Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / Deranged Killers： Charles Whitman - Serial Killer Documentary

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Deranged Killers： Charles Whitman - Serial Killer Documentary · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:02
Speaker 1: He seemed to be the all American boy, but dark
0:05
Speaker 1: thoughts clouded the mind of Charles J.
0:08
Speaker 2: Whitman, an urge to kill that he couldn't stop.
0:13
Speaker 1: On August the first, nineteen sixty six, he barricaded himself
0:17
Speaker 1: at the top of the clock tower at the University
0:19
Speaker 1: of Texas and began shooting.
0:23
Speaker 3: There's no report as to who this man may be
0:26
Speaker 3: or what he's doing up there, and what was this
0:28
Speaker 3: abarent madness.
0:29
Speaker 4: He had the whole program set up for himself. He
0:32
Speaker 4: was in the killing field and he was the killer.
0:39
Speaker 1: In ninety six minutes, Charlie Whitman gunned down forty five strangers,
0:42
Speaker 1: killing fourteen. It was a murders free that changed America forever.
0:49
Speaker 4: But everybody wants to wonder why he just rayed.
1:08
Speaker 1: When he was twelve, Charles J. Whitman became the youngest
1:12
Speaker 1: Eagle Scout in America. As an adult, living in Austin,
1:16
Speaker 1: the state capital of Texas, he led a Scout troop
1:19
Speaker 1: at his local Catholic church.
1:21
Speaker 5: He was loved by the boy scouts, and he took
1:25
Speaker 5: the boys out on a rifle range and he showed
1:28
Speaker 5: them and they injoared.
1:30
Speaker 1: That Toby Hamilton was in Whitman's troop, but he didn't
1:33
Speaker 1: enjoy it. The scout master often taunted the boys.
1:37
Speaker 6: He would take a dollar bill out and he would
1:38
Speaker 6: throw it down on the floor and say, anybody can
1:40
Speaker 6: do what I do, you can have the dollar. Well
1:42
Speaker 6: dollar in nineteen sixty six a lot of money to
1:43
Speaker 6: a kid. But he'd flip upside down. He would go
1:46
Speaker 6: into a handstand position with his feet up on the
1:48
Speaker 6: wall and he would do push ups upside down, and
1:51
Speaker 6: of course we'd all try to do it with fall
1:52
Speaker 6: on our faces, and he would just laugh at us
1:55
Speaker 6: and snatch a dollar bill back and say, see you
1:57
Speaker 6: can't do it, and walk away. I mean, he was
1:59
Speaker 6: just that. It was all about showing off. It was
2:02
Speaker 6: about Charles Whitman. Nothing was about us. I don't know
2:06
Speaker 6: if anybody else in Austin that could shoot like he could.
2:08
Speaker 6: He'd taken us all out to a rifle range at
2:10
Speaker 6: one point, and his marksmanship skills were incredible.
2:16
Speaker 7: There didn't seem to be any reason why he felt
2:19
Speaker 7: so angry, and yet the anger was really deep seated.
2:22
Speaker 7: From his childhood.
2:25
Speaker 1: His father was a domineering presence in Charlie's life. Charles
2:29
Speaker 1: Whitman Senior was strict and overbearing. He often beat his
2:34
Speaker 1: wife and his sons.
2:38
Speaker 8: What's tragic about that relationship is that Charles Whitman Senior
2:42
Speaker 8: apparently didn't see anything at all.
2:45
Speaker 4: Unusual about that.
2:46
Speaker 8: He was a kind of a person who could associate
2:49
Speaker 8: violence and love for a family all in the same sentence.
2:54
Speaker 1: Charlie nursed a hatred for his father. His violence wasn't
2:57
Speaker 1: the only reason. The year constantly pressed and bullied Charlie
3:01
Speaker 1: to succeed. No matter how hard the boy tried, he
3:05
Speaker 1: could never please him, except when it came to his
3:07
Speaker 1: aptitude for guns. His father kept a gleaming collection of
3:12
Speaker 1: over sixty firearms at their home. By the age of twelve,
3:16
Speaker 1: Charlie was an expert shot.
