HIGH POINT, N.C. � A half-century ago, High Point could boast of being an almost idyllic community.

HIGH POINT, N.C. � A half-century ago, High Point could boast of being an almost idyllic community.

Crime was relatively low. Neighborhoods were safe. Homeowners didn't worry about locking their doors at night, nor their vehicles. And children, even young children, could walk to school by themselves and play outside well past dusk without fear of stranger danger.

Those days of innocence all but disappeared in early 1966, however, when a vicious stalker's three-month reign of terror gripped the city, prompting otherwise laid-back parents to keep a vigilant watch on their children, even in their own yards and even during broad daylight.

"It was a very scary time," remembers Doris Shehan of High Point, who had young children at the time. "My children were never ever left alone, because there was this man out there picking up kids."

Not just picking up kids � picking up kids and paddling them mercilessly, like a schoolteacher on steroids.

Shehan's daughter, Kim Maxwell, was only 6 years old at the time, but she remembers, too. The family lived across from Armstrong Park, but she wasn't allowed to go there by herself because the stalker might've been lurking there.

"It scared me to death, and I've never forgotten it," the High Point woman says. "I remember Mom telling me about this guy who would grab little kids and paddle them. At 6 years old, nobody wants a paddling."

If the description of a mysterious man abducting children and paddling them sounds like some sort of mythical boogeyman, concocted by adults to keep their children from straying, rest assured this was no boogeyman.

This was a malicious man authorities and media came to refer to as "The Paddler" � so named for his unorthodox weapon of choice � and he was very real.

First report

Fifty years later, retired Maj. Jerry Streetman of the High Point Police Department still remembers the initial call. It came in on a Friday night � Feb. 18, 1966 � around 9:30 p.m.

"We got a call about a missing boy down on Mangum (Avenue, which no longer exists)," Streetman recalls. "I went and talked to the boy's mother. She said he had been working at a grocery store and hadn't come home yet."

Ninety minutes had passed since the 13-year-old boy had gotten off work � more than enough time for him to ride his bicycle home � so his mother was worried. Streetman scoured the neighborhood and found the boy's bike on an adjacent street, abandoned on the side of the road, but the boy was nowhere to be found. The officer wasn't worried, though � these missing-child cases rarely amounted to anything serious. Typically, the kid wouldn't come home on time, the parents would overreact, and then the kid would show up safe and sound.

"I told her not to worry about it, that he'd probably found some good-looking girl and went off to have some fun," Streetman says. "But I told her I'd have our people out looking for him anyway."

The next day's afternoon newspaper told Streetman just how wrong he'd been.

"Boy, 13, Is Abducted, Whipped With Paddle," read the headline in The High Point Enterprise.

Sure enough, it was the boy whose disappearance he had written off the night before.

"I felt like a damn fool," Streetman says.

Even more so as he read the sickening details.

According to the Enterprise, a man had stalked the adolescent boy as he left work, shadowing him in what appeared to be a blue car. Twice, the man tried to get the boy to stop, before finally succeeding on his third try when the youth reached Grimes Avenue, not far from his home.

"He showed me a badge and said that he was a police officer and took my name, age and address," the boy told police later that night. "He then told me to get in the back seat of the car and lay down. I did what he said � I thought he was a police officer."

The abductor drove around with his young victim for about an hour, at one point parking in a remote area outside of town and ordering the boy to pull down his pants and bend over.

"He got in the back seat and hit me with a paddle on my legs and seat," the boy told police. "He hit me about eight times or so. I screamed and yelled when he hit me."

The thick, wooden paddle was long and narrow, with holes in it � "the kind they use in school," the boy explained.

Throughout the ordeal, if the assailant gave the youth any indication as to why he was spanking him, the newspaper article does not reflect that.

After several minutes of paddling, the man returned to the front seat and drove a little farther before releasing the boy near the Union Cross community in Forsyth County. Crying hysterically along the roadside, the boy flagged down a passing motorist, who drove him home. The boy's mother � no doubt upset, but also relieved her son was alive � promptly called the police. After the youth gave his statement to an officer, his family took him to the hospital for treatment.

"When a medical examination was made," the Enterprise reported, "police said the boy's buttocks from the lower back to the bend of the knees was a mass of bruises."

Children kept close

The harrowing story spread quickly across High Point, leaving a swath of fear in its wake.

Who would do such a cruel thing to a helpless boy? And why? And how had he chosen this particular boy? And, most poignantly to local parents and guardians, if this madman did it once, would he do it again? The uncertainty only served to heighten the community's fear.

"It ain't every day somebody kidnaps a child, spanks his butt and then releases him," says Streetman, the retired officer. "I'm sure there was great concern. I would've been concerned if I had a child at that time."

