A Sniper in the Tower (32 page)

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Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

Tags: #History, #United States, #General, #State & Local, #Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), #True Crime, #Murder, #test

BOOK: A Sniper in the Tower
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Page 94
actually liberating Kathy. He wished the same for his mother: "Similar reasons provoked me to take my mother's life also." In fact, he had done no such thingyet. But he continued to type: "I don't think the poor woman has ever enjoyed life as she is entitled to. She was a simple young woman who married a very possessive and dominating man." He had reached a frightening mental state. Going beyond the familiar absurdity of mixing love and brutality, he saw murder as an act of love and protection. Charlie's mind then took another turn. "All my life as a boy until I ran away from home to join the Marine Corps,'' he typed, but did not complete the thought.
He heard a noise and stopped in mid-sentence. Larry and Elaine Fuess had knocked at the door. Larry had become Whitman's close friend, and the Fuess couple considered Charles and Kathy Whitman fun to be with. A number of pictures show the two couples having a delightful time. Larry, like Charlie, was an architectural engineering major and considered by some to be one of the brightest students in the College of Engineering. Elaine Fuess worked in the capitol in the computer section of the State Comptroller's office.
Whitman greeted Larry and Elaine and stated, "I was writing to a friend in Washington whom I haven't seen in five years." Both noticed that Charlie was unusually calm and in good spirits. He recounted hilarious stories of living in Goody Woo. The Fuess couple had fun listening to Charlie's stories. Some accounts of the visit claim that the three friends discussed heavy topics like the Vietnam War, that Larry asked Charlie about having to face two exams on Monday, and that he gently teased Charlie by pointing out that he had stopped biting his fingernails. Larry Fuess does not recall any such deep discussions. "I would not have teased him about biting his fingernails. I wouldn't have wanted to hurt his feelings," he maintains. Fuess also claims that they never discussed Vietnam very much on any occasion. And finally, since Fuess did not have any classes with Charlie during that semester, he could not have known if Charlie had any tests.
Larry Fuess described the conversation with Whitman as "very normal." Whitman spoke of a $750 contract he had supposedly signed to buy land along the shores of Canyon Lake. He said he had to do it. When their conversation turned to the absent Kathy, the content of the remarks stunned Elaine:
 
Page 95
Charlie was in high spirits. Otherwise he was quite normal, except he seemed relieved. . . . He was talking about Kathy with much more sentimentality than usual. You don't sit in front of your best friends and just moon over your wife. He was unusually tender.
22
While speaking of Kathy, he betrayed his innermost thoughts. "It's a shame that she should have to work all day and then come home to. . . ." He said it twice and finished the sentence neither time. Otherwise, Charlie had been in as good a mood as they had ever seen him, but the Fuess couple drove away believing something did not add up. The pleasant visit lasted about an hour, interrupted only by a decision to buy ice cream from a Blue Bonnet vendor cruising Jewell Street.
23
It was a good day for ice cream. It was hot.
Whitman bade farewell to his two best friends around 8:30
P.M.
He took his notes and most likely placed them in a black attaché. It was almost time to go to Southwestern Bell to get Kathy.
VII
At work, Kathy spoke often of things she and her husband did together. During the last week of July, for instance, she had been preparing for a picnic at a nearby lake with a number of Lanier High School students. She made arrangements to switch shifts with her friend and fellow operator, Patricia Barber, so that she could attend. She made it clear that Charlie would be there as well. Kathy could hardly have planned to bring her husband to a function involving her students if she feared his violence. Kathy had many friends at the company. Her supervisors and co-workers unanimously asserted that if problems existed with her marriage, she covered them up extraordinarily well. Margaret Winn, a Southwestern Bell Supervisor stated, "There was never a hint of difficulty between her and Charles."
24
Shortly before 7:00
P.M.
the shift supervisor, Ruth Perry, conducted a "spot check" of Kathy's performance. Kathy explained that very soon she would return to her teaching position, but the check was done anyway. As usual, she performed in an exemplary fashion, and Mrs. Perry encouraged her to "keep up the good work." At 7:00
 
Page 96
P.M.
she took a break with another friend and fellow operator named Linda Damereau. Kathy and Linda sat and talked in the lounge. Since Kathy and Charlie had already been to a movie and had eaten with Margaret Whitman at 3:30
P.M.
, Kathy did not eat. On a table near the sofa, Kathy noticed the previous week's edition of
Life
magazine, featuring controversial pictures of a live birth. She could not imagine what it would be like to give birth, she said, but as a biologist she was intrigued by the pictures. During her conversation she said that she and Charlie would become parents someday.
25
Within minutes of Kathy's wholesome thought, Whitman, back at Jewell Street, typed a paragraph that began with the sentence "It was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife Kathy, tonight after I pick her up from work at the telephone company."
For Kathy Whitman, 31 July 1966 was a long workday that had started at 8:30
A.M.
At 9:30
P.M.
she was free to go. She walked with her good friend Kay Pearce to the area where headsets were stored; they dropped theirs off, and went on to the third-floor elevator. On the way out of the building, Kathy remarked that she hoped her husband would not stop at a new Dunkin' Donuts that had opened only three weeks earlier on the 600 block of Congress Avenue. "They are ruining my diet," she said. Although she often substituted a popular diet drink called Sego for meals, Kathy was probably more concerned about her husband's diet than her own. She had once mildly complained that he ate too many sweets and snacks at his mother's apartment and that he was getting out of shape.
Kathy and Kay Pearce exited the building through an employee entrance on 9th Street, a one-way thoroughfare going east. Whitman, as usual, was waiting for her. At street level Pearce said, "Bye. I'll see you tomorrow." She remembered Kathy getting into a large dark car. She could not see the driver, but would have thought nothing of seeing Whitman drive the new, black Chevrolet Impala. Pearce watched the car turn right and head south on Congress Avenue. The Whitmans were going home to their neat little house.
26
1 Carl Sifakis,
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
(New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1982) pp. 15455;
Time
, 12 August 1966.
2 Perry E. Smith quoted in Sifakis,
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
, p. 155.
 
Page 97
3 By far the best account of the Speck Murders is Dennis L. Breo and William J. Martin,
The Crime of the Century
(New York, Bantam Books, 1993); see also Time-Life, pp. 629.
4 Truman Capote,
In Cold Blood
(New York: The Modern Library, 1965) pp. 3536.
5 Ibid., p. 37.
6 Connally Report, p. 4.
7
Time
, 12 August 1966;
Newsweek
, 15 August 1966;
Austin American-Statesman
, 3 and 7 August 1966.
8 Time-Life, p. 35.
9 Ibid.; Connally Report, p. 4; APD Files:
The Daily Record of C. J. Whitman
, entry of 1 March 1964,
SOR
by John Pope, 5 August 1966;
Austin American-Statesman
, 4 and 7 August 1966.
10 Texas DPS Files:
Series of Events of Charles Joseph Whitman
, n.d.; APD Files:
SOR
by Sgt. Rutledge, 4 August 1966. The pictures referred to in the text are in the APD File and will hereafter be cited as "Whitman Pictures."
11 C. A. Whitman quoted in
Austin American-Statesman
, 7 August 1966.
12 Lawrence A. Fuess.
13 APD Files:
Charles Whitman's Notes
.
14 Ibid.
15
Austin American-Statesman
, 5 August 1966.

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