“Mass Murder in Texas, Cafeteria Style”

The standard gripe among television viewers generally involves a couple themes:

first, they inevitably ask, “Why are there so many commercials during newscasts?” The

truth is, when it comes to local news on network affiliated stations, the ratio of

commercial content versus editorial, or actual news, has been the same for many, many

years: 22 minutes of content to 8 minutes of commercials within a half hour program.

There was even a successful promotional campaign created years ago, built around the

slogan, “Give us 22 minutes and we’ll give you the world.” The second issue that comes

up frequently involves charges of so-called news “sensationalism” connected to a

nagging perception about deliberate attempts to drive higher ratings, particularly during

what is commonly referred to as “sweeps week.” That misnomer of a phrase, “sweeps

week,” is enough to make even the most seasoned broadcaster’s skin crawl, as would the

very idea that better ratings is some kind of a mortal sin and station executives should be

thoroughly ashamed of themselves for promoting news and programming and even trying

to persuade viewers to watch more. Much like monthly sales figures for retailers, tickets

to the ballpark or seats in the concert hall, ratings are the single most critical metric by

which broadcasters are judged. However, there is not and never has been a single week

dedicated to sweeps. Today, nearly all major markets are rated daily via Nielsen Media

Research’s Local People Meters (LPM) which measures households as well as a number

of male, female and other the demographics that watch. Years before the advent of LPMs

stations were measured quarterly each year for 4 weeks at a time. These critical periods

determined the winners and the losers and helped the stations, networks, advertising

agencies and media buying services evaluate, calculate and set rates for commercial sales.

So the very idea of being “sensational” for 7-days every now and then, as opposed to

staying at the top of your game every, single second of the day, is far from reality.

Few news events drive more television viewing (which translates directly to better

ratings) then severe weather coverage or spot news, and historically few stations handled

both situations better than WFAA. Former news director Marty Haag’s age-old mantra,

“own the big story,” echoes through the halls to this day. The station’s award winning

coverage of extraordinary news stories such as the crash of Delta Flight 191 near D/FW

International Airport and the dramatic 58-hour rescue of baby Jessica McClure, the Texas

toddler who fell 30-feet down an 8-inch wide, cast iron abandoned water well in Midland,

remain sterling examples of Haag’s longstanding newsroom charge in action. However

nothing epitomizes the importance of owning the big story more than the events of

October 16, 1991.

WFAA assistant news director Ilene Engle and I had an important lunch date that

day. November sweeps, my first at the station, was less than a month away, and selfishly

I wanted to set records and blow the doors off the other news stations in the market. For

weeks we had been deep in planning mode, staying on top of the ABC’s ever changing

prime time line up and devising a strategic plan to better connect the demographics of the

9 p.m. network lead in programming with content in our 10 p.m. newscast. This was

highly controversial behavior in those days, and the very idea of “stacking” a newscast

such that it would appeal to a specific demographic that may happen to be watching at

any given time was simply the antithesis of good journalism. It was almost as though

traditional news departments had decided, “If we build it, they (viewers) will certainly

come!” We knew better.

Executive news director John Miller was out sick that day, which would become a

strangely recurrent behavioral pattern for him when big news stories would occur. It got

to the point that several of us would actively encourage him to stay home in hopes of a

major story breaking. But on this particular Wednesday, rather than cancel and

reschedule the meeting to a time when John was feeling better, Eileen decided the two of

us should bravely forge on without him. We spent an hour over lunch at the Crescent City

Café in the Deep Ellum section of downtown talking about everything but sweeps, the

newscast or the station. Eileen had grown up in Jasper, Alabama, not far from my

hometown, and after graduating from the University of Texas in Austin joined WFAA.

