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 (70 page)

Page 240

Connally had an even larger investigation in mind and pre-empted the study.

Considered by many to be the greatest governor Texas ever had, John Connally was remembered by most Americans as the man who sat on a jump seat in a limousine in front of John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963 in Dallas. By 1966, he had tired of talking about the Kennedy assassination. Upon hearing the news about the Tower sniper on 1 August 1966, Connally, in Brazil as part of a trip to several South American countries, immediately cut short his excursion and returned to Austin. He formed a commission of some of the nation's leading medical and psychological experts and charged them with investigating the medical aspects of the Charles Whitman murders.

In Washington, D.C., President Lyndon B. Johnson, a son of the Texas Hill Country, sent personal notes to the families of the victims. He called J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, and personally ordered an investigation into the Whitman tragedy.
⁶

III

By Thursday, 4 August 1966, John Michael Whitman had returned home to Lake Worth, Florida, to attend the double funeral of his mother and oldest brother. In Catholic tradition, a rosary was recited at the funeral home the night before the funeral, which took place on Friday, 5 August 1966. Approximately 300 people filled Lake Worth's Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Father Eugene Quintan served as the celebrant of the Mass and double funeral. He reminded friends and family, and informed the world, that both Margaret and Charles were once people of deep religious devotion. After the High Mass, Father Quintan led a procession to the waiting hearses and thirty-three other cars on a trip to Hillcrest Memorial Cemetery in West Palm Beach. Because church officials presumed that Charles Whitman was deranged at the time of his death, his coffin was draped by the flag of the United States. The funeral was an occasion for prayer and song. The only show of emotion, other than weeping, came from Johnnie Mike when he shook his fists at cameramen. The caravan motored a few miles to Hillcrest Memorial

Page 241

L-R, Patrick, John, and Charles A. Whitman, brothers and father of mass killer
Charles J. Whitman, at the funeral of Whitman and his mother on 5 August 1966.
The priest who celebrated the funeral mass stated that the Roman Catholic Church
gave Whitman a Christian burial because "God in his mercy does not hold him
responsible" for his final actions.
UPI/Corbis-Bettmann.

Park in West Palm Beach without incident. There, Charles and his mother were laid side by side.
⁷

At 12:43
A.M.
on the day after the funeral, C. A. Whitman called the Austin Police Department and left a message for Major Herbert to call collect at 11:00
A.M.
that same morning. When the call was returned C. A. asked for a Monday morning (8 August 1966) meeting. Again, he requested that the Jewell Street home and the Penthouse apartment be locked. At 7:50
A.M.
he called again to inform APD that he and his father-in-law would arrive in Austin at 8:50
P.M.
under the names "R. Smith and A. Smith." He asked that the Penthouse be made available at that time, but APD could not guarantee its availability.
⁸

On the following Monday morning, 8 August 1966, while shaving for work, Ramiro Martinez began to shake. For a moment he did not know why. Then he realized it had been a week since his trip to the Tower. It was not a big deal; he got over it. What he did not yet

Page 242

know was that C. A. Whitman was now in Austin. Later that day at APD headquarters, C. A. would ask to meet the policeman who had killed his son, saying it was one of his reasons for coming to Austin:


I came to Texas to express my sympathies and regrets to all concerned and to cooperate to the fullest with all law enforcement officers and I have met personally and embraced the man that killed my son and I have no animosity, in fact, I have respect for him for doing his job. . . . I think this will help this boy [Martinez] in years to come. ⁹

It was a kind gesture, and Ramiro Martinez was very gracious to the man from Lake Worth who sobbed and said that he just did not know what happened, that his son was just not like that. Martinez had always known that police work might involve killing someone. "It is why they give you a gun; it is part of the job. No one likes killing, if they do they're sick. It's just part of the job. I had a job to do and I did it." He would never question the need to bring Charles Whitman down, and once he got over a temporary spell of the "shakes," his recovery was complete and permanent.
¹⁰

While in Austin, C. A. Whitman cooperated completely. He consented to every request made of him by the Austin Police Department and other law enforcement agencies. On 9 August 1966 Chief Miles gave C. A. the following letter:

To whom it may concern:
Mr. C. A. Whitman of Lake Worth, Florida, the father of Charles J. Whitman, has cooperated fully and graciously with the Police Department in their efforts to complete their investigation of the tragedy which occurred on the Campus of the University of Texas on August 1, 1966. His attitude and assistance is appreciated and gratefully acknowledged.
Sincerely,
R. A. Miles
Chief of Police

Page 243

On the same day, C. A. was taken to 906 Jewell Street where he met the Leissner family. As Mr. Leissner remembered: "We more or less took some personal things that we wanted, and he [C. A. Whitman] took what he wanted. There wasn't much. They were just kids." Nowhere to be found was Kathy's little dog Schocie. A neighbor called APD early on the morning after the murders to report that Schocie had mysteriously disappeared on 1 August 1966 after Kathy's body had been removed from her home.

C. A. Whitman would neither see nor hear from the Leissners again. By the end of the day he had located Margaret's new Mercury Park Lane automobile, which had been taken to the Austin Police Department's impounding yard for safekeeping. It was released to him at 6:05 p.
M.
11

On the next day, 10 August 1966, C. A. penned a short note to most of the victims and their families. The note he sent to Robert Heard, the Associated Press reporter who had been gunned down in an open area north of the Tower read, "Dear Mr. Heard, May we express our most sincere regrets. C. A. Whitman, Jr. and family."
¹²

Events like the Charles Whitman murders bring out the best in people. The reaction of the people of Austin revealed the town's character. Immediately after the shooting stopped someone picked up Alex Hernandez's newspapers and sold them at double the list price. The money was later delivered to him at Brackenridge Hospital, where fifty stitches had been required to repair a huge gash from his hip to his knee. Less than five minutes after Joe Roddy announced a need for blood, a traffic jam formed around the Travis County Medical Society. Some motorists passing through Austin went out of their way to give blood. APD had to be called to the downtown area to handle the congestion. Two hours later an estimated 1,000 donors, including mothers holding babies, students, businessmen in suits, and soldiers in uniform from Bergstrom Air Force Base, lined the streets.
¹³

Police Chief Bob Miles asked the world to believe that "this could have happened in any city in the United States, or any city in the world for that matter." It was a period of kindness. The police and

Page 244

even the Travis County Grand Jury sought to protect C. A. Whitman from his son's vitriolic notes:


We have instructed the police to release the notes left by Charles Whitman only to authorized investigating agencies, since they contain unverified statements of an insane killer which could be misunderstood if publicly released. ¹⁴

But C. A.'s own statements to the press contained numerous incredibly candid and injudicious declarations. Reporters found him quotable; he admitted to beating his wife, spanking his children, being a "fanatic" about guns, and personally training his boys in marksmanship. His speech had strength and assertion but no emotion, even though he had just been told that his son had killed his wife, daughter-in-law, and scores of others before being gunned down by policemen. It all seemed rather odd. Had Charles's notes been released in their entirety on 1 August of 1966, C. A. Whitman's life would have been intolerably more complicated.

The most remarkable group of people to emerge from the tragedy were the survivors of Whitman's gunshots. In an article for the
Texas Observer
written less than three weeks after the incident, Bill Helmer wrote that he knew no one who had any hatred towards Whitmanonly pity and dismay: "It is hard to hate a pain-tormented animal that strikes out indiscriminately as it dies."
¹⁵Mary Gabour had the greatest right to descend into anger and bitterness. For months she languished in hospitals and recovery centers enduring painful rehabilitation procedures. She emerged permanently crippled and legally blind. Her physical recovery was complicated by the end of her marriage to M. J. Gabour. And, of course, she had lost her youngest child, Mark, whose funeral she was unable to attend. But she forgave the sniper. Ten years after the incident, she told a reporter: "I don't feel any bitterness towards Charles Whitman. I can only feel a sort of pity for himto have had to face his judgment with the blood of so many on his hands." Once Mike Gabour was able to talk to reporters he was asked if he had any resentment towards the man who shot him. Mike only replied, ''He's dead."
¹⁶The Gabours were remarkable people.

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