Terry Norman
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Terrence Brooks Norman (b. 1949) was an American university student involved in the Kent State shootings.
He was a part-time junior at Kent State University when Ohio National Guardsmen killed four students and wounded others during a May 4, 1970 protest. Norman was there taking photographs of demonstrators for both the campus police and the FBI (although both agencies initially tried to disavow using him as an informant).
Immediately after the killings, Norman became a prime suspect when Sylvester Del Corso, the Ohio National Guard's top general, released a public statement claiming Norman fired four times, "but not at us; he told us he shot at the demonstrators in self-defense."
Del Corso subsequently backed off from that statement, but some suspected that Norman may have indeed fired his gun on May 4. The suspicions were based on several facts:
- Norman was the only person on campus other than a Guardsman known to have been armed with a weapon;
- The Guard still continued to claim that a single shot of unknown origin preceded the 13 second volley of gunfire; and
- There was a suspicious and never-fully-investigated incident on Blanket Hill in which Norman drew his gun and pointed it at students. At some point, Norman scuffled with some of his fellow students, drew his gun, and was chased by several men across the campus Commons into to the arms of the campus police and National Guard. One of his pursuers, graduate student Harold Reid, yelled "Stop that man! He fired four times."
In 1970, the FBI squelched all speculation by announcing that Norman's gun had never been fired. Three years later, however, the issue of Norman's role on May 4 was revived. At one point Peter Davies, the author of "The Truth About Kent State," and William A. Gordon, a journalist for the Kent student newspaper and the future author of Four Dead in Ohio, reported that there were at three additional witnesses who swore they either heard Norman admitting "I had to shoot", and/or a Kent State police detective exclaim: "My God. He fired his gun four times. What the hell do we do now?" In the wake of these revelations, a Congressional subcommittee overseeing the Justice Department began a new investigation of the case. Once news of the investigation broke, John Martin, the captain of one of the National Guard units that fired, came forward with the statement of one of his soldiers who thought he overheard Norman admit shooting a person. That revelation resulted in an accusation by Senator Birch Bayh that Norman may have been "the fatal catalyst" of the tragedy.
Ironically, at the time Norman was accused of starting the Kent shootings, there were not any witnesses who actually saw him fire his .38, much less shoot a student. All the witnesses who thought they heard Norman and/or Detective Tom Kelly admit Norman fired several shots, were back at the university's R.O.T.C. building, approximately 100 yards from where the shooting took place.
Once the accusations were made, renewed interest by Ohio newspapers produced an important new witness who seemed to cast doubt on the theory that Norman was the man responsible for the tragedy. John Dunphy of the Akron Beacon Journal tracked down new witness, Tom Masterson, who admitted that he was the student who jumped Norman. Further, Masterson supported Norman's claim that he only drew his gun after the shootings, and only in self-defense.
Norman seemed to be further exonerated when the Justice Department commissioned a study of the 68 shots fired at Kent. The analysis was done by the Massachusetts firm Bolt, Berenek and Newman, the same firm that discovered the 18 1/2 minute gap in the Nixon tapes. The firm concluded that three shots preceded the 13-second volley; that all were fired by M-1 rifles carried by the Guardsmen; and that there was such a short period of time between Shots 1, 2, 3, and the sustained 13-second volley that a shot from one individual could not have triggered the others.
Despite clear evidence of his innocence, Norman's involvement has some disturbing loose ends. We now know, for example, that about five to ten minutes before the shooting, Norman positioned himself between the Guardsmen and the protestors and threw rocks at the students. Norman has admitted this himself. When deposed before the 1975 wrongful death and injury trial, Norman copped to throwing two or three rock throws. Witness Masterson, however, places the number at closer to "half a dozen, a dozen." Captain John Martin also noticed Norman throwing rocks and asking himself: "What is this idiot doing?"
The rock-throwing raises questions as to why Terry Norman, a not-so-subtle undercover agent, acted on the behest of his employers, possibly, some suggested, as an agent provocateur, or whether he threw rocks on his own accord. Also unanswered is why the FBI initially lied to the public when it claimed they had no relationship with Norman, and why they claimed his gun had never been fired, when in fact the FBI lab report indicated it had indeed been fired since it had last been cleaned. The lab was unable to ascertain where or when the gun had been fired.
Some have also wondered why Norman, the only student with a gun that day, walked up to National Guardsmen on the practice football field and what he was doing in a huddle of Guardsmen.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Froelich, Janet. "Kent State: A New Look." Tampa Tribune Online, April 30, 2006. http://www.tbo.com/life/kentstate.htm
- Gordon, William A. "Four Dead in Ohio: Was There a Conspiracy at Kent State?" Laguna Hills, CA: North Ridge Books, 1975.
- Renner, James. "The Kent State Conspiracies." Free Times, May 3, 2006. http://www.freetimes.com/story/152
