Posted on 08/01/2026 7:52:32 AM PDT by DFG
Edna Elizabeth Townsley, Mark Jerome Gabour, Marguerite M. Lamport, Thomas Frederick Eckman, Dr. Robert Hamilton Boyer, Karen John Griffith, Thomas Ray Karr, David Hubert Gunby, Thomas Aquinas Ashgton, Paul Bolton Sonntag, Claudia Marilyn Rutt, Harry Walchuk, Officer Billy Paul Speed, Roy Dell Schmidt and the unborn son of Claire Wilson.
These are the names of the people who lost their lives when a shooter turned a simple day at the University of Texas into one of the darkest days in Texas history. This Saturday, August 1, marks the 60th anniversary of the UT Tower shooting, a day when 18 people lost their lives, including the shooter, and more than 30 were injured.
"The entire nation experienced the terror of what was going on in that 96 minutes in real time, and it happened just three years after America had gone through the mass trauma of literally witnessing in real time the murder of the President of the United States," Seamus McGraw, author of From a Taller Tower: The Rise of the American Mass Shooter, said to MySA. "Had it not been for that, I don't know what would have happened, but I do know that it established this rhythm of atrocity in search of fame or infamy."
What happened during the UT Tower shooting?
Charles Whitman was 25 years old, a former Marine and a former mechanical engineering student at UT when, on August 1, 1966, he murdered 17 people. Whitman had murdered his wife, Kathleen Frances Whitman, and mother, Margaret Elizabeth Whitman, hours before he climbed to the 28th floor of the UT Tower and began shooting at 11:48 a.m.
Receptionist Edna Elizabeth Townsley, 51, was the first person killed that day. She was followed by Mark Jerome Gabour, 18, and Marguerite M. Lamport, 56, who were touring the tower when they were fatally shot as Whitman made his way to the observation deck. Eighteen-year-old Claire Wilson was the first person wounded after Whitman opened fire. She survived but lost her unborn son as a result of her injuries.
Whitman terrorized the UT campus for 96 minutes, firing from the tower as dozens desperately clung to shelter and every Austin Police Department officer in the area descended on the scene. Ultimately, it was the combined efforts of officers Houston McCoy and Ramiro Martinez, who responded despite being off duty, and civilian Allen Crum, a retired Air Force tail gunner, who climbed the tower to confront Whitman. McCoy fatally shot Whitman at 1:24 p.m., ending the attack.
The final toll stood at 18 people killed, including Whitman, Kathleen and Margaret, with another 31 injured. David Hubert Gunby did not die on August 1, but his only functioning kidney was damaged in the shooting. He ultimately died in 2001 at age 58 from kidney disease, but his death was ruled a homicide.
What led to the UT Tower shooting?
Gary Lavergne was an employee at ACT, the non-profit organization best known for administering the college readiness assessment test, and in 1995 he traveled around the country. During one of his many trips, he stumbled upon an episode of American Justice with Bill Kurtis that touched on the UT Tower shooting. Remembering the massacre as a kid, Lavergne went in search of a book on the shooting and couldn't find one that had gone in depth about the incident, even 30 years later. So, he set out to write the definitive true crime book about August 1, 1966, resulting in A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders, published in 1997.
One of the questions Lavergne explores throughout the book is what drove Whitman to carry out the attack. While an autopsy revealed Whitman had a brain tumor — a finding that has fueled decades of speculation about its role in the shooting — Lavergne strongly disputes the idea that the tumor was to blame.
"I wanted to believe that something drove him to do this against his will. That something overpowered him," Lavergne said to MySA. "I researched that book for over two years, and when you look at what he actually did the 48 hours before he went up there and started shooting people, I came across with the firm belief that nothing made him do this against his will. He spent 48 hours planning and making serial decisions in a correct order, leading to a goal."
Whitman's past leading up to the shooting has been a topic of scrutiny. Jo Scott-Coe's book Mass: A Sniper, a Father, and a Priest looked into a Catholic priest who may have abused Whitman. Her second book connected to Whitman, Unheard Witness, investigated his wife and how she may have experienced years of abuse before the shooting.
"I think one of the most surprising things is looking at the narrative of this history differently," Scott-Coe said to MySA. "In other words, instead of seeing the tower shooting as the event, seeing it as the culmination of events already in motion."
Six decades later, no single explanation has emerged for why Whitman carried out the attack. As McGraw put it, hundreds of thousands of people die of tumors every year, but not one of them died on the University of Texas campus on August 1, 1966.
