University of Texas tower shooting
The University of Texas tower shooting was an act of mass murder that occurred on August 1, 1966, at the University of Texas at Austin. The perpetrator, 25-year-old Marine veteran Charles Whitman, indiscriminately fired at members of the public, both within the Main Building tower and from the tower's observation deck. Whitman shot and killed 15 people, including an unborn child, and injured 31 others before he was killed by two Austin Police Department officers approximately 96 minutes after first opening fire from the observation deck.
Prior to arriving at the University of Texas, Whitman had stabbed his mother and wife to death—in part to spare both women "the embarrassment" he believed his actions would cause them. Although Whitman's autopsy revealed a pecan-sized tumor in the white matter above his amygdala, the tumor was not connected to any sensory nerves. Nonetheless, some experts believe this tumor may have contributed to the violent impulses which Whitman had been exhibiting for several years prior to the massacre.
At the time, the University of Texas tower shooting was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history, being surpassed 18 years later by the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre.
Perpetrator
Charles Joseph Whitman was born on June 24, 1941, in Lake Worth, Florida, the eldest of three sons born to Margaret Elizabeth and Charles Adolphus Whitman Jr. Whitman's father had been abandoned as a child and raised in a boys' orphanage in Savannah, Georgia, and described himself as a self-made man who ran a successful plumbing business, in which his wife worked as a bookkeeper.The marriage of Whitman's parents was marred by domestic violence; Whitman's father was an admitted authoritarian known to be physically and emotionally abusive towards his wife and children. He willingly provided for his family and strove for their betterment but also demanded subservience and near perfection from all of them.
Whitman has been described as a polite and extremely intelligent child—an examination at the age of six revealed his IQ to be 139. His academic achievements were encouraged by both his parents, and any indication of failure or a lethargic attitude were met with physical and/or emotional discipline from his father. With his parents' encouragement, Whitman became a Boy Scout at age eleven; he attained the rank of Eagle Scout three months after his twelfth birthday, reportedly the youngest ever individual to earn this rank at the time.
Graduation and military service
In June 1959, Whitman finished his schooling at St. Ann's High School in West Palm Beach, where he graduated seventh out of a class of 72 students. Weeks later, to celebrate his graduation and upcoming eighteenth birthday, Whitman and several friends drank themselves into a state of intoxication. Upon returning home, his father became enraged at his son's drunken state, severely beating his son before throwing him into the family swimming pool.Three days after his birthday, without his father's knowledge, Whitman enlisted in the United States Marine Corps; he was deployed to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on July 6. Whitman's initial military service was exemplary, and he earned a sharpshooter's badge and the Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal while stationed in Cuba. Two years later, in September 1961, Whitman enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied mechanical engineering via a scholarship approved and funded by the Naval Enlisted Science Education Program.
To his fellow students at the University of Texas, Whitman was regarded as an amiable and promising student with a penchant for practical jokes. However, some acquaintances noted a morbid aspect to Whitman's personality. One acquaintance of Whitman's, Francis Schuck, Jr., would later recollect that on one occasion in Whitman's first year of studies, Whitman had stood at the window of his dormitory room staring at the UT Tower before remarking: "A person could stand off an army from the top of it before they got to him."
Marriage
On August 17, 1962, Whitman married Kathleen Frances Leissner, a teaching student whom he had met at the university six months previously, and to whom he had become engaged on July 19. The couple chose Whitman's parents' wedding anniversary for the occasion; Whitman's family traveled from Lake Worth to attend the ceremony and his younger brother, Patrick, served as best man. The ceremony was held at St. Michael's Catholic Church in Needville, Texas, before the couple honeymooned in New Orleans.University life
Although Whitman had initially been an assertive student, largely due to an increasingly lackadaisical attitude to his studies and resultant poor academic performance, the Marine Corps deemed his academic performance insufficient to warrant the continuation of his scholarship and he was ordered to return to active duty in February 1963, being stationed in Camp Lejeune to serve the remainder of his enlistment.Despite a November 1963 court-martial pertaining to instances of gambling and usury, Whitman achieved the rank of Lance Corporal while stationed at Camp Lejeune. He was honorably discharged from the Marines in December 1964 and returned to Austin where—in March 1965—he enrolled in an architectural engineering program at the University of Texas as his wife worked as a biology teacher at Lanier High School.
In an effort to obtain his engineering degree faster, Whitman undertook a full academic workload. By 1966, he had also studied for and passed a state licensing exam for real-estate agents. As the teaching salary Whitman's wife earned was insufficient to sustain the lifestyle the couple desired, both also held part-time jobs.
