The Charles Whitman Papers

Shortly before noon on Monday, August 1, 1966, Charles Joseph Whitman barricaded himself on the observation deck of the University of Texas tower in Austin and began shooting everyone he could see through the telescopic sight on a high-powered Remington hunting rifle. Because of the many buildings surrounding the tower and the vantage point it afforded a sniper, people on and off the campus were slow to realize that the distant, reverberating booms were gunshots; many understood what was happening only when someone nearby fell dead or wounded from a well-aimed bullet. In the first 20 minutes, Whitman hit at least two dozen people. Before police broke through his barricade, over an hour later, he had shot a dozen more--firing from an elevation of 231 feet and hitting his victims at ranges up to 500 yards. The final toll was 14 dead and 31 wounded. Unlike most mass murderers, Whitman had prepared his offensive with meticulous attention to details and apparently knowing that his actions would be recorded as an atrocity. During the previous night, he had killed his wife and his mother and left letters and a poem--never before published--that offer chilling insights into the workings of a mind that could remain lucid and analytical while planning and committing murder.

Sunday, July 31, 1966, 6:45 P.M.

I don't quite understand what it is that compels me to type this letter. Perhaps it is to leave some vague reason for the actions I have recently performed. [At this point, Whitman had harmed no one; his wife and mother were elsewhere in the city, still alive.]

I don't really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I can't recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts. These thoughts constantly recur, and it requires a tremendous mental effort to concentrate on useful and progressive tasks. In March when my parents made a physical break I noticed a great deal of stress. I consulted a Dr. Cochrum at the University Health Center and asked him to recommend someone that I could consult with about some psychiatric disorders I felt I had. I talked with a Doctor once for about two hours and tried to convey to him my fears that I felt come [sic] overwhelming violent impulses. After one session I never saw the Doctor again, and since then I have been fighting my mental turmoil alone, and seemingly to no avail. After my death I wish that an autopsy would be performed on me to see if there is any visible physical disorder. I have had some tremendous headaches in the past and have consumed two large bottles of Excedrin in the past three months.

It was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife, Kathy, tonight after I pick her up from work.... I love her dearly, and she has been as fine a wife to me as any man could ever hope to have. I cannot rationally pinpoint any specific reason for doing this. I don't know whether it is selfishness, or if I don't want her to have to face the embarrassment my actions would surely cause her. At this time, though, the prominent reason in my mind is that I truly do not consider this world worth living in, and am prepared to die, and I do not want to leave her to suffer alone in it. I intend to kill her as painlessly as possible....

About 7:30, Whitman stopped typing to answer a knock at the front door. He admitted a classmate and his wife, who were surprised to find the usually tense, moody Charles Whitman uncommonly relaxed and amiable--in retrospect, like a man who had finally found the strength to make an agonizing decision and could rest in the knowledge that, for good or bad, he was irrevocably committed. The classmate was even moved to remark to Whitman that he wasn't biting his fingernails. Whitman only smiled. To his visitors, he seemed carefree, pleased with himself.

About 9:30, Whitman said goodbye to his friends and drove to pick up Kathy. He took her home and stayed there until she went to bed, then he drove to his mother's apartment in another part of the city. In the bedroom, he stabbed her in the chest with a bowie knife and somehow crushed the hand on which she wore her wedding and engagement rings. On a legal pad, he wrote:

Monday, 8-1-66, 12:30 A.M.

To Whom It May Concern:

I have just taken my mother's life. I am very upset over having done it. However, I feel that if there is a heaven she is definitely there now.

last recorded thoughts of a mass murderer

And if there is no life after, I have relieved her of her suffering here on earth. The intense hatred I feel for my father is beyond description....

Whitman completed the note with an elaboration of his hatred for his father, an expression of love for his mother and the hope that "If there exists a God, let him understand my actions and judge me accordingly." Then he drove back to his cottage and stabbed to death his sleeping wife. In the margin of his unfinished letter, he added:

Friends interrupted, 8-1-66, Mon., 3:00 A.M.

Both Dead.

I imagine it appears that I brutally killed both of my loved ones. I was only trying to do a good thorough job.

If my life insurance policy is valid please see that all the worthless checks I wrote this weekend are made good. Please pay off all my debts. I am 25 years old and have never been financially independent. Donate the rest anonymously to a mental health foundation. Maybe research can prevent further tragedies of this type.

Charles J. Whitman

Give our dog to my in-laws, please. Tell them Kathy loved "Schocie" very much....

During the next several hours, Whitman readied himself. At one store, he bought extra ammunition; at another, he bought an automatic shotgun, which he took home and sawed off in gangster fashion. In a footlocker and a bundle he packed the shotgun, two rifles, three handguns and miscellaneous supplies, including food, toilet paper and a bottle of underarm deodorant. About 10:30 A.M., he drove with his arsenal and supplies to the University of Texas campus and dollied them toward the administration building and its tower. When he reached the reception room at the observation level, he clubbed to death the middle-aged woman who tended the guest register and dragged her body behind a couch.

Moments later, a boy and a girl came in from the outside walkway. They saw an armed man in coveralls and assumed that the school was thinning out its pigeon colony again. "We smiled and said hello. He smiled back real big and said, 'Hi. How are you?' " They walked around a sticky reddish puddle on the floor and left. More sight-seers--a family--arrived within minutes and were met by blasts of buckshot that killed two of them and wounded two others. Then Whitman blocked the door with a heavy desk, went out onto the tower's fortresslike parapet and began shooting--at first over the top of the 18-inch-thick outer wall, later through drain spouts that served as gun ports and afforded protection against riflemen on the ground. He knew how to allow for his own downward angle of fire and adjusted his scope accordingly. He hit a reporter running at full speed across an open space. He put a bullet through a light airplane circling overhead.

Some 90 minutes after the shooting began, two city policemen and a deputized civilian crawled over the bodies on the stairway leading from the elevator to the observation level and forced their way into the reception room. Then they crept along the outside walkway, closing in from two directions. At one corner, the civilian poked his rifle around the edge of the building and fired blind; as Whitman whirled to answer the shot, the two policemen stepped out from the opposite corner and riddled him with buckshot and revolver bullets. Then one officer picked up a towel and waved from the parapet to signal it was over.

On the poem Whitman left, he noted, "8-1-66. Written sometime in early 1964 when I was in a similar feeling as I have been lately."

To maintain sensibility is the greatest effort required--

To slip would be so easy, it would be accomplished with little effort....

To burden others with your problems--are they problems?--

Is not right--However

To carry them is akin to carrying a fused bomb--

I wonder if the fuse can be doused--

If it is doused what will be gained

Will the gain be worth the effort put forth

But should one who considers himself strong, surrender to an enemy he considers so trivial and despicable....