40-Year-Old Audio Recording Reveals Ohio National Guardsmen Were Ordered to Fire at Kent State

The Plain Dealer revealed a bombshell today, confirming what many have long suspected occurred during the infamous Kent State shootings of 1970. New analysis of a 40-year-old audio tape of the event reveals that the Ohio National Guardsmen who fired on students and anti-war protesters on the fateful day of May 4, 1970 at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio were ordered to prepare to shoot.

The PD enlisted the assistance of two forensic audio experts who utilized today's much more modern technology to enhance and evaluate the old recording. The enhancements reveal a male voice shouting: "Guard!" and then several seconds later "Prepare to fire!"

Next, on the audio tape, someone is heard shouting "Get down!" It is presumed to be someone from the crowd. Next heard on the tape is "Guard!" and then gunshots. The spoken sequence lasted 17 seconds.

The gunfire by the Guard killed four and wounded nine. The command heard clearly in the enhanced audio had never before been detected, and may finally uncover the mystery surrounding the tragic event. 28 Guardsmen, in unison, pivoted, raised their rifles and pistols, and fired 67 times. This tape shows without a doubt that they were ordered to do so, and that the shots were neither in response to sniper fire nor spontaneous.

A copy of the tape was uncovered in a library archive by Alan Canfora, one of the wounded. He sought to have it professionally reviewed. The recording was made by Terry Strubbe, a communications major at KSU in 1970. He turned on his recorder and put a microphone in his dorm window to document the protest. No other recording is known to exist documenting the events that led up to the shootings.

Strubbe originally kept the tape in a bank vault, but a copy was made in the mid-70s for use in the civil lawsuits that the victims and their families filed against Ohio Gov. James Rhodes and the Guardsmen. One of the plaintiff's lawyers donated the copy to Yale University's Kent State archives. Canfora found it while researching for a book.

Stuart Allen and Tom Owen reviewed the audio tape. Both are well-renowned forensic audio experts who have decades of experience in working with law enforcement agencies, private clients, and the government. They donated their time and services due to the potential historical significance of the project and their possible findings.

The PD commissioned the analysis of a digitized version of the tape. Some of the other bullet points revealed through Allen and Owen's analysis and published in the PD included:

• There is a sound fragment milliseconds before the gunfire starts. Allen believes it could be the beginning of the word "Fire!" - just the initial "f" before the sound is overrun by the fusillade. Owen said he can't tell what the sound is.
• The frequency of the voice giving the command changes as the seconds pass. "I'm hearing a Doppler effect," Allen said, referring to the familiar pitch change that occurs as a siren passes. "It's as if he was facing one way and turned another," Owen said. That's consistent with eyewitness accounts that the Guardsmen spun around from the direction they had been marching just before they fired.
• The 1974 Bolt Beranek and Newman analysis concluded that the first three gunshots came from M1s, the World War II-vintage rifles carried by most of the Ohio Guardsmen. The M1 is a high-velocity weapon with a high-pitched gunshot sound.

In 1974, a federal judge dismissed the charges against the eight indicted Guardsmen, stating that the U.S. government had failed to prove its case. Meanwhile, the victims and/or their families settled a civil lawsuit for $675,000 and agreed to drop all future claims against the Guardsmen in 1975.

It is unclear at this time whether the new findings could lead to new legal action or a re-opening of an investigation of the Kent State shootings. It has, however, been suggested that the significance of the findings and the commands uncovered will likely be more historical than legal.