“A Killer in the Lobby”

Jim Glass burst in to my office on a sticky July afternoon with a peculiar look on

his face, somewhere between acute panic and childish exhilaration. “Hang up the

phone,” he said. I glanced up casually, tried to ignore the intrusion and went right back

to my conversation. He repeated himself, this time a bit more forcefully, “Hang up the

phone. Like now.” Judging from the intensity in his voice, suddenly it seemed like a good

idea. “What is it?” I asked, a little perturbed by the interruption. “You know the guy who

killed the lawyers and wounded the judges in the Tarrant County Courthouse this

morning?” he said. “The one who’s been on the lam all day and no one can seem to

find?” Yes, I nodded; the local news stations, including ours, were all hot on the trail of a

sensational murder story and had peppered the airwaves with live shots throughout the

day, following the mysterious courthouse shooter’s disappearance some 35 miles west of

Dallas in downtown Fort Worth. It was now around 3:15 p.m. and the early evening

newscasts would soon be on the air with the latest details of one of the most extensive

manhunts in recent memory. “Well, he’s in the lobby,” said Glass.

Earlier that morning, there was a routine custody hearing in a Fort Worth

courtroom. The child’s father and mother were locked in a serious battle over their young

son and it wasn’t going well. The father was a non-practicing attorney who had gone

through a messy divorce and apparently blamed a legal conspiracy for allegations that

he’d molested his son. Police reports from the scene said the father was sitting quietly in

the spectator section of a fourth floor courtroom when he suddenly stood up, drew a

black, 9-milimeter handgun and began randomly firing at judges on the bench. When the

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shooting ended, the man had killed a Tarrant County prosecutor and a Dallas attorney,

and seriously wounded another prosecutor and two judges before slipping down a back

stairwell and fleeing the building. Authorities claimed that an armed bailiff was on duty

in the courtroom but did not return fire. It was a gruesome scene, and people interviewed

by local news crews were traumatized. Shaken courthouse employees told news cameras

they dropped straight to the floor when they heard shots that sounded like fireworks start

“ricocheting” around them. Some locked themselves in their offices, terrified, and

remained there through the entire ordeal. Then, for the next five to six hours it was almost

as if the gunman simply vaporized into the thick July air. Law enforcement personnel in

north Texas’ two largest counties were doing everything they could to find the alleged

killer on the loose. It was a manhunt of unprecedented proportions in the first few weeks

of a long, hot summer.

The creative service department at WFAA was situated a few steps down a short

hallway, just above the station’s lobby on the second floor of the building in the former

radio administration offices and sound studios. Since the company had sold all of its

radio interests years before, the office space was one of the least populated areas within

the building, and a perfect spot to stash the promotion writers and producers. Jim’s office

was next door to mine. We worked well together, and spent our days (and many nights)

hard at work shouting conversations back and forth. We hustled out of our offices down

the hallway, and peeked over the railing into the lobby below. There stood a rather meek,

almost nondescript man in casual clothes who appeared to be in his mid-forties, head

down talking to Ann DeNike, the station receptionist on duty that afternoon. “I’d like to

speak to Tracy Rowlett or Chip Moody,” he hastily explained, telling her that he was the

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man who “shot the judges” in Fort Worth earlier that morning, and wanted to meet with

one of the station’s most recognized news anchors. Was he armed? Were we his next

victims?

DeNike was already feeling overwhelmed by all of the activity in the lobby, just

before the man arrived. Her switchboard had been overflowing with calls most of the day

and since the regular operator, Betty Hooker, had taken the day off, Ann was working

solo. She didn’t know whether to believe the man’s outrageous claim or not. Was he

telling the truth? Maybe he was he some sort of a copycat, or just another nut off the

street. “Hard to tell,” she thought. Ann decided to call the newsroom just in case, and

after a few anxious rings someone finally answered. “I have the man who shot the judges

in the lobby,” she whispered a bit nervously to news operations manager Craig Harper.

