A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders

Prologue: Weathered Metal Plaques

PROLOGUE Weathered Metal Plaques vii u.S. Highway 59 in Texas spans both rural and urban areas. Through Houston the traffic can be murderous, but just south of the metro area, near Rosenberg, drivers breathe a sigh of relief. They are safely into the countryside . Rosenberg inhabitants, like many small-town Texans, worry about "planned communities" of deed-restricted, monotonous, brick homes creeping closer. They cling to an agrarian tradition while welcoming vast riches from the oil and gas industry. Crops of all types carpet tracts of rich, dark soil, while oilsearching and oil-producing rigs dot the landscape. 111---------- Weathered Metal Plaques Near the exit to Farm-to-Market Road 221 8 are the DavisGreenlawn Funeral Chapel and a large, well-manicured cemetery. Golf carts transport visitors and maintenance personnel. The main entrance is near the access road, but many visitors are attracted to a smaller, less ostentatious entrance on the northeast side. The bumpy path leads to an even smaller drive, where blades of grass struggle to grow through compacted gravel. At the confluence is a large white marble carving of Da Vinci 's The Last Supper. That portion of the cemetery is nearly full, and unoccupied sites have long ago been sold and await their inhabitants. The graves are marked by weathered metal plaques on small marble slabs. Visitors are seldom distracted by the traffic noi se from Highway 59; more noticeable are the chirping birds in a nearby wooded area. Here is peace. Kathleen Leissner Whitman is buried here . Gothic lettering on her plaque indicates that she was born in 1943 and died in 1966. Far too young to have found th e peace of a grave, she lies beneath an oak tree. Nearby, weak and rotted limbs from a towering pine fall to the ground as if to join the dead. The family service director of DavisGreenlawn Cemetery steps off a golf cart and volunteers, "Hardly anyone ever comes here anymore, and few people around here even know who she is, but many of the old-timers tell me that reporters Kathleen Leissner Whitman is buried in the Davis-Greenlawn Cemetery in Rosenberg, Texas. Gilry Lavergne. Weathered Metal Plaques - - - - - - - I E I from allover the world were here for her funeral." Attached to the weathered plaque is a small black.vase with nearly-fresh poinsettias. "1 see to it that flowers are there, at least most of the time. I kind of adopted her. It just seems right." ICnowingwhat Kathy Whitman look.ed like makes the visit more tragic. She was beautiful. Knowing that she chose teaching as an honorable profession brings pointless questions of the lives she could have touched; the world was robbed of her grace, intellect and talent . Knowing that on her last day she fell asleep feeling safe and that her death came quickly and painlessly brings little comfort. She has occupied space five, lot forty-two of section H of Davis-Greenlawn Memorial Parle since 3 August 1966.1 Approximately 1,200 miles awa~ via the Eisenhower Interstate System, in West Palm Beach, Florida, is Hillcrest Memorial Park. Across the street from a large, domed silver water storage tank, a life-size statue above a small columbarium depicts a mother and father looking down upon their young son and daughter with gentleness and kindness. At the base of the statue is inscribed "Family Protection." Here, too, is peace. At Hillcrest narrow asphalt roads wind among the weathered metal plaques. Some of the plaques near the edges of the drive are bent, run over by indifferent and careless drivers. Well-manicured boxwoods and exotic trees dot the ground's rolling hills. In the very center of the cemetery; atop a stainless steel flagpole, the star-spangled banner flaps in a gentle breeze. Nearby; in section ten, is buried the man who lulled Kathy Leissner Whitman-her husband, Charles Joseph Whitman. On the right lies Margaret E. Whitman, his mother. He lulled her, too. Charlie's plaque is adorned by an engraving of Saint Joseph, his patron saint. A rosary stretches across the top and around an opening where a vase should be. No one has adopted this grave. An engraving of the Virgin Mary and a rosary as well adorn Margaret's plaque. Yet another Whitman, John Michael, whom Charlie playfully called "Johnnie Mike," the victim of another tragedy, lies to the right. An angel with a spear adorns...