Texas Tower Murders
The Texas Tower Murders refer to a tragic mass shooting that occurred on August 1, 1966, when Charles Joseph Whitman, a former U.S. Marine and student at the University of Texas, killed fifteen people and wounded thirty-one others from the observation deck of the university's clock tower. Leading up to the incident, Whitman experienced significant personal turmoil, including the recent separation of his parents and the effects of familial abuse. The attack began shortly before noon when Whitman, after murdering his mother and wife earlier that morning, ascended to the tower with an arsenal of firearms.
Once atop the clock tower, he barricaded himself and opened fire on unsuspecting individuals below, resulting in a chaotic scene as law enforcement and civilians responded. The shooting spree lasted over ninety minutes, and Whitman was ultimately killed by police. Investigations following the incident revealed a brain tumor in Whitman, which some experts suggested may have influenced his violent behavior. The events at the Texas Tower shocked the nation and contributed to discussions surrounding mental health, gun violence, and public safety. The legacy of the Texas Tower Murders continues to resonate in contemporary conversations about mass shootings in America.
Texas Tower Murders
Date: August 1, 1966
One of the most infamous events of the 1960’s. A sniper ascended the clock tower on the campus of the University of Texas, Austin, and randomly shot dozens of people below. In the end, more than forty people were either dead or wounded as a result of the killing spree.
Origins and History
Twenty-five-year-old Charles Joseph Whitman was an Eagle Scout, a former U.S. Marine, and a student at the University of Texas when he assumed the unlikely role of mass murderer. The recent separation of his parents and his mother’s subsequent move to Austin had been tremendous sources of stress for the troubled Whitman. The clock tower’s one-hundred-meter-high observation deck had long been a popular tourist attraction when Whitman, who exemplified the all-American youth, turned the tower into a landmark of terror.
The Murders
Late on the night of July 31, 1966, Whitman went to the apartment of his mother, Margaret Whitman, stabbed her several times with a bayonet, and shot her once in the back of the head. He left a note by his mother’s bedside stating that he was upset about having killed her but felt that doing so was the only way to relieve her suffering. The suffering Whitman referred to was the physical and emotional abuse that, for years, his father had inflicted upon his mother. After murdering his mother, Whitman returned home and stabbed his wife, Kathy, killing her as she slept. He also left another note, this one explaining his feelings of desperation, his struggle to maintain rational thought, and his wish that, after his death, his brain would be examined for physical abnormalities.
Early the next day, Whitman called his wife’s place of employment, claiming that she was ill and, as a result, would be taking the day off. He made a similar call to explain his mother’s absence later that morning. Whitman then loaded a Marine-issue footlocker with various weapons and supplies. His arsenal included numerous rifles, handguns, a shotgun, and seven hundred rounds of ammunition. Whitman then drove to a campus parking lot, placed the trunk on a dolly, and wheeled his arsenal to the clock tower’s elevator, which he rode up as far as he could. He lugged the trunk up some stairs and soon reached the tower’s observation deck. A University of Texas employee, paid to greet visitors as they entered the area, met Whitman as he emerged from the stairs. He immediately split her skull with the stock of his shotgun and then shot her. He then barricaded the door to the stairwell and fired on a family of tourists who were about to enter the observation deck, killing two and wounding two. Whitman then positioned himself behind the face of the clock and with a rifle began indiscriminately shooting at people below. The time was approximately 11:48 a.m. when the shooting began. Had the sniper arrived a bit earlier, there would have been thousands of students walking through campus, leaving classes that ended at 11:30 a.m. Nevertheless, Whitman continued shooting for more than ninety minutes. Whitman, himself, was under heavy gunfire not only from the 130 or so local, state, and federal law enforcement officers who had converged on the scene but also from an undeterminable number of local citizens. Police eventually broke into the barricaded observation deck and fatally shot Whitman. In all, including his wife and his mother, Whitman killed fifteen people and wounded thirty-one.
Impact
The day after the tower murders, a psychiatrist who had seen Whitman on a single prior occasion told a mystified national television audience that the killer had come in seeking help, had been experiencing hostile urges, and had admitted to having thought about shooting people from the campus clock tower. Whitman’s brain was later examined, as he had hoped, and a small tumor was found. The tumor may have been the cause of the severe headaches that Whitman complained of at the time; and a panel of experts agreed that the tumor may possibly have had an indirect effect on his actions. The tower murders occurred in the wake of the much-publicized Richard Speck murders. Only weeks before Whitman’s rampage, Speck had murdered eight female nursing students in Chicago. The combination of events stunned the nation, and apparently caused another Texan, a fifteen-year-old boy, to kill a local law enforcement officer. The boy said that after hearing reports of the two events, he had fostered an uncontrollable urge to kill that he could not explain.
Additional Information
A detailed account of the sequence of events surrounding the Texas tower murders and an in-depth look at Whitman can be found in Mass Murderers (1992), by the editors of Time-Life Books.