3:20
Speaker 9: He'd been excellent with firearms from the time he was
3:23
Speaker 9: a small boy. His father said he could shoot the
3:25
Speaker 9: eye out of a squirrel at fifty yards beautiful.
3:30
Speaker 1: When Charlie was nineteen, his relationship with his father reached
3:33
Speaker 1: breaking point.
3:35
Speaker 8: He went out with some friends and he got drunk,
3:39
Speaker 8: and his father got enraged to the point where he
3:43
Speaker 8: beat up Charlie and threw him in the family swimming pool.
3:47
Speaker 8: He was so beaten up and drunk at the same
3:50
Speaker 8: time that he almost drowned.
3:52
Speaker 1: He decided to savitize with his father for good. With
3:55
Speaker 1: his mother's encouragement, he joined the United States Marines.
4:01
Speaker 9: When he joined the Marine Corpsy was an outstanding marine.
4:04
Speaker 9: On his first tour, he was well liked. People said,
4:07
Speaker 9: if you had been somebody who'd want to go up
4:09
Speaker 9: with Charles wit he was courteous.
4:11
Speaker 4: His IQ was one hundred and thirty eight.
4:15
Speaker 1: Seeing promise in Whitman, the Marines awarded him a scholarship
4:18
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one to study mechanical engineering at the
4:21
Speaker 1: University of Texas in Austin. There he met a woman
4:25
Speaker 1: who would change his life, Kathy Leisner.
4:32
Speaker 10: She was outgoing, fun cute. She was the kind of
4:36
Speaker 10: girl that everybody wanted to be friends with in when
4:39
Speaker 10: we were in college.
4:41
Speaker 1: After a six month courtship, they married, but their home
4:46
Speaker 1: life was short lived.
4:52
Speaker 11: I have directed that the following initial steps be taken immediately.
4:56
Speaker 1: On October fifteenth, nineteen sixty two, the Cuban miss Up
5:00
Speaker 1: crisis began. The confrontation between the Soviet Union and the
5:03
Speaker 1: US brought Whitman back to active duty. When he managed
5:07
Speaker 1: to return to university. He was no longer a good student,
5:10
Speaker 1: and the Marines withdrew his scholarship. They took Whitman out
5:14
Speaker 1: of the University of Texas and returned him once again
5:17
Speaker 1: to active duty.
5:19
Speaker 8: When Charlie returned to Camp Lejune, North Carolina.
5:23
Speaker 4: He was not a good marine anymore.
5:25
Speaker 8: He guide into fights, he engaged in gambling, He got
5:29
Speaker 8: caught in the possession of an illegal weapon.
5:33
Speaker 1: In December nineteen sixty four, Whitman was discharged from the Marines.
5:37
Speaker 1: He returned to Austin. Determined to redeem himself. He reapplied
5:42
Speaker 1: to the university, was accepted, and started a new course
5:46
Speaker 1: architectural engineering. Charlie Whitman may have had a violent temper,
5:51
Speaker 1: influenced by his father, but he managed to hide it
5:54
Speaker 1: from fellow students and most of his friends. However, his
5:58
Speaker 1: streak of aggression would soon reveal itself in the most
6:01
Speaker 1: brutal manner. Charles Whitman returned to the University of Texas
6:15
Speaker 1: to resume his engineering studies after being discharged from the Marines.
6:20
Speaker 1: In the city of Austin, he settled down with his wife, Kathy,
6:23
Speaker 1: who was also an undergraduate on the surface everything seemed normal,
6:28
Speaker 1: but below a calm exterior, an aggressive personality seethed.
6:34
Speaker 7: He does seem to have been the type of person
6:36
Speaker 7: who did not have much resilience, who was a rigid temperament,
6:41
Speaker 7: probably because his father was as well, and so he
6:44
Speaker 7: would have stored up that anger and the grievances he
6:48
Speaker 7: had so that it really didn't matter if he had
6:51
Speaker 7: friends and had family and went out. He still was
6:53
Speaker 7: an angry young man.
