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 (38 page)

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Page 116

Whitman's loaded trunk, showing some of the contents. The radio he kept with him
to hear the broadcasts about himself is on the floor in front of the trunk.
Austin Police
Department Files.

Once the weapons and his supplies were inside, Whitman had trouble moving the heavy footlocker. At about 7:00
A.M.
he left 906 Jewell Street and drove west of downtown to Austin Rental Company at 900 West 10th Street. Arriving around 7:15
A.M.
, he rented a two-wheeled dolly for the twenty-four-hour rate of $2.04. On his way back home he stopped by Austin National Bank, on the corner of 5th Street and Congress Avenue, and cashed two $125.00 checks, one from his account and the other from an account he shared with Margaret.
¹⁹

Whitman selected his weapons carefully from the many available at his Jewell Street home. After taking inventory of what he had and what he ''needed," he decided to buy more weapons. Between 9:00 and 9:30
A.M.
Whitman traveled farther north than his other preparations had taken him. Many accounts of his movements have made much of his excursion northward to the small Charles Davis Hardware at 4900 Burnet Road. But Davis Hardware was not that far from Whitman's area of activity and getting there took only a few minutes. At Davis Hardware he bought a 30-caliber Carbine, 3

Page 117

boxes of shells, two boxes of 35-caliber Remington shells, and one box of 9mm Luger bullets. The attending salesman, Ted Beard, remembered that Whitman "knew exactly what he wanted." They had a brief conversation in which Whitman indicated plans for a trip to Florida to shoot wild hogs. He purchased about $100 worth of merchandise. About fifteen minutes later, however, he returned to Davis Hardware to return a clip that was bent.
²⁰

From Davis Hardware, Whitman drove to what was probably his favorite gun shop, Chuck's Gun Shop, located at 3707 East Avenuenow Interstate Highway 35 (IH 35). Any central Texan who knew guns knew Chuck's Gun Shop. During the previous year Whitman and his father had made purchases at the shop. Frequently during the past year Whitman had returned to make payments on those earlier purchases. On 1 August 1966, he entered the establishment through the right front double doors. He bought four more boxes of carbine shells, two boxes of 6mm shells, and a can of Hoppe's #9 cleaning solvent. The owner's wife waited on him. The bill

Whitman's arsenal included (from left to right) a 35mm Remington, an illegally customized
Sears 12-gauge shotgun, a 6mm Remington bolt action, and a 30-caliber M-1
carbine. The carbine enabled Whitman to fire rapidly, but by far the most accurate
and deadliest was the scoped 6mm Remington.
Austin Police Department Files.

Page 118

totaled $48.63. Whitman wrote a check and in jest asked the sales-woman not to contact the bank to make sure it was good.
²¹(Later in the week the check bounced.)

Less than a mile across IH 35 from Chuck's is the Hancock Shopping Center. When Whitman arrived at about 9:40
A.M.
he went straight to the sporting goods section of the Sears store to survey the rifles. He told a clerk named James D. Morehead he wanted to see the 12-gauge automatics. Morehead opened the gun cabinet and Whitman lifted a shotgun to his shoulder and told the clerk that it felt "light compared to the twenty-one pound gun I carried in the service." He bought the gun after asking if there was "mechanism" inside the wooden stock. He also asked if any carbine clips were in stock, but there were none. Here, too, he talked of going to Florida to shoot hogs. He charged his purchases with his Sears credit card after Morehead called for approval to charge $137.95.
²²The entire transaction took about ten minutes.

During his visit to Sears, he must have been reminded of Margaret; the Wyatt's Cafeteria where she worked was a prominent part of the Hancock Center and clearly visible from the route he would have taken from Chuck's Guns. He had not yet explained why Margaret would not be at work by 11:00
A.M.
He went straight home to do so. From the Hancock Shopping Center Whitman could have driven south towards home in any number of ways. The University of Texas Tower, like an overbearing chaperon observing the movements of people going about their business, would have overlooked all possible routes. If he thought about what he was going to do, he had to have fixed his eyes upon the deck and the rain spouts on each side of the parapet.

It did not seem unusual to Mrs. Johnny Whitaker, a next-door neighbor, when she saw Whitman get out of his car with two rifles; even the neighborhood children, like young Mark Nowotny, knew "he just had a whole bunch of army stuff" in the garage. Everyone knew he spent an inordinate amount of time at firing ranges, and no one in the neighborhood had heard anything unusual or disturbing the previous evening.

