Texas Tower Shooting

On August 1, 1966, after stabbing his mother and his wife to death the previous night, Charles Whitman, a Marine veteran, took rifles and other weapons to the observation deck atop the Main Building tower at the University of Texas at Austin, and then opened fire indiscriminately on people on the surrounding campus and streets. Over the next 96 minutes he shot and killed 15 people, including an unborn child, and injured 31 other people. The incident ended when two policemen and a civilian reached Whitman and fatally shot him. At the time, the attack 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.

It has been suggested that Whitman's violent impulses, with which he had been struggling for several years, were caused by a tumor found in the white matter above his amygdala upon autopsy.

Perpetrator

Charles Whitman, aged 25, was studying architectural engineering. In 1961, Whitman was admitted to the University of Texas at Austin on a scholarship from the Naval Enlisted Science Education Program. While at UT, Whitman met and married his wife, Kathleen. Whitman struggled with gambling and bad grades, and he lost his scholarship in 1963.

In the months prior to the attack, Whitman had sought professional help for "overwhelming, violent impulses", including fantasies about shooting people from the tower. An autopsy revealed a hypothalamic tumor.

Timeline

Murders of Margaret and Kathy Whitman

Whitman stabbed his mother, Margaret Elizabeth Whitman, to death at 12:30 a.m. on August 1, 1966. He then stabbed his wife Kathleen Leissner Whitman to death, at 3:00 a.m. on the same day. In a note typed just hours prior to the murders, he professed his love for both women, saying he had killed them to spare them future humiliation and suffering.

Later that morning, Whitman rented a hand truck and cashed $250 () worth of bad checks at a bank. He then 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 hunt wild hogs. At a gun shop he purchased four more carbine magazines, six additional boxes of ammunition, and a can of gun cleaning solvent. At Sears he purchased a Sears Model 60 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun before returning home.

Whitman then packed into his footlocker a Remington 700 6-mm bolt-action hunting rifle, a .35-caliber pump rifle, the M1 carbine, a 9-mm Luger pistol, a Galesi-Brescia .25-caliber pistol, a Smith & Wesson M19 .357 Magnum revolver, the shotgun, of which he had sawn off the barrel and buttstock, as well as more than 700 rounds of ammunition. He also packed food, coffee, vitamins, Dexedrine, Excedrin, earplugs, jugs of water, matches, lighter fluid, rope, binoculars, a machete, three knives, a transistor radio, toilet paper, a razor, and a bottle of deodorant. He put khaki coveralls on over his shirt and jeans.

Whitman arrives on campus

At approximately 11:25 a.m., Whitman reached the University of Texas at Austin, where he showed false research assistant identification to obtain a parking permit. Whitman wheeled his equipment toward the Main Building of the University.
Entering the Main Building, Whitman found the elevator did not work. An employee named Vera Palmer activated it for him; Whitman thanked Palmer, stating, "Thank you ma'am", before repeatedly saying: "You don't know how happy that makes me."

Exiting the elevator on the 27th floor, he hauled the dolly and equipment up a flight of stairs to a hallway, from which another flight led to the rooms skirted by the observation deck. There he encountered receptionist Edna Townsley.

Persons killed or injured

Police actions

Some mistook the sound of shots for the noise from a nearby construction site, or thought that persons falling to the ground were part of a theater group or an anti-war protest. One victim recalled that as she lay bleeding a passerby reprimanded her and told her to "Get up."
Among those who grasped the situation, many risked their lives to take the wounded to safety. Ambulances from local funeral homes and an armored car were used to reach the wounded.

Four minutes after Whitman began shooting from the tower, a history professor was the first to telephone the Austin Police Department, at 11:52 am. Patrolman Billy Speed, one of the first officers to arrive, took refuge with a colleague behind a columned stone wall. Whitman shot through the six-inch space between the columns of the wall and killed Speed.

