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 (71 page)

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However, an attempt by the community and its commentators to explain what happened and, to a lesser extent, to find someone or something to blame, did follow. Janet Paulos, whose wedding to Abdul Khashab had to be postponed, became dismayed at American culture. "There must be something wrong somewhere when in a civilized country like this a guy can get guns like he did and do what he did."
¹⁷Some time later the young couple moved to Khashab's native country, Iraq.

The Whitman murders coincided with the beginning of a period in U. S. history when Americans began to lose their "school boy's" view of their country. Revisionist interpretations of American history began to replace traditional and "patriotic" histories. JFK assassination theories began to replace hard facts found in the Warren Commission Report, and as a new conspiracy industry began to flourish, Chief Justice Earl Warren was slowly transmuted from a hero of the Civil Rights Movement to a major player in a sinister cover-up. American institutionsthe FBI, the CIA, the military, corporations, and the Presidency itselfwere portrayed by some as murderous institutions. As John Connally observed, conspiracy advocates saw "evil." America entered a period of doubt and self-flagellation. And so, in an atmosphere of suspicion and cynicism, during a time of war against individual guilt, some embraced and others were conditioned to accept the notion that Charles Whitman was, indeed, an all-American boy.

Most attempts to apply blame focused on the Austin Police Department. Phone calls and telegrams for "heads to roll" flooded APD and the offices of the
Austin American-Statesman
. Specifically, there were calls for the resignation of Chief Bob Miles. The bulk of local criticism, some of it fueled by rumor and misinformation, came from University faculty members. Dr. Irvin Spear, an assistant professor of botany, enumerated one of the longer lists of concerns in a letter to the
Austin American-Statesman
. He claimed that very little was done by APD to keep people from walking into the area, that no one was ever rescued by police but by civilians instead, and that police in the Biology Building (apparently where Professor Spear was located) were armed with only shotguns rather than rifles. He also complained that police had no organized communication with one another and had no plan for ending the siege other than firing

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back, that scores of civilians with high-powered rifles were immediately allowed to wander the campus after the incident, and that Charles Whitman was finally stopped by an off-duty officer and a civilian.

Other students and faculty asked whether ninety-six minutes was a much longer than necessary time period for police to take to get to the top of the Tower. There were many questions as to why Allen Crum, a civilian, was up there at all. A UT student named Richard Solem asked, "Is Austin so short of responsible policemen that it must deputize a middle-aged businessman to do the work policemen are trained for?" Still other questions involved the use of the University's tunnels; shouldn't they have been used much sooner to get into the Tower? Stanley Werbow, a Law Professor, called on Governor Connally to appoint a commission to study the reaction of the Austin Police Department. His concerns were essentially the same as those enumerated by Spears.
¹⁸All of the questions were fair and the Austin Police Department was held accountable for answers to them. The pressure to explain fell on Chief Bob Miles. For the most part, he rose to the occasion.

The easiest and most obvious question was whether the Austin Police Department was prepared for the magnitude of the crime. Clearly, they were not. A more relevant question was whether they
should
have been prepared. More specifically, should APD have had plans for handling a sniping or any crime of that magnitude?

A fair assessment of APD's performance requires an appreciation for the enormous area over which the crime took place and the number of people involved. Whitman hit people in an area covering five city blocks, or the area of a circle around the Tower with a diameter of at least 1,200 yards. It was an enormous crime scene; likely the largest in American history for a crime perpetrated by a single individual. The area included virtually all of the University and a substantial portion of some of the most congested sections of Austin. It involved every kind of landscape including trees, alleys, tall and short buildings, streets, construction sites, stairways, hills, statues, roofs, automobiles, windows and tunnels. The danger zone, or the total area over which Whitman could have inflicted injury, can only be estimated, but has to be considerably larger than the actual crime scene, possibly a half-mile squared, or about 300 acres. The

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crowds covering the South Mall after Whitman had been killed represented only a small portion of the number of people who were pinned down. The perception that APD did little or nothing to get people out of harm's way is likely the result of the large area involved. Numerous reports by officers detailed efforts to get people into buildings and keep others off the campus.

The size of the crime scene also contributed to the impression that very few officers ran into the open to rescue the wounded. Certainly, any given individual was more likely to have been wounded or killed near a civilian than a policeman. Logically, at least according to some critics, if an officer did his job, he had people around him take cover, making a rescue less likely, which is what many officers indicated that they had done. Numerous accounts of officers rescuing individuals who were trapped, but not wounded, did exist. The
Daily Texan
later related a story of an unidentified coed huddled under shrubs and crying in terror as she held her bruised and bleeding knee. An unidentified policeman led her to safety.
¹⁹

The assertion that APD's weapons were inadequate for the crime does have merit. The entire department had fifteen rifles, but they were 35-caliber Remingtons that had not been used for law enforcement for twenty years. In his review of Whitman's arsenal, noted writer Russell Tinsley pointed out that Whitman's own 35 Remington was hardly better than a pistol from the top of the Tower.
²⁰Had APD's Remingtons been used from the ground they would have been even less accurate. In any case, premium deer rifles, accurate over long distances, were fired by seasoned hunters at Whitman to no avail. No more appropriate type of weapon could have been used from the ground. The inability to get Whitman by shooting from the ground was less related to the quality of the weapons used than the quality of the fortress he had chosen. No one so much as wounded Charles Whitman from the ground; he was killed by APD officers in the only way he could be reachedfrom a distance of about fifty feetby shotgun blasts from an APD-issued weapon. What does seem reasonable to assume, however, is that a police department should have weapons of better, or at least equal, quality than those available to the general public, even if they are not likely to be used.

