• 21 Aug, 2019

• By, Wikipedia

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. He 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

Main article: Charles Whitman

Charles Joseph Whitman was born on June 24, 1941, in Lake Worth, Florida, the eldest of three sons born to Margaret Elizabeth (née Hodges) and Charles Adolphus Whitman Jr. Whitman's father (b. 1919) 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. One neighbor of the Whitmans, Judi Faulch, would later state she was unable to recollect the sheer number of times her own parents had called police in the 1940s and '50s in response to Whitman's father beating his wife, children, and family pets.

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. This would prove to be the sole occasion in which Whitman sought any professional help pertaining to the sources of frustration and pressure in his life.

Murders

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 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".

Later that morning, Whitman rented a hand truck before driving to his bank, where he cashed $250 (equivalent to $2,300 in 2023) worth of bad checks—one drawn from his own account; one 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, 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.

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 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.

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, holding a firearm in each hand, was about to shoot pigeons; 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 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.

At 11:48 a.m. Whitman began shooting from the observation deck 231 feet (70 m) above the ground. His targets were random individuals upon and around the campus, although the majority were young students, including an 18-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant and whose unborn child was fatally shot—the first individual Whitman shot from the observation deck. Several of those killed or injured were shot on or near a section of Guadalupe Street known as the Drag, which is home to coffee shops, bookstores, and other locations popular with students and is located to the west of the Main Building; numerous others were shot from the other three sides of the observation deck. In the first 20 minutes after Whitman first fired from the tower, he shot the majority of his victims.

Initially, several individuals upon and close to the campus mistook the sound of gunfire for noise sourcing from a nearby construction site, or thought that persons falling to the ground were participating in either a distasteful joke or a symbolic protest against the Vietnam War. One student within the tower at the time of the shootings, Norma Barger, later recollected looking from her fourth floor window and observing six individuals sprawled close to the tower. Initially, Barger "expected the six to get up and walk away laughing" before she noticed the blood by their bodies and saw another individual fall to the ground. One woman who was shot recalled that as she pleaded with a bystander for a doctor, he tersely replied: "Get up! What do you think you're doing?" However, as the reality of the unfolding events dawned on those present upon the campus, several individuals risked their own lives to rescue the wounded. Ambulances from local funeral homes and an armored car were also used to reach the casualties.

As the shootings continued, several police officers and civilians provided suppressive fire from the ground with firearms of varying calibers including pistols, shotguns, and hunting rifles, forcing Whitman to remain low and predominantly fire through the three large storm drains located at the foot of each of the four feet high observation deck walls, where he continued to find targets, including a 29-year-old electrical repairman, Roy Dell Schmidt, who was fatally shot 500 yards (1,500 ft; 460 m) from the tower, and 30-year-old funeral home director Morris Hohmann, who was shot and seriously wounded seconds after entering Whitman's view from behind the cover of the ambulance in which he had been traveling to ferry wounded individuals to local hospitals.

Police chartered a two-seater Champion Citabria light aircraft, from which sharpshooter Marion Lee attempted to obtain a clear shot of Whitman as the aircraft orbited close to the tower; however, rising heat waves created turbulence, limiting the stability of the aircraft and thus Lee's ability to focus. Whitman fired two shots into the aircraft before pilot Jim Boutwell navigated to a safe distance, from which he continued to circle, seeking to distract Whitman and further limit his ability to fire from the tower.

Four minutes after Whitman opened fire from the tower, at 11:52, the Austin Police Department received their first report of shootings at the University of Texas. All available police officers and highway patrolmen in the vicinity of the university were immediately dispatched to the site. One of the first officers to arrive, 23-year-old Austin patrolman Billy Speed, took refuge with a colleague behind a columned stone wall. Whitman shot through a six-inch space between the columns of the wall and killed Speed with a single shot to the chest.

Civilian Allen Crum (40), a retired Air Force tail gunner, became aware of the shootings when he observed teenager Aleck Hernandez lying close to the University Book Store Co-Op he managed and surrounded by several individuals. Initially, Crum believed a fight was in progress, but quickly realized the teenager had been shot and that the assailant was continuing to fire from the tower. Unable to make his way back to his store safely after assisting in providing first aid to Hernandez, Crum proceeded to the tower, where he offered to help the police. Inside the tower, he accompanied Department of Public Safety Agent William Cowan and Austin Police Officer Jerry Day up the elevator; Cowan having provided Crum with a rifle.

