Listen carefully. This moment in the archive tape of the antiwar protest at Kent State University in 1970 goes by quickly:
Tape.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer hired a forensic audio expert who compared those pops using modern digital techniques to the sound of a .38 caliber revolver and found them to be identical. This could mean that there were shots fired over a minute before the National Guard opened fire on anti-war protestors killing four students and wounding nine others. The discovery raises new questions about a pivotal historical event that galvanized public anger over US military actions in Vietnam and Cambodia. Alan Canfora is one of the students wounded that day. He found this tape in an archive in 2007.
Alan Canfora: It's clearly the most significant evidence in 40 years, this recorded evidence which is more enhanced now because of digital technology. We need a new investigation.
In 1974, a federal judge dismissed charges against eight guardsmen stating that the prosecution didn't have a strong enough case for trial.
The audio tape and new analysis do not tell us who may have fired the handgun or why. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, however, says a Kent State student hired by the FBI to take photographs during the demonstration named Terry Norman carried a pistol that could have made such a sound that day. His whereabouts today are unknown. Mhari Saito, 90.3.