One of the darkest days in Texas history
The Sutherland Springs church shooting remains the deadliest mass shooting in Texas history. The attack at Robb Elementary in Uvalde horrified the nation with the killing of 19 children and two teachers. Mass shootings at an El Paso Walmart, Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen and Fort Hood each left lasting scars on Texas. Many historians consider the shooting at the UT Tower on August 1, 1966, a turning point in the history of mass shootings in America, changing how the nation understood and responded to such attacks.
The UT Tower shooting is widely regarded as the nation's first modern mass shooting on a college campus. It was the first to make international news. Television and radio helped people follow the events in real time. These things are all too common, as more than 500 mass shootings have occurred across the country in the last 60 years, according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government.
"The University of Texas massacre stands out because I honestly believe it was the progenitor of so many of these [shootings]," McGraw said to MySA. "There's a lot of blood that's been spilled that may not have been spilled otherwise had things gone down differently that day."
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
Oddly enough, the shooter wasn’t a tranny
I still remember the coverage on the news of this though I was young.
X-files did an episode called ‘Blood’ based on this. I recognized it right away because of the clock tower in the story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_(The_X-Files)
My friend’s father is one of the victims named above. We don’t talk about this, though.
“Do any of you dumbasses know who Charles Whitman was?”
I was in the Army stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington.
“MKUltra. A successful CIA experiment.”
Very few mass murders, except by organized crime, before the mental hospitals were closed in the 1970s and the crazies dumped on the streets. I can remember four.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-first-mass-murder-us-history-180956927/
1949 Howard Unruh considered the first. Luger pistol.
Richard Speck killed 8 student nurses with a knife,
Charles Whitman with a bolt action rifle,
Charlie Manson gang with knives and a .22 pistol.
Yet semi auto rifles have been around since 1903. So why so few mass murders until the mental hospitals were closed?
My belief is the politicians are using these mass murders as a way to force gun bans on us. That is why they have not reopened the mental hospitals back up.
Biggest mass murder was on 9-11 when moslems armed with $3 box cutters ended up killing almost three thousand people. No guns involved.
There was in the early 1970s, a Made-for-TV movie (THE DEADLY TOWER) about this mass murder. When the show finished and the end titles were run a voice over came on telling about his brain tumor. That voice over was DROWNED OUT by a bigger louder voice over telling us to watch some show coming on in a few days.
It is as if the network broadcasters did not want the public to know about his tumor. This movie had it’s usual anti-gun spew at that time.
THE DEADLY TOWER
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072852/?ref_=ls_t_15
I don’t know what was going on in the 60s, but that decade pretty much destroyed America.
The CIA was probably up to something, or commie infiltrators that purposely destroyed America from within. But yeah the 60s were a decade of hell and we are still paying the price today.
JFK 11-22-1963.
.
The devil’s in the details.
Marvelous song by Harry Chaplin worth a listen : “Sniper”. Personalizes the shooter.
My uncle was on campus during the shooting and it changed the rest of his life. I attended there less than a decade ago, and had some classes in the building opposite the square on the north. I could never pass by the library without thinking about the carnage he caused. If you are retired Army, then you know what a shooting position is was on top of the library. He controlled effectively at least a quarter to half mile, and if fact shot as far away as sixth street.
Another product of psychiatric atrocities er I mean treatment.
Peter Gabriel did a song about a shooter on his third solo album as well.
Not entirely true.
Except for those who stood at the intersection of Elm and Houston in Dealey Plaza, JFK was not murdered in "real time". But there are thousands of morons who claim they *saw* the assassination because they later watched the Zapruder film which was not "in real time". For them, it was a recorded event. Even then, the Zapruder film was suppressed until a decade later.
The execution of Lee Harvey Oswald happened "in real time" as it was carried out on live television by NBC as they tried to document Oswald's transfer from the city jail to the county jail.
Part of Whitman's rampage was captured on live tv in Austin as it was broadcast by the local PBS affiliate that was a block or two away from the tower. All they showed, however, were puffs from the rifle.
To be more accurate, these were the first incidents shown in the media era of such a spontaneous event.
MK Ultra went live and was a success. It was classified so they just lied and said a brain tumor to cover it up. Embalmed the same day he died and the autopsied the next day. BS. The trusting public of the 60s just ate it up.
I remember watching the made for TV movie when i was a kid- it freaked me out...
Oh, yes! Talented singer and great comedian. The "LIttle Tramp" bit was classic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.