“You mean the man that photographed it?” asked a puzzled Harper, trying to understand

her curious statement. “Please just come up here,” she said, and quickly hung up. Craig,

Jim Willett and John Gudjohnsen walked out into the lobby. Willett was one of the

regulars on the newsroom’s assignment desk, and had a law enforcement background.

Gudjohnsen, a longtime news photographer, had been in the market for many years and

covered more than his fair share of crime scenes. He was extremely familiar with police

procedures and also worked shifts on the desk. It was not unusual for people working the

assignment desks in news departments to have close connections to the police. The bulk

of their days are spent listening to blaring scanners that track the movement of law

enforcement personnel, ambulances, and other emergency vehicles. The most successful

assignment editors maintain solid connections to the local cops so it stands to reason

some of them might come from within the ranks.

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The alleged killer had walked into the front door of the television station just after

3 in the afternoon. He said he drove his van around for hours before arriving at WFAA

with the express purpose of surrendering to one of the news anchors at the station. “I

thought he was just another courier,” DeNike remembered. She said the man waited

patiently while she assisted 3 other couriers who had arrived just moments before him,

and dealt with a switchboard overloaded with calls from viewers, many worried over the

whereabouts of the man who had just entered the lobby. “I even held up my index finger

mouthing the words, ‘I’ll be with you in just a second,’” she said, as he nodded, and

waited his turn. “Would you please sign our register book, sir?” she said, pointing to the

guestbook on the counter, which he signed at precisely 3:15 p.m.

This was July 1992, and Americans lived in a pre-9/11 world. There were no

metal detectors in the Tarrant County Courthouse that morning, which all in all seemed

normal. In fact, security at the vast majority of state, local, and federal government

facilities (not to mention television and radio stations, as well as other media outlets

around the country) had yet to be dialed up to the dramatic levels we experience today.

Nearly anyone could walk into the lobby of a television station for any reason, and on

that day, one man certainly did. “Can I help you?” asked Harper. “I need to see Tracy

Rowlett,” the man answered. Willett asked if he was armed. The man nodded his head

sharply, then preceded to hand over his weapon obediently, a black Glock pistol tucked in

his belt behind his back and the clip full of ammunition stashed in his sock, all without

incident. Without moving her head, DeNike said she glanced up from her desk in the

lobby to see the man’s hands raised high, over his head. He was then led into a small

conference room just off the station’s front lobby where he sat down with Rowlett, and

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three news cameras to discuss the shootings earlier in the day. On the way into the room,

he reached in his pocket and surrendered a small knife he was also carrying. Hanging his

head, the man sat down and quietly said, “I have sinned. It was a horrible, horrible thing

I did today.”

As the other Dallas-Fort Worth news stations across town were getting reporters

into positions for live shots, and preparing the lead stories for their 5 p.m. newscasts, the

courthouse killer was telling WFAA cameras details about his violent rampage. He said

his disgraceful actions were designed to shine a light on how the legal system had

persecuted him during his divorce and draw attention to the unfairness of a child-

molestation charge his ex-wife filed against him. Meanwhile, news management at

WFAA telephoned the Dallas Police Department to inform them the alleged courthouse

killer and subject of one of the largest dragnets in years had surrendered at the television

station, and was awaiting their arrival. Harper called 911, and spoke to a less than

enthusiastic Dallas Police Department employee. “What is your emergency?” she asked

in a matter of fact tone. Harper explained that the man who shot up the courthouse in Fort

Worth earlier in the day had just surrendered to station personnel. Gudjohnsen had run a

license plate check on the man’s old van, parked outside in a metered spot in front of the

station to try and get his name, address and other information. On the front seat was a

map of city streets, turned to a page marked 606 Young Street, Dallas, Texas, WFAA’s

street address. “His name is George Lott,” said Harper. “Holy Shit!” said the 911

Operator, before asking Harper to “please remain on the line.” After a few seconds of

silence another person, possibly a supervisor, asked Harper to repeat the name. “George

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Lott,” he said. Within minutes Dallas Police arrived at the television station, first with

patrolmen on bicycles, followed by more personnel in marked and unmarked squad cars.