7:00
Speaker 1: July the thirty first, nineteen sixty six, was the hottest
7:03
Speaker 1: day of the year in Austin. Charles Whitman sat at
7:06
Speaker 1: his typewriter in his sweltering home and wrote a letter
7:10
Speaker 1: that attempted to explain his feelings.
7:13
Speaker 12: I don't quite know what compels me to write this letter.
7:16
Speaker 12: I don't really understand myself these days. I am supposed
7:20
Speaker 12: to be an average, reasonable and intelligent young man. However,
7:24
Speaker 12: lately I've been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.
7:29
Speaker 1: The twenty five year old was about to put those
7:31
Speaker 1: irrational thoughts to a deadly purpose.
7:37
Speaker 8: July thirty first, nineteen sixty six. We have a man
7:42
Speaker 8: who has decided to kill a lot of people, and
7:45
Speaker 8: that day was focused on preparing and making decisions and
7:51
Speaker 8: getting what he needed to get to accomplish that goal.
7:57
Speaker 1: That day, he picked up his wife from her part
7:59
Speaker 1: time some job and took her to the cinema. He
8:03
Speaker 1: dropped Kathy for her evening shift and went shopping, buying ammunition, weapons,
8:08
Speaker 1: cans of food, and bottles of water.
8:10
Speaker 8: He planned meticulously, and he made a number of decisions
8:14
Speaker 8: that led to the largest mass murder in the history
8:18
Speaker 8: of America up until that time.
8:23
Speaker 1: In the early evening, Whitman started typing.
8:26
Speaker 12: I've been to a psychiatrist. I've been having violent impulses.
8:31
Speaker 12: I've had tremendous headaches.
8:34
Speaker 1: As he typed, two friends dropped by.
8:37
Speaker 10: When we walked in, there was a typewriter and there
8:41
Speaker 10: was something in it, but of course we didn't stop
8:43
Speaker 10: to look at it or read it, and he was
8:46
Speaker 10: acting very normal.
8:48
Speaker 1: The couple soon left. Despite exams being imminent, Charlie seemed
8:52
Speaker 1: strangely calm and low key.
8:55
Speaker 10: Usually before exams, Charlie was very into studying and didn't
8:59
Speaker 10: have time to do anything, and he was remarkably relaxed.
9:04
Speaker 1: When he was alone again, Whitman continued to type. He
9:09
Speaker 1: outlined exactly what he planned to do.
9:14
Speaker 12: It was after much thought that I decided to kill
9:17
Speaker 12: my wife Kathy tonight. I cannot rationally pinpoint any specific
9:21
Speaker 12: reason for doing this. I intend to kill her as
9:25
Speaker 12: painlessly as possible.
9:31
Speaker 1: After Cathy came home and fell asleep, Whitman went to
9:33
Speaker 1: the home of his mother, Margaret. She had recently moved
9:36
Speaker 1: to Austin to escape her brutal husband. Whitman attacked her
9:41
Speaker 1: as soon as he entered her flat.
9:47
Speaker 8: Then he picked up the body very gently and carefully
9:50
Speaker 8: placed her on her bed, where he put the covers
9:53
Speaker 8: over her body to make it look as if.
9:56
Speaker 4: She was asleep.
10:00
Speaker 1: He left a note near his mother's body, addressed to
10:02
Speaker 1: whom it may concern, I.
10:05
Speaker 12: Have just taken my mother's life. I am very upset
10:09
Speaker 12: over having done it. However, I feel that if there
10:13
Speaker 12: is a heaven, she is definitely there now.
10:17
Speaker 1: He blamed the murder of his mother on his father's cruelty.
10:21
Speaker 12: She took enough of his beatings, humiliation, degradation, and tribulations.
10:29
Speaker 12: I loved her with all my heart.
10:32
Speaker 7: I think the way that Whitman treated his mother by
10:35
Speaker 7: choking and stabbing her was really about anger at her
10:40
Speaker 7: for not saving him. As a child. She knew he
10:43
Speaker 7: was killing her before she died.
10:48
Speaker 1: Returning home, Whitman crept into the bedroom and stabbed his
10:52
Speaker 1: sleeping wife five times in the chest with a bayonet.