Police had little to go on, other than the account of the 13-year-old victim, who only saw his assailant in the dark and whose memories easily could've been distorted by the trauma of the ordeal. At any rate, he told them the man was a Caucasian, about 26-30 years old, wore glasses, had short hair and stood about 5-foot-5. From the boy's description of the car, police believed it might be a 1963 or '64 blue Rambler.

After several weeks, the stalker struck in High Point again. The story was essentially the same: A blue sedan. A man fitting the same description as before lured a 16-year-old boy into the car, explaining he was a police officer and the boy's mother had sent for him. Instead of driving the youth home, though, he drove to a secluded area in Forsyth County, parked the car, and got in the back seat with his victim, where he instructed the youth to pull down his pants. The man then retrieved a wooden paddle from beneath the seat and began spanking the youth relentlessly. When he finally stopped, he returned to the front seat and started driving again, before finally stopping long enough to release his captive.

News of a second victim eliminated the hope that the initial assault might just have been a one-time thing. Now, a pattern existed.

Two weeks later, the "phantom paddler" (as the Enterprise called him) assaulted his third victim, this time targeting a 12-year-old boy in Greensboro. Dressed in a black suit, white shirt and tie, black gloves and dark sunglasses, the attacker again flashed a bogus law enforcement badge to dupe the youth into getting in his car, explaining that he was taking him to the police station because he didn't have a light on his bicycle.

The kidnapper drove to a remote patch of woods off of N.C. 68 and commenced with his same mode of assault � the wooden paddle. This time, though, the spanking was more severe � the assailant paddled his victim three times, each time for about 10 minutes. He also briefly molested the boy.

After the assault, the subject made his victim get out of the car and stand by a small tree. Holding a large case knife to the boy's side, he told the boy not to move until he was gone or he would kill him. The youth stood perfectly still until his attacker's car was out of sight.

The fourth victim, another Greensboro boy, was only 11 when he was assaulted a couple of weeks later. A police report indicates that after again driving to a secluded area off of N.C. 68, the subject turned off the engine and asked the youth, "Did your mother ever tell you not to accept rides from strangers?" When the boy answered affirmatively, the man replied, "You should have listened to her."

Realizing the man was not a police officer, the boy asked what was going to happen to him, and the subject answered, "You will probably get a nice little paddling."

For the next hour or so, that's what happened � but there was nothing nice or little about it. Every time the boy moved or yelled, the man hit him even harder and told him to shut up. At one point, the subject burned the boy's back with a lit cigarette, and � as he'd done with his previous victim � he molested the boy before finally releasing him.

By now, local news media and authorities had begun calling the suspect "The Paddler" or even "The Mad Paddler" � but he was doing more than just paddling.

Analysis offered

Four boys, four assaults � each more severe than the one before � and after three months of the community's being held hostage by fear, police still had not gotten their man.

An Enterprise editorialist, in a piece titled "Get The Paddler," offered cautious optimism, though.

"With excellent descriptions from the victims," the journalist wrote, "it should be logical to expect that the fiend who roams this area and abducts young boys to be targets for sadistic beatings will very soon be behind bars."

Indeed, the boys' descriptions resulted in composite sketches of the suspect � one with sunglasses, one without � being published in local newspapers. In the Enterprise, the crude drawing accompanied an article in which a local psychiatrist was interviewed about the psyche and possible motivation of The Paddler.

"This man you call The Paddler needs help," said Dr. R.C. Fincher Jr., "and he needs it immediately."

Fincher described The Paddler as a sadist � "He undoubtedly gets great gratification from this act," he said � but he also offered a sympathetic portrayal of the assailant, explaining that his urge to paddle boys probably stemmed from some sort of traumatic event in his own childhood.

"The paddler is not a demon or monster of any kind," Fincher said. "He is a very sick man. He should not be regarded in the same light as the cold-blooded criminal type, and although you continue to hear talk about people wanting to get their hands on him for about five minutes, he should be an object of pity."

It's doubtful many readers shared the doctor's sympathetic view of The Paddler. It certainly didn't make Roger Bryant's family feel any better about the mysterious stalker, even though they lived in Thomasville, where there had been no reports of The Paddler striking.

"My parents were like, 'You're not gonna be walking anywhere by yourself, and you're not gonna be getting in a car with anybody,'" recalls Bryant, who was about 10 at the time. "My parents never locked their doors before, but this thing scared the crap out of people."

Bryant, who still lives in Thomasville, even remembers the police sketch in the newspaper.

"That drawing was haunting � it was a very scary-looking thing to a kid," he says. "And then, just a few days later, my friend who lived right up the street from me got picked up by The Paddler."

COMING MONDAY: Meet the Thomasville man, now 64, who became The Paddler's fifth victim when he was 14 years old.