Lott finished his interview with Rowlett about the same time police took him into

custody, walking him handcuffed and head down, out of the building and into a car

among a waiting convoy of official looking vehicles. At 5 p.m. when the early local

newscasts finally took center-stage to update viewers with the latest details on victim’s

conditions and the killer’s whereabouts, I saw something happen I had never seen before

or since on a local television station. The NBC and CBS stations led their broadcasts with

their versions of the latest on the manhunt: specifics on how the armed fugitive had

escaped in a hail of gunfire, driving off in a van parked outside the courthouse, and

eluding law enforcement all day. But on WFAA’s News 8 at 5 p.m., there was an

exclusive interview with the alleged murderer, George Lott, who had turned himself into

the station just about an hour earlier. As unedited portions of the taped interview aired on

WFAA’s local news broadcast with Rowlett adding support-commentary, the entire

newsroom stood and watched as the other local stations’ reporters were clearly hearing

details of the surrender and interview with Lott from panicked news producers through

their IFB ear pieces, and frantically changing stories, live, on the fly. “Wait, we are

getting word the alleged killer is no longer on the loose…he is apparently now in custody

having surrendered himself at WFAA television, Channel 8, in Dallas,” one reporter from

another news station repeated into the camera in a slow, fairly confused tone.

Competitively speaking, one of the truly priceless moments of any local television

broadcast is when a news reporter from one station is forced to mention another by name

on the air. You don’t see it often, and most will go to great lengths to avoid it. But when

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they do, it’s something to remember. This was one of those moments. WFAA was now

an integral part of this huge news story and precious little could be reported without

actually naming the station. While the other news stations were chasing their tails on live

television you could almost hear the sound of viewers changing channels to watch

WFAA’s improbable interview with the Tarrant County Courtroom killer.

By now ABC News, KHOU-TV, WFAA’s sister station and the CBS affiliate in

Houston, CNN and others were calling the newsroom frantically trying to get the

interview fed to them via satellite (WFAA is an ABC affiliate, and maintained a news

partnership with CNN). Tempers flared, and relationships were tested when the station

declared the footage would be embargoed until after 7 p.m., and only made available

then. However when NBC Nightly News went on the air at 5:30 p.m., their broadcast

actually included portions of WFAA’s restricted interview. Apparently, the network’s

Dallas bureau routinely taped WFAA’s local newscasts and decided to use the station’s

exclusive interview with Lott in NBC’s competing newscast without permission.

At 6:30 p.m. WFAA preempted Wheel of Fortune to air the entire interview with

George Lott. A half hour later, the station’s news department generously made tapes of

the interview available to all the other Dallas/Fort Worth news stations as well as

broadcast and cable networks, handing them out to reporters as they drove by. The

footage included a large, WFAA logo embedded into the video on the bottom of the

screen. ABC News Nightline devoted their entire program that evening to WFAA’s

coverage, one of a handful of times reporters from a local market took the spotlight on

the award winning network news program. WFAA’s role in the story was chronicled the

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following day on the front pages of The Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star

Telegram, as well as newspapers all over the country.

As day turned to night, and the near surreal events we had witnessed came to a

close I sat in John Miller’s office and listened to him reflect.“L, M,” he said. “What does

that mean, John?” I asked. “Lott, Miller,” he said. It had been a long day. I narrowed my

eyes, and asked him to explain. After the excitement died down and Miller was a bit less

agitated, a revelation came to him as he slumped back in his chair. George Lott, the man

who shot 5 and murdered 2 before fleeing the scene of one of the bloodiest days in

Tarrant County history, was a longtime classmate of Miller’s in Fort Worth public

schools. “George Lott sat in front of me,” he said in his trademark deadpan voice. “L, M.

Lott. Miller,” he said in reference to their alphabetical seating order.

Lott acted as his own legal representation and continually rejected offers for

assistance. In the end, he refused to appeal his death sentence and was executed by lethal

injection in September 1994, a mere 18 months after his conviction. It was the speediest

execution in Texas since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982.

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