Officer Ramiro Martinez was off duty at home when he heard news reports of the ongoing shooting at midday. Having called the police station to offer assistance, Martinez was instructed to go to the campus to assist in redirecting traffic; upon arrival, he found other officers already performing these duties, and thus ran toward the tower where, having ascended the elevator to the 26th floor, he encountered officers Day and Cowan, and Allen Crum.

Austin Police Officer Houston McCoy (26) also proceeded to the Main Building; he was able to safely cross the campus as he encountered a university employee familiar with the underground tunnels of the campus; as such, he and a small number of other officers were able to safely reach the Main Building. Upon the 28th floor, McCoy encountered Crum, Day, and Martinez.

On the 26th floor, the quartet of Day, Crum, Cowan, Martinez, and two other officers named Jack Rodman and Leslie Gebert (who had separately ascended to this floor) encountered a distraught Michael Joseph Gabour, who hysterically shouted that his family had been murdered inside the tower by the gunman as he clutched his wife's bloodstained white shoes. Gabour attempted to wrestle a rifle from one of the officers; Day and Cowan restrained the distraught man as Rodman and Gebert returned via elevator to the ground floor, where they instructed Vera Palmer to switch off all elevators within the building before they began securing all perimeter entrances to the edifice as Martinez and Crum ascended the stairs to the 27th floor. (Day followed Crum and Martinez to the 27th floor shortly thereafter.) As Martinez and Crum ascended the stairs to the observation deck, Crum asked, "Are we playing for keeps?", Martinez responded, "You're damn right we are", to which Crum replied, "Well, you better deputize me". Martinez replied, "Consider yourself deputized."

Midway upon the stairwell leading to the reception area, Martinez and Crum found the bodies of Marguerite Lamport and Mark Gabour, and the severely injured Mary Gabour and her son, Michael. Michael Gabour—slumped against a wall at the base of the stairway—had initially been knocked unconscious and had only recently awakened. He gestured to the observation deck as he informed Martinez and Crum, "He's out there." After positioning Mary Gabour on her side to prevent her from drowning in her own blood, the two men continued ascending to the reception area, where they discovered the mortally wounded Edna Townsley.

Martinez and Crum were the first individuals to reach the observation deck. Martinez first dislodged the dolly Whitman had wedged against the door before instructing Crum to remain positioned outside the door with his firearm focused to provide cover from their right, and to shoot any individual who appeared in his sights from this southwesterly direction, as he proceeded warily to the left. McCoy and Day separately reached the observation deck shortly thereafter: McCoy immediately followed Martinez to Crum's left; Day—arriving at the observation deck shortly after McCoy—proceeded to Crum's right. Believing he heard the sniper's footsteps proceeding toward the corner of the observation deck he covered, Crum fired a single shot from his rifle into the southwest corner of the parapet, directing Whitman away from his line of fire.

At approximately 1:24 p.m., while Whitman crouched close to the northwestern wall of the observation deck with his firearm focused toward the southwest corner of the deck for the source of Crum's rifle shot, Martinez and McCoy rounded the northeastern corner. Martinez jumped from cover and immediately fired in Whitman's direction, missing with most or all of his six revolver shots. Almost simultaneously, McCoy leaped from cover as Martinez rapidly fired in Whitman's general direction; he recollected observing Whitman's head looking over the light ballast. McCoy fired at Whitman's white headband, hitting him between the eyes with several pellets and killing him almost instantly. McCoy fired his shotgun a second time, hitting Whitman on his left side. Whitman fell to the ground; Martinez then grabbed McCoy's shotgun, ran to Whitman's prone body, and fired a direct shotgun blast into Whitman's left arm at point-blank range.

As civilians and police were initially unaware the sniper had been felled, those upon the ground continued firing at the tower, narrowly missing Martinez. McCoy instructed another officer to notify a police dispatcher to announce to Austin's news media outlets that the sniper had been killed. As these instructions were relayed, Allen Crum waved a white handkerchief from above the parapet to signal the sniper's siege from the tower was over.

