Thirty-three years ago on a snowy Friday in November, the nightmare of mass school shootings shocked Iowa like it has never been shocked before.
It was 3:40 p.m. A former University of Iowa graduate student with a brilliant scientific mind, and a .38-caliber revolver, walked into a conference room in Van Allen Hall, the home of the university’s renowned Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Gang Lu, a native of China, pulled the revolver from his coat and in quick succession fatally shot two professors, Christoph Goertz and Robert Smith, and another Chinese grad student, Linhua Shan, who were seated at the large conference table. A handful of others in the room were spared.
Lu then walked down a flight of stairs to the office of the department chairman, Dwight Nicholson, where he fired a bullet into Nicholson’s head, killing him.
Lu left the building and walked a couple of blocks west to Jessup Hall, the main U of I administration building. He went to the office of the associate vice president for academic affairs and mortally wounded T. Anne Cleary. On his way out, he paused to shoot a student clerical worker, Miya Rodolfo-Sioson, leaving her paralyzed.
With police officers closing in, Lu went upstairs to an empty classroom. There, he killed himself with a single bullet.
The gunfire was over — but the questions began.
Gang Lu’s cold, methodical plan comes to mind today not just because of the magnitude of the awful events in Iowa City, nor because this crime spree was eight years before the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado came to symbolize school violence.
The Iowa City events merit our review because prosecutors and law enforcement officials back then began providing details and analysis that evening of November 1, 1991. In the days to follow, officials allayed fears and snuffed out rumors and suspicions with facts, details and first-hand accounts.
The response back then is markedly different from the way investigators clamped down on information and answers in the wake of the school killings in Perry last January 4. Such shootings are not new in Iowa, but access to authoritative information to help communities understand these tragedies has changed.
Eight months after the Perry tragedy, parents, teachers and taxpayers have been stymied by the unwillingness of officials to provide authoritative information. Community pressure likely forced Dallas County Attorney Jeannine Ritchie to change her mind last week and now say she will release a summary of state investigators’ findings and conclusions.
State agents have finished their investigation. But Ritchie said she needs more time to decide whether criminal charges are warranted. She will not say when that will occur or how detailed her summary will be.
We know a Perry student, Dylan Butler, 17, fatally wounded high school principal Dan Marburger and sixth-grader Ahmir Jolliff. He also wounded two other school employees and five other students, but their names have not been confirmed. The horrible events ended when Butler took his own life.
Perry residents still do not know where, when or how Butler obtained the shotgun and pistol he had on January 4. Residents still do not know whether rumors of Butler being bullied by some students are accurate. They still do not know whether his parents were aware he had the guns. Nor does the public know whether Butler was having mental health problems.
By contrast, consider the details made public in the days immediately after the awful afternoon in Iowa City. The morning after the killings, The Daily Iowan, the student newspaper, filled a 4-page special section with details.
Three days after the shootings, the New York Times reported Johnson County Attorney J. Patrick White said of Gang Lu, "He had a personal belief that guns were an important means to an individual to redress grievances."
When the first officer found Lu’s body in Jessup Hall, White said, Lu was still carrying the .38-caliber revolver used in the killings, as well as a loaded .22-caliber handgun.
The Times’ report included details from County Sheriff Robert Carpenter, who said records showed Lu purchased the 38-caliber revolver at an Iowa City sporting goods store five months before the killings. While Lu legally owned the two guns, he did not have a permit to carry them, Carpenter said.
White said Lu left a three-page letter in which all but one of his victims were named. The letter also included the name of U of I President Hunter Rawlings III, whose office was down the hall from Cleary’s. Rawlings was out of town that day.
The Times quoted White as portraying Lu as a darkly disturbed man who drove himself to success and destruction. Despite the perception he was an outstanding scholar in space physics, White said there was a sinister edge to Lu's character well before the shootings.
The day after the killings, White told reporters the evidence shows Lu planned to murder faculty members who did not nominate him for an academic prize and who did not take his side in his appeal to reverse the decision to award the prize to Shan.
“His state of mind was that of a premeditated, cold-blooded murderer,” White said.
The Los Angeles Times reported on the final words Lu left before the killings. His comments were in the letter released by police after the shootings.
Lu wrote: “I have finished what I am supposed to do here, which is to make right what was once wrong. So long, my friends, maybe we will meet again in another time at another place.”
The letter helped the people of Iowa City understand what was going through Lu’s mind that terrible day. They learned this in the days immediately after the shootings. They did not have to wait eight months for answers.
* * *
Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes openness and transparency in Iowa's state and local governments. He can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com
