Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

Tags: #History, #United States, #General, #State & Local, #Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), #True Crime, #Murder, #test

A Sniper in the Tower (41 page)

27 APD Files:
SOR
s by B. Gregory, 2 August 1966, George Phifer, 9 August 1966, Carl Booth, Jr., Treasury Department, Dallas, Texas, n.d.

28 APD Files: Whitman Notes;
Austin American-Statesman
, 7 August 1966.

Page 124

8
The Glass-Paneled Door

On 1 August 1966 beneath a cloudless sky, Charles Whitman drove from the neat little house on Jewell Street to the University of Texas at Austin. Weather forecasters predicted warm, humid nights and hot sunny days. Experienced Austinites knew the pattern: cumulus clouds greeted early morning commuters with spectacular golden formations, but soon intolerant and relentless sunshine melted them away. It would be hot, and if any humidity dared linger, an afternoon thermal thundershower would pelt the area until the sun

Page 125

returned with a vengeance to turn the fallen rain into steam rising from the streets and sidewalks. A light southerly wind, not strong enough to bring relief, accompanied the heat and humidity. When Whitman left his home for the last time, at or slightly after 11:00
A.M.
, the temperature had climbed to the upper nineties. Vacationers and students on semester break flocked to Barton Creek, where cold spring-fed water supplied bathers with a momentary refuge from the heat. But most Austinites could afford no such luxury and instead wearily prepared for another one of "those" days. It was hotdamn hot.
¹

The drive to the university would not have taken more than twenty to twenty-five minutes. Whitman entered the UT campus through a security checkpoint on 21st Street near the corner of Speedway Avenue, the northern extension of Congress Avenue, between 11:25 and 11:30
A.M.
He approached the little white outpost manned by Jack O. Rodman, a UT Security Officer there to relieve the regular security guard during a lunch break. Whitman retrieved his wallet, holding ninety-six dollars remaining from the checks he had cashed earlier in the morning, and presented a Carrier Identification Card to gain admission to the campus. The guard would have been familiar with the ID which was issued to individuals with a frequent need to transport heavy or bulky materials onto the campus. Whitman had been issued such a card as part of his lab assistant duties in Dr. Clyde Lee's highway research project. Whitman explained that he had to unload equipment at the Experimental Science Building and that he needed a loading zone permit for longer than the usual twenty-minute time limit.

Rodman peered through a back window of the car and saw an "Army" issue footlocker covered with a quilt. He also noticed a black attaché. As Rodman looked at the items in the back seat, Whitman, probably to divert the guard's attention, volunteered that other items were in the trunk. Most likely, he wanted Rodman to look into the trunk at the innocent looking two-wheeled dolly instead of poking his head into the car, where he very likely would have noticed the stench of the Hoppe's #9 Gun Cleaning Solvent. The circumstances were normal enough, and the incident quite unremarkable; Rodman began to scribble out a loading zone permit. "I told him that since he had this [the footlocker] to unload that I would give him a while

Page 126

longer.'' Throughout the encounter Whitman held his ID card so that it could be seen plainly; he wanted Rodman to remember the name Whitman. Rodman did not date the permit but gave Whitman a window of forty minutesfrom 11:30 a.m. to 12:10
P.M.
Only a few minutes after the brief encounter, Rodman returned to security headquarters for his lunch.
²

Whitman drove directly to a parking lot adjacent to and north of the Tower where he parked in an area reserved for university administration officials. He opened the trunk and retrieved the dolly, then unloaded the footlocker and other items from the back seat of the car. For some reason, he left the black attaché behind. With his considerable strength he had little trouble taking the cargo up a few cement steps to the entrance of the building. Between 11:30 and 11:35
A.M.
Charles Whitman entered the Tower.

Once inside, his plan to pass as a janitor worked well. No one asked any questions or barred his way as he proceeded directly to the elevators. Twenty-seven floors above, Dr. Antone G. Jacobson, an associate professor in the biology department, his young son and daughter, ages two and six, and Dr. J. G. Duncan had just heard the 11:30
A.M.
chimes and were descending the stairs connecting the observation deck to the twenty-seventh floor. Jacobson distinctly remembered leaving only the receptionist and a young couple on the deck. When they reached the first floor, the Jacobson party nearly stumbled over the loaded dolly Whitman was waiting to wheel onto the elevator. Like everyone else, Jacobson presumed Whitman to be a "workman with dolly and equipment." Almost immediately Jacobson and Duncan noticed a smell. "It was very hard to identify, but I remember thinking of guns at the time," Jacobson would recall. The professor would also recall that the dolly held more than just a footlocker. A long bundle about eight to ten inches in diameter had been tied to the front of the footlocker, and the load had been capped by several parcels.
³

Once Dr. Jacobson and his party maneuvered around Whitman and his gear, Whitman entered the elevator, but it did nothing. He then asked Vera Palmer, the elevator attendant and one of the three deck receptionists, for help. She assumed him to be a repairman. "Your elevator is turned off," she said, then reached for a switch and made elevator #2 functional. Whitman smiled and in a barely

Page 127

audible mumble said, "Thank you, ma'am. You don't know how happy that makes me."
⁴There are no accounts of anyone else being in the elevator with Whitman during what was probably an uninterrupted thirty-second trip to the twenty-seventh floor, which ended at or just before 11:40
A.M.
The schedule called for Vera Palmer to assume her duties on the deck within the next half hour.

