Audiotape of Kent State Shooting to Get New Analysis; Is Order to Open Fire Audible?

(April 29) -- A Kent State University alumnus plans to have a cutting-edge analysis performed on an audio recording he made of the historic campus shooting in 1970 in an attempt to determine whether the Ohio National Guard was ordered to open fire on anti-war protesters.

Four students were killed and nine wounded in the clash.

Terry Strubbe, a KSU communications student, pressed the record button on the reel-to-reel machine in his dorm room on May 4, 1970, capturing a chilling 30-minute audio account of the protest, including cries from students, 13 seconds of shooting and the chaos that followed.

Kent State shooting scene on May 4, 1970

Howard Ruffner, Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images

The Ohio National Guard opened fire on anti-war protesters at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, killing four. A new analysis of a 30-minute audiotape of the incident could help resolve lingering questions about whether troops were given an order to shoot.

After preserving the recording for the past 40 years, Strubbe and a friend, psychologist and occasional music producer Joe Bendo, plan to have it analyzed by a Los Angeles film archivist who will digitize the audio and reduce background noise in an effort to hear whether an order to fire is audible.

Strubbe's new mission is another step in the four-decades-long attempt to use his tape to determine why the 28 National Guard troops fired 67 shots into the crowd of Vietnam War protesters.

"He knew it was an historical document and was important," Bendo told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. "He could have sold it. He wanted to make sure it was used in a factual and appropriate way."

The Kent State shooting has raised questions about whether the troops were ordered to shoot. In a 1974 inquiry, guardsmen testified that they weren't order to shoot but acted spontaneously. Some students and other guardsmen said they heard what sounded like an order to shoot.

A Massachusetts acoustics firm analyzed the gunshots documented in Strubbe's recording in 1974 during the prosecution of eight of the National Guardsmen. That case ended with a federal judge dismissing charges. A civil suit was settled with no admission of guilt on the part of the shooters.

Alan Canfora, one of the nine students wounded in the incident, is vocal about his belief that Strubbe's static-filled tape contains a shooting order. Canfora, who runs the nonprofit Kent May 4 Center, played a copy of the tape at a news conference in 2007, claiming he heard a command of "Right here, get set, point, fire!" before the shooting began.

Canfora has scheduled a news conference for Friday, in which he plans to urge the FBI to re-open the Kent State investigation based on new evidence contained in Strubbe's recording.

Strubbe and Bendo said they plan to reveal the results of the latest analysis of the tape in a documentary later this year.