Read A Sniper in the Tower Online

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 (42 page)

 
Page 130
Why did Whitman let Don Walden and Cheryl Botts live? There are a number of possible explanations. First, he had committed three murders by the time he encountered Walden and Botts. In each of the killings he probably did not face his victims directly He may have had an aversion to doing so. Second, he may have been disarmed by the innocence and cordial manner of the young couple. They smiled and said "Hi," so he may have found it difficult to kill them. That is possible, but not likely He had already killed three innocent people and would soon kill and maim many more, some of whom were children. In a few minutes he would shoot a newspaper boy off his bicycle. Third, and most likely, is that he simply was not prepared to begin his murderous spree. Securing the twenty-eighth floor and deck made killing Edna Townsley a necessity. From the deck, he had a radius of several hundred yards of a densely populated university for a target. Whitman wanted to kill a lot of people, but could care less whom he killed. The window of survival for Walden and Botts could not have been more than a minute, but they made it. Austin Police Chief Bob Miles would later describe them as "the luckiest people in Austin." By the end of the day, they would know that to be an understatement.
III
They were on their first vacation in two years, and the M. J. Gabour family of Texarkana, Texas, was having a ball. They were touring Texas, heading for Austin, to visit M. J.'s sister Marguerite; San Antonio, to visit Mike's good friend Jack Rogers; Houston, to catch a couple of baseball games in the new Astrodome; and Galveston, to spend time on the beach. Mr. Gabour owned and operated a Gulf service station in Texarkana and everyone was surprised when he announced that he would lock it up for a week's vacation. His wife, Mary, who was active in the Altar Society and the Catholic Youth Organization in their church parish, had not intended to make the long trip, planning to stay home instead with their daughter Mary Jane, a recent high school graduate. Mary Jane had just landed a new job at a drugstore and did not want to ask for time off. The mother and daughter looked forward to time together, as Mary would later write, sort of "a holiday for the girls." But Mary's sixteen-year-
 
Page 131
old son Martin (called Mark) pleaded with her to go along. He apparently felt that in his mother he had a powerful ally; he wanted to make sure his father followed through on the entire trip. M. J. Gabour, a hard worker, was not very good at "loafing." Apparently, Mark's fears were well-founded. M. J. began talking of a shorter trip, leaving on Wednesday instead of Sunday. Mary intervened and agreed to go. They would leave on Sunday, 31 July, after 6:00
A.M.
Mass, and were to return the following Sunday, 7 August 1966.
10
Mark Gabour was within one month of beginning his junior year of high school. His older brother, Mike, had just completed his first year in the United States Air Force Academy. Mike had arrived from the academy during the last week of July. His grades were good; the family had much to celebrate. Mr. Gabour's sister, Marguerite, lived at 2606 Cascade Street. She and her husband, William A. Lamport, served as hosts for the joyous family affair, using the occasion to show off their hometown. While there was much to see, no visit to Austin would be complete without viewing the city and its surrounding countryside from the observation deck of the landmark UT Tower. It was their first stop.
11
Don Walden and Cheryl Botts, the "luckiest people in Austin," were in an elevator descending toward the ground floor while the Gabours and the Lamports followed the twenty-seventh floor signs and arrows pointing to the stairs to the twenty-eighth floor reception area. If anyone had noticed the Gabours and Lamports walking towards the stairs, they had been dismissed as just another family of tourists, talking and laughing and happy to be together. Mark and Mike, in their youthful exuberance, led the pack and ascended the stairs first. Mary and Marguerite followed closely behind; farther back by at least one flight came the men.
12
At the top of the stairs Mike noticed that the doorway had been barricaded by a desk that had been turned on its side. Two chairs had been placed above that. He and Mark were delayed long enough for Mary and Marguerite to reach the landing adjacent to the door. They did not know exactly what to do. Mary thought that a janitor was still cleaning. "I don't think they've finished cleaning yet. We'll have to come back later," she said as she turned and looked at Marguerite. Mary would later write that Marguerite looked back with a stern look that suggested, "They can't do this to us!"
13
 