Officer Houston McCoy, 26, heard of the shooting on his radio. As he looked for a way into the tower, a student offered to help, saying he had a rifle at home. McCoy drove the student to his home to retrieve the rifle.

Allen Crum, a 40-year-old retired Air Force tail gunner, was a manager at the University Book Store Co-Op. Across the street he saw 17-year-old Aleck Hernandez being dragged and went to break up what he thought was a fight. Learning Hernandez had been shot, and hearing more shots, Crum rerouted street traffic out of harm's way. Unable to make his way back to the store safely, he then made his way to the tower, where he offered to help the police. Inside the tower, he accompanied Department of Public Safety Agent Dub Cowan and Austin Police Officer Jerry Day up the elevator; Cowan provided Crum with a rifle.

Around noon, Officer Ramiro "Ray" Martinez was off duty at home when he heard about the attack on the news. Having called the police station, he was instructed to go to the campus and direct traffic. Once there, he found other officers already doing that, so he went to the tower.
He assumed he would find a team of officers there, but when he reached the 27th floor, he found only Cowan, Crum, and Day.

Officers attempting to reach the tower were forced to move slowly and take cover often, but a small group of officers including Houston McCoy began making their way to the tower via underground maintenance tunnels.
Officers and several civilians provided suppressive fire from the ground with small weapons and hunting rifles, forcing Whitman to stay low and fire through storm drains at the foot of the observation deck's wall. A police sharpshooter in a small plane was driven back by Whitman's return fire but continued to circle at a distance, seeking to distract Whitman and further limit his freedom to choose targets.

Martinez, Crum, and Day searched the 27th floor, where they found M. J. Gabour; Day removed him. As they started up to the stairs to the observation deck, Crum asked "Are we playing for keeps?", Martinez responded, "You’re damn right we’re playing for keeps", to which Crum replied, "Well you better deputize me".

Beneath the stairwell leading to the reception area, Martinez found Marguerite Lamport, Mark Gabour, Mary Gabour, and Mike Gabour. Mike Gabour gestured to the observation deck, saying: "He's out there".

Martinez reached the observation deck first. He told Crum to remain at the door. McCoy and Day reached the observation deck a few minutes later. Crum thought he heard footsteps and fired his rifle, distracting Whitman.

Around 1:24 pm, while Whitman was looking south for the source of the rifle shot, Martinez and McCoy rounded the northeastern corner of the observation deck. Martinez jumped out and fired, hitting Whitman several times. McCoy leaped out while Martinez was firing and saw Whitman's head looking over the light ballast, McCoy fired at the top of the ballast, hitting Whitman between the eyes with several pellets, killing Whitman instantly. McCoy fired again, hitting Whitman on his left side. Martinez grabbed McCoy's shotgun, ran to Whitman's prone body, and fired a direct shotgun blast into the deceased Whitman's left arm. In the immediate aftermath, Martinez was nearly shot himself by those on the ground, who did not yet realize that Whitman was dead.

Legacy and memorials

Martinez and McCoy were awarded Medals of Valor by the city of Austin.

Following the shootings, the tower observation deck was closed. The various bullet holes were repaired and the tower was reopened in 1968. It was closed again in 1975 following four suicides. After a stainless steel lattice and other security features were installed, it was again reopened in 1999, but only to by-appointment guided tours, and all visitors are screened by metal detectors.

There was no campus police presence at the time. After the shooting, there was widespread acknowledgement that security measures in place were inadequate to address campus-wide issues on this scale.

As a result of outcry following the shooting, progress toward a cohesive campus police force began shortly thereafter. In 1967, Senator A.M. Aiken proposed Senate Bill 162, which was “an act providing for the protection, safety and welfare of students and employees … and for the policing of the buildings and grounds of the State institutions of higher education of this State.”  In 1968, The University of Texas System Police Academy graduated its first class of commissioned officers. Current UT police officers undergo a variety of training programs designed to help them prepare to combat threats on campus if the Austin Police Department or the SWAT team are unavailable.

In 2006, a Memorial Garden was dedicated to those who died or were otherwise affected. A monument listing the names of the victims was added in 2016 on the shootings' fiftieth anniversary. The tower's clock was stopped for 24 hours beginning at 11:48 a.m.
The day was declared by the City of Austin as "Ramiro Martinez Day".

In 2008, the following names of persons who helped stop Whitman were added to a plaque on an Austin police precinct building:

In 2014, Claire Wilson's stillborn son received a tombstone in Austin Memorial Park Cemetery, after his grave was rediscovered by Gary Lavergne. Adorned with a single crucifix, it reads "Baby Boy Wilson / August 1, 1966".

In popular culture

Film

* Peter Bogdanovich's 1968 film '' Targets'' features a character based on Whitman.
* Seemingly picking up on the event, in Luis Buñuel's 1974 surrealist film ''The Phantom of Liberty'' an unknown man indiscriminately shoots at passers-by with a sniper rifle from the Tour Montparnasse.
* In the 1987 film ''Full Metal Jacket'', the character of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman praises Whitman's marksmanship, along with that of Lee Harvey Oswald, emphasizing that they were both Marines.
* In the 1994 film '' Natural Born Killers'', Tom Sizemore's character, Jack Scagnetti, tells of an encounter with Whitman which influenced his own depravity, claiming Whitman had killed his mother in the shooting.
* The 2016 film '' Tower'' is a partially animated documentary about the event.

Television

* The 1975 television film '' The Deadly Tower'' featured Kurt Russell as Whitman. McCoy filed a lawsuit over the movie, alleging it portrayed him as a coward. The suit was eventually thrown out of court and McCoy was ordered to pay the fees of the opposing attorney.
* The final scene of ''The X Files'' 1994 episode '' Blood'' ( Season 2, Epsiode 3) was based on the shooting by writers Glen Morgan and James Wong.
*In the 2012 " Signal 30" episode of '' Mad Men'', Jenny Gunther (Amanda Bauer) mentions the shooting to Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser). The shooting is also discussed later at a dinner party hosted by Trudy Campbell ( Alison Brie), where Cynthia Cosgrove ( Larisa Oleynik) mistakenly refers to Whitman as 'Whitmore,' and is corrected by Don Draper ( Jon Hamm), for whom the last name Whitman is significant.

Music

*In 1972, Harry Chapin released an LP called ''Sniper and Other Love Songs''. The title track was a fictionalized version of the Whitman shooting from the point of view of the killer, a woman he once dated, his mother, and others. At times the narration is objective, evoking the events externally. From the shooter's point of view, the killings seemed to confirm his identity and achieved revenge for the pain of his life. Chapin performed the song on American TV, and in concerts.
*Country songwriter Kinky Friedman - who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin the same year as the shooting - lampooned the event with the song "The Ballad of Charles Whitman," which appeared on his 1973 ''Sold American'' album.
*American composer Jennifer Jolley wrote the wind ensemble piece ''The Eyes of the World are Upon You'' for the UT Austin Wind Ensemble in 2017. The piece is both a tribute to the victims of the 1966 shooting and a reaction to Texas legislators’ 2015 decision to allow the possession of firearms on state campuses.
*In 2007 Insane Clown Posse released their album The Tempest (album). That album contains a song titled "The Tower" based on Whitman's crimes.

See also

References

Further reading

*

Life Magazine article Aug. 12, 1966

{{Mass shootings in the United States by deaths

1966 mass shootings in the United States
August 1966 events in the United States
Crimes in Austin, Texas
Deaths by firearm in Texas
Deaths by stabbing in Texas
Familicides
Mass murder in Texas
Mass murder in the United States
Mass shootings in Texas
Mass shootings in the United States
Massacres in 1966
Matricides
University and college shootings in the United States
University of Texas at Austin
Uxoricides
20th-century mass murder in the United States