AUSTIN -- Police officer Ramiro Martinez wasn’t supposed to be at work until 3 p.m., but when he heard the noon television news of trouble on the University of Texas campus, he figured his colleagues at the scene could use some help.

He called in from home. His instructions were to go to the campus and work traffic, keeping people away from the area around the landmark 307-foot University of Texas Tower.

AP

University of Texas Tower, the day after Charles Whitman's shooting rampage. August 2, 1966

A gunman was on the 28^th-floor observation deck and shooting people on the streets, 231 feet below. Several people already had been hit.

Martinez, then 29, forever would be linked with what at the time

40 years ago Tuesday—became the worst mass killing in American history.

Sixteen people were killed, another 31 wounded that day—Aug.

1, 1966.

Martinez, known as Ray, was one of the two officers to kill the gunman, 25-year-old Lake Worth, Fla., native Charles Whitman, a former Eagle Scout, former Marine, and former University of Texas student.

“Why deny history?” says Martinez, now 69 and retired. “It’s something that happened and something that’s part of my life. I don’t try to hide it. I don’t go advertise it. But by the same token, if somebody asks me if that’s true, of course, I’ll admit to it.”

Martinez and another officer, Houston McCoy, fired the shots that took down Whitman an hour and a half after the deadly siege began. Besides his murderous attack from the top of the tower, Whitman earlier had stabbed to death his mother at her Austin apartment and his wife at their Austin home.

In 2001, a Fort Worth man died of what physicians said were complications from a gunshot wound inflicted that day by Whitman, bringing the death toll to 17.

The school will mark the day by flying flags on campus at half-staff, spokesman Rob Meckel said. And the university’s Center for American History also is to accept the donation Tuesday of some personal papers about the shootings kept by Allen Hamilton, then the university’s police chief.

A Half Price Books store in Austin bought the papers from a relative of Hamilton, who has since died

“We immediately recognized the historical value of the documents and wanted to be sure they were secured for posterity,” said Steve Leach, used merchandise buyer for the bookstore.

The papers include a number of photocopied documents pertaining to the shootings and some original reports submitted by officers who responded to the scene. There are also some original vehicle information documents signed by Whitman when he was a student in 1965, some memos about his campus parking violations and a parking fee receipt signed by Whitman.

“The collection is a welcome addition to our extensive holdings documenting this tragic event,” said Don Carleton, director of the school’s Center for American History.

For Martinez, who eventually became a Texas Ranger, “Time has gone so fast.”

Forty years later, he remembers reaching the campus about 4 miles from his home at the time. When he saw other officers already had traffic rerouted, “I decided I might as well go to the tower to assist.”

It was an era before portable radios and cell phones. Before specialists like SWAT teams.

“I had to run by dead and wounded people,” Martinez said.  “There was no communication with anybody. It’s all of my own doing, but I was hoping to assist. I figured there already would be a team there.”

He took the elevator to the 27^th floor reception area and hooked up with several officers, including McCoy. There also was carnage.  A receptionist had been fatally beaten by Whitman. Two tourists from Texarkana had been fatally shot.

Whitman had barricaded the door to the observation deck with a hand truck he’d used to carry a footlocker filled with supplies.  Martinez forced the door open and emptied his police issue .38-caliber pistol toward the carbine-carrying Whitman. When Whitman swung to return fire, McCoy aimed his 12-gauge shotgun at Whitman’s white headband and fired twice.

As described by Texas author Gary Lavergne in his riveting 1997 book about the shootings, “A Sniper in the Tower,” McCoy reloaded as Whitman’s body twitched and Martinez, tossing aside his empty revolver, grabbed his colleague’s shotgun and ran toward the wounded sniper, firing another blast.

“At 1:24 p.m., the Eagle-Scout-turned-mass murderer lay dead on the red tiled floor of the observation deck,” Lavergne, who now works for the university, wrote.

“There was no way he was going to come down alive,” Martinez said last week. “I’m pretty sure he had predetermined he was going to die.

“Of course, there are a lot of unanswered questions. Why did he take 3 ½ gallons of gas with him? He took an alarm clock. He took ear plugs. And food.

“It’s my assumption, he planned to stay there for a long time.”

Whitman’s own notes that he left behind indicate he killed his wife and mother to spare them the embarrassment of what he planned to do. He was upset with the breakup of his parents and particularly angry with his father, a Florida plumbing contractor, Lavergne said in an interview.

“That indicates to me he knows what he is going to do and that it’s wrong,” Lavergne, director of admissions research and policy analysis at the University of Texas, said. He also had money problems, his own marital problems and school problems.

“He wanted very badly to outdo his successful father,” he said. “We know why Whitman did what he did.

“Does that mean he’s the next Andrea Yates?” Lavergne asked.  “That’s the hard question. And the next argument: Is he insane in the legal sense? There is no way any district attorney would buy that. And a junior grade assistant district attorney could take an insanity defense and shred it.”