10:57
Speaker 1: He returned to the typewriter and the letter he had
10:59
Speaker 1: been right earlier in Blue Ink. He scowled three am
11:04
Speaker 1: both dead. In that letter, Whitman said he had killed
11:10
Speaker 1: the two women to spare them from the murders breed
11:12
Speaker 1: he would soon launch.
11:14
Speaker 7: We have mass murders who kill their families and then
11:17
Speaker 7: say they wanted to spare them. But that's usually a lie.
11:20
Speaker 7: Usually that's just something they're telling themselves. But in fact
11:23
Speaker 7: they're really very angry at these people.
11:27
Speaker 9: The nature of the killings suggests rage. So these were
11:31
Speaker 9: both very violent, very close, very upfront, personal deaths with
11:36
Speaker 9: someone that he professed to love a great deal.
11:40
Speaker 10: Kathy said that when they were first married that he
11:44
Speaker 10: would hit her. She told me that he used to
11:46
Speaker 10: really have a temper.
11:51
Speaker 1: Whitmen had been taking amphetamines in the months leading up
11:54
Speaker 1: to the killings, making his frequent mood swings more volatile.
11:59
Speaker 1: In Factmen had exhibiting warning signs that he was about
12:02
Speaker 1: to crack for quite some time.
12:05
Speaker 7: Often mass murderers are also abusing substances, the likelihood that
12:11
Speaker 7: they will act out is raised because their inhibitions are
12:16
Speaker 7: lowered and their impulsiveness is raised. So the fact that
12:21
Speaker 7: Whitman was taking dexadrine meant he probably wasn't sleeping well.
12:26
Speaker 7: He probably was irritated already being angry. That would have
12:30
Speaker 7: just magnified his sense of the need to pay back
12:34
Speaker 7: somebody or to get revenge.
12:38
Speaker 1: At one point, Whitman even confessed his revenge fantasies in class.
12:42
Speaker 13: Larry looked, Doug said, Miss Riley, Charlie's talking about taking
12:46
Speaker 13: a rifle and going up on the tower and shooting
12:48
Speaker 13: a bunch of people. And I just walked over and
12:51
Speaker 13: put my elbows on his table and said, now, that's
12:53
Speaker 13: just what an old marine needs to do to show
12:56
Speaker 13: that to prove that he can shoot.
12:58
Speaker 4: He never looked up.
12:59
Speaker 13: He had that little bit smile on his face, and
13:03
Speaker 13: he just kept drawing.
13:05
Speaker 1: Whitman saw a campus docture about his anxieties and severe headaches.
13:10
Speaker 1: Once again, he spoke about the clock tower.
13:13
Speaker 8: One of the things that Charlie indicated in the session
13:18
Speaker 8: was that he would like to go up to the
13:20
Speaker 8: top of the University of Texas with a deer rifle
13:23
Speaker 8: and kill people.
13:24
Speaker 1: The doctor asked Whitman to return in a week, but.
13:27
Speaker 14: He never did.
13:29
Speaker 12: I have thought very much about the concept of death.
13:33
Speaker 12: When it overtakes me, someday, I must remember to observe
13:36
Speaker 12: it closely.
13:39
Speaker 1: At sunrise on August the first, nineteen sixty six, Whitman
13:42
Speaker 1: packed enough food to last for two weeks. He also
13:45
Speaker 1: assembled ear plugs, matches, rope, a transistor, radio, binoculars, and
13:54
Speaker 1: gallons of water. There was a machete and three large
14:00
Speaker 1: hunting knives. He sought off the stark and barrel of
14:03
Speaker 1: a brand new twelve gage shotgun and packed it along
14:06
Speaker 1: with three rifles, three pistols, and seven hundred rounds of ammunition.
14:12
Speaker 1: He loaded everything into his car and then put on
14:15
Speaker 1: a repairman's overalls. At about eleven am, he drove to
14:21
Speaker 1: the University of Texas campus as a student. He was
14:24
Speaker 1: waved through security. Meanwhile, city police officer Jerry Day and
14:32
Speaker 1: his partner, Billy speed We was sharing breakfast before going
14:35
Speaker 1: on duty.
