Mesa GM site reborn as a housing development

Four years after General Motors turned out the lights on its Desert Proving Ground in Mesa, you’d hardly know the place.

The iconic white water tower is still there, although the GM logo has been painted over. A few of the old buildings remain, fenced off and crumbling on the east side of Ellsworth Road.

The famous banked test track — the one with a lane that specified a minimum speed of 90 mph — has been all but demolished. The 2.4-mile straightaway is gone, too, as is almost everything else the car manufacturer built to test new models in harsh temperatures for more than 50 years.

What’s emerging now bears no resemblance to the industrial site. There’s a man-made lake, the first completed portion of what developers hope

University of Arizona together,” Terry said. “We grew up in Tucson. After his high-school graduation, Rick went into the Air National Guard. At UofA, we were in the same fraternity. We were very close. Very close. When he was killed, he was a senior.”

Rick and Patricia had gone on a picnic in the Rincon Mountains outside Tucson. Narten apparently spotted them as they skimmed rocks on a lake. Patricia was telling Rick about her plans to inform her sorority sisters of their engagement. The couple came upon Narten as they were walking back to their car. Narten was carrying a rifle.

“Hi,” Rick said as they passed.

Narten lifted the weapon and shot him. Then he shot Rick seven more times.

He took Patricia hostage. When she fended off his sexual advances, Narten forced her into his car and drove to an isolated spot.

“He walked Patricia out into the woods,” Terry said.

She sat down, and Narten shot her. The bullet only grazed Patricia, but she fell to the ground and played dead. Narten took off.

Patricia was found walking along a road the next day by a couple going to church. Terry and a younger brother had gone looking for Rick and Patricia. They located Patricia at a Tucson hospital. Terry was told she had reported a murder.

“I thought perhaps they had come upon a murder scene, and Rick was still there helping,” Terry said. “But Patricia just looked at me and said, ‘No, Terry, it was Rick.’ And I just … I just …”

The memory of that moment still gets to him.

With the help of Patricia’s description, Narten was caught trying to sneak into Mexico. He was a German immigrant and had hoped to get on a ship to Europe.

The case was a media sensation in the 1960s world of newspaper headlines and pulp magazine articles. Narten received a death sentence that later was reduced to life in prison.

His victim, Rick Hanson, was an electrical-engineering student. He was hoping for a career with NASA.

“I sat in the courtroom a few feet from Narten during the trial, and I swore he would never live a day if he ever got out of prison,” Terry told me. “I wanted the death penalty badly. But, you know, you mature. I’m a 73-year-old man now, and I no longer believe that.”

Instead, Terry believes that the death penalty reduces us to the level of the criminal and that the expense of appeals could be better spent on education or “the old CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), which did so much to get at-risk men off the streets and into programs that greatly benefited our country.”

The Hanson family established a scholarship in Rick’s name for engineering students at UA. In that sense, Rick lives on. But the aftershocks of violent crime never dissipate. Not for a victim’s loved ones. Not even after 50 years.

Patricia completed college. She eventually married and had a family.

“We all lived our lives,” Terry said, “but the loss persists inside us.”

A few years back, he wrote to Narten in prison, asking to speak with him. He wanted to ask him why he’d done what he did. Narten refused to meet.

Then, last week, with the country fixated on the Arias verdict, Terry got the letter from the Department of Corrections.

“What did I think?” he said. “I didn’t think ‘closure.’ What did I think? … The SOB lived 50 years longer than my brother.”