Informant Terry Norman probably triggered Kent State shooting

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The discovery adds new perspective to -- and raises new questions about -- one of the signature events of the 20th century, after four decades of spirited discussion and research.

"They got somebody," an observer says. "Kill him!" at least two male voices repeatedly shout, followed by sounds of a struggle and a female voice yelling, "Whack that [expletive]!" or "Hit that [expletive]!" Four distinct shots matching the acoustic signature of a .38-caliber revolver then ring out, according to a review by New Jersey forensic audio expert Stuart Allen.

Earlier this year, Allen and colleague Tom Owen examined the recording at The Plain Dealer's request and determined that Guardsmen were given an order to prepare to fire moments before they unleashed a 13-second fusillade of rifle shots at a May 4, 1970 demonstration that killed four students and wounded nine others. What compelled the Guard to shoot is the central mystery of the iconic event, which galvanized sentiment against the Vietnam War.
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How the Kent State audiotape was analyzed

After uncovering the apparent command, Allen has continued to study and enhance the old recording, and determined this week that it also contains the clash and the pistol fire that precede the Guard volley.

Though the tussle and pistol shots, if authenticated, match some key details of a confrontation several witnesses reported seeing or hearing involving a pistol-waving Kent State student named Terry Norman, they raise many new questions.

Norman was photographing protestors that day for the FBI and carried a loaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 36 five-shot revolver in a holster under his coat for protection. Though he denied discharging his pistol, he previously has been accused of triggering the Guard shootings by firing to warn away angry demonstrators, which the soldiers mistook for sniper fire.

The apparent order for the Guardsmen to fire that is captured on the recording, as well as passage of more than a minute between the last supposed pistol shot and the Guard's gunshots, raises doubts about a connection between the two events.

"I think it's premature to make any conclusions at this point," said Alan Canfora, a protester who was wounded by the Guard gunfire and who unearthed a copy of the long-forgotten audio tape in a library archive in 2007. "All these questions add to the pressure on the U.S. and Ohio governments to begin a new investigation so we can determine the ultimate truths about this tragedy."

New Kent State audio
Warning: Contains offensive language

4.5 seconds: Sounds of crowd yelling, cheering.
37.2 seconds: "Retreat!"
41.5 seconds: Male voice: "They got somebody." Victory bell begins ringing.
51 seconds: Crowd roars.
59.1 seconds: Male voice: "Kill him!"
59.8 seconds: Male voice: "Kill him!"
1:08.3 seconds: Sounds of struggle.
1:01.7 seconds: First pistol shot.
1:10.2 seconds: Female voice: "Whack that (expletive)!" or "Hit that (expletive)!"
1:15.2 seconds: Second pistol shot.
1:21.7 seconds: Third pistol shot.
1:25.5 seconds: Fourth pistol shot.

Norman has remained an elusive and controversial figure in the four decades since the Kent State shootings. He could not be located for comment on the new developments.

On the morning of Monday, May 4, 1970, Norman moved among the protesters and National Guardsmen skirmishing on campus, snapping pictures as the tension escalated. He had a press card issued by the Guard, and brought his own gas mask to fend off clouds of tear gas from the canisters Guardsmen fired to disperse the crowds, which demonstrators lobbed back at the soldiers.

Norman also had the pistol. In his only known interview, he told an Akron Beacon Journal reporter on the afternoon of the shootings that he carried it because protesters had threatened his life four times while he took photos at sit-ins during the weekend.

He was shooting the pictures for the Kent State police department and the Akron FBI office, "for the purpose of identification and prosecution of violators," he said in a police statement that day. The FBI later acknowledged having paid Norman $125 in April 1970 for supplying information to the bureau.

Shortly after the Guard gunfire on May 4, a reporter and camera crew for Cleveland's WKYC TV saw and began filming Norman as he ran down Blanket Hill toward a cordoned-off area where Guardsmen and police officers had gathered. Norman was being chased by two men.

One of them, a graduate student named Harold Reid, yelled, "Hey, stop that man! I saw him shoot someone! Stop him! Stop him! He's carrying a gun."

Norman, panting and disheveled, sought shelter among the Guardsmen. As the WKYC camera rolled, he reached under his jacket and handed a gun to a police officer. "The guy tried to kill me," he said, recounting an assault that he would later repeatedly assert took place after the Guard shootings.

