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Charles Whitman

This article is about the criminal Charles J. Whitman. For the politician, please see Charles S. Whitman.

On August 1, 1966, ex-Marine Charles Joseph Whitman (June 23, 1941 - August 1, 1966) embarked on a shooting spree that left sixteen residents of Austin, Texas dead and thirty-one others wounded. In addition to fourteen sniper victims Whitman also killed his wife and mother the night before. David Gunby, one of the first people shot on campus, died over three decades later from his injury (see below). Whitman was an architecture major at The University of Texas and an ex-Marine.

Dressed as a workman and pushing a steamer trunk with his supplies, he entered the Main Building of the University of Texas slightly after 11:30 a.m. Claiming to be a maintenance worker, he had obtained a permit at a UT Police checkstand on West 24th Street northwest of the tower to enter the inner campus drive. After parking near the foot of the Main Building and shoving his steamer trunk inside on a dolly, he told an attendant on the ground floor "you don't know how happy you've made me" when she helped him enter the elevator.

Upon arriving at the top floor the elevator reached, he pulled his trunk up two short flights of stairs to the deck area itself. Encountering a middle aged attendant at her desk in the small room guarding passage to the four-sided deck, he bashed her skull in with a rifle butt, shoved her behind her desk and left her for dead. (In the aftermath it was revealed she had traded shifts with a co-worker.) A young couple who had been out on the deck sightseeing came into the attendant's area moments later and encountered him. The girl saw "a mess" on the floor, but did not realize it was the attendant's blood. Whitman told them to just keep moving along. The boy remarked afterwards that the look in Whitman's eyes told them that they had better follow his orders. Later, observers said that they were the "luckiest people in town" that day.

Some tourists who were heading up the stairs moments later were not so fortunate. As the two teenaged boys in the group opened the deck area door from the stairway, Whitman met them with blasts from his illegally-fashioned sawed-off shotgun. The gunfire sent them, along with two women in the party, tumbling back down the stairs to a landing. Of the four, one boy and a woman died and the two others had permanent injuries. The two men in the group, who were at the foot of the stairs when the shots rang out, were not hit. One of them was crazed with desire for revenge, while the other was numbed with shock.

Whitman's trunk contained a sniper rifle and numerous other weapons including the sawed off shotgun for close-in use, deodorant, a radio, shaving gear, snack food and other items. Over the next ninety six minutes he shot down from the tower into the surrounding area, aiming at random civilians. The first shots from the tower towards the ground came at 11:48 a.m.

A history professor who had an office in Garrison Hall, overlooking the Main Mall, saw the first victims drop to the ground just south of the tower and immediately phoned the Austin police department. His call was followed by a flurry of similar phone messages from other horrified campus-area employees clamoring for police help and medical assistance. (In those pre-cell phone days, few students had instant access to phones.)

The murderous rampage sparked panic among residents in Austin as news spread on the local media and by word of mouth. Ramiro Martinez, an Austin police officer, was cooking himself lunch and readying for his afternoon shift when he heard a bulletin on KTBC-TV from newsman Joe Roddy. He immediately called police headquarters to see if he could help and was told to go without delay to the campus area and assist with traffic control. As the drama played out, he was one of the two officers who would fire the final shots at Whitman. His on-duty colleague Houston McCoy had received the primary call to proceed to campus minutes before. When the magnitude of what was happening became apparent, every officer on duty was ordered to the campus area. Other off-duty officers like Martinez threw on their uniforms and hurried to help.

Had Whitman arrived on the deck slightly later, he would have been in time for summer session lunch hour foot traffic as classes let out--the number of potential victims would have been greatly increased. As it happened his prey was limited to stragglers. The victims were young to old, male and female, and his accuracy was astounding; two hits found their mark more than 450 yards away from the tower. The worst killing zone, as far of numbers of people hit, was Guadalupe Street (known as "The Drag"), which is still the major shopping, food service, and business district across from the west side of the campus.

Local Secret Service agents from the Johnson administration as well as sheriff's department officers, Department of Public Safety officers, Austin police and campus police came to assist at the scene, but Whitman was well barricaded on the deck. In fact, as later observers said, the deck was tailor made for a madman like Whitman. During the latter part of his rampage, he was using the drainspouts located on each side to fire through, making him virtually impossible to hit from the ground.

As word went out, many students and area residents with high powered deer rifles loaded their their weapons and ran to campus to return fire. Students, bystanders and campus area employees performed heroic acts to drag or carry wounded victims to safety where they could be picked up by ambulances. An armored car service which served Austin banks wheeled a vehicle to campus. It was of great assistance in helping pick up victims.

