COLD BLOODED KILLERS (Killers from around the World) (6 page)

In August 1962, Whitman married Kathleen Frances Leissner, another University of Texas student, in a wedding that was held in Leissner's hometown of Needville, Texas. The following year, he returned to active duty at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where he was both promoted to Lance Corporal and involved in an accident in which his Jeep rolled over an embankment.

In November of 1962, Whitman was court-martialed for gambling, possessing a personal firearm on base, and threatening another Marine over a thirty dollar loan for which Whitman demanded fifteen dollars interest. He was sentenced to thirty days of confinement, ninety days of hard labor, and demoted to the rank of Private.

In December, 1964, honorably discharged from the Marines, Whitman returned to the University of Texas and enrolled in the Architectural Engineering program. He worked as a bill collector for Standard Finance and later as a bank teller at Austin National Bank. In January, 1965, he took a temporary job with Central Freight Lines and worked as a traffic surveyor for the Texas Highway Department. He also volunteered as a Scoutmaster for Austin Scout Troop five while Kathy worked as a biology teacher at Lanier High School.

In May of 1966, Whitman's mother contacted Charles and because of several disagreements she had with his father, she announced she was filing for a divorce. Whitman drove to Florida to help his mother move to back to Austin, where she found work in a cafeteria. The move prompted his youngest brother, John, to leave Lake Worth as well, but his brother Patrick decided to continue living at home and working for their father at his plumbing supply business.

Whitman's father began to telephone him several times a week, pleading with him to convince his mother to return to Lake Worth, but Charles refused. The day before the shootings, Whitman purchased binoculars and a knife from a hardware store, and Spam from a 7-Eleven. He then picked up his wife from her summer job as a Bell operator, and met his mother for lunch at the Wyatt Cafeteria near the campus.

Around 4:00 p.m., on July 31
^st
, they visited friends, John and Fran Morgan, who lived in the same neighborhood, leaving at approximately 5:50 so that Kathy Whitman wouldn’t be late for her 6:00–10:00 p.m. shift that night. At 6:45, Whitman began typing his suicide note, a portion of which read:

I do not quite understand what it is that compels me to type this letter. Perhaps it is to leave some vague reason for the actions I have recently performed. I do not really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I cannot recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.

The note explained that he had decided to murder both his mother and his wife, but made no mention of the coming attacks at the university. Expressing uncertainty about his actual reasons, he nevertheless observed that he felt he wanted to relieve Kathy and his mother Margaret from the suffering of the world.

Just after midnight, Whitman rendered his mother unconscious and then stabbed her in the heart. He left a handwritten note beside her body, which read in part:

To Whom It May Concern: I have just taken my mother's life. I am very upset over having done it. However, I feel that if there is a heaven she is definitely there now...I am truly sorry...Let there be no doubt in your mind that I loved this woman with all my heart.

Whitman returned to his home at 906 Jewell Street and stabbed his wife Kathy three times in the heart as she slept, returning to the typewritten note he had begun earlier, which he then finished by hand, writing,

I imagine it appears that I brutally killed both of my loved ones. I was only trying to do a quick thorough job...If my life insurance policy is valid please pay off my debts, donate the rest anonymously to a mental health foundation. Maybe research can prevent further tragedies of this type.

Whitman also requested that an autopsy be done after his death to determine if there had been anything to explain his actions and increasing headaches. He also wrote notes to each of his brothers and his father, and left instructions in the apartment that the two canisters of film he left on the table should be developed, and that the puppy, Schocie, should be given to Kathy's parents.

At 5:45 a.m. on Monday, August 1
^st
, 1966, Whitman phoned Kathy's supervisor at Bell to explain that she was sick and could not make her shift that day. He made a similar phone call to Margaret's workplace about five hours later.

Whitman rented a hand truck from Austin Rental Company and cashed $250 of worthless checks at the bank before going to Davis' Hardware and purchasing an M1 carbine, explaining that he wanted to go hunting for wild hogs. He then went to Sears and purchased a shotgun and a green rifle case. After sawing off the shotgun barrel – while chatting with the mail carrier – Whitman packed it with a Remington 700 6mm bolt-action hunting rifle with a 4x Leupold Scope, an M1 carbine, a Remington .35 caliber pump rifle, and various other equipment, in a wooden crate and his Marine footlocker. He also had a .357 Magnum revolver, 9mm German Luger, and another small caliber pistol on his person.

Before heading to the tower, Whitman donned khaki coveralls over his shirt and jeans. Pushing the rented dolly carrying his equipment, he met security guard Jack Rodman and obtained a parking pass, claiming he had a delivery to make. He showed Rodman a card identifying him as a research assistant for the school.

Whitman entered the Main Building shortly after 11:30 a.m. He struggled with the elevator until an employee, Vera Palmer, informed him that it had not been powered and turned it on for him. He thanked her and took the elevator to the 27
^th
floor of the tower, just one floor beneath the clock face.

