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 (65 page)

Page 225

Oddly enough, obtaining a positive identification of the world's most famous corpse took nearly an hour and a half, much of which was spent locating someone at the university who knew Charles. Professor Leonardt Kreisle, Whitman's former academic advisor, along with UT Security Chief Allen R. Hamilton and APD Sergeant T J. Allen, eventually drove to Cook's Funeral Home to make the positive identification.
³By then the name Charles Whitman already headlined the news.

Back in Needville, Raymond W. Leissner heard his son-in-law's name on the radio at about 2:00
P.M.
He immediately called 906 Jewell Street in a desperate, yet futile, attempt to reach his daughter Kathy. When he was unsuccessful, he thought of Kathy's summer job at Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. The supervisor on duty told him that Whitman had called earlier in the day to report that Kathy was ill and would not be at work. Mr. Leissner then called the Austin Police Department; his call was forwarded to Detective Donald Kidd. Leissner identified himself and expressed a concern for Kathy's safety. In the course of their conversation Leissner revealed that Whitman's current residence was 906 Jewell Street and not the Shelley Avenue apartment. Leissner asked that someone go there to check on Kathy. Kidd realized he had no transportation and asked his fellow officer Bolton Gregory to drive him to the south Austin address.
⁴

Kathy's friends were concerned for her as well. One of her colleagues at Lanier High School, a speech and drama teacher named Mayda Nell Tupper, called the Police Department and asked Officer Betty Hamm if Kathy was at headquarters. She identified herself as a close friend and offered to sit with Kathy through the ordeal. Officer Hamm told Tupper that an attempt would be made to locate Kathy, and that APD would likely call on her. In the Jewell Street neighborhood, Mrs. D. W. Nowotny, a resident of 910 Jewell Street, walked over to the Whitman residence.


I thought so much of Mrs. Whitman that I went to her house so she wouldn't be by herself. But there was no answer at the door. I looked through the little glass in the door and everything was as neat as a pin like it always was.

Page 226

Mrs. Nowotny turned, walked off the little porch and headed back home.
⁵

In a short time, two
Austin American-Statesmen
reporters, Don Vandiver and Mike Cox, arrived to find another reporter from the
Houston Chronicle
already there. They, too, tried the door and found it to be locked. Only minutes later Officers Kidd and Gregory arrived. They knocked several times, walked around the house, and peered through the windows. Kidd was struck by how neat and orderly everything was. Looking through a window near the southwest corner of the house into the front bedroom, Kidd saw Kathy lying in the bed. He cut the screen and climbed into the room where Kathy lay, covered to the neck with a sheet and bedspread. She had obviously been dead for some time; rigor mortis had set in and her body was cold to the touch. A brief investigation established the identity of Kathy's murderer. On Kathy's death bed, Gregory found an envelope with a partially typed, partially handwritten note entitled "To whom it may concern" signed by Charles J. Whitman, the person they knew to be the sniper on the UT Tower deck. The most shocking part of the note, the first sentence of the third paragraph, read, "Similar reasons provoked me to take my mother's life also."
⁶

When Donald Kidd and Bolton Gregory called APD to report what they had found, they discovered another unfolding drama, an investigation into the whereabouts of Margaret Hodges Whitman. Upon hearing the news of the shooting and the identity of the sniper, Wyatt's Cafeteria manager had immediately called APD to report that Charles had called earlier to say that his mother was ill. Margaret's friends at Wyatt's began to fear for her safety. Meanwhile the manager of the Penthouse Apartments, Margaret Eilers, called APD after she recognized the name Whitman. Looking into Margaret's file, she noticed C. J. Whitman listed as her son and next of kin. When Eilers went to Apartment 505, she found the note to "Roy" posted on the door. Lieutenant Bill Sterzing assigned Sergeant Frank Monk to proceed to the Penthouse. At Cook's Funeral Home near the corpse of Charles Whitman, Chief Miles asked an employee if he could use the phone. He dialed a few numbers and waited as a phone in Penthouse apartment 505 rang. There was, of

Page 227

course, no answer. Miles then hung up the phone, looked at the employee and said, ''He killed her, too."
⁷

When Frank Monk arrived at 2:55
P.M.
, Eilers, Penthouse owner Reuben H. Johnson, and Reverend B. Molloy, a resident of apartment 808, handed him the note that had been posted on the door of Apartment 505. Johnson, Molloy and Monk knocked and called out to Margaret. When no one answered, Monk instructed Johnson to unlock the door. Once inside the apartment, Monk located Margaret's body in the south bedroom. She, much like her daughter-in-law, was covered to the neck and appeared to be asleep. When Monk felt her cold face, he knew that she had been dead for some time. Before long Sergeant Dwight L. Moody arrived to conduct the investigation. He slowly removed the floral bedding that covered Margaret's lifeless body, exposing the extent and brutality of the assault from her eldest son. Moody also uncovered a note written on a yellow legal pad. Like the one found with her daughter-in-law, Margaret's note was also entitled "To whom it may concern." Reuben Johnson immediately identified the murdered woman as Margaret Whitman.
⁸

