University of Texas tower shooting

• 1. Introduction

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  The University of Texas tower shooting began at 11:48 a.m. on the 1st of August 1966, when a gunman opened fire from the observation deck of the Main Building tower in Austin. The deck stood 231 feet above the ground, and from it the whole campus lay open to view.

  Norma Barger, a 23-year-old student, looked out from a fourth floor window and saw six people sprawled near the tower. She expected them to get up and walk away laughing. They did not.

  By the end, fifteen people at the university were dead, including an unborn child, and thirty-one more were wounded. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in American history. It held that grim record for eighteen years, until the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre surpassed it.

  This documentary asks who the 25-year-old Marine veteran Charles Whitman was, and what he did in the hours before he climbed the tower. It asks how a small group of police officers and one civilian reached him, and how a campus and a city absorbed what happened.

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• 2. The Man Before

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  Charles Joseph Whitman was born on the 24th of June 1941 in Lake Worth, Florida, the eldest of three sons. His family was middle class, but his father was an authoritarian who abused his wife and children, both physically and emotionally. Whitman was bright, with a reported IQ of 139. Three months after his twelfth birthday he became an Eagle Scout, reportedly the youngest in America at the time.

  He graduated from St. Ann's High School in West Palm Beach in June 1959. A month later he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. There he earned a Sharpshooter's Badge and the Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal.

  In September 1961, a scholarship funded through the Naval Enlisted Science Education Program brought him to the University of Texas at Austin to study mechanical engineering. The following year he married Kathleen Frances Leissner, whom he had met at the university, in Needville, Texas. In 1963 the scholarship was revoked, and he was ordered to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to finish his five-year enlistment. He rose to Lance Corporal there and was honorably discharged in December 1964. He then returned to Austin and enrolled in an architectural engineering program at the university.

  In March 1966, his parents divorced and his mother moved to Texas. His father then telephoned him almost every day, pleading with him to persuade her to return to Florida and reconcile. Two weeks later, Whitman went to a campus psychiatrist named Maurice Heatly. He attended one two-hour session and then abandoned the sessions.

  In the ten days before the shooting, Whitman visited the tower's observation deck twice. On the 22nd of July he went with his brother John and a friend. Six days later he went alone.

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• 3. The Night Before

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  At 6:45 p.m. on the 31st of July 1966, Whitman sat at his typewriter and began the first of two suicide notes. In it he laid out his plan to kill his wife and his mother before attacking the university. Partway through, friends named Larry and Elaine Fuess dropped by. They later said he seemed relieved, as though he had solved a problem.

  Twice that evening he began a remark about Kathleen: "It's a shame that Kathleen should have to work all day and then come home to..." Both times he stopped without finishing. The Fuesses left after a few hours so that he could drive Kathleen home from her part-time job as a switchboard operator. She is believed to have gone straight to bed.

  At about 12:30 a.m., Whitman drove to his mother's apartment on Guadalupe Street and stabbed her to death with a bayonet. He laid her on her bed and covered her with sheets. Then he took a yellow legal pad and wrote the second note, which he left beside her. Around 3:00 a.m. he returned home and stabbed Kathleen through the heart as she slept. Afterward he finished the first note, in largely illegible handwriting.

  Both notes described a mind in turmoil. Whitman wrote that he had become "a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts" and that since talking with Dr. Heatly he had been "fighting his mental turmoil alone". He professed love for his wife and mother. He said he killed them to spare them humiliation and, in his mother's case, to end her suffering. He also wrote of an "intense hatred" for his father, which he called "beyond description", because of the abuse his mother had endured.

  Whitman cashed $250 worth of bad checks at his bank that morning, one drawn on his own account and one on his mother's. Before that he had phoned Kathleen's boss to say she was ill, and he had rented a dolly. At 9 a.m. he bought a .30 caliber Universal M1 carbine, two extra magazines and eight boxes of ammunition at a hardware store. He told the cashier he was heading to Florida to hunt wild hogs.

  Thirty minutes later, at Chuck's Gun Shop, he bought four more magazines, six more boxes of ammunition and a can of gun cleaning solvent. A nearby Sears sold him a 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun. At home, in his garage, he sawed off its butt and barrel.

  Everything went into the footlocker he had kept from his Marine Corps service. It also held a Remington Model 700 6-mm bolt-action hunting rifle with a Leupold M8-4X scope, and a .35-caliber Remington pump action rifle. There were three handguns as well: a 9-mm Luger, a Galesi-Brescia .25-caliber pistol and a Smith & Wesson M19 .357 Magnum revolver. He packed more than 700 rounds of ammunition.

