![]() They fired at him with rifles equipped with telescopic sights but could not pin him down. Shooting and darting from side to side in the heights of the tower, Whitman kept officers at bay. Whitman’s mother and father were separated about five months ago. Giving partial quotations, however, police said Whitman’s notes told of “hating his father with a mortal passion.” The notes also said his mother “gave the best 25 years of her life to that man.” He declined to release all of their contents. Wells said the notes left in each place were different. The 23-year-old wife was stabbed in the Whitmans’ small duplex home.ĭetective Lt. The mother was shot and stabbed to death in her fifth-floor luxury apartment near the campus. ![]() Police said Whitman wrote that he was killing the women to spare them embarrassment over what he was about to do. The notes told of depression, repressed violence and severe headaches. Police said Whitman left notes near the bodies of his wife and mother, slain separately in their homes. ![]() She was in her eighth month of pregnancy. A sixteenth victim was the unborn child of a woman who was wounded. Two policemen ended the carnage by climbing to a platform above the sniper, Charles Joseph Whitman, 24, and killing him with six shots from a revolver and two blasts from a shotgun loaded with deer slugs.Ĭounting the sniper, the dead totaled 15. Dozens of times since Whitman, a lone gunman has claimed large numbers of victims in single shooting incidents.įive decades after its original publication, The Associated Press is making available a version of its story, written by AP newsman Garth Jones, along with photos. The killing spree introduced the nation to the concept of a “mass shooting” outside the context of a military battlefield, coining a phrase in American lexicon that’s become chillingly commonplace. He had killed his wife and mother prior to heading to the tower, one victim died in the hospital a week later and medical examiners eventually attributed a 17th death to Whitman in 2001 - a man who had been shot and wounded in his one functioning kidney and elected to stop dialysis treatment. He killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others before authorities gunned him down. 1, 1966, when architectural engineering student and Marine-trained sniper Charles Whitman climbed to the observation deck of the 27-story clock tower in the heart of UT’s flagship Austin campus, armed with rifles, pistols and a sawed-off shotgun. It was shortly before noon on a sweltering Monday morning, Aug. AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Before Virginia Tech and Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora and Orlando, there was the University of Texas tower shooting.
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