A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders

Notes on Sources

Notes on Sources 299 In his landmark work. on the Kennedy Assassination entitled CaseClosed, Gerald Posner effectively demonstrated how the passage of time and repeated exposllre to large amounts of coverage of an infamous incident tend to blur the recollections of eyewitnesses. Oral history is necessary, but as an historian I am often suspicious of memories that are thirty years old. A great deal of folklore has surrounded the Charles Whitman case, so wherever possible, I have given preference to primary documents from 1966 rather than relying on the 199596 recollections. tm------------------- Notes on Sources Interviews I conducted three formal interviews: one with Houston McCoy on I°March I995, in Menard, Texas; one with Ramiro Martinez on 3 April 1995, in New J3raunfels, Texas; and one with Lawrence A. Fuess in Dallas 011 6 June 1996. All three gentlemen were interviewed as much for an update on their lives since 1966 as for their recollections of the Tower incident. I also had brief meetings with Phillip Conner, one of the members of the McCoy Team, on 18 August 1995, at my office in Austin; Dr. Albert Lalonde on 30 June 1995, at his home in Austin; and Robert Heard and lack Keever, former Associated Press reporters, on 16 March 1996, at the 1996 South by Southwest Media Conference in Austin. Other, very brief, conversations are endnoted through the book. None of the interviews produced dramatic new information relative to the Whitman murders. On 26 January 1995, I met Mr. C. A. Whitman at his home in Lantana, Florida. It is my personal belief that news and history should not be purchased, so when he indicated that in the past he has received payments for interviews and pictures, I explained that I could not pay him for any information. We then had a pleasant conversation which yielded no information that had not already been published or was otherwise well-documented. Primary documents The bulk of the information of this work is taken from the Whitman Case File, offense number M968150, of the Austin Police Department. The original documents are still locked in an evidence room vault on the second floor of the Austin Police Department headquarters. Wisely,APD asked for evidence of my qualifications to review the material. I presented a resume and volunteered other personal information to gain access to the original documents. The APD file on the Whitman Case consists mostly of reports completed by virtually all of the officers involved in any way with the incident and related investigations. The Whitman Case is more completely documented than most crimes, not only because of its notorious nature, but because Police Chief Robert Miles sought to answer criticisms of his department's performance by requiring detailed reports from all officers involved as to their movements and actions. They completed hundreds of pages of forms including Supplementary Offense Reports, Crimes Against Persons Reports, Hospitalization Offense Reports, DetailsofInvestigations, and Vehicle Impounding Reports, in addition to various statements and affidavits to other government agencies, including the FBI, Food and Drug Administration, Texas Department of Public Safety and others. The record is extraordinarily complete. The Texas Department of Public Safety file on the Charles .Whitman Case, file number 4-38, is larger than the APD file in that it includes its own reports as well as the FBI files and the APD files. My access to FBI reports was through this body of material. The APD and Texas DPS files also contain a wealth of copies and original primary documents related to Charles Whitman's childhood and adolescence, as well as his life as a marine and as a University of Texas student. They include health and education records from Sacred Heart Elementary School, Lake Worth, Florida; Saint Ann's High School, West Palm Beach, Florida; and the University of Texas at Austin. There are also documents pertaining to his hitch as a marine, including tablets he used as notebooks for his marine classes and the scorebook he used that certified him as a marine sharpshooter. Whitman's own writings provide an astonishing look. into his mind and character. The earliest example of his writing is his Autobiography of Charles Joseph Whitman, dated 1 March 1956, followed chronologically by numerous calendars, notebook.s, and diaries, the richest ofwhich is TheDaily Record ofC. J. Whitlnan. Charles Whitman was an obsessive listmaker and noternaker: dozens of examples are in both the Austin Police Department...