"The guy starts to beat me up, man, tries to drag my camera away, hits me in the face," Norman said, gesturing.

What happened next is in dispute. Both former WKYC reporter Fred DeBrine and sound man Joe Butano have said repeatedly over the years that they heard Kent State police Detective Thomas Kelley, who took possession of Norman's gun and had opened its cylinder, say, "Oh my God, he fired four times."

In interviews with The Plain Dealer this week, DeBrine and Butano reiterated that account.

"I'm standing about a foot from Kelley and I see him flip the gun open and take a look at it," DeBrine said. "He saw that four bullets had been fired."

Kelley later denied having made the remark, and it was not captured on film, since the WKYC cameraman had turned to record a passing ambulance. Kent State patrolman Harold Rice, who had taken the gun away from Norman, wrote in his incident report that it was fully loaded, and that he sniffed the barrel and did not detect burnt powder.

As William Gordon reported in "Four Dead in Ohio," an authoritative book on the Kent State tragedy, a later FBI ballistics test on Norman's pistol determined it had been fired since its last cleaning, but there was no way to determine when.

The presidential commission that investigated the Guard shootings determined Norman played no role in them.

DeBrine said he tried to convince Norman to go on camera the day after the massacre and explain what happened to him. Norman refused, but told DeBrine that he had gotten separated from the Guardsmen as he shot photos and they moved back up Blanket Hill, pursued by protesters.

"He said, 'They started to come toward me and I was afraid they were going to kill me, so I took out my revolver and I fired it into the air and into the ground,'" DeBrine recounted. "Then the Guard, shortly thereafter or upon hearing the shots, turned and fired."

Norman told investigators that he was assaulted after the Guard gunfire, not before. He recounted trying to help a "hippie-style person" lying on the ground, then being jumped by several protesters who tried to grab his camera, pummeled him with their fists and a rock, and yelled "Kill the pig!" and "Stick the pig!" Norman reported that he drew his gun and told his attackers to back off "or you're going to get it," then ran for the Guard encampment. He insisted he didn't fire.

At least one witness, Kent State junior Janet Falbo, said she saw an altercation between protesters and a man matching Norman's description that occurred five minutes before the Guard shootings.

In a letter written the next day to university president Robert White, Falbo said a young man with a gas mask, camera and shiny silver handgun hit a student in the face with the pistol's butt. When others approached, the man "turned into an animal. He crouched down and pointed the gun at everyone in all directions, saying 'I'll shoot.'" Falbo did not see him fire.

Butano, the retired WKYC sound engineer, said he and cameraman Jorge Gomez were filming near the Kent State victory bell, on the opposite side of Blanket Hill as the Guardsmen retreated. Butano said he heard four shots and grabbed Gomez's shoulders to turn his camera in the direction of the gunfire. The Guard's rifle volley soon followed.

"To me, it was almost immediate, but I could be mistaken," Butano told The Plain Dealer. "It could have been 30 to 40 seconds." The apparent pistol fire on the audio tape "verifies what I heard and have been thinking about all these years," Butano said.

Janis Froelich, an author and former Akron Beacon Journal and Tampa Tribune reporter, wrote an exhaustive investigation of the Terry Norman affair in 2006. She tracked down his elderly uncle, since deceased, who told her in one interview that Norman had fired his gun to scare off attackers, but in another declined to answer whether his nephew had shot before or after the Guard did, or at all. Jim Norman called his nephew a scapegoat, and said he "just wanted to be James Bond."

Froelich documented Norman's strange life in the wake of Kent State. He was hired as an undercover narcotics agent by the Washington, D.C. police department three months after the shootings – a job Norman's uncle said the FBI got for Terry -- and worked there until he moved to California in 1983.

He bought a boat, an airplane, and a Texas ranch. He pleaded guilty to defrauding a California company he worked for, and served more than three years in federal prison in the 1990s. Froelich tracked Norman to a mountain town in North Carolina, but was never able to contact him.

The pistol fire on the 40-year-old audio tape "could well be" the altercation Norman described to his relatives, Froelich said. "It would be wonderful if Terry Norman would come clean at this point."