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 (43 page)

Page 135

They could not have known it, but they inadvertently located themselves near what eventually became the most violent side of the Tower. After locking and bolting the door, they barricaded the room with filing cabinets, chairs, and a blackboard. "It was like being in a battle. Bullets were hitting all around, and we didn't know what to expect." The eight-member group huddled together: Sister Aloysius Nugent, Sister Miriam Garana, Leoda Anderson, James Hynd, Florence Haywood, Margaret Arnold, Herb Ritchie, and Elaine Anderson. Fred Mench ran down the stairs warning people on every floor to stay out of the halls. On the twenty-fourth floor David Latz and nine other people barricaded themselves in rooms 2404 and 2405. For the next hour and a half, they stayed close to the floor, away from the windows, and prayed.
¹⁹

The schedule called for Vera Palmer to go to the twenty-eighth floor to relieve Edna Townsley at noon, and as usual she boarded the elevator for the trip to the twenty-seventh floor. As the doors slid open at about 11:55
A.M.
, a dazed William Lamport, holding Marguerite's purse and shoes, stated emphatically, "Lady, don't you dare get off this elevator; go on down!"
²⁰Without hesitation, Palmer complied.

In the reception room, Whitman placed his sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun back into the footlocker. Edna Townsley, the Gabours and the Lamports had slowed his progress long enough for him to miss a change of classes that usually found the West and South Malls teeming with hundreds of students and faculty. Probably while still in the reception area he tied a white bandanna around his head to keep perspiration from falling into his eyes and draped the binoculars he had purchased only the day before around his neck. He knew that what he had done and was about to do would be considered an atrocity. Carrying a knapsack filled with ammunition, he let himself become a killing machine, but unlike most mass murderers, he had prepared everything meticulously. Although he probably thought he was a little late, he was there nonetheless. He had secured the reception area and it would be some time before anyone would head for the twenty-eighth floor. Between the shooting of the Gabours and his exit to the observation deck, he shot an already critically wounded Edna Townsley on the top and left side of her head. But the "scrapper" was not dead yet, and there is little satisfaction in knowing that Whitman would die first.

Page 136

As the shadow of the Texas state capitol retreated from its daily reach for the swank apartment on Guadalupe Street, the mother of Charles Whitman lay dead, and in the neat little house on Jewell Street the body of his wife was also yet to be discovered. Behind a beige couch on the twenty-eighth floor of the Tower lay a dying receptionist, and on the landing in the stairway one flight below were two dead and two wounded. Still it was not enough. Employees and students of the Classics Department on the twenty-sixth floor huddled and prayed as the patriarchs of the Lamport and Gabour families ran throughout the Tower in a desperate attempt to help their families. Meanwhile, Whitman's terrorist mission unfolded. He reloaded the footlocker onto the dolly and wheeled it towards the south exit. As he opened the door to the deck a flush of hot Austin air engulfed him. The view to the south was familiar. There stood the other symbol of Austinthe dome of the Texas capitol.

And then he walked through the glass-paneled door.

And then he walked through the glass-paneled
door.
Gary Lavergne.

Page 137

1
Newsweek
, 15 August 1966;
Austin American-Statesman
, 1 and 7 August 1966; Time-Life, p. 31.

2 APD Files:
SOR
s by B. Landis, D. Kidd, 1 August 1966, and by A. Whitsel, 4 August 1966.

3 APD Files:
SOR
by George Phifer, 4 August 1966;
Austin American-Statesman
, 2, 6, and 7 August 1966; Time-Life, p. 31.

4 Texas DPS Files:
Intelligence Report
, n.d.

5 APD Files:
SOR
by John Pope, 4 August 1966;
Austin American-Statesman
, 3 August 1966.

6 Edna Townsley quoted in
Austin American-Statesman
, 3 August 1966.

7 Ibid., 3 and 7 August 1966;
Texas Monthly
, August 1986.

8 In the Texas DPS File there are drawings of the layout of the deck and reception area which includes the position of many things, including the location of Whitman's murder of Edna Townsley. The drawings are hereafter cited as "Drawings." APD Files:
SOR
by B. Landis, 1 August 1966;
Time
, 12 August 1966;
Austin American-Statesman
, 2, 3, and 7 August 1966.

9 APD Files:
Affidavits
, Cheryl Botts, 4 August 1966, and Donald W. Walden, 4 August 1966; Time-Life, pp. 3234;
Austin American-Statesman
, 5 August 1966.

10 Mary Gabour Lamport,
The Impossible Tree
, (Austin: Ginny Copying Service, Inc., 1972), pp. 105109;
San Antonio Daily Express
, 17 March 1967;
Austin Citizen
, I August 1977.

11 Lamport,
The Impossible Tree
, pp. 105109.

12 Ibid.

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