Page 119

Whitman went directly to the door at the rear of the garage and deposited the guns. He had arrived at 906 Jewell Street slightly before 10:30
A.M.
He entered the house and called D. W. Quinney, the manager of Wyatt's Cafeteria, and manufactured an illness for Margaret. His fabrication mirrored the one he had used to explain Kathy's absence. Margaret had diarrhea and vomiting and would not be able to report to work.
²³Much would be made of Whitman's selection of those specific bogus symptoms. Attempts would be made to connect diarrhea and vomiting with his use of drugs. The insinuation was that he used symptoms with which he suffered as a drug abuser. That connection is possible, but weak. Today, patient information leaflets for Whitman's drug of choice, Dexedrine (dextroamphetamine), do not list diarrhea but rather constipation as a possible side effect.
²⁴

Minutes later Whitman returned to the garage and placed the shotgun in a vise. Using a hacksaw, he cut off much of the barrel and stock. As Whitman sawed, the neighborhood postal carrier, Chester Arrington, noticed him in the garage and walked over to the back yard for a chat. Startled, Arrington reminded Whitman of the illegality of his alterations of the shotgun. Charlie responded, "It's my gun, and I can do what I want with it." They spoke for a total of about twenty-five minutes, mostly about guns. According to Arrington, "It was about an hour and forty-five minutes before the killings. He was very, very, very calm." The postman went about his rounds. Shortly afterwards, a very young neighborhood kid walked into the garage; Whitman gave him a new "toy"the barrel he sawed off the new Sears shotgun.
²⁵

Whitman continued to prepare his arsenal, the last step in his elaborate arrangements for mass murder. He cleaned the guns, presumably with the fluid he purchased at Chuck's Gun Shop. He then packed a 6mm Remington with a 4-power scope, a 35-caliber Remington rifle, a 30-caliber Carbine, the new Sears (now customized) 12-gauge shotgun, a 357 Magnum Smith/Wesson revolver, a 9mm Luger pistol, a Galesi-Brescia pistol, the large hunting knife he had used to kill Kathy and Margaret, and about 700 rounds of ammunition. Some of the longer guns were rolled into a blanket and would later be tied to the front of the dolly and footlocker.

Page 120

The 35-caliber Remington and the 30-caliber Carbine were accurate to about 100 yards; the ranges of the pistols were even more limited. Whitman's alteration of the 12-gauge shotgun made it even less accurate over long distances. By far the deadliest weapon in Whitman's arsenal was the 6mm Remington, a powerful rifle, very popular in Texas with deer hunters, and designed for long-range accuracy. The rifle expels a very slim, high-velocity missile over a long distance on a nearly flat plane. The bullets Whitman used were designed to kill by shock; they flattened into a mushroom shape upon impact. Because of its shape, power and speed, the Remington is very resistant to atmospheric interference. Without a scope, targets 300 yards away are reasonable. Even an average shot should be able to hit a target at that distance within six and one half inches, and Whitman was no average shot.
²⁶

Whitman left behind other guns at 906 Jewell Street: a 410 shotgun, a 25-20 Winchester rifle, and two matched Colt Derringers.
²⁷He would use almost all of the weapons in his arsenal, but the 6-mm Remington pierced the heart of Austin. From the top of the Tower, all of the other weapons, even in the hands of a trained sharpshooter like Charles Whitman, were of little use. He bought the 12-gauge shotgun for the purpose of short-range battle, apparently anticipating some sort of shootout inside the building, maybe in narrow hallways or staircases. He would use it to secure the twenty-eighth floor and its exterior deck.

In Austin at 11:00
A.M.
on 1 August 1966, it was hot. The official temperature at the municipal airport measured 96 degrees, but Austin's concrete and asphalt jungle shot the sun's rays upward as if to take revenge on people. Whitman was wearing sneakers and a red plaid shirt and jeans. To look like a janitor or a repairman in order to haul a large footlocker to the top of the Tower without attracting suspicion, he went back into the house to put blue nylon coveralls over the clothes he already had on. In the 96-degree heat the outfit must have been insufferable.

Kathy's body had lain in the neat little house for over eight hours. No one will ever know if Whitman looked at her one last time. Elsewhere in the house Whitman located one of the many lists he had written or typed over the past few years. He often typed action

Page 121

verbs and clichés in capital letters. What he called his "Thoughts to Start the Day" included:

READ AND THINK ABOUT, EVERY DAY
STOP procrastinating (Grasp the nettle)
CONTROL your anger (Don't let it prove you a fool)
SMILEIts [sic] contagious
DON'T be belligerent
STOP cursing, improve your vocabulary
APPROACH a pot of gold with exceptional caution (Look it overtwice)
PAY that compliment
LISTEN more than you speak, THINK before you speak
CONTROL your passion; DON'T LET IT lead YOUDon't let your desire make you regret your present actions later (Remember the lad and the man)
If you want to be better than average, YOU HAVE TO WORK MUCH HARDER THAN THE AVERAGE
NEVER FORGET; when the going gets rough, the ROUGH get going!!!!!
YESTERDAY IS NOT MINE TO RECOVER,
BUT TOMORROW IS MINE TO WIN OR TO
LOSE. I AM RESOLVED THAT I SHALL
WIN THE TOMORROWS BEFORE ME!!!

At the top of his "Thoughts to Start the Day" Whitman scribbled "8-1-66. I never could quite make it. These thoughts are too much for me."
²⁸