18-03-2016, 10:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 26-03-2016, 01:11 PM by Rolf Zaeschmar.)
All the contemporaneous news accounts reported more than one shooter, it took about a week for them to settle on one lone gunman.
"Three black snipers set fire to this hotel...."
The New York Times
January 12, 1973
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 11 - The New Orleans Police Department has evidence that there were at least two snipers and possibly three in the downtown Howard Johnson Motor Lodge last Sunday and Monday, and that the six people killed and 15 wounded by gunfire at the motel were shot from two different weapons - a .44-caliber semiautomatic rifle and a bolt action rifle. One of the snipers was said by a police officer tonight to have been a woman.
Police Superintendent Clarence B. Giarrusso said the he is not as convinced now as he was Monday that there were two or more snipers, but that he still felt strongly that there were. One thing that the police have not been able to explain is how a second sniper could have escaped from the motel, which was surrounded by several hundred officers.
The New York Times
January 17, 1973
"I believe there was more than one, and that one of them got out in the chaos of removing the guests from the building," (NOPD)Krinke said. "He slipped in with that and made his way out." (NOPD)Trepagnier agrees: "My gut feeling is, I shot at two different people."
Others:
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013...is_st.html
January 05, 2013
Though officials concluded that Essex was a lone killer, even today many of those who worked to stop him believe that he had at least one accomplice.
http://www.wwltv.com/news/local/6AM-Dark...27691.html
My father Fred Efraim O'Sullivan was then commander of the NOPD Intelligence and went up into the stairwell with Bob Buras to flush out the sniper. Buras got hit in the shoulder and my father got a bullet through the ear. My father always believed there were two snipers.
...Channel 4 news photographer Willie Wilson Jr. was a young employee of the station who volunteered to go out to the scene and shoot film of the incident.
"It was a sense of panic," he remembers. "Nobody really knew how many snipers there were. Even today, you talk to people that were involved, they really don't know. Some say it was one, some say it was more than one."
Chuck Hustmyre in an essay titled, "Under Attack: The New Orleans Police Department and the Howard Johnson's Hotel Sniper"
Very few of the police officers involved in the siege of the Downtown Howard Johnson's believed that there was just one sniper.
-------------
Then the question becomes: if police knew there was more than one sniper, why did they ever stop pursuing these other suspects, given that they were chasing cop killers? They never close the case on a cop killing.
"Three black snipers set fire to this hotel...."
The New York Times
January 12, 1973
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 11 - The New Orleans Police Department has evidence that there were at least two snipers and possibly three in the downtown Howard Johnson Motor Lodge last Sunday and Monday, and that the six people killed and 15 wounded by gunfire at the motel were shot from two different weapons - a .44-caliber semiautomatic rifle and a bolt action rifle. One of the snipers was said by a police officer tonight to have been a woman.
Police Superintendent Clarence B. Giarrusso said the he is not as convinced now as he was Monday that there were two or more snipers, but that he still felt strongly that there were. One thing that the police have not been able to explain is how a second sniper could have escaped from the motel, which was surrounded by several hundred officers.
The New York Times
January 17, 1973
"I believe there was more than one, and that one of them got out in the chaos of removing the guests from the building," (NOPD)Krinke said. "He slipped in with that and made his way out." (NOPD)Trepagnier agrees: "My gut feeling is, I shot at two different people."
Others:
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013...is_st.html
January 05, 2013
Though officials concluded that Essex was a lone killer, even today many of those who worked to stop him believe that he had at least one accomplice.
http://www.wwltv.com/news/local/6AM-Dark...27691.html
My father Fred Efraim O'Sullivan was then commander of the NOPD Intelligence and went up into the stairwell with Bob Buras to flush out the sniper. Buras got hit in the shoulder and my father got a bullet through the ear. My father always believed there were two snipers.
...Channel 4 news photographer Willie Wilson Jr. was a young employee of the station who volunteered to go out to the scene and shoot film of the incident.
"It was a sense of panic," he remembers. "Nobody really knew how many snipers there were. Even today, you talk to people that were involved, they really don't know. Some say it was one, some say it was more than one."
Chuck Hustmyre in an essay titled, "Under Attack: The New Orleans Police Department and the Howard Johnson's Hotel Sniper"
Very few of the police officers involved in the siege of the Downtown Howard Johnson's believed that there was just one sniper.
-------------
Then the question becomes: if police knew there was more than one sniper, why did they ever stop pursuing these other suspects, given that they were chasing cop killers? They never close the case on a cop killing.