Charles J. Whitman was born in Florida in 1941. He enlisted in the Marine Corps and qualified for officer candidate school. Sent to the University of Texas to study engineering, he was called to active duty due to poor grades and served as an enlisted man until his discharge in 1964.
Whitman had married during his time at UT and returned to the university for the 1965-66 school year. Early in 1966 he sought psychiatric help from the student health clinic but failed to return for followup visits.
In the early morning hours of August 1 1966 Whitman murdered his mother and wife. Later that morning he loaded a footlocker with several rifles, a shotgun and knives, food and water. Arriving at the Main Building and dressed as a maintenance man he started up the clock tower staircase. On the twenty-eighth floor he murdered the receptionist then shot four people coming up the stairs killing two and wounding two.
At the top of the tower Whitman opened fire on random targets on and off campus. Ten people died and thirty one were wounded, one of whom died a week later.
As news of the shooting spread police and citizens, some armed with high powered rifles brought from home began returning fire. Later a story, almost certainly apocryphal, claimed that a member of the Confederate Air Force was flying from Corpus Christi to Austin in his P-51 Mustang armed with functioning machine guns.
While the chaos on the ground continued APD officers Houston McCoy and Ramiro Martinez (who would go on to become a Texas Ranger) made their way to the top of the tower, ending the killing with several shots from McCoy's handgun and a blast from a *12 gauge shotgun from Martinez. Whitman's autopsy revealed a brain tumor but doctors disagreed as to what role if any it had.
* The shotgun that killed Whitman is displayed at APD headquarters but the small museum is not open to the public.
Whitman had married during his time at UT and returned to the university for the 1965-66 school year. Early in 1966 he sought psychiatric help from the student health clinic but failed to return for followup visits.
In the early morning hours of August 1 1966 Whitman murdered his mother and wife. Later that morning he loaded a footlocker with several rifles, a shotgun and knives, food and water. Arriving at the Main Building and dressed as a maintenance man he started up the clock tower staircase. On the twenty-eighth floor he murdered the receptionist then shot four people coming up the stairs killing two and wounding two.
At the top of the tower Whitman opened fire on random targets on and off campus. Ten people died and thirty one were wounded, one of whom died a week later.
As news of the shooting spread police and citizens, some armed with high powered rifles brought from home began returning fire. Later a story, almost certainly apocryphal, claimed that a member of the Confederate Air Force was flying from Corpus Christi to Austin in his P-51 Mustang armed with functioning machine guns.
While the chaos on the ground continued APD officers Houston McCoy and Ramiro Martinez (who would go on to become a Texas Ranger) made their way to the top of the tower, ending the killing with several shots from McCoy's handgun and a blast from a *12 gauge shotgun from Martinez. Whitman's autopsy revealed a brain tumor but doctors disagreed as to what role if any it had.
* The shotgun that killed Whitman is displayed at APD headquarters but the small museum is not open to the public.
I was 16 years old that summer.
