The New Orleans Sniper by Frances Chaput Waksler

Author:Frances Chaput Waksler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of America
Published: 2010-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

In an interview in which his description of the sniper varies widely from descriptions of Essex (i.e., as a 5’10” white man in tight-fitting light blue clothing), Sgt. George Delpidio, Jr. nonetheless says, “I heard a shot from the area where I had last seen Essex. . . .” (381).4 The Report even cites as observers of Essex those who deny that he was the person they saw. Thus, the Report states that Carrie Mae Clemmons, a hotel maid, “observed Mark Essex walking through the Gravier Street stairwell doorway” (85) even though “She was subsequently shown photographs of Mark Essex, but stated that he was not the subject she had seen on the 11th floor” (85).

The Time Sequence Outline and Narrative sections of the Report reframe and expand the event in time and space, linking the occurrences at Howard Johnson’s to the events that began at Central Lockup on 12/31/72. Ballistics evidence served not only to connect the shooting at Central Lockup with that at Howard Johnson’s–the same rifle was used at both locations-but also to provide beginning and end points to the event that could then be filled in with other evidence. Thus the event comes to be taken as beginning5 with the sniping at Central Lockup on 12/31/72 at 10:52 p.m. (during which one police cadet was killed and a police officer wounded) and to include a break-in at the Oliver Van Horn Company; shooting at the Burkart Manufacturing Company on South Gayoso Street (at which one police officer was killed); two break-ins at The First New St. Mark Baptist Church, the first on 1/1 (first sighting of a person, “a young negro male”) and the second on 1/3; a sighting on 1/2 and later shooting (not fatal) on 1/7 of the proprietor at Joe’s Grocery; and ending on 1/7 at approximately 8:50 p.m. with Essex’s death. The active search for a second sniper inside Howard Johnson’s continued until the evening of Monday, 1/8 and interviews continued until early February, but the Report retrospectively ends the event with the death of Essex.

Thus a path in space and time was created for Essex to have followed, a process facilitated by the finding in Essex’s apartment after his death of an Esso street map of New Orleans “on which Police headquarters and the downtown Howard Johnson’s were circled in black. The fastest route from Essex’s apartment to the hotel was overlined” (Hernon, 1978/2001: 261). As more and more evidence came to be linked to Essex, traces of a second sniper were significantly reduced. Were the existence of a second sniper to have been confirmed, some of this evidence might have been attributed to him, but the conclusion that Essex acted alone made such attribution unnecessary.

The Report acknowledges that, after Essex’s death, police remained on the scene and the search for a second sniper in the hotel continued at least until the evening of Monday, 1/8. The description of this work, however, begins the process of unconstituting the second sniper by offering alternative explanations (it was “later learned” and “in later interviews”).

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