Whitman then lugged the dolly up one long flight of stairs to the hallway that led to a doglegged stairway that went up to the observation deck area. Edna Townsley, the receptionist on duty, observing Whitman’s trunk, asked if he had his University work identification. Whitman knocked her unconscious with the butt of his rifle and dragged her body behind a sofa. She later died from her injuries at Seton Hospital. Moments later, Cheryl Botts and Don Walden, a young couple who had been sightseeing on the deck, returned to the receptionist area and encountered Whitman holding a rifle in each hand. Botts later claimed that she believed that the large red stain on the floor was varnish, and that Whitman was there to shoot pigeons. Whitman and the young couple exchanged hellos and the couple left for the elevators. When they were gone, Whitman barricaded the stairway and donned his white sweatband.

Two families, the Gabours and Lamports, were on their way up the stairs when they encountered Whitman’s barricade. Michael Gabour was attempting to look beyond the barricade when Whitman fired the sawed-off shotgun at him, hitting him in the left side of his neck and shoulder region, sending him over the staircase railing onto other family members. Whitman fired the sawed-off shotgun two more times through grates on the stairway into the families as they tried to run back down the stairs. Mark Gabour and his aunt, Marguerite Lamport, died instantly. Michael was partially disabled and his mother was permanently disabled.

The first shots from the tower's outer deck came at approximately 11:48 a.m. A history professor was the first to phone the Austin Police Department after he saw several students in the South Mall center gunned down. Many others had dismissed the rifle reports, not realizing there was directed gunfire. Eventually, the shootings caused panic as news spread and all active police officers in Austin were ordered to the campus. Other off-duty officers, Travis County Sheriff's deputies, and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers, also converged on the area to assist.

About twenty minutes later, once Whitman began facing return fire from the authorities and armed civilians who had brought out their personal firearms to assist police, he used the waterspouts on each side of the tower as gun ports. These allowed him to continue shooting largely protected from the gunfire below, but it greatly limited his range of targets below.

Ramiro Martinez, an officer who participated that morning, later stated that the civilian shooters should be credited as they made it difficult for Whitman to take careful aim. Police lieutenant Marion Lee, reporting from a small airplane, noted that there was a single sniper firing from the observation deck. The airplane circled the tower while Lee tried to shoot Whitman, but turbulence made it difficult for him to get a clear shot. The airplane, piloted by Jim Boutwell, was hit by Whitman's rifle fire but continued to circle the tower from a safe distance until the end of the incident.

Whitman's choice of victims was indiscriminate. Most were shot on Guadalupe Street, a major commercial and business district across from the west side of the campus. Efforts to reach and rescue the wounded included an armored car and ambulances run by local funeral homes. Ambulance driver Morris Hohmann was responding to victims on West 23
^rd
Street when he was shot in the leg. The bullet severed an artery, and another ambulance driver quickly attended to Hohmann, taking him about ten blocks south of UT to Brackenridge Hospital, the only local emergency room.

The Brackenridge Administrator declared an emergency and medical staff raced to reinforce the on-duty shifts. Following the shootings, volunteers donated blood at both Brackenridge and the Travis County Blood Bank. Austin Police Department (APD) Officers Ramiro Martinez, Houston McCoy, Jerry Day, and civilian Allen Crum, were the first to reach the tower's observation deck, stepping outside the south door at 1:24 p.m. Martinez, closely followed by McCoy, formed one team and proceeded north on the east deck. Day, followed by Crum, formed a second team and proceeded west on the south deck, with Whitman believed to be between the two teams.

Several feet before reaching the southwest corner, Crum accidentally discharged a shot from his borrowed rifle. At the same time, Martinez jumped around the corner into the northeast area and rapidly fired all six rounds from his .38 police revolver at Whitman. As Martinez was firing, McCoy jumped out to the right and fired two fatal shots of double buckshot with his 12-gauge shotgun into the head, neck, and left side of Whitman, who had been sitting with his back toward the north wall in the northwest corner area, fifty feet away.

Whitman, who appeared to be unaware of the presence of Martinez and McCoy, was partially shielded by the deck tower lights, and in a position to defend assaults from either corner.

After firing six rounds, Martinez threw his empty revolver onto the deck and grabbed McCoy's shotgun. He ran to Whitman's prone body and fired directly Whitman’s upper left arm. Martinez then threw the shotgun on the deck and hurriedly left the scene, repeatedly shouting, "I got him."

After attending to the wounded in the stairwell, APD Officers Milton Shoquist, Harold Moe, and George Shepard, made their way up the stairs to join APD Officer, Phillip Conner, and Texas Department of Public Safety Agent, W.A. Cowan. Arriving on the 28
^th
floor as Martinez, McCoy, Day, and Crum were outside on the observation deck, Moe, with a hand-held radio, heard Martinez as he ran past shouting "I got him," and relayed his words to the APD radio dispatcher. Houston McCoy appeared before the Travis County Grand Jury on August 5
^th
, 1966, and received a justifiable killing verdict for the death of Whitman. At the Cook Funeral Home the next day, an autopsy was performed and an Astrocytoma brain tumor was discovered in Whitman. Due to his status as a veteran Marine, Whitman had a casket draped with an American flag for his burial.

- 7 - 
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris

COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL

Dylan Klebold & Eric Harris