14:38
Speaker 11: Billy told me that he was going to turned in
14:41
Speaker 11: his resignation that day. I said, now, Bill, he didn't
14:46
Speaker 11: want to do that, He says, yeah, He says, I
14:49
Speaker 11: feel like I'm going to be heard or killed if
14:52
Speaker 11: I stayed.
14:53
Speaker 14: On the board.
15:00
Speaker 1: When Charles Whitman arrived on campus, he headed to the
15:02
Speaker 1: university's clock tower, a local landmark built in the nineteen thirties.
15:07
Speaker 1: It dominated the Austin skyline, attracting twenty thousand visitors a year.
15:14
Speaker 1: Whitman park nearby and took his equipment to the tower's lift,
15:17
Speaker 1: which carried him to the twenty seventh floor below. On
15:21
Speaker 1: the campus, students and staff walked around as normal.
15:26
Speaker 15: I remember very clearly the weather that day. It was
15:29
Speaker 15: extraordinarily hot. It felt like it was about one hundred degrees.
15:36
Speaker 1: In the towers reception area, the powerfully built former marine
15:39
Speaker 1: was confronted by Edna Townsley. She was a divorced mother
15:44
Speaker 1: of two who was filling in as a receptionist.
15:46
Speaker 8: On her day off, probably because she recognized him because
15:53
Speaker 8: he had been up there before and she knew he
15:55
Speaker 8: was a student and not a university employee or a repairman.
15:59
Speaker 8: Her immediately and he chased her down and just beat
16:04
Speaker 8: her on the back of the head to the point
16:06
Speaker 8: where it almost destroyed her skull.
16:12
Speaker 1: Minutes later, after he had barricaded the entrance to the
16:15
Speaker 1: reception area, a family of six bounded up the stairs
16:18
Speaker 1: to take in the view. As they attempted to jump
16:21
Speaker 1: the barricade, Whitman fired his sawn off shotgun. Fourteen year
16:27
Speaker 1: old Mark Gabour and his aunt, Margaret Lamport were killed instantly.
16:33
Speaker 1: Eighteen year old Mike Gabour lay bleeding on the stairs,
16:36
Speaker 1: while the others fled to the floor below. It was
16:42
Speaker 1: eleven forty three am when Charles Whitman walked out onto
16:45
Speaker 1: the observation deck.
16:50
Speaker 8: He took his foot locker and placed it on the
16:53
Speaker 8: western side of the deck, and then went back and
16:56
Speaker 8: took the dolly and wedged it against the door that
17:00
Speaker 8: you could use to get.
17:01
Speaker 4: Out onto the deck.
17:04
Speaker 8: And so he took guns and he spread them out,
17:07
Speaker 8: guns and supplies and a bunch of different things, and
17:09
Speaker 8: he spread them out in all directions so that he
17:13
Speaker 8: could run from one place to the next and shoot.
17:19
Speaker 1: The University green stretched out on three sides in a
17:22
Speaker 1: dyllic summer mode, with students strolling the walks across campus
17:26
Speaker 1: between classes.
17:28
Speaker 16: August first, nineteen sixty six was a typical hot, steamy
17:34
Speaker 16: August day, in Austin, Texas summer school was in section
17:37
Speaker 16: on the campus.
17:38
Speaker 5: Certainly, there was nothing to suggest that day anything out
17:41
Speaker 5: ordinary is going to go on. You know, it was
17:43
Speaker 5: a very sunny summer Texas day with no clouds in
17:47
Speaker 5: the sky and the very peaceful college campus environment.
17:51
Speaker 4: You know that we were in.
17:53
Speaker 1: A cafe on busy Guadalupe Street on the full side
17:55
Speaker 1: of the tower forest. Priest was taking his usual daily
17:59
Speaker 1: lunch break.
18:00
Speaker 5: Friends for our lunchtime conversation ran over by about five minutes,
18:06
Speaker 5: which I think was instrumental in the say, in my life,
18:10
Speaker 5: any other day that semester oud have been in the
18:13
Speaker 5: middle of the main mall.
18:14
Speaker 1: Of Charles Whitman had chosen his sniper's nