A Sniper in the Tower Read Online Free PDF Page B

entering a second phase of his marine career. For the first time in his life, he would experience real freedom. He did not handle it very well. The first time Charlie ever exercised any significant control over his daily affairs should have been a cause for elation. But less than three months after his emancipation, he nearly got himself thrown into jail. He, Schuck, and another student named Jim Merritt ventured out into the Hill Country west of Austin, and in an area near the Lyndon B. Johnson Ranch, poached a deer by "jacklighting" it. A Hill Country resident observed the dead catch protruding from the trunk of Charlie's car, noted the license number and reported the incident to the Texas Game and Fish Commission. The game warden assigned to the case, Grover Simpson, with three policemen, followed a trail of deer blood from the entrance of the dorm to Charlie's room, where they caught Charlie and his cohorts skinning the catch in a shower. Charlie claimed to have wanted to send his father a supply of deer meat for Thanksgiving. Surprisingly, Simpson found in Charlie a cooperative and even likeable suspect, a "darn nice fellow."
Perhaps because he was new to Texas, a student, one of "our boys in uniform," or maybe because he could be charming, the incident was dropped after Charlie agreed to pay a $100 fine. Or maybe authorities found the spectacle of butchering a deer in a shower in a dorm inhabited by hundreds of college boys to be laughable. Regardless, he had been caught poaching in Texas, and he should have considered himself extremely fortunate at Travis County Court on 20 November 1961 when, as part of Case #69869, he was allowed

 

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to plead guilty, pay his fine plus court costs in the amount of $29.50, and go back to the dorm. Eight days later, however, he foolishly entered a motion for a new trial; the judge overruled him. 10
The Charlie that Francis Schuck observed had good relations with his family. He kept a steady and faithful correspondence with them all and spoke of earning a degree in mechanical engineering so as to return to Florida and join C. A. in his business. He shared a love of guns and hunting with his father and looked forward to hunting trips they made together. 11 Charlie appeared to be a responsible student. "He seemed more mature than most students, and [was] very, very serious," stated Professor Leonardt Kreisle, Charlie's academic advisor. Schuck remembered him as well-mannered, good looking, well-dressed, and personable. But he had a distracting habit of biting his fingernails, which subtracted from his otherwise impeccable appearance. 12
Today it is evident that Charlie had become a consummate actor. He could be a serious student, a contrite poacher, a daredevil, or a model marine. He considered himself a polished bluffer and a better-than-average gambler. In Charlie's circle of acquaintances, the stakes could get high, especially for college students with limited resources. Charlie and his friends often drove considerable distances to play poker. During one all-night poker game in San Antonio in March of 1962, a fellow dorm resident named Robert Ross bet $190 on a hand; Charlie called and lost. He had lost a total of $400 that night. The Texas State Bank check he wrote to settle the debt bounced. When Ross approached him with the bounced check, Charlie was lying on his dorm room bunk throwing a huge hunting knife into a closet door. "Look, kid, my family is loaded. I'll get you your money Don't worry about it," he said. 13 Ross, considerably smaller than Whitman, would later decide the debt unworthy of pursuit. It would never be paid. The episode revealed Charlie to be obsessed with making quick money, to think nothing of dismissing a debt, to be able to revert to a dependence on his "loaded" family (i.e., C. A. Whitman), and to have little conscience when it came to intimidating the smaller and weaker.
Equally revealing was the manner in which Charlie dealt with characters who