She had taken an extended period of time off to “sit on the mountain top and think,” as

she phrased it, and had only recently returned to work. We discovered we had all sorts of

mutual friends in common, and lunch was a good time to play, “Do you know?” When

we finished, and got back to the station it was a little after 1 p.m. and we’d not even

scratched the surface of what needed to be accomplished. We had a series of highly

promotable, multi-part news stories already being shot, edited and scheduled to air during

November sweeps. There was one on hunting exotic animals on secret Texas ranches, for

example; another that looked inside the rising costs of health care; a series of reports on

the ins and outs of telemarketing scams; a report on crooked chiropractors; and another

the rise of area storefront medical clinics. All of the news “special assignments” were

tagged with clever animations with memorable hooks, names such as “Doc in a Box,”

“Texas Wild,” and “Bad Backs or Big Bucks” all designed to help provide sizzle to the

promotional sell. Nothing caused a bigger rift between television news and promotion

departments quite like the naming of a news series. Years before joining WFAA, while

still working in Atlanta, the promotion staff there dubbed a news series on breakthrough

techniques used to influence unborn children, “Womb with a View.” It took years to live

that one down, particularly after a reference to it appeared in Newsweek. The news

department at WFAA had certainly done its share of highly promoted stories in the past,

but to a number of the hard core journalists in the station, airing a local story on medical

risks associated with Prozac in the late news on the heels of a ABC News “20/20” expose

focused on controversial issues involving another medication, was far too orchestrated,

manipulative and downright distasteful. But as far as the executive news director and the

station’s new promotion manager were concerned, this was common sense. It was

unusual for anyone from news and promotion to connect, however not only were John

Miller and I riding on the same train, it was headed down the track towards November

sweeps with a full head of steam.

“I’m going downstairs to check on the one o’clock editorial meeting in the

newsroom,” Eileen said as she left my office, “I’ll be back after that and we can sort all

of the schedules out once and for all. How’s that sound, Dave?” All television stations

have newsroom editorial meetings two to three times a day. This is when managers listen

to story pitches from reporters; make assignments based on the news of the day, and work

through any scheduling conflicts with engineers, editors, photographers or other

personnel. WFAA was known for its “enterprise” journalism, meaning the reporters were

expected to come to daily editorial meetings prepared with original ideas for news stories,

rather than managers assigning them. One of WFAA’s best was Scott Pelley, who arrived

at the morning meetings armed with a variety of story ideas each day. This was a

“reporter’s shop,” and the adventurous Pelley helped set a lasting tone that other reporters

would follow for years to come. He left WFAA in the late 1980s and went on to host CBS

News 60 Minutes, work as the network’s chief White House correspondent and even

anchor on the CBS Evening News on occasion.

A half an hour later Eileen still hadn’t returned to my office, and I decided to head

downstairs to the news department and find out what was taking her so long. I walked

into a buzz saw of reporters and producers running all over the newsroom, and phones

ringing off the hook in a scene reminiscent of a hectic war room. I could see news

operations manager Craig Harper from across the cramped quarters of the newsroom with

a focused, intense look written all over his face. “There’s been a shooting,” Eileen told

me breathlessly. “It’s bad.” Details were sketchy but here’s what she knew: a man had

rammed his Ford pick up truck through a plate glass window at the front of a busy

cafeteria around lunch time near the airport in Killeen, Texas, near Waco, about 2 hours

or so south of Dallas. He got out of the vehicle and started shooting. The scene was total

chaos, and it was unknown how many people injured.

Craig had been in the afternoon editorial meeting with his colleagues when

newsroom secretary Clara Sayles paged him to say that he had a phone call. “Who is it

Clara?” he exhaled impatiently, wrapped up in the details of the afternoon session. On

the line was Virgil Teeter, news director at KWXT-TV, the CBS affiliate in Waco. Craig

and Virgil were old friends; in fact, Craig began his career at the CBS station there in his

hometown before moving up to WFAA about a year before. “Virgil said that there had

been a shooting and that 2 people were dead,” said Harper. A minute or two later, Sayles

paged Harper once more telling him Virgil was calling again. “Craig, make that 4 people

dead,” reported his old colleague, sounding a bit more urgent. Soon there were more

calls and as the bloody details emerged in no time the body count was up to 12 and rising.

Some of the most innovative thinking in a newsroom happens in the heat of battle,

and the Luby’s shooting put everyone to the test. One of Harper’s old KWTX contacts

was able to feed video of the truck lodged inside the cafeteria window. He ran to the

control room and asked the director to zoom in as far as he could on the truck’s license

plate. “If we could get a clean shot of the tag, I thought we could run the plates and find

out who the truck belonged to, which might help us identify the killer,” said Harper. He

was right; within minutes WFAA had a name and an address, which was passed along to

a veteran reporter and photographer in the station’s Austin news bureau. Robert Riggs

and Paula McCarter headed to the address listed as that of the owner of the car and, in

fact, were there, at his house waiting when police arrived.