In 1966, Austin did not have a 911 system or city-operated ambulances. The ambulances were run by the funeral homes. Many funeral home employees risked their lives in the effort to save victims. One, Morris Hohmann, from Hyltin-Manor Funeral Home, was working on the Drag to load up victims at the corner of West 23rd Street at the height of the seige. He had ducked and was moving along behind his firm's ambulance, which was turning the corner slowly to the west and Whitman saw him as his cover disappeared. Whitman's shot hit his leg, ripping open a major artery. As his damaged limb ballooned in size, he had to use his own belt as a tourniquet on it to keep from bleeding to death. He was soon loaded into his own ambulance and rushed to the Brackenridge ER along with many others who had been jammed into in the vehicle. He survived and became a respected funeral director at Hyltin-Manor.

Austin only had one full-scale emergency room at that time--in Brackenridge Hospital--a city run facility on IH 35 about ten blocks south of the UT area. It quickly became overtaxed with victims. Doctors, nurses, and medical technicians raced there from all parts of the city to reinforce the on-duty staff. The lines at the city blood center on IH 35 and at Brackenridge itself stretched for blocks as citizens lined up to donate their life fluid. One victim said that people were laid in a row on the emergency room hallway floor "like cordwood." Nurses and other personnel strived to treat the most seriously wounded first. Later reports showed that the totally over-extended staff did a magnificent job and saved many lives. Legend has it that in the aftermath, one exhausted and distraught nurse who had maintained professional composure through the whole ordeal broke down crying and threw her blood-soaked shoes in the trash.

Law enforcement officials tried to distract or even shoot Whitman by flying around the tower in a small airplane commandeered from a local air park. The plan to fire at him from the plane was abandoned when it became obvious that a stray bullet could hit innocent people in upper offices/classrooms in the tower. Whitman actually fired at the airplane. The officer on board suddenly realized the predicament he would be in if the pilot was hit, because he had no flying experience. But the officer did provide useful communications to ground personnel about Whitman's movements throughout the incident and he was able to confirm that there was only one shooter. Austin police contacted nearby Bergstrom Air Force Base about bringing in an armed helicopter to aid in the assault effort, but the problem of hitting the wrong people was the same.

One of the most poignant events in the madness happened when Paul Bolton, then the dean of Austin broadcast news who was anchoring the KTBC-am (now KLBJ-am) coverage, heard a list of the dead being read on-air by Joe Roddy, one of his reporters. Roddy, who broke the story on KTBC-TV, was in a remote unit at the Brackenridge Hospital ER. Bolton interrupted and requested that Roddy reread a name on the list. Bolton said, "that's my grandson." Indeed, the named victim was Paul Sonntag, Bolton's grandson, who was shot along with his girl friend Claudia Rutt on the Drag. Sonntag had instantly died. Rutt, who took a bullet while trying to reach for her injured boy friend and pull him to safety, died from a lung injury after admittance at the ER.

Back at the Austin police station, the two men who ran the switchboard were deluged with calls from the campus area begging for help as victims were pulled into stores and classroom buildings. In addition, as word spread nationwide, news organzations ranging from radio stations in Texas to the national networks in New York City were phoning and demanding information. These calls were put off, since the two operators had no way of dealing with them and the backlog of crucial pleas for assistance was growing by the minute.

The attacks continued until the observation deck was stormed by volunteers who took it upon themselves to stop the killing. Two armed APD officers, Houston McCoy and Ramiro Martinez, along with a temporarily deputized private citizen, SWAT) Team in the Los Angeles Police Department.

The reason behind Whitman's suicidal rampage is still unknown, though it has been suggested that he had a mental disorder (a brain tumor was discovered during his autopsy which may have irritated his amygdala, causing bouts of rage), that he was under the influence of amphetamines, and that he was homicidal-suicidal. In fact, he had left a note at his home which indicated he knew that he would never survive. Some amateur psychologists tried to justify Whitman's actions as being a result of his strong-willed and abusive father's parenting techniques. Whitman's final notes reflected this anger, especially about the way his mother had been treated by his father. As for the amount of time he had spent planning the rampage, investigative journalists later found one of Whitman's acquaintances who had been standing by him one day months before as he gestured towards the tower and remarked that someone with a deer rifle could do a lot of damage from up there.

After the tragedy, the university bell tower's observation deck was closed to the public for two years. It was re-opened in 1968, but a number of suicides during the 1970s caused it be closed again in 1975. The tower remained closed for twenty-three years, finally being re-opened in 1998.

In 1972, Harry Chapin recorded a song about the shooting, entitled "Sniper." Current day Texas singer Kinky Friedman has also recorded "The Ballad of Charles Whitman."

The movie Full Metal Jacket contains a scene in which a Marine Corps drill instructor tells his recruits that Whitman's phenomenal accuracy was a result of his training as a rifleman in the Marines.

On November 12, 2001