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Merle Wells, the head of APD's homicide squad, and Frank W. McBee, the Justice of the Peace of Precinct 5, arrived separately at 906 Jewell Street. Donald Kidd and Bolton Gregory briefed them both. McBee's inquest determined the obviousKathy had been killed by "multiple stab wounds in the chest." An autopsy to determine the cause of death was clearly unnecessary and none was ever performed. A close friend of the Whitmans, Ronald Macon, arrived on the scene and positively identified Kathy. Larry and Elaine Fuess arrived to see if they could be of assistance to Kathy. Instead they discovered that she was dead. Larry then told Kidd of their visit to Whitman the night before. Officer Kidd placed a call to Raymond Leissner and informed him of Kathy's death. He asked that his daughter's body be sent to a local funeral home for transfer to another in Rosenberg, Texas. At headquarters Chief Miles instructed Officer Hamm to tell Mayda Nell Tupper of her friend's death.
⁹

On Jewell Street, Mrs. Johnny Whitaker informed Kidd and Gregory that she had seen Whitman take two guns into the west side of the garage in the back yard. Gregory attempted to enter the

Page 228

garage, but Whitman had locked it earlier that morning, so he used Mr. Whitaker's hammer to break off the lock. Inside the garage, the investigator found the butt of a Sears 12-gauge shotgun and metal shavings from the cut-off barrel lying on the floor. Later, one of the neighborhood children would be discovered playing with the piece of barrel Whitman had cut from his shotgun. Gregory knew exactly where he had earlier seen the rest of the altered gunon the deck near the body of its owner. He also saw what young Mark Nowotny had called "a whole bunch of army stuff." Lieutenant Wells instructed Gregory to nail the door shut. Johnny Whitaker supplied the three nails Gregory used to secure the garage.
¹⁰

Late in the afternoon the investigation at the Jewell Street house came to a close, at least for the day After the officers and ambulance attendants lifted Kathy onto a stretcher, they took her out of the neat little house and wheeled her over the sidewalk through the front yard. Neighbors, including the children she had loved and who had loved her, and the little boys Charles had taught to climb a rope "marine style," stood silently as Kathy began the journey that would take her back home to Needville.

As afternoon became early evening at the University of Texas, the sunshine diminished and the temperature "cooled" to the low nineties. From all over the world, parents of UT students called for their children. Most of the students, now perfectly safe, had joined the throngs of people assembled on the South Mall. Dorm workers spent the rest of the day talking to desperate parents, many in tears, trying to locate their children. Ironically, some of the residual burden from the crime committed by Charles Whitman fell on Kathy's colleagues at Southwestern Bell Telephone. August 1, 1966, set a record for the largest number of long distance calls placed in a single day in Austin. Of 34,228 calls, the company completed approximately 20,500, or about sixty percent.
¹¹

In Lake Worth, Florida, C. A. Whitman learned that his eldest son Charles was dead, as did most of the world. At 3:30
P.M.
, in a telephone conversation with APD Captain J. C. Fann, he learned that Margaret and Kathy were also "tentatively identified as dead." C. A. asked that the Jewell Street home and the Penthouse apart-

Page 229

ment be secured. About a half hour later, the elder Whitman called again. He indicated that he would fly from Lake Worth to Austin in order to claim the bodies of Charles and Margaret. For a second time, he requested that the residences be locked. Two hours later, at 6:37
P.M.
, C. A. called again to inform APD of the funeral arrangements he had made in Lake Worth and West Palm Beach. He asked Captain Fann for a third time to be sure to lock the residences. He explained that Margaret had valuable property in her apartment and an automobile parked nearby. During that phone call, C. A. stated that he could think of no reason why his son did what he had done. He explained that Charles was an Eagle Scout, an honorably discharged ex-marine, and an honor student at the university.
¹²

III

After pronouncing Whitman dead, Dr. Robert Stokes had joined some of the other police officers on the deck in looking through Whitman's wallet. In a statement to the Food and Drug Administration, Stokes would later write:


I found the name to be Charles Joseph Whitman and then I left to return to the first floor where I learned in the auditor's office that he was a student registered in the university for the summer session.


I returned to the Health Center where I immediately looked up Whitman's medical records, found that he had been seen by a psychiatrist on March 29th and went to the psychiatry office where I read the report to the psychiatrist. ¹³

So began a hellish period in the life of Dr. Maurice Dean Heatly.

Early the following day, on 2 August 1966, the University of Texas summoned reporters to what many assumed would be a routine press conference. None of the reporters were prepared for the drama about to unfold. Before introducing Dr. Heatly, Dr. Charles LeMaistre, Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs for the University of Texas System distributed the following statement:

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