When Harper was hired at WFAA, the only place he had ever really wanted to

work, his first lunch was with Haag, who had been with the station for years and had a

significant national reputation. He talked about working for NBC News in New York and

missing an historic opportunity involving the coverage of a story involving Fidel Castro’s

regime in Cuba years before. Haag lamented the fact that CBS Evening News had video

and NBC did not. Apparently, CBS had chartered a plane and flown the film to Louisville

for processing, before feeding it on to New York. After days of feeling personally

responsible for the mistake, Haag told Harper he spent months researching and

memorizing routes, timetables and aircraft availability so that the next time he needed to

charter a plane at the last minute he’d be completely confident and well-prepared. “You’ll

never be fired for chartering a jet for the story,” he lectured Harper, “But you might be

for not.”

Within a few minutes of his conversations with KWTX, Harper sent the station’s

newly christened satellite truck, Starcam 8, and their Aerospatiale A-Star jet-helicopter,

with a reporter and photographer onboard, south to Killeen. After KWTX called with the

death toll rising, Harper lifted a page directly from Haag’s well-worn playbook and

chartered a Lear jet to get his crew to the scene and start reporting. News anchor Chip

Moody, who had been out for the entire summer recovering from surgery, had just

returned to work about a month before, still appearing thin and weak. He was assigned to

anchor the station’s coverage from Killeen. Having worked in Waco at KWTX, Moody

knew the territory well and was a natural choice for the assignment. WFAA had the crew

in the air in no time flat, streaming south to the scene of what would become the worst

mass murder in American history. Harper’s other unusual step was both proactive and

preventative, all at the same time. With a news crew in the air, 3 or 4 others driving south

down I-35 from Dallas-Fort Worth, and north from the station’s Austin newsroom, the

WFAA’s Calvary was on the way. However, time was still of the essence, and

competitively the newsroom wanted to get on the air first with video and then their own

live reporters, from the scene. In his boldest move of the day, Harper and the news staff

proceeded to buy up all the interstate microwave time for the next few hours. This meant

that the station’s news coverage would have a clear path to get footage and reports to and

from the murder scene, and perhaps more critically, virtually road block every other

station in the market from doing the same thing. To say the least, Harper believed it

would be what he called, a “huge competitive advantage.” Haag, who would soon move

out of WFAA and into an office across the street for a corporate position, had been at the

dentist the morning of the shooting. By the time he arrived at the station things were

underway and under control. The trip to the dentist left Haag uncomfortable and barely

able to talk. He was sore, and holding his jaw gingerly in his hand through most of the

ordeal.

The killer was identified George Jo Hennard was a resident of tiny Belton, less

than 10 miles from Killeen. Early that morning when he stopped at a convenience store

near his home, and bought $3 worth of food on credit, the clerk on duty looked him over.

She knew Hennard well, and often worried about his violent streak. Months before, he

had told her, “If they don’t stop messing with me, something bad is going to happen.”

Indeed it did. Neighbors described him as “troubled, “explosive” and “violent.” One

man who said he’d roomed with Hennard about a decade before the shootings claimed he

would, “Put his fist through a wall if he got mad,” and that “he made several references

to wanting to kill people.” Hennard complained to local police sometimes 3-4 times a day

about imaginary noises in his neighborhood and was known to curse at people he’d never

met just for driving by. It seemed that everyone in the area had a disturbing story about

George Hennard.

By now eyewitness accounts were piling up, and the grisly details emerging from

inside Luby’s Cafeteria were shocking to even the most experienced law enforcement and

media veterans. One woman inside the cafeteria said Hennard’s truck crashed into the

front window at about 12:40 p.m. where about 100 people were having lunch. She said

after the initial collision he continued to violently accelerate, running over diners and

tables until the truck was basically inside the building. Some witnesses said the agitated

Hennard was firing his handgun before he even got out of the vehicle, and when he

finally climbed completely from the truck, he shot two people he’d just run over. “This is

what Bell County has done to me,” Hennard announced to the room. “Was it worth it?

Well, was it worth it?” He continued firing shots at diners, methodically reloading and

then firing even more. By some eyewitness accounts Hennard reloaded 2-3 times during

the ordeal.