Several of the immediate media broadcasts and publications erroneously referred to Crum as the sniper waving a white flag in a public gesture of surrender.

In the minutes immediately following the media announcement of the end of the University of Texas tower shooting, several hundred students, staff, and citizens within the vicinity of the Main Building emerged from cover and silently converged upon and around the campus. According to one survivor, few individuals "said anything" as all present were in a state of disbelief and stunned silence. KTBC reporter Neal Spelce would himself reflect of the minutes following the cessation of the shootings in 2016 that those converging upon campus "looked like they were mesmerized ... they, they weren't looking at each other; they weren't talking to each other ... most of them were just kind of walking around as if dazed and wondering what in the world has happened ... to my world."

An examination of Whitman's possessions revealed identification cards. By 3 p.m., his identity had been formally established and his name broadcast nationwide. Whitman's father—upon hearing news reports of his son's identification—contacted the Austin police and provided both his son's address and that of his former wife. Shortly thereafter, police discovered the bodies of both women and the suicide notes Whitman had left close to their bodies.

At Whitman's home, investigators also discovered a collection of written admonitions he had apparently read on a daily basis stored inside an envelope. On the outside of the envelope, Whitman had penned a final message: "8-1-66. I never could quite make it. These thoughts are too much for me."

Charles Whitman killed seventeen individuals and wounded at least thirty-one others over the course of thirteen hours before he was killed on the observation deck of the UT Tower on August 1, 1966. All but two of those killed and all injured sustained their wounds after Whitman reached the 28th floor of the main building less than two hours before his own death. The fatalities include an unborn baby boy, a 17-year-old girl who succumbed to her injuries one week after the shooting, and a man shot at age 23 who succumbed to his injuries 35 years after the event, and whose death was officially ruled a homicide.

Beyond those killed and injured within the main building and the first two individuals shot from the observation deck of the tower, the precise order of Whitman's firing cannot be ascertained.

• Margaret Elizabeth Whitman (43). Perpetrator's mother. Stabbed to death in her Guadalupe Street apartment.
• Kathleen Frances Whitman (23). Perpetrator's wife. Stabbed to death in the couple's Jewell Street apartment.

• Edna Elizabeth Townsley (51). Receptionist. Bludgeoned about the head with Whitman's rifle, then shot in the head.
• Mark Jerome Gabour (16). Tourist. Shot in the head by Whitman as he attempted to navigate the makeshift barricade Whitman had constructed to the floor.
• Marguerite Lamport (56). Tourist. Shot by Whitman as she ascended the stairwell to the 28th floor.
• Baby Boy Wilson. Unborn child of 18-year-old Claire Wilson—the first individual shot from the UT Tower.
• Thomas Frederick Eckman (18). Freshman student and fiancé of Claire Wilson. Eckman was shot through the chest immediately after Wilson was hit. He died almost immediately.

• Dr. Robert Hamilton Boyer (33). Mathematician (see Boyer–Lindquist coordinates). Boyer may have been the third individual shot from the tower; he was struck in the lower back. He was days away from relocating to England, where he had secured a teaching post at the University of Liverpool.
• Karen Joan Griffith (17). A Lanier High School student and one of Kathleen Whitman's biology class students. Griffith received a shot in the shoulder and chest which pierced her right lung; she died seven days later.
• Thomas Ray Karr (24). Senior student. Karr was shot in the spine as he walked to his apartment following a Spanish exam, reportedly as he attempted to assist Griffith. He died one hour later.
• David Hubert Gunby (23). Engineering student. Gunby was shot in the upper left arm, the bullet entering his abdomen and severing his small intestine at approximately 11:55 a.m. During surgery, it was discovered that Gunby had only one functioning kidney, which had now been severely damaged; he was in great pain for the rest of his life. In 2001, he died at age 58 one week after discontinuing dialysis resulting from his health having deteriorated to the degree of his becoming largely bedridden via kidney disease. His death was officially ruled a homicide.
• Thomas Aquinas Ashton (22). Student and Peace Corps volunteer. Ashton was killed while walking to meet three fellow Peace Corps volunteers at the Student Union. He was shot once in the chest.