Page 132
"Well, I'll see what's going on," Mike said as the boys pushed the desk and leaned for a look inside the room. Mike started to squeeze past the desk. They saw Whitman to their left gazing out of one of the windows. Mike, too, thought the young man was a janitor cleaning the room. Whitman then turned to his right and ran towards the doorway. Using the sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun illegally customized for just such a situation, he leveled the weapon and sprayed Mike and Mark with deadly pellets as they retreated from the doorway. It could have been the only face-to-face murders Whitman committed. He wanted no more interruptions; he wanted to step outside.
Mike let out a loud scream. Apparently, for a split second, Mark saw what was happening and lowered his head as if to duck. He was shot fatally through the top of the head. They both tumbled backwards and down the stairs as Whitman ran to the doorway and continued to fire at the family rolling down the narrow steel and concrete steps. He fired repeatedly, at least three times, sending dozens of pellets after the helpless victims. In her autobiography Mary would later write:
I never heard a sound from Mark or Marguerite, so I assumed they were all right. I could see Mike writhing up on his shoulder in pain and then coming down, and each time he came down I thought he was hitting me in the face with his feet. I seemed to be falling just ahead of him. The pain was terrific, and I kept thinking, "I can't say anything to him, and he can't help it, but I do wish he would lose his shoes." Then I thought he did lose them as the blows grew lighter. I really don't know if the pain was from his shoes, the stairs as I hit them, or a bullet. He did lose his shoes and so did I.
14
The wounds covered their bodies, especially their backs. Mary, although critically injured, thought of Mike's scream and assumed correctly that he had been hurt very badly. She heard nothing from Mark and her sister-in-law Marguerite and assumed they were all right; in reality, they were dead. Marguerite died instantly from a
 
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wound in her right chest. Whitman spent no time watching the dying family fall. He immediately restored the barricade.
15
Whitman never saw the men below. Nearly deafened by the tremendous noise, they recovered in time to see their families rolling down the stairs. Mr. Gabour turned Mark over and knew immediately that the head wound was fatal. Mark's eyes were open and his face frozen in terror. It was equally clear that his sister Marguerite had been killed. In shock, William Lamport picked up Marguerite's purse. M. J. Gabour grabbed Mary's white shoes and together the men ran around the twenty-seventh floor searching for help.
16
Mike Gabour had been knocked unconscious, but he regained consciousness about forty-five minutes later. He had four head wounds, a shoulder wound and another in the left leg. He saw blood
Charles Whitman placed the
receptionist's desk at the top of the last
flight of stairs leading from the 27th floor
to the reception area. Here he fired upon
Marguerite Lamport and Mike, Mary and
Mark Gabour. Whitman then stood at the
top of the stairs and fired at least two
more shotgun blasts as the helpless family
tumbled down the stairs. 
Gary
Lavergne.
Whitman murdered Mark
Gabour and Marguerite Lamport on the
stairway at the end and to the left of this
little hallway between the 27th and 28th
floors of the Tower. Mary and Mike
Gabour were critically injured and had
to endure for over an hour before being
rescued by Austin Policemen. 
Austin
Police Department Files.
 
Page 134
everywhere; it had splattered the walls and covered the steps until it dripped in a gruesome flow to the bottom of the stairs. He worried that Whitman would return to finish off the survivors so he tried desperately to pull himself to safety. He could not. "There was too much blood; I could get no friction."
17
IV
The meticulous plans unfolded. The battle lines were drawn. Whitman had established control of the twenty-eighth floor and access to the observation deck. The shots he fired to annihilate Marguerite Lamport and Mark Gabour and critically injure Mary and Mike Gabour rang through the upper floors of the Tower. On the twenty-sixth floor, the Classics Department had been alerted to something unusual. The first loud noise was "like a heavy cabinet falling." Others thought scaffolding had collapsed. Leoda Anderson, a secretary, phoned maintenance to see if there had been an elevator accident. Studying the Greek classics at the time were two Catholic nuns from San Antonio's Incarnate Word High School, Sisters Aloysius Nugent and Miriam Garana. Sister Aloysius would later recall, "We were sitting in class when we heard this noise, like knocking out a wall. Then this terrifically loud man's voice yelling, 'Help! Help!' "
18
Two men, Fred Mench, an instructor in the Classics Department, and his assistant Herbert Ritchie, proceeded up the stairway to investigate. David Latz, an assistant to the director of admissions, and James Zinn, the husband of a receptionist on the twenty-fourth floor, joined them on the stairway They found Mr. Gabour calling for help and in a state of confusion. Farther up, by one flight of stairs, they saw the bodies lying in pools of blood. Mench quickly instructed Ritchie to call the police, but Ritchie did not know how to operate the campus PBX, so Mench called. Ritchie looked out the window and began to see pedestrians falling everywhere.
Mench and Ritchie cried, "Get back. There are bodies all over." Margaret Arnold, another secretary on the twenty-sixth floor, phoned her husband, William, located in another campus building, telling him to stay put. The group retreated to room 2608 and huddled together on the west side as far away from the stairs as possible.

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