Was Charles Whitman a deranged mad man or was there something else behind his murderous rage? Before Virginia Tech and Columbine, the first mass shooting on a school’s campus would occur on August 1, 1966. Listen to the episode and learn how one young man with so much promise killed his mother and his wife before taking the lives of fourteen people and wounding thirty-one others on the University of Texas in Austin campus.
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TuneInThe Tower, University of Texas at Austin Larry D. Moore / CC BY-SA
Early Life
Charles Joseph Whitman was born on June 24, 1941, in Lake Worth, Florida. His father, Charles Adolphus Whitman was a plumber, and his mother Margaret was a stay-at-home mom. They would end up having 3 children, Charles being the oldest. Charles was a bright young man, scoring in the 99th percentile of an IQ test. His father was strict with high expectations and was said to have a violent temper.
He was abandoned by his father when he was 6. His mother placed Charles and his two brothers in the Bethesda home for boys in Savanna, Ga where he stayed for nine years. They were strict, and what his elders told him there was right, according to Charles.
Charles was an Eagle Scout and was familiar with guns his entire life. His father had a very large gun collection and was an avid hunter and Charles Jr participated as well. He graduated from high school in 1959.
Military
One month after his graduation he joined the Marines. Some reports say that his father didn’t know that he was going to join the military and tried to have his enlistment canceled. A friend of Charles said that he had been ‘inspired’ to enlist after an incident where he had come home drunk and his father beat him and threw him into a pool.
During his time in an SC boot camp, he earned his sharpshooter ranking. He scored 215 out of 250 possible points on the examination and was very skilled. He then moved to the Navy base at Guantanamo where he served for 18-months.
Charles Whitman applied for a Navy scholarship program intending to get his degree and then become a commissioned officer. He entered prep school in Maryland before being approved to enter the University of Texas in Austin for mechanical engineering.
Once in the University, he was not a very good student. He struggled with his grades and got a reputation as a practical joker. There was also an incident where Whitman and some friends were caught poaching a deer when a passerby reported his license plate to the police. He and his friends were butchering the deer in the dorm shower when police arrived.
Marriage
In February 1962, he met Kathleen Leissner, an education major studying at the University of Texas. Five months after they met, they got engaged and married just a month after that. They married in Kathleen’s hometown of Needville, Texas. Whitman’s Family drove from Florida to attend. Everyone described him as intelligent and well-mannered.
Whitman’s grades improved somewhat over the next couple of semesters, but it wasn’t enough to meet the scholarship requirements and in February 1963 he was put back on Active Duty.
Court Martial
Charles Whitman was assigned to Camp Lejeune and was promoted to lance corporal automatically upon his return to active duty. He was an exemplary Marine but had a bit of a gambling problem. In November of 1963, he was court-martialed for gambling, having a personal firearm on base, and for threatening a fellow officer about a $30 loan. He was confined for 30-days, assigned to 90-days hard labor, and demoted to private.
He resented the military for having taken away his studies and for his punishment. In 1964 he was honorably discharged.
University of Texas
He returned to the University of Texas studying architecture and working as a bank teller on the side to support his wife. Apparently, they were also somewhat financially reliant on Charles’ father.
Mental Health
In 1966, Charles went to a therapist stating that he was suffering from violent headaches and was concerned about his mental health. His parents had separated a few months earlier and more and more he was feeling stress mounting and experiencing violent urges. The psychiatrist told him to come back for another appointment, but he never did.
Letter to Himself
This is from a letter he wrote to himself on July 31, 1966 at 6:45 pm:
I don’t quite understand what it is that compels me to type this letter. Perhaps it is to leave some vague reason for the actions I have recently performed. I don’t really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I can’t recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts. These thoughts constantly recur, and it requires a tremendous mental effort to concentrate on useful and progressive tasks.
It was after much thought I decided to kill my wife, Kathy, tonight after I pick her up from work at the telephone company. I love her dearly. She has been as fine a wife to me as any man could ever hope to have. I cannot rationally [sic] pinpoint any specific reason for doing this. I don’t know whether it is selfishness, or if I don’t want her to have to face the embarrassment [sic] of my actions would surely cause her. At this time, though, the prominent reason in my mind is that I truly do not consider this world worth living in and am prepared to die, and I do not want to leave her to suffer alone in it. I intend to kill her as painlessly as possible.
Similar reasons provoked me to take my mother’s life also.…
Charles Whitman
In the margin, it then reads “friends interrupted” as his wife and a friend returned home. The friend later described Charles as relieved.