The siege lasted ninety-six minutes, but for those who were there, it seemed to last all afternoon. Critics wondered what took so long.

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APD's complete display of Whitman's materials.
Austin Police Department Files.

The questions were reasonable. Ninety-six minutes might have been too long to get to Whitman, if that were all APD had to do. Some attributed the length of time to inadequate communications and a lack of planning. Unfortunately, trying to establish communications between APD and UT Security took time and kept officers anchored to positions. W. A. Cowan kept security on the phone while Harold Moe had a walkie-talkie. The phone effectively immobilized Cowan and the noise made by the walkie-talkie would have made bringing it to the deck dangerous.

The need to evacuate the Gabours and Lamports and university employees further complicated the whole operation. Assuming an inevitable gunfight, APD could not have allowed anyone to stay on the twenty-seventh floor. Moreover, it would have been heartless to walk past Mike and Mary Gabour and not remove them to an area where they could receive aid. Once those tasks had been accomplished, the officers faced other uncertainties: how many snipers were on the deck and what were their positions?

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Could the officers have gotten to the Tower faster by using the tunnels? Probably not. The first three officers in the Tower, Bob Day, Jerry Day, and Ramiro Martinez, dashed over open ground to reach the Main Building. The tunnels were safer, but not faster. Houston McCoy and his team had to be led through the maze of tunnels to the Tower by a university employee. Without the guide they could have gotten lost.

Why was it that the team that finally stormed the deck and killed the sniper consisted mainly of off-duty policemen and a civilian? Technically, all of the policemen were on duty. Shepard, Shoquist, Moe, and Conner reported to APD first and were assigned to report to UT Security to form a team to storm the deck. Martinez called APD and was told to report to the campus to handle traffic control. A review of the reports shows that the officers already on duty when the firing began were likely to be assigned to traffic and crowd control. The idea was to remove Whitman's targets by getting people out of the way, something officers with communications capabilities, i.e., a motorcycle or squad car radio, were likely to be asked to do, and something some critics maintained APD should have done more of. Off-duty officers, like some who brought their own weapons to return fire, or like Ramiro Martinez, often engaged in direct, independent actions.

Finally, why was Allen Crum, a civilian, on the deck when Whitman was killed? He was there because he insisted on going. Allen Crum guided the lawmen through hallways and passageways leading to the deck. None of the policemen knew the layout of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth floors. Only Jerry Day and W. A. Cowan knew Crum to be a civilian from the time they met him. Shortly after reaching the twenty-seventh floor, Jerry Day was forced to escort a very distraught M. J. Gabour downstairs and then had trouble keeping him there. As Cowan struggled to establish communications with UT Security, Martinez saw that the rifle-wielding Crum ascended the stairs with him "military style," reinforcing Martinez's assumption that Crum was with UT Security. It was not until a moment before they entered the reception area that Martinez discovered who Crum was and deputized him.

Allen Crum had demonstrated extraordinary courage. He placed himself in danger from Charles Whitman and inadvertently from all

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of the officers accompanying Houston McCoy who agreed that the sniper needed to be killed. McCoy, by his own account, came dangerously close to killing him. Once Crum had stepped onto the deck, Charles Whitman actually charged in Crum's direction when Crum fired a round from a gun he had been handed and with which he was unfamiliar. Luckily, Whitman reacted by turning around and running in the opposite direction. Had he turned the southwest corner, Crum or Day would have killed Whitman, or Whitman would have killed Crum or Day or both. In either case, a tremendous public outcry would have taken place. Arguments as to whether Allen Crum should have been on the deck should not supplant the crucial role he played as the navigator of the team that ended the tragedy. Without Allen Crum the siege would likely have lasted even longer.

Time and norm referencing should also be applied to a fair analysis of APD's performance. In 1966, could any other police department of comparable size have reacted any better? Probably not. Was there any information routinely collected by other comparable police departments that APD should have had that they did not? Not really. Chief Miles did react to the sniper incident by saying that the department would secure blueprints of the top floors of all of Austin's tall buildings, but before 1 August 1966 they would never have been used, and in the thirty years that followed the Tower incident they have not been needed for any other serious crime.

Moreover, as Jack Levin and James Alan Fox have pointed out in their book
Mass Murder
, sniping is a very infrequent crime in America. Single-victim homicides, robbery and property crimes encumber far more police resources and time. To plan for Whitman-like crimes would certainly siphon resources from more immediate problems.

Not surprisingly, rumors began to circulate. The most shocking was that three to four years prior to the Tower incident Whitman had approached a businessman on the Drag for the purpose of selling pornography. The
Texas Observer
was the first to print the off-the-record story of the unnamed businessman who claimed to have thrown Whitman out of his establishment. The account would later be expanded in Time-Life's series of books on True Crime:

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