  The footlocker held supplies too. There were canned food, a flask of coffee, vitamins, Dexedrine, Excedrin, earplugs and three-and-a-half gallons of water. He added matches, lighter fluid, rope, binoculars, a machete, a hatchet and three knives. The last items were a small Channel Master transistor radio, toilet paper, a razor and a bottle of Mennen deodorant.

  Before leaving, Whitman pulled blue nylon khaki coveralls on over his shirt and jeans. He hoped to pass as a janitor, repairman or deliveryman and deflect suspicion when he arrived.

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• 4. Up the Tower

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  At about 11:25 a.m., Whitman reached the campus and showed false research assistant identification to a guard. He said he was delivering teaching equipment to a professor and received a 40-minute parking permit. He is believed to have entered the Main Building between 11:30 and 11:35 a.m. He may have timed it for the 11:45 class changeover, when the most students would be out walking.

  The elevator was not working. An employee named Vera Palmer, taking him for a repairman, told him it had been turned off and reached for a switch to restore it. Whitman smiled and said, "Thank you ma'am." Then he repeated, "You don't know how happy that makes me... how happy that makes me." He left the elevator on the 27th floor and hauled the dolly and equipment up a last flight of stairs, then along a corridor toward the observation deck.

  In the reception area he met 51-year-old receptionist Edna Townsley. He struck her unconscious with his rifle butt, splitting her skull, and dragged her behind a couch. While he was hiding her, a young Texan couple named Donald Walden and Cheryl Botts walked in from the observation deck. Botts later said she assumed the man holding a firearm in each hand was about to shoot pigeons. She smiled and greeted him, and he smiled back and said, "Hi, how are you?" Botts also noticed a dark stain on the carpet near Townsley's chair and took it for varnish.

  Whitman then built a barricade at the stairway entrance to the floor, using Townsley's desk, two chairs and a wastebasket. A vacationing family from Texarkana arrived at it while he was working. Sixteen-year-old Mark Gabour tried to prise the entrance open, and Whitman wheeled and fired his shotgun. The blast killed Mark and his 56-year-old aunt, Marguerite Lamport. It seriously wounded 19-year-old Michael Gabour and his 41-year-old mother, Mary.

  Michael Gabour Sr., 48, and William Lamport, who had been following their relatives, were unhurt. They ran, came back to help the wounded, and then ran again for help. On the way, Gabour met Vera Palmer stepping out of an elevator on the 27th floor to relieve Townsley. He shouted a warning, and Palmer went straight back down.

  Whitman reset the barricade and shot Townsley once in the head. He wheeled his footlocker onto the six-foot-wide observation deck and wedged the dolly against its only door. At about 11:46 a.m. he put on a white headband and began unpacking his weapons, setting them out on all four sides of the deck.

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• 5. Under Fire

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  The first person Whitman shot from the deck was Claire Wilson, an 18-year-old student who was eight months pregnant. Her unborn child was killed. Seconds later her fiancé, 18-year-old freshman Thomas Eckman, was shot through the chest and died almost at once. Most of Whitman's targets were young students, and he fired at random. Many were hit along Guadalupe Street, known as the Drag, which was lined with coffee shops and bookstores. He shot most of his victims in the first twenty minutes.

  A woman shot in the stomach near the Main Building begged a passing bystander for help. He answered, "Get up! What do you think you're doing?" Many people took the gunfire for noise from a nearby construction site. Some took the falling bodies for a tasteless joke or a symbolic protest against the Vietnam War.

  Once the truth sank in, people dived behind whatever cover they could find. Some risked their lives to pull the wounded to safety. Ambulances from local funeral homes and an armored car were used to reach casualties. Local reporters broadcast updates and warned the public to stay away from the campus.

  Police officers and civilians returned fire from the ground with pistols, shotguns and hunting rifles. This forced Whitman to stay low and shoot mostly through the storm drains at the foot of the four-foot-high deck walls. Even so, he kept finding targets. Electrician Roy Dell Schmidt, 29, was killed some 500 yards from the tower, seconds after telling a policeman he thought he was out of range. Funeral director Morris Wayne Hohmann, 30, was seriously wounded just after stepping into view from behind the ambulance he was using to carry the wounded to hospitals.