Murder of Mother & Wife
After the separation Charles’ mother moved to an apartment in Austin, probably to be closer to her son since Kathleen had been sharing the problems Charles had been having. That night, on July 31st, he went to his mother’s apartment and stabbed and shot her. He left a note with the body stating, “truly sorry that this was the only way I could see to relieve her sufferings but I think it was the best.”
After having killed his mother he went back to his home and stabbed his sleeping wife.
Texas School Shootings
On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman, purchased two additional guns and ammunition which was on top of his already heavy artillery. This included a Remington 700 ADL, a universal M1 carbine, a Remington model 141, a Sears model 60 shotgun, an S&W model 19, a Luger P08, and a Galesi Brescia.
A little after 11 am he parked his car near the Main Building on the grounds of the University of Texas in Austin. He was dressed in overalls and carried a duffel bag. The Main Tower is a 307-foot tall building with 27 floors. It houses some specialized libraries, but mainly admin offices.
He entered the building and went to the elevator but it wasn’t working. An employee activated the elevator and he thanked her and went up to the 27th floor. From there he went up the stairs towards the observation deck. There he encountered Edna Towsley.
He hit Edna on the back of her head with the butt of his rifle splitting her skull. He then dragged her body and hid it behind a couch. At that point, two people came in from the observation deck, they saw the weapon but assumed he was there to shoot pigeons? They exited the reception area. At that point, he moved the desk to try and block the door into the reception area.
Victims
Around 11:45 a family was walking up the stairs. When they arrived at the desk Mike (19) and Mark (16) pushed past the desk. Charles fired the shotgun towards them hitting Mike in the shoulder and Mark in the head. He then shot down the stairs striking the boy’s aunt Marguerite and their mother Mary Frances. Mike called for his father and uncle to run for help. Mike would survive with injuries, and Mary Frances was paralyzed from the neck down, no one else survived. After the encounter with the family, Charles shot Edna in the head and proceeded to the observation deck.
Once he reached the deck, he began shooting at the people below. The first was Claire Wilson, a student that was 8 months pregnant. She was shot in the abdomen. Student Thomas Eckman ran to help her and was shot and killed. Passerby Rita Murphy lay with Wilson comforting her and trying to keep her conscious. Clair would survive the attack, but her unborn child did not. Robert Boyer was shot in the lower back and killed. Devereau Huffman was shot next, he feigned death and survived his injuries.
It wasn’t until 4 minutes into the spree that the first call was made to the police. There was nearby construction and many thought that those lying on the ground were part of a theater group or a war protest. At 11:52 officers began to arrive, two of which took cover behind a columned stone wall. Charles was able to shoot through a 6-inch gap in the columns, killing one of the officers.
Response
At this point, people surrounding the area began offering anything they could to help. While some were helping to direct traffic away from what was happening, others were getting their personal weapons trying to shoot back at Charles. Officers had to move slowly and take cover as they approached the tower. A small group was also using underground maintenance tunnels to approach.
Officer Ray Martinez was off duty when he heard about the shooting. Allen Crum was a retired Air-Force officer who worked on the campus and offered to assist. Officer Jeffery Day was on duty and was called to the scene and was accompanied by the Department of Public Safety Agent Dub Cowan. The 4 men made their way to the observation deck and were then joined by another Officer Houston McCoy.
Martinez and McCoy rounded the northeastern corner of the observation deck while Charles was looking south. Martinez fired on Whitman with his revolver, missing, then McCoy hit Whitman twice with his shotgun. Martinez then took McCoy’s shotgun from him, having emptied his own weapon, and fired a final shot into Whitman at point-blank range. The rampage lasted less than two hours, with most of the deaths and injuries occurring in the first 15 to 20 minutes; 14 were murdered and 31 injured.
Brain Tumor
In the letters that he wrote prior to the killings, he had requested his brain be examined to try and explain the change he was seeing in himself.
Upon police autopsy, a brain tumor the size of a nickel was found. This tumor, called a glioblastoma, had blossomed from beneath a structure called the thalamus, impinged on the hypothalamus, and compressed a third region called the amygdala. The amygdala is involved in emotional regulation, especially of fear and aggression.
There has not been a conclusive decision to say if this tumor caused his behavior, but it could explain a lot.
Resources
- Charles Whitman – Murderer
- Charles Joseph Whitman (1941-1966)
- Washington Post, The loaded legacy of the UT tower shooting
- University of Texas tower shooting