Tower of Terror

The deranged Eagle Scout... -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
In August of 1966 I was all of 8 years old living in Austin, enjoying my summer vacation. One hot day, my lunchtime TV broadcast was interrupted with a special TV report. It seemed a sniper was shooting people indiscriminately from the University of Texas Tower -- the 28-story Main Building with an observation deck.

I ran outside and joined my two friends (David Cotton and David Berryman) in the excitement of it all. We climbed to the top of Berryman's roof and strained to see what was happening with binoculars. We were a good 5 miles away, otherwise the action would've been foolhardy and tragic in the extreme. (In fact a couple of Whitman's victims may have been adult gawkers trying to get a look). Fortunately from the distance of University Hills, we could see nothing and were out of the maniacal gunman's range. My father was working on his math doctorate at UT and my aunt was working on her bachelor’s this particular day. Both had been ordered by campus intercom to stay huddled in their classrooms, away from the windows.

The gunman was 25 year-old Charles Whitman, an ex Eagle Scout, Marine veteran and UT engineering student. A nice-looking, tow-headed young man with a crew cut, nobody could have imagined that this former altar boy could harbor such violent feelings. When his journals and psychiatric records were later examined it seems that Whitman had a deep-seated hatred for his father. It’s ironic that he strangled and stabbed his wife and his mother earlier that fateful day – apparently his father-rage was redirected to his female relatives. (His journal said he didn’t want them to be embarrassed.)

In our post-9/11 world, it’s amazing how lax the rules were then. Whitman put his many supplies (gun, knives, ropes, water, spam, sweet rolls, journal, toilet paper, canvas, gasoline and other strange sundries) in a large trunk. He dressed a bit like a maintenance man and brought his trunk to the UT Main Building on a dolly. He simply showed his student/employee ID to the security officer and was waved thru as a maintenance worker. Upon reaching the Observation office suite, he killed the receptionist by bashing her head with a gun butt. He barricaded the office door and killed two tourists coming up the stairs with shotgun blasts. Then from 11:48AM until 1:24PM, Whitman engaged in a sniper attack that gripped Austin Texas and terrified the nation. He picked off pedestrians, students, shoppers and tourists like so many ducks in an arcade gallery – most victims were on Guadalupe Street, a west campus shopping strip.

At @ 1:24, Austin officers Houston McCoy and Ramiro Martinez pushed past the barricade and ran onto the south deck. In retrospect it seems like an invitation to death – Whitman was waiting for them in a corner, knowing they’d arrived. It may be that Whitman had already surrendered to some extent – he didn’t meet them with any fire. Martinez fired 6 shots with a revolver and McCoy fired two rifle blasts. It’s believed that McCoy’s rifle blasts are what killed actually Whitman, although the boastful Martinez received full credit for the killing long after the fact. For his part, McCoy dealt with post-traumatic stress syndrome for many of the years that followed.

In the final tally, Whitman killed 16 people and injured 31. One of the 31 had to be on life-support for 30 years – when he suspended the life support and died in 1996 the statistic was changed to 17 fatalities. At Whitman’s own pre-mortem suggestion, a thorough autopsy was done which did indeed reveal that he had a large brain tumor, a glioblastoma. Neurologists think that this type of tumor could affect emotions and fight-or-flight reflexes. This may be an explanation but never a justification for what horrible events transpired that August afternoon. The JFK assassination had somewhat inured us to irrational violence, but this was a new twist.

There have been several similar events since Whitman – most notably Columbine High School. All we can leave off with is a cliché, “Things are not always what they seem”. How could we miss the mark so tragically here? In the hindsight-is-20-20 department, it’s noted that Whitman had fantasized about “shooting people like pigs” to his therapist. There’s no clear way even yet to draw the line between psycho rants and a healthy person letting off steam. On August 1, 1966 America actually saw the difference first hand, gruesomely.

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