  Police also chartered a two-seater Champion Citabria light aircraft, hoping sharpshooter Marion Lee could get a clear shot. Rising heat waves shook the plane and spoiled his aim. Whitman fired twice into the aircraft. Pilot Jim Boutwell flew to a safer distance but kept circling, trying to distract Whitman and limit his shooting.

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• 6. The Climb

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  Four minutes after the first shot from the deck, the Austin Police Department received its first report of a shooter at the university. Every available officer and highway patrolman nearby was sent. One of the first to arrive, 23-year-old patrolman Billy Paul Speed, took cover behind a columned stone wall. Whitman shot through a six-inch gap between the columns and killed him with one shot to the upper chest.

  Allen Crum, a 40-year-old retired Air Force tail gunner, managed the University Book Store Co-Op. He saw teenager Aleck Hernandez lying nearby, surrounded by people, and at first thought a fight was under way. Then he saw that Hernandez had been shot in the upper leg and that the gunfire came from the tower. After helping give first aid, Crum could not get back to his store safely, so he went to the tower and offered his help. Inside, Department of Public Safety Agent William Cowan handed him a rifle. Crum, Cowan and Austin officer Jerry Day rode the elevator to the 27th floor.

  Officer Ramiro Martinez was off duty at home when he heard the news at midday. He called the station and was told to help redirect traffic. Other officers were already doing that, so he ran toward the tower and rode up to the 27th floor, where he met Day, Cowan and Crum. Officer Houston Roy McCoy, 26, crossed the campus underground. A university employee who knew the tunnels, named in later awards as William Wilcox, led him and a few other officers safely to the Main Building. McCoy joined the others on the 28th floor.

  On the 27th floor, the group met Michael Gabour Sr., who shouted hysterically that his whole family had been murdered. He was clutching his wife's bloodstained shoes and tried to wrestle a rifle from an officer. Day and Cowan held him back. Officers Jack Rodman and Leslie Gebert went down to the ground floor and told Vera Palmer to switch off every elevator. They began sealing the building's outer entrances, while Cowan set up a police communications post.

  On the stairs, Crum asked Martinez, "Are we playing for keeps?" Martinez answered, "You're damn right we are." Crum said, "Well, you better deputize me." Martinez replied, "Consider yourself deputized."

  Halfway up, they found the bodies of Marguerite Lamport and Mark Gabour, and the badly hurt Mary and Michael Gabour. Michael had been knocked unconscious and had only just woken. He told them there was only one gunman, then pointed toward the deck and said, "He's outside." The two men turned Mary onto her side so she would not drown in her own blood. Then they climbed on to the reception area, where they found the mortally wounded Edna Townsley.

  At about 1:21 p.m., Martinez and Crum reached the door to the deck. Martinez dislodged the dolly and told Crum to stay outside, covering the right-hand side and shooting anyone who appeared from the southwest. Martinez went left. McCoy followed him, and Day arrived and moved to Crum's right. When Crum heard footsteps approaching his corner, he fired one rifle shot into the southwest corner of the parapet. That pushed Whitman toward the northwestern corner.

  Whitman crouched there with his weapon aimed toward the source of Crum's shot. Martinez and McCoy rounded the northeastern corner. Martinez fired his six revolver shots and missed with most or all of them. McCoy leaped from cover, saw Whitman's head above the ballast, and fired at the white headband. Several pellets struck Whitman between the eyes and killed him almost instantly. McCoy fired again, hitting his left side. Martinez grabbed McCoy's shotgun and fired a blast into Whitman's left arm at close range. The time of death was 1:24 p.m., about 96 minutes after Whitman first fired from the deck.

  People on the ground did not know the sniper was dead and kept firing at the tower, narrowly missing Martinez. McCoy had a message relayed to a dispatcher to tell Austin's news media the sniper was dead. As it was passed on, Crum waved a white handkerchief over the parapet. Some early broadcasts and papers wrongly described Crum as the sniper, waving a white flag of surrender.

  Several hundred students, staff and citizens then came out of cover and gathered in silence. KTBC reporter Neal Spelce said they "looked like they were mesmerized." Many, he recalled, wandered around dazed, wondering what had happened "to my world."

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• 7. Names and Answers

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  By 3 p.m., Whitman's name had been broadcast nationwide, after police found several identification cards among his belongings. His father heard the news reports and called the Austin police. He gave them his son's address and that of his former wife. Officers soon found the bodies of both women, with the suicide notes Whitman had left close by.

