The University of Texas tower shooting was a mass shooting 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 (June 24, 1941 – August 1, 1966) was born and raised in Lake Worth, Florida, the eldest of three sons born to Margaret Elizabeth ( Hodges) and Charles Adolphus Whitman Jr. He was raised in a middle class household, although his parents' marriage was marred by domestic violence; Whitman's father was an authoritarian known to be physically and emotionally abusive towards his wife and children.
Whitman was an intelligent child with a reported IQ of 139. A boy scout, he achieved the rank of Eagle Scout three months after his twelfth birthday, reportedly the youngest individual in America to achieve this rank at the time. He graduated from St. Ann's High School in West Palm Beach in June 1959. One month later, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was deployed to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. While stationed at Guantánamo Bay, Whitman earned a Sharpshooter's Badge and the Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal.
Via a scholarship approved and funded by the Naval Enlisted Science Education Program, Whitman enrolled upon a mechanical engineering scholarship at the University of Texas at Austin in September 1961. The following year, he married his fiancée, Kathleen Frances Leissner—whom he had met at the university—in Needville, Texas.
In 1963, Whitman's scholarship was revoked, and he was ordered to return to active duty at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, to serve the remainder of his five-year enlistment. He achieved the rank of Lance Corporal while stationed at Camp Lejeune and was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps in December 1964. He returned to Austin and later enrolled in an architectural engineering program at the University of Texas.
In March 1966, Whitman's parents divorced; his mother relocated to Texas. Thereafter, his father telephoned his son on an almost daily basis, pleading with and haranguing him to persuade his mother to return to Florida and reconcile their marriage. Two weeks later, Whitman sought professional help from a campus psychiatrist named Maurice Heatly. He would attend one two-hour session with Heatly before abandoning the sessions.
Murders It is unknown precisely when Whitman decided to end his life, or when he selected the Main Building of the University of Texas as the location for his act of mass murder. The contents of one of Whitman's suicide notes revealed that in the months prior to his death, he had become "a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts" and that since talking with Dr. Heatly, he had been "fighting [his] mental turmoil alone". He is known to have twice visited the observation deck of the UT Tower in the ten days prior to August 1, 1966. On the first occasion, on July 22, he had been in the company of his brother John and a friend; on the second occasion six days later, he had been alone.
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 [Kathleen] 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 (at approximately 12:30 a.m.), 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 grabbed a yellow legal pad and penned the second of his two suicide notes, 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 phoned his wife's boss to explain she was ill and unable to attend work that day; he then rented a dolly 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 a.m. 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, and more than 700 rounds of ammunition. He also packed assorted cans of food in addition to a flask of 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 Mennen 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.
Arrival at University of Texas At approximately 11:25 a.m., Whitman reached the University of Texas at Austin, where he displayed false research assistant identification to a guard in order to obtain a 40-minute parking permit with the explanation he was delivering teaching equipment to a professor. Whitman then wheeled his equipment toward the Main Building of the university. He is believed to have entered the Tower between 11:30 and 11:35 a.m. and may have timed his entrance to the tower to coincide with the 11:45 a.m. student class changeover in order to maximize the number of available targets walking around the campus.
Upon entering the Main Building, Whitman found the elevator did not work. An employee named Vera Palmer—believing Whitman was a repairman—informed him the elevator had been "turned off" before reaching for a switch to activate it for him; Whitman smiled as he thanked Palmer, stating, "Thank you ma'am", before repeatedly saying: "You don't know how happy that makes me... how happy that makes me." He exited the elevator on the 27th floor, then hauled the dolly and equipment up a final flight of stairs to a hallway, then down a corridor toward the observation deck.
UT Tower homicides Inside the reception area, Whitman encountered 51-year-old receptionist Edna Townsley; he bludgeoned Townsley into unconsciousness with his rifle butt—splitting her skull—before dragging her body behind a couch. As Whitman hid Townsley's body, he was surprised by a young Texan couple named Donald Walden and Cheryl Botts, who entered the room from the observation deck as he leaned over the couch. Botts later stated she and Walden believed Whitman, dressed in coveralls and holding a firearm in each hand, was about to shoot pigeons from the tower; she smiled and greeted Whitman, who smiled back and said, "Hi, how are you?" Both observed a dark stain on the carpet close to where Townsley had been seated, which Botts assumed was varnish.
Moments after Walden and Botts exited the 28th floor, Whitman constructed a makeshift barricade to the floor entrance using Townsley's desk, two chairs, and a wastebasket. As he was about to enter the observation deck, he was surprised by a vacationing Texarkana family attempting to navigate the barricade. As 16-year-old Mark Gabour attempted to prise the entrance to the staircase open, Whitman wheeled and fired at the family with his shotgun, killing Mark and his 56-year-old aunt, Marguerite Lamport, and seriously wounding 19-year-old Michael Gabour and his 41-year-old mother, Mary, before resealing his makeshift barricade. Michael Joseph Gabour Sr. (48) and William Lamport (who had been following their family members to the reception area) were uninjured; both briefly ran from the stairwell before attempting to provide care for their family members, then running for help. Gabour would later recall encountering Vera Palmer exiting an elevator on the 27th floor to relieve Edna Townsley's receptionist position; he frantically cautioned the young woman as to the ongoing homicidal commotion. Palmer immediately returned to the ground floor.
After again securing the makeshift barricade, Whitman fatally shot Townsley once in the head before wheeling his footlocker to the six-foot-wide observation deck, where he wedged the dolly against the sole entrance door before—at approximately 11:46 a.m.—donning a white headband and unpacking his weapons from the footlocker, which he placed around all four sides of the deck.
Observation deck shootings