It’s amazing that we can remember mass murders that just shocked the nation so many decades ago. But now there are mass murders that happen on a monthly basis that barely get a mention in the headlines before they are passed over by another mass murder.
I blame it on Whitman’s wife majoring in education. Liberal arts majors can drive someone crazy.
I remember this because I was to go to college only a few years later.
I remember crossing the campus and looking up at one of the buildings that looked out over the campus and being reminded of the story and worrying it could happen again at my campus.
The X-files did a story based on it,”Blood”. I could see that the minute I saw it. The reports from the days of that Texas shooting really impressed me, as it did others. I don’t know if it was the shock of something like that happening at at time when nothing like that happened or because of the way the reporting was, or the coverage was a lot but it really never left my mind.
No apparent mention by the media writer of the citizens who returned fire on Whitman’s position within a few minutes after he started, and kept him from killing even more people, until the cops could show up and rush his position.
“There was a rumor
About a tumor
Nestled at the base of his brain
He was sitting up there with his .36 magnum
Laughing wildly as he bagged them
Who are we to say the boy’s insane?”
Kinky Frieman - “The Ballad of Charles Whitman”
He was sitting up there for more than an hour,
Way up there on the Texas Tower
Shooting from the twenty-seventh floor. Yahoo!
He didn’t choke or slash or slit them,
Not our Charles Joseph Whitman,
He won’t be an architect no more.
Got up that morning calm and cool,
He picked up his guns and walked to school.
All the while he smiled so sweetly
And it blew their minds completely,
They’d never seen an Eagle Scout so cruel.
There was a rumor about a tumor
Nestled at the base of his brain.
He was sitting up there with his .36 Magnum
Laughing wildly as he bagged ‘em.
Who are we to say the boy’s insane ?
Some were dying, some were weeping,
Some were studying, some were sleeping,
Some were shouting “Texas # 1!”
Wasn’t there a movie where R Lee Ermey was impressing marines about shooting skills using Whitman as an example?
Never mind Full Metal Jacket
“In one scene set during basic training, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman praises the marksmanship of Whitman and Lee Harvey Oswald, saying both learned to shoot in the U.S. Marines.”
Psychotropic drug development and use really came into being in the 1950s. They turned my husband into a Jekyll and Hyde.
The UT Tower shooting was August 1, 1966.
“...and it’s one reason that I have been civically active and contributed everything I can to good causes around town...”
Austin is loaded with people like this. They are called democrats.
A Marine and his weapon holds off a city...he also had brain damage and knew something was wrong...he left a suicide note
“After my death I wish that an autopsy would be performed on me to see if there is any visible physical disorder.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mind-murderer_n_1384102
My best friend’s Father in law was killed by that man that day. For some people, it’s very personal. Not for me, but for them, it is deeply personal.
He might have been a victim of the Camp LeJuene water contamination which is still being litigated.
***who used multiple guns and fired off about 150 rounds. ***
His main rifle he used was a Remington bolt action 6 MM hunting rifle. The news media dubbed it a “sniper rifle”.
Just a few months earlier Richard Speck murdered eight student nurses with a knife.
One of THREE mass killings done before the 1968 gun control act became law and before the insane asylums were closed down in the 1970s and the crazies dumped on the streets. When that happened mass shootings took off like a rocket.
The ONLY mass killings(not done by criminal gang wars) before 1970 were...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-first-mass-murder-us-history-180956927/
Howard Unruh in 1949 with a Luger pistol.
Richard Speck 1966 who murdered 8 student nurses with a knife.
Charles Whitman in 1966 with a Remington bolt action rifle.
Yet semi auto rifles had been on the market to anyone since 1903. Why no mass killings blamed on semi auto rifles till 1984?
I remember watching it on black and white tv. I knew the campus pretty well even as a kid.
It was so hot that day, and there was a girl who had been shot laying out in the sun for what seemed like hours. Horrifying.
Yet one more reason to ALWAYS CARRY!
A lot of doctors think this caused his anger and violent impulses behind the shooting
JFK,RFK and King.
Throw in ‘Nam and Manson it was
A Very Bad Time for All.