Terry Norman started it.
At least that’s what re-examined audio evidence reveals to this writer and countless others. 21st century forensic techniques offer a new listen to old tapes. If a 46-year old, digitally enhanced length of magnetic recording tape is to be believed (and it should be), a twitchy KSU student who also happened to be a paid FBI informant and agent-provocateur was the first to pull the trigger on the campus of Kent State University on May 4, 1970.
The sound of Terry Norman’s handgun startled the National Guardsmen, most of whom were roughly the same age as the students they were sent to manage. Within seconds, a barrage of bullets ripped into the bodies and brains of more than a dozen young students. Four American kids named Allison Krause, Sandra Lee Scheuer, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, and William K. Schroeder died that day, and no National Guard member nor government official has ever fully answered for the massacre.
What else is heard on the tape?
A male voice screams, “Guard!” After several seconds, another male voice gives the order “Alright. Prepare to fire .” “Get down!” yelled a voice in the crowd. Again, a male voice screams “Guard!”After that, the sound of 28 National Guardsmen firing their weapons 67 times.
“My god! They’re killing us!”
Make no mistake about it. What happened shortly after noon at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 was indeed a massacre. The kids on campus that day, even the ones with rocks in their pockets and bottles poised to pitch, never stood a chance against the marching army of Ohio National Guardsmen.
Kent, Ohio, was not exactly a peaceable place during the first week in May 1970. On April 30, then-president Richard M. Nixon had announced the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, and antiwar demonstrators were restless. According to a Newsweek report published May 18, 1970, militant students torched an ROTC building the night before the campus killings. There had also been recent altercations in town between student protesters and the local citizenry.
As the 24-year old ROTC structure burned in the night, Kent Mayor Leroy Satrom urgently requested that Governor James Rhodes elicit the assistance of the National Guard. The governor obliged. Governor Rhodes was running for U.S. Senate at the time and may have been eager to show his constituents that he was all about reining in campus disorder in Ohio.
Rhodes declared a state of martial law and called in members of the 145th Infantry Battalion and the 107th Armored Cavalry Regiment. On the morning of May 4, troops assembled on the KSU campus, armed to the gills with M-1 rifles, 45-caliber pistols, and submachine guns. The soldiers were exhausted, having been called away from the task of maintaining law and order at a wildcat Teamsters strike near Cleveland, about 40 miles to the northwest.
. @gbpressgazette front page on this day in 1970, the day after the Kent State killings. pic.twitter.com/zBaXE3MJz9
— Jeff Ash (@JeffAshGB) May 5, 2015
In October 2010, The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland commissioned audio analyst Stuart Allen to reexamine recorded evidence via sound technology that was not available four decades prior. Researchers at The Plain Dealer obtained hundreds of investigative documents from campus police, the FBI, the Ohio Highway Patrol, and the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as eyewitness statements and archived correspondence associated with the KSU slayings. Researchers spoke with acquaintances of Terry Norman. In addition, researchers and reporters were granted access to review sworn depositions made by one Terrence Brooks Norman.
Two months later, on December 19, The Plain Dealer published their accounting of the tragic event on the Kent State campus. They said that the digitally enhanced audio tape clearly presents the sound of a.38-caliber handgun firing four times, just before the National Guard began shooting students. The article also notes that a.38-caliber handgun was confiscated from Terry Norman on the day in question. Here are the facts as reported by The Plain Dealer.
- Terry Norman was known to infiltrate (and be thrown out of) on-campus activist groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). He told people that he took pictures of campus activists at meetings with the hope that said photographs would lead to their arrest. Norman stated that an FBI agent named Bill Chapin provided him with film.
- Harold Rice, the Kent State patrolman who confiscated Norman’s pistol at the scene, sniffed the firearm and then handed it to Detective Tom Kelley of the university police force. Kelley directed Terry Norman’s involvement as an FBI informant. The detective subsequently vouched for Norman when he applied for a job on a Washington D.C. police force.
- Reporters Joe Butano and Fred DeBrine of Cleveland television station WKYC said they observed Detective Kelley open Norman’s confiscated gun and exclaim, “My God, it’s been fired four times!” Two National Guardsmen said that they overheard Terry Norman say he “may have shot someone.” The snub-nosed, five-shot Smith & Wesson gun changed hands several times, leading the FBI to note that care was not taken to preserve a proper chain of custody. The gun was never forensically tested, nor were Terry Norman’s clothing or hands ever tested for evidence of gunfire.
- Several of Terry Norman’s statements contradict each other. He said that he loaded his gun with one armor-piercing round, one tracer round and three hollow-point bullets. The FBI noted that when they received the weapon, it contained one armor-piercing round and four hollow-point bullets. There is no indication that the discrepancy was ever investigated.
- In 1970, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover lied when he said, “Mr. Norman was not working for the FBI on May 4, 1970, nor has he ever been in any way connected with this Bureau.” In 1973, Hoover’s successor, Clarence Kelley, acknowledged that the agency had paid Norman $125 for expenses one month prior to the Kent State incident. Norman claimed he only worked for the FBI for about a month. A former girlfriend of the informant said that Terry Norman was working with the FBI at least as far back as 1968.
- On May 4, 1970, the New York Times reported that Sylvester Del Corso, then Adjutant General of the Ohio National Guard, said the guardsmen fired in defensive retaliation after a sniper shot at them. Assistant Adjutant General Frederick P. Wenger said, “They (the National Guard) were understanding orders to take cover and return any fire.”
Students who were there vehemently denied a sniper among the protesters, as did the author of the article, New York Times reporter John Kifner, who was in the crowd of students as events unfolded on the Kent State campus.
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
Allison Krause was not throwing rocks, nor was she hurling bottles or lobbing tear gas canisters back at the guardsmen who threw them. Allison wasn’t one of the Vietnam War protesters on the commons who taunted guards with chants of “Pigs off campus!” According to The Plain Dealer , Allison was hiding behind a parked car with her boyfriend, Barry Levine. The vehicle, which was almost 350 feet away from the phalanx of state troopers, was not enough to shield the frightened young woman from the hail of bullets that ripped into her body. Allison Krause was 19-years-old, and she died in her boyfriend’s arms.
Our pal Al Cox mortgaged his home to make a documentary to show Kent State killings were murder. Proven right today. https://t.co/d5kNkMlomI
— Dee Davis (@iAmFlyRock) March 22, 2016
On May 1, 2012, Allison’s younger sister Laurel sent a letter to President Obama . The letter, written at the behest of her elderly mother, was not the first time the Krause family asked a president to reveal the truth about Kent State once and for all. Laurel Krause described what it was like to be at the hospital with her parents to identify Allison’s lifeless body, only to hear ‘men with guns’ mutter, “they should have shot more.” In her letter, Laurel said the following.
“Please do not allow another Kent State anniversary to pass without truth and justice for Allison Krause and her fellow murdered classmates, Jeffrey Miller, Sandy Scheuer and William Schroeder.”
What do the survivors of the Kent State tragedy want? Money? No. A small cash settlement was rendered in 1979, according to the Cleveland Register-Guard . Survivors want the truth to come out, they want the U.S. government to formally admit its involvement in the shootings, and they want an apology.
In May 2012, seven survivors held a press conference. They asked congress, the governor, the attorney general, and other officials to revive an inquiry into the events of 1970, especially in light of the digitally enhanced audio tape. Dean Kahler, who was shot in the back and paralyzed from the waist down as he lay on the ground and said the following.
“It’s important to get the truth out before it’s too late”
Today marks the 46th anniversary of the massacre at Kent State University. So far, the U.S. Justice Department has refused to give credence to the audio tape or to reopen the inquiry into the death of four American kids on a Midwest college campus almost half a century ago.
Readers who desire truth and justice are invited to contact the Kent State Truth Tribunal .
https://www.facebook.com/KentStateTruthTribunal/posts/1165634110136775
[Photo by Douglas Moore/AP Images]
