Crime: Ten Minutes in Hell

In the worst mass murder in U.S. history, a gunman turns a Texas cafe into a killing field, leaving 23 dead

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Because 14 of his 22 victims were female, there was speculation that he had been driven by misogyny. As Hennard stomped through the restaurant, he shouted, "Bitch!" and "Take that, bitch!" several times before firing. For years he fought furiously with his mother, who now lives in Nevada; he used to draw caricatures of her with a serpent's body, and once reportedly threatened to kill her. A sometime rock drummer, he liked music with lyrics that expressed violence toward women. "He used to say that women are vile and disgusting creatures," fellow musician Alexandria Garner told the Austin American-Statesman.

An Army surgeon's son, Hennard moved often with his family and graduated from high school in Las Cruces, N. Mex., in 1974. After a brief stint in the Navy, he joined the merchant marine. The ending of Hennard's sea duty following his 1989 marijuana bust left him "very, very depressed," his mother told the Houston Post. Hennard said to a judge at the time, "It means a way of life, it means my livelihood. It means all I've got. It's all I know." He underwent drug treatment at a Houston hospital that year, but in recent months had lived a secluded life in the expansive colonial home at Belton. The house, which his mother had kept after divorcing her husband in 1983, was up for sale.

Hennard had several run-ins with the local cops. Last May, for example, neighbor Judy Beach complained that he had shouted epithets at her and her son as they searched for a lost baseball glove near his home. "I'll never forget how he was looking at me," she said, recalling that Hennard wound a garden hose around his hands "in a threatening manner" and screamed, "Bitch!" No charges were pressed. When he frightened two young sisters with a letter describing women in the community as "treacherous female vipers," their mother reported it to the police. But the cops did not consider him dangerous.

Hennard was meticulous, always cleaning his truck or the yard, and would curse out garbagemen for leaving litter on his lawn. He was also a creature of habit, eating the same sausage-and-biscuit breakfast each day at a neighborhood convenience store. Owner Mary Mead recalls that "he always had such a look on his face, we were scared." But just before the massacre last Wednesday morning, she says, "he seemed real nice" for some reason.

Hennard had had no trouble obtaining his weapons. He purchased both the lightweight, plastic-framed Glock and the Ruger in Nevada, and registered them with the Las Vegas police last winter. In Texas, where the Glock is valued by cops and criminals alike for its rapid-fire action, the pistol can be bought at gun shops and variety stores by filling out nothing more than a brief federal form. After attending a prayer service for the dead and injured, Governor Ann Richards renewed a call for controls on automatic weapons. "Dead lying on the floor of Luby's should be enough evidence we are not taking a rational posture," she said.

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