“I thought it was the backfire of the car at first,” said a shaken Jane Gaither of

Desoto. “Then he,” she continued, gesturing to her husband who was standing beside her,

“pulled me underneath the table. It just kept going and going. He just kept shooting and

shooting. And it wasn’t going to stop.” A young Luby’s employee remembered that, “He

just started shooting everywhere, at no particular person, just shooting. Just wanted to

kill everybody, I guess. He was mad.” The killer moved throughout the cafeteria in

deliberate fashion, from table to table. In some cases he would take aim and shoot people

cowering helplessly under tabletops, execution style in top of the head. Others, he would

allow to live. He told one woman to take her young daughter and get out, only to shoot 2

more people at the next table. “Was it worth it?” Hennard continued to shout, “Was it

worth it?” One man threw a chair through a window of the cafeteria and about 15 people

scrambled out with him. Others escaped treacherously stepping over the shards of glass

where the truck had entered the building, while Hennard fired away. A fragile elderly

woman on her knees shielded her wounded husband’s body with her own. The gunman

walked over and stood above them. She looked up at the killer in disbelief for a brief

second or two then bowed her head. Hennard lowered his handgun, then shot and killed

her. The cafeteria was filled with area office workers; married couples meeting for lunch

and even some families, including a woman dining with her elderly parents. It was

Bosses’ Day, and like several business people in the room a trio of administrators from

the Killeen School District were at Luby’s celebrating. All three of the school officials

were shot and killed.

A couple of Texas Department of Public Safety agents were attending a traffic

training class in a building close by, and while taking a short break outdoors they heard

gunshots. A hysterical woman running from the cafeteria headed towards the pair

frantically shouting, “He’s crazy. He’s got a gun. He’s killing everybody.” The agents

alertly bolted to a department vehicle parked nearby to retrieve their weapons, then

entered Luby’s. A gun battle broke out between law enforcement and the crazed killer.

Bullets were flying everywhere, and the DPS agents and other law enforcement officers

who had also made their way inside the building, most in civilian clothes, were concerned

diners caught up in the bloody chaos may not know the good guys from the bad. Some of

the patrons were pleading for their lives, pulling on the pants legs of officers who crawled

past them, begging to be saved from the mad killer. As the DPS agents cautiously inched

their way closer, gunfire reigned down around them. A shot exploded a ceramic coffee

cup on a nearby table as the officers tried to move further into the crowded room among

the bodies of the dead, and desperate cries for help from those clinging to life. It was like

nothing anyone in the room had ever seen before. One of DPS agents commented that the

bodies stacked on top of each other reminded him of the notorious Jonestown massacre

years before in Guyana. Another said the people hiding under tables reminded him of

frightened coveys of quail.

Finally, when one of the agents was a short distance from the killer and had a

clear shot, he aimed and fired. Hennard appeared to jerk violently, thought the agent, but

he couldn’t be sure. The wounded killer lay on his stomach on the blood-soaked floor,

and continued to return the agents gunfire to the right and left side of the room. Before

long an exhausted George Hennard, still on the cafeteria floor, rolled over on his back,

and turned his pistol on himself.

By the time the smoke had lifted, 23 people had been murdered, shot in cold

blood, and 20 more were wounded, some fighting for their lives at area hospitals. The

deranged 35-year old gunman lay dead on the floor of the cafeteria. As WFAA news

crews assembled, delivering a series of tour de force live reports from the scene that

would continue well into the night, ambulances were busy transporting the wounded to

nearby clinics in Waco, Killeen and other cities. It wasn’t until 8 p.m. that authorities

even began the process of removing the dead bodies from the crime scene and

transporting them up to Dallas for autopsies. Doctors and hospital personnel heard dozens

of stories of physical endurance, courage and the gruesome details about what really

happened inside the cafeteria. Perhaps the strangest survival story of the day, however,

came from an employee who’d heard the shots, and slipped into a freezer. She waited 3

hours, until she figured the coast was clear, and then finally emerged. She was treated at a

local clinic for, of all things on a warm October day in Texas, exposure to the cold.

Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen was the site of the worst mass killing in American

history until April 2007 when a troubled young student went on a shooting rampage at

Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg killing 32 and himself. After the shooting in

Killeen, Luby’s was closed for a time, cleaned up, the front wall design changed, and

later reopened for business. But it was never the same. The cafeteria struggled for many

years before eventually closing its doors for good about 10 years after the shootings.