TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102891/1028102.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.4 KB | 160 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 31

CRIME

Ten Minutes in Hell


In the worst mass murder in U.S. history, a gunman turns a Texas
cafe into a killing field, leaving 23 dead


By RICHARD WOODBURY -- Reported by Kathryn Jones/Killeen


    At first it seemed like a freak accident. As the usual
lunchtime crowd jammed Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, last
Wednesday, a blue Ford Ranger pickup tore across the parking lot
and barreled straight through the restaurant's plate-glass
window. A few startled customers ran to help the driver. To
their horror, a muscular young man in a green shirt sprang from
behind the wheel with a semiautomatic pistol and began firing.
"This is what Bell County did to me . . . This is payback day!"
he shouted as he made his way through the crowd, pumping bullets
in every direction.

    One of the gunman's first victims was an elderly man who
was struck by the truck and shot in the head as he attempted to
get up. The gunman then fired on a grandmother, and killed
71-year-old Al Gratia, who ignored his daughter's pleas and rose
to confront the killer. As screams pierced the air, the gunman
moved toward the crowded serving line and continued firing.
Pausing only long enough to pack fresh clips into his two
semiautomatic pistols -- a Glock 17 and a Ruger P-89 -- he
worked his way methodically around the rectangular,
beige-colored hall. Cool and deliberate, he felled most of his
victims point-blank in the head or chest, sometimes reaching
under tables where many diners had huddled and flattened
themselves on the gray carpet.

    Mere chance seemed to determine who lived and who died. At
one instant, the killer spared a mother and child, barking at
her to get the youngster "out of here." An elderly woman put
her arm around her husband, who had been wounded. As the killer
approached her, she looked up, then bowed her head, and he shot
her. The gunman faced down another patron, Sam Wink, but when a
woman nearby tried to race off, he was distracted and fired at
her, allowing Wink to flee. "It just seemed like slow motion,
and he shot forever," Wink recalled. One woman survived by
hiding in a freezer; she was later treated for hypothermia. Food
preparer Mark Mathews, 19, escaped by hiding inside an
industrial dishwasher. He was so frightened that he did not come
out until the following day.

    The killer continued for a full 10 minutes, until four
police officers arrived on the scene, returned his fire and
wounded him four times. The gunman then stumbled into a rear
alcove, where he pumped a bullet into his own head. By the time
he slumped to the floor, the death toll stood at 23. It was the
worst mass murder in U.S. history, surpassing the 1984 massacre
at a McDonald's restaurant in San Ysidro, Calif., that left 21
dead.

    The killer was quickly identified as George Hennard, 35,
an unemployed seaman with a reputation as an oddball. An
intemperate recluse who apparently hated women, Hennard was
thrown out of the merchant marine in 1989 for possessing a small
amount of marijuana. He lived alone in his mother's stately
brick house in nearby Belton, where he delighted in screaming
obscenities at passing females and harassing neighbors with
threatening letters. But Hennard's strange life-style could not
begin to explain the enormity of his act. Said police chief
Francis Giacomozzi: "There was nothing we recovered to show he
was capable or intended to do anything like he did. The whos,
whats, whens and whys -- we may never be able to figure them
out."

    Because 14 of his 22 victims were female, there was
speculation that he had been driven by misogyny. As Hennard
stomped through the restaurant, he shouted, "Bitch!" and "Take
that, bitch!" several times before firing. For years he fought
furiously with his mother, who now lives in Nevada; he used to
draw caricatures of her with a serpent's body, and once
reportedly threatened to kill her. A sometime rock drummer, he
liked music with lyrics that expressed violence toward women.
"He used to say that women are vile and disgusting creatures,"
fellow musician Alexandria Garner told the Austin American-
Statesman.

    An Army surgeon's son, Hennard moved often with his family
and graduated from high school in Las Cruces, N. Mex., in 1974.
After a brief stint in the Navy, he joined the merchant marine.
The ending of Hennard's sea duty following his 1989 marijuana
bust left him "very, very depressed," his mother told the
Houston Post. Hennard said to a judge at the time, "It means a
way of life, it means my livelihood. It means all I've got. It's
all I know." He underwent drug treatment at a Houston hospital
that year, but in recent months had lived a secluded life in
the expansive colonial home at Belton. The house, which his
mother had kept after divorcing her husband in 1983, was up for
sale.

    Hennard had several run-ins with the local cops. Last May,
for example, neighbor Judy Beach complained that he had shouted
epithets at her and her son as they searched for a lost
baseball glove near his home. "I'll never forget how he was
looking at me," she said, recalling that Hennard wound a garden
hose around his hands "in a threatening manner" and screamed,
"Bitch!" No charges were pressed. When he frightened two young
sisters with a letter describing women in the community as
"treacherous female vipers," their mother reported it to the
police. But the cops did not consider him dangerous.

    Hennard was meticulous, always cleaning his truck or the
yard, and would curse out garbagemen for leaving litter on his
lawn. He was also a creature of habit, eating the same
sausage-and-biscuit breakfast each day at a neighborhood
convenience store. Owner Mary Mead recalls that "he always had
such a look on his face, we were scared." But just before the
massacre last Wednesday morning, she says, "he seemed real nice"
for some reason.

    Hennard had had no trouble obtaining his weapons. He
purchased both the lightweight, plastic-framed Glock and the
Ruger in Nevada, and registered them with the Las Vegas police
last winter. In Texas, where the Glock is valued by cops and
criminals alike for its rapid-fire action, the pistol can be
bought at gun shops and variety stores by filling out nothing
more than a brief federal form. After attending a prayer service
for the dead and injured, Governor Ann Richards renewed a call
for controls on automatic weapons. "Dead lying on the floor of
Luby's should be enough evidence we are not taking a rational
posture," she said.

    As authorities probed Hennard's murky past for answers,
Killeen set about burying its dead and consoling the survivors.
Townsfolk who had worn yellow ribbons while troops from nearby
Fort Hood were in the Middle East began wearing white ones last
week. Others left flowers outside the cafeteria's shattered
facade. There was talk that the restaurant, like the McDonald's
in San Ysidro, might be permanently closed. In its grief,
Killeen could be thankful for the network of psychological
counselors who rushed in to assist. The Army had brought them
to the Fort Hood region to deal with the heavy casualties that
were expected during Desert Storm. As it turned out, the
community lost twice as many people in last week's rampage as
it did in the entire gulf war.