  At Whitman's home, investigators found two cameras and Kathleen's wedding ring on a dresser by the bed. Beside them was a note: "Have the film developed in these cameras. Thank you." An envelope held a set of written admonitions he appeared to have read every day. On its outside he had written, "8-1-66. I never could quite make it. These thoughts are too much for me."

  An autopsy at the Cook Funeral Home in Austin on the morning of the 2nd of August 1966 found a small tumor. It measured about 2 x 1.5 x 1 cm and lay in the white matter above the amygdala, the brain region tied to emotion. It was not connected to any sensory nerves. Experts still disagree over whether it contributed to the violent impulses he had shown for years. Whitman was buried beside his mother on the 5th of August at Hillcrest Memorial Park in West Palm Beach, Florida.

  Kathleen was buried on the 3rd of August in Davis-Greenlawn Cemetery in Rosenberg, Texas. Her father, Raymond Leissner, refused to hate the son-in-law who had killed his only daughter. He chose to believe the tumor was the cause.

  On the twentieth anniversary of the shooting, Whitman's father agreed to a press interview. A reporter asked whether his son's motive had been to punish him for the way he raised his children and treated their mother. He answered yes, and said, "Yes, it hurt deeply. It always has and there will always be a hurt there, but I don't feel in any way that I was responsible for any of it."

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• 8. What Remained

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  Counting his mother and wife, Whitman killed seventeen people. Two of the dead died long after the siege. Seventeen-year-old Karen Griffith, a Lanier High School student who had been in Kathleen Whitman's biology class, died seven days later. David Gunby, a 23-year-old engineering student shot at about 11:55 a.m., lived in pain for decades. He died in November 2001, aged 58, a week after stopping dialysis, and his death was officially ruled a homicide.

  Mathematician Robert Boyer, 33, was only days from moving to England for a teaching post at the University of Liverpool. Eighteen-year-old Paul Sonntag and his girlfriend Claudia Rutt, a ballet dancer, sheltered behind a construction barricade on Guadalupe Street. Sonntag stood up and was shot in the mouth. Rutt was shot in the chest seconds later as she tried to go to his aid, and died several hours later. Sonntag's grandfather, KTBC news director Paul Bolton, learned of his death as the victims' names were read on air. Mary Gabour was left crippled and legally blind, and her son Michael could not complete his Air Force Academy training.

  The University of Texas closed for one day and reopened on the 3rd of August. Flags flew at half-staff for more than a week. The observation deck stayed shut to the public until 1968. After four students jumped to their deaths from it between 1968 and 1974, it was closed permanently. It reopened in 1999 for guided tours by appointment only, with metal detectors at the entrance.

  Public outcry also pushed the university toward a proper campus police force. In 1967, state senator Alexander Aikin Jr. introduced Senate Bill 162, an act for the protection and policing of state higher education campuses. Governor John Connally signed it on the 27th of April 1967. The first class of commissioned officers from the University of Texas System Police Academy graduated the following year.

  The city of Austin awarded Medals of Valor to Ramiro Martinez and Houston McCoy. Martinez has given many interviews, in which he generally casts himself as the main force in neutralizing Whitman. McCoy, who died in December 2012, avoided attention. The year before his death he told the Austin American-Statesman he did not want his obituary to mention Whitman. He added, "Just be sure to say that I was not the only police officer there that day; it was teamwork."

  Allen Crum moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1972 and never returned to Texas. He died of natural causes in March 2001, aged 75. In 2008, the Austin City Council gave Distinguished Service Awards to fourteen people who helped end the siege. They included Billy Paul Speed, pilot Jim Boutwell, sharpshooter Marion Lee and tunnel guide William Wilcox, and university employee Frank Holder, who helped officers reach the deck.

  The shooting has been retold on screen. The made-for-television drama The Deadly Tower, directed by Jerry Jameson with Kurt Russell as Whitman, was released on the 18th of October 1975. Keith Maitland's 82-minute 2016 documentary Tower interviews victims, rescuers and officers. The 60-minute documentary Sniper '66 won a Lone Star Emmy Award for Best Historical Documentary in 2007.

  A memorial garden north of the tower was dedicated in 2006. By 2014, plans for a larger granite memorial and a bench around the memorial pond had been approved. On the fiftieth anniversary in 2016, the university observed two minutes of silence at 11:48 a.m. It then unveiled a stone monument at the Tower Garden, engraved with the names of the dead and set to face away from the observation deck. Above them is the inscription Interfecti, the 1st of August 1966. The tower clock was stopped at 11:48 a.m. that day and stayed still for 24 hours.

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