White/Caucasian Robert David Seater, age 26, died on July 23, 1977, in Klamath Falls, Oregon, when a gunman opened fire at Uncle Albert’s Lounge on South Sixth Street just after midnight. Contemporary and retrospective records place him among six people killed during the attack, which unfolded around 12:15 a.m. outside the nightclub. His wife, 23-year-old Carrol Ann Seater, who was eight months pregnant, was also slain in the same burst of gunfire.
Memorial and cemetery records corroborate his age, date, and place of death.
The assailant, identified in news and historical accounts as DeWitt Charles Henry, an unemployed truck driver and former bouncer at the club, retrieved a. 223-caliber Colt AR-15 Sporter and opened fire after an earlier altercation. Accounts describe panic in the parking area as the rifle fire cut down patrons and staff, including Robert David Seater, age 26, and other victims named in official and media tallies. Two additional people were wounded.
Responding Oregon State Police troopers engaged the gunman in a brief exchange before subduing and arresting him; he was wounded and taken into custody that night. In November 1979, following a trial moved to Multnomah County, the shooter was convicted on six counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder, receiving six consecutive life sentences. Oregon did not have an active death penalty statute at the time, so a capital sentence was not imposed. Subsequent corrections records and later reporting note his continued incarceration decades after the crime.
The names of the dead, repeatedly published in press summaries and later compilations, include Robert David Seater, age 26; Carrol Ann Seater, age 23; Michael Gene Mortensen; Gary Lee Anderson; Andrew Walker; and James Trueman. Local retrospectives and memorial sites have continued to mark the date as one of the state’s worst mass murders, anchoring the public memory of Robert David Seater, age 26, as a husband whose life ended amid a sudden, indiscriminate burst of rifle fire in the parking lot of a familiar neighborhood lounge.