Parents' divorce
In early March 1966, Whitman's mother announced her decision to divorce her husband after over 25 years of marriage because of his continued physical and emotional abuse. Upon receipt of this news, Whitman immediately drove overnight to Florida to help his mother move to Austin. Whitman's youngest brother, John, also left Lake Worth to relocate to Austin with his mother, although his brother Patrick remained in Florida with his father. Reportedly, Whitman was so fearful that his father would resort to violence against his mother as she prepared to leave him that he summoned a local policeman to remain outside the house while she packed her belongings. Shortly after Margaret Whitman relocated to Austin, she obtained employment as a cashier in a local cafeteria.Psychological frustrations
On one occasion two months after his parents' divorce, Whitman sought professional help from a campus psychiatrist named Dr. Maurice Dean Heatly to discuss the sources of pressure, frustration, and distress within his life. Heatly's notes regarding this one-hour session reveal Whitman—whom Heatly observed to be a somewhat self-centered and egocentric individual—had disclosed he had endured increasingly frequent headaches; his sense of self-loathing over the fact he had struck his wife twice throughout the course of their marriage; his resultant fear of becoming a frequent woman beater in the mold of his "demanding" father; and his frustration regarding his father's almost daily phone calls to him pleading with him to persuade his mother to return to Florida.Dr. Heatly's notes from this session also reveal that Whitman conveyed a somewhat egocentric persona; that he constantly strove to better himself; that he had been "oozing with hostility" throughout the hour-long session; and that Whitman had disclosed his developing fantasies of shooting random people from the observation deck of the UT Tower.
Murders
Margaret and Kathleen Whitman
At 6:45 p.m. on July 31, 1966, Whitman sat at his typewriter and began composing the first of his two suicide notes, in which he outlined his intentions to murder his wife and mother prior to committing his act of mass murder at the University of Texas. Midway through composing this note, he was interrupted by two friends named Larry and Elaine Fuess. Both later remarked Whitman seemed "particularly relieved about something—you know, as if he's solved a problem" and that on two occasions throughout the evening, Whitman remarked: "It's a shame that should have to work all day and then come home to..." In both instances, Whitman neither finished his sentence nor elaborated further. The trio conversed for a few hours before the Fuesses left so that Whitman could drive his wife home from her part-time job as a switchboard operator. Kathleen Whitman is believed to have immediately retired to bed.Shortly after midnight, Whitman drove to his mother's Guadalupe Street apartment and stabbed her to death with a bayonet before placing her body upon her bed and covering her with sheets. He then penned the second of his two suicide notes upon a yellow legal pad, which he left beside her bed. He then returned home and, at approximately 3:00 a.m., repeatedly stabbed his wife through the heart as she lay asleep in their bed before—in largely illegible handwriting—finishing composing his first suicide note. In both suicide notes, he professed his love for both his wife and mother, saying he had killed them to spare them humiliation and—in his mother's case—to alleviate her suffering. He also outlined the "intense hatred" he felt for his father because of the physical and emotional abuse his father had inflicted upon his mother throughout their marriage, describing this hatred as "beyond description".
Final preparations
Later that morning, Whitman rented a hand truck before driving to his bank, where he cashed $250 worth of bad checks — one drawn from his own account, and another from his mother's. At 9:00 he drove to a hardware store, where he purchased a.30 caliber Universal M1 carbine, two additional ammunition magazines, and eight boxes of ammunition, telling the cashier he planned to travel to Florida to hunt wild hogs. Thirty minutes later he purchased four more carbine magazines, six additional boxes of ammunition, and a can of gun cleaning solvent from Chuck's Gun Shop before purchasing a 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun from a nearby Sears. Whitman then returned home, where he sawed off the butt and barrel of the shotgun in his garage. All these purchases were then placed into Whitman's footlocker, which he had retained from his service within the Marine Corps.Whitman also packed into his footlocker a Remington Model 700 6-mm bolt-action hunting rifle equipped with a Leupold M8-4X scope, a.35-caliber Remington pump action rifle, a 9-mm Luger pistol, a Galesi-Brescia.25-caliber pistol, a Smith & Wesson M19.357 Magnum revolver, the aforementioned sawed-off shotgun, and more than 700 rounds of ammunition. He also packed assorted cans of food in addition to coffee, vitamins, Dexedrine, Excedrin, earplugs, three-and-a-half gallons of water, matches, lighter fluid, rope, binoculars, a machete, a hatchet, three knives, a small Channel Master transistor radio, toilet paper, a razor, and a bottle of deodorant.
Shortly before driving to the University of Texas, Whitman also donned blue nylon khaki coveralls over his shirt and jeans in an effort to appear as a janitor, repairman, or deliveryman and thus deflect any suspicion upon his arrival at the University of Texas.