fascination with guns," recalls the chiropractor. "He kept shooting at trees as if they were people. That should have been a warning."
Today a few Algonans fear their town will be indelibly marked by Robert's madness, the way Villisca, Iowa, is by the brutal ax murder of eight residents there back in 1912. But uppermost in everyone's mind is the hope that the Dreesmans will be remembered for all they did, not for the way they died. The hospital addition will help, although Robert almost killed that possibility too, by assuming he could dispose of his family's wealth with his own will, since he would be the last to die. For some contorted reason, he left $1 to each of his victims and everything else to the World Wildlife Fund, of which he wasn't even a member.
Robert's will didn't stand up, and the belated discovery of an obscure Iowa statute allowed the executors of the parents' will to give the hospital marketable properties worth $282,000 in lieu of paying Iowa taxes on the estate. The proceeds enabled the hospital to launch its long-planned $1.5 million expansion project.
As the last guests left the open house, an orange moon rose above the seven side-by-side graves in East Lawn Cemetery next to the hospital. "Wherever they are," said one of the departing guests, "I hope we made them proud."