Gunman seemed ‘a nice young fellow’

A Bermudian who worked at Kindley Air Force Base when a serviceman gunned down two colleagues has recalled how he crossed paths with the killer just the day before the shooting. 

Harry Bean told the Bermuda Sun that gunman Bill Cook was acting ‘completely normally’ and seemed ‘a really nice chap’ just before he went on the rampage in March 1960.

Earlier this week the Sun reported how the recent Washington Naval Installation massacre had stirred islanders’ memories of a similar shooting at Kindley Air Force Base.

Mr Bean saw the article and contacted the Sun to share his memories of this little-known chapter in Bermuda’s history.

He said: “I was a cash collector for the Base exchange, and every time I took money to Hamilton or St George’s I had to be accompanied by an air policeman.

“I had seen Bill Cook around the Base before, but never really spoken to him.

“That was until the day before the shooting.

“He drove me to Hamilton and we chatted all the way. To me at the time he seemed like such a nice young fellow.

“He did not seem troubled or anything like that, although he explained that his boss was giving him a really hard time.

“But overall I was left with the impression that this was a good guy who could talk away quite happily about all sorts of things.

“So when I heard what he had done I could not believe it. “I was in total shock and I think everyone on the Base was too. “

US news reports at the time describe how Cook opened fire with a sub-machine gun in the Base’s police headquarters while colleagues ran for their lives and hid under their desks.

He left two men, Sgt Irby McNeill and Sgt Dino Martelli, dead and a third man, Sgt George Baxter seriously injured.

But Mr Bean believes that the real target of the shooting was Cook’s boss.

He added: “Everyone on the Base thought that his boss was the target.

“He had been riding him hard and the day after I shared the journey to Hamilton and back with Bill Cook he must have just snapped.

“I never saw him again, although I did see the scene of the shooting.

“It looked like someone had gone around with a pellet gun just shooting up everything.

“I heard about what happened through word of mouth on the Base, but the secrecy of the military at the time meant that very few details about the shooting were released to the public.

“It really was quite something and reading the article in the Sun took me right back to the time when I met Bill Cook for the first and the last time.”