On the twenty-seventh floor signs with arrows directed visitors to the observation deck, but Whitman had been there many times. He knew precisely where to go and what to do. Tragically, the signs also gave him an exact measure of altitude; he knew precisely how to set the four-power scope on his 6mm Remington for maximum accuracy. He lugged the heavily laden dolly, one step at a time, up three half-flights of stairs and a short, narrow hallway to a landing. As he ascended the stairs the wheels of the dolly rolled over each step, to be abruptly stopped by the face of the next step. The procedure produced a series of hollow-sounding "thuds." On the twenty-seventh floor librarian Jules Emig heard noises which sounded to him like someone was moving something heavy up the steps to the reception area.

Whitman reached the twenty-eighth floor, and when he walked from the landing through the door into the reception area, he came face-to-face with the receptionist, Edna Elizabeth Townsley.

Edna Townsley, Vera Palmer, and Lydia Gest, the three receptionists who supervised the observation deck, had worked out an intricate shift schedule to staff the popular attraction seven days a week. They also kept watch over the elevators. The vacationing Lydia Gest would normally have been on the deck at 11:40
A.M.
on 1 August 1966; Edna Townsley would normally have had the day off.
⁵

Townsley was a forty-seven-year-old divorced mother of two sons named Terry and Danny. Her sons were a source of pride for Edna, who made sure they were meticulously cared for. "I'm not going to send my boys off to school without their starch," she would say as she ironed their blue jeans.
⁶She and her boys lived in north Austin. She had a reputation for being direct and even brusque. Her friends called her "one hell of a scrapper." It was Edna who became infamous among students for insisting that every visitor sign the guest

Page 128

register. She did not allow sick jokes about jumping off the deck and could be stern and quick to turn away children who attempted to sneak onto the deck without their parents. But Edna had a quick sense of humor and was remembered by many for her loud, unique laugh. Tower employees frequently heard her guffaw. Many just shook their heads and said, "Oh! That's Edna." She had joined the UT staff in 1954 and was transferred to the Tower four years later as an elevator operator. On 1 August 1966 she reported to her desk in the reception area on the twenty-eighth floor at 8:00
A.M.
; she expected to be relieved at noon by Vera Palmer.
⁷

Edna Townsley and Charles Whitman were alone in the reception area on the twenty-eighth floor. It is quite possible that she knew Whitman from his previous visits. She might have been the first to recognize him and demand an explanation for the dolly and the gear. Many of her friends, knowing of her temperament, conjectured that she probably struggled with Whitman, but that is not likely. She may have been a scrapper, but the six-foot, 198-pound ex-marine would easily have overpowered her slim, five-foot-four-inch frame. Additionally, the known sequence of events permitted little time for a struggle. Whitman attacked her immediately He probably struck her as soon as she turned her back on him, in the same manner in which he had killed his mother Margaret. Near the center of the south wall, close to the entrance to the stairs, he hit Edna on

Scene near desk on the twenty-eighth floor of the
Tower.
Austin Police Department Files.

Page 129

the back of the head, probably with the butt of a rifle. The vicious blow shattered the posterior of her cranium; parts of bone were ripped away. Her glasses flew from her face as she hit the floor. He hit her again above the left eye and broke her skull again.
⁸As she lay bleeding, a ghastly pool surrounded her head. Whitman grabbed her legs and dragged her across the room towards the beige couch, creating a dark, thick streak across the room. He moved the beige couch away from the wall and placed her behind it and out of sight. There Edna Townsley lay, still alive, but critically injured and bleeding profusely.

Whitman was still bending over the couch when a young couple, Don Walden and Cheryl Botts, stepped into the reception area from the outer deck. They were the same couple Dr. Jacobson had seen only a few minutes earlier. Don Walden was a twenty-two-year-old senior English major from San Antonio who worked at Austin's Continental Trailways bus station to pay his way through college. His guest was nineteen-year-old Cheryl Botts of Rockdale, Texas, in Austin visiting her grandmother. She planned to enter Howard Payne College in the fall and major in elementary education. They had been on the deck for almost forty-five minutes and had intended to stay until noon to hear the chimes. Walden showed Botts the countryside and the campus and pointed out a number of sites they would visit later in the afternoon. By 11:50
A.M.
they had had enough of the deck and decided to leave. They entered the reception area and noticed the unattended receptionist's desk. Whitman stood silently erect and looked directly at them. He held two rifles, one in each hand. Cheryl would remember seeing a "good-looking young blonde man holding guns." Don thought the presence of the guns unusual and started to ask Whitman if he was there to shoot pigeons; his silence probably saved their lives. Oblivious to the danger they were in, they smiled and said, "Hello." Their greeting seemed to disarm Whitman, who returned the smile and said, "Hi, how are you?" As they walked towards the exit to the stairway, Cheryl looked down and noticed what she would later describe as a "dark stain'' which "appeared as if someone had taken a mop and drug it across the floor." Whitman stood silently near Edna's desk "half facing" the couple as Cheryl warned Don not to step in the "stuff"Edna Townsley's blood. On a landing at the top of the stairs the couple walked around a chair lying on its side; they thought nothing of it and headed for the elevator on the twenty-seventh floor.
⁹

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