Charles Whitman

Charles Joseph Whitman, aka the Texas Tower Sniper, was the spree killer responsible for the University of Texas shooting in 1966.

Background
Charles Joseph Whitman was born in 1941 in Fort Worth, Florida where his father, Charles Adolph "C.A." Whitman, ran a plumbing business and had, besides Charles, two sons named Patrick and John with his wife, Margaret. He was sometimes abusive to her and would discipline his sons physically. Growing up, Charles was a pitcher in a local baseball team, took up piano lessons, was an Eagle Scout and was taught by his father how to handle firearms along with his brothers. All three brothers were also altar boys at the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church. On July 6, 1959, less than a month after he turned 18, Charles joined the U.S. Marine Corps. His father, who was strongly opposed to the decision, personally made a call to "some branch of Federal government" and tried to have his son's acceptance reversed. Charles spent most of his service at the USMC's base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba and was a part of the Naval Enlisted Science Education Program (NESEP), a scholarship program which trained engineers who were to become officers. He earned a number of decorations, including a Sharpshooter's Badge, and proved to be an excellent marksman, especially at rapid fire from long distances and at moving targets. On September 15, 1961, he entered the mechanical engineering program at the University of Texas on a Marine Corps scholarship.

While studying, Whitman practiced karate, scuba diving and was also an avid hunter; the latter got him in trouble on one occasion when he shot a deer, took its carcass to his dorm room and skinned it in the shower. Also, though he was quite intelligent, his grades were sub-par and he began racking up some gambling debts. After marrying his girlfriend, Kathy Leissner, he did pick up the slack a bit, but the USMC withdrew his scholarship in 1963 and he was sent to active duty at the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune near Jacksonville, North Carolina. Though he was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal upon returning, it was difficult for him to re-adjust to the military after his time in civilian life; he was court-martialed for gambling, usury and possession of a non-regulation firearm. He was sentenced to 30 days of confinement and 90 days of hard labor and was demoted to the rank of Private. In 1964, he was honorably discharged, having had his father use his connections to get his service time shortened, and moved back to Austin, Texas, where he continued studying. While his wife worked as a biology teacher, he changed his major from mechanical engineering to architectural engineering and held down some jobs for short periods of time, including as a bill collector for Standard Finance Company, a bank teller and a traffic surveyor. He was also a Scoutmaster. In May of 1966, Whitman was contacted by his mother, Margaret, who announced that she was filing for divorce from her husband. Whitman went to Fort Worth and helped her and one of his brothers, John, move to Austin. The third brother, Patrick, stayed in Fort Worth with their father, who kept calling Whitman and asked him to talk Margaret into returning. Over time, Whitman became more and more troubled with the way his life had gone; his wife even suggested that he should seek counseling.

The Shooting
On July 31, Whitman apparantly finally snapped completely. During the day, he bought a knife and a pair of binoculars at a surplus store and Spam at a 7-11, all of which he brought with him to the shooting. In the evening, he wrote a suicide note in which he requests that an autopsy of him be done after his death and that his remaining estate be donated to mental health research. At night, he killed first his mother, leaving a written apology by her side, and then his wife. In the morning the next day, he called their respective workplaces and told them they wouldn't be able to make their shifts. In the morning of the next day, August 1, he bought an M1 carbine, claiming he was going to use it for hunting wild hogs, and a 12-gauge shotgun, the barrel of which he shortened. He also brought a scoped Remington 700 hunting rifle, a .35 pump rifle, a .357 Magnum revolver and a 9 mm Luger pistol as well as a hatchet, a machete (neither of which was used during the shooting), ammo, water, gasoline, canned food, a portable radio, a compass, a flashlight and batteries, a can of charcoal starter and a box of matches. He packed the supplies in his old Marine footlocker and loaded it onto a two-wheel dolly he had rented, paying with useless checks, and drove to the university dressed in khaki coveralls. He entered the Main Building's tower, using his old Career Identification Card which allowed him to carry heavy equipment on campus. He took the elevator to the 27th floor and carried his cargo up three floors. On the 28th floor, he knocked out a receptionist, Edna Townsley, with the butt of a rifle. She later died of her injuries in a hospital. When two families, M.J and Mary Garbour and their two sons and William and Marguerite Lamport, got past a barricade set up by Whitman, entered the floor, he blasted them with his shotgun, killing two people. M.J. Garbour and William Lamport ran for help.

At 11:48 a.m., Whitman started firing with his rifles at random bypassers from the tower's outer observation deck after barricading the door behind him. By the time police arrived, students and other pedestrians were hiding behind whatever cover they could find. When they arrived, two police officers, Billy Speed and Jerry Culp, took cover behind a statue along with some other people. Whitman managed to hit Speed in the abdomen through a six-inch gap, killing him. More police officers of both the Austin Police and the University Police were called in and started unsuccessfully returning fire at him from a long distance. Civilians also began bringing out their guns and fired at Whitman. Finally, police officers Jerry Day, Houston McCoy and Ramiro Martinez, a Department of Public Safety officer named W.A. Cowan, an armed civilian named Allan Crum and some other people managed to make their way to the tower's 27th floor. They carried Mary and Mike Gabour to safety and approached the door to the observation deck, where Whitman was perched. After they broke through his barricade, Martinez snuck around a corner and emptied his .38 revolver at Whitman, but missed. While Whitman reached for his weapon to return fire, McCoy shot him twice with a shotgun and then ran towards his body, which was still alive and twitching, and fired another shot into him at point blank range, killing him. At 1:24 p.m., Whitman was declared dead. During his autopsy, it was discovered that he'd had an aggressive brain tumor which could have affected his ability to control his emotions. In spite of what he had done, Whitman, being an ex-Marine, was buried with an American flag draped over his coffin at the Hillcrest Memorial Park in West Palm Beach, Florida, next to his mother and brother John. In 1976, the observation deck was closed for the public and remained closed until the university's 115-year anniversary in 1999.

Modus Operandi
Whitman killed his mother and girlfriend by stabbing them; his mother was also shot. At the University of Texas campus, he fired from the tower at bypassers with the rifles he brought.

Fatalities

 * July 31, 1966:
 * Margaret Whitman, 43
 * Kathy Whitman (née Leissner), 23
 * August 1, 1966: The University of Texas shooting
 * Edna Townsley, 47
 * Marguerite Lamport, 45
 * Mark Gabour, 16
 * Thomas Eckman, 19
 * Robert Boyer, 33
 * Thomas Ashton, 22
 * Thomas Karr, 24
 * Billy Speed, 22
 * Harry Walchuck, 39
 * Paul Sonntag, 18
 * Claudia Rutt, 18
 * Roy Schmidt, 29
 * David Gunby
 * Karen Griffith, 17

Injuries

 * August 1, 1966: The University of Texas shooting
 * Mary Gabour
 * Mike Gabour
 * Claire Wilson
 * 29 other unnamed injured

On Criminal Minds
In the Criminal Minds novel Killer Profile, Whitman is mentioned to have been one of the spree killers covered in Max Ryan's book Serial Killers and Mass Murderers: Profiling Why They Kill, which the UnSub used as basis for a series of copycat murders. It is unknown if he was really planning to copy Whitman as well, much less how he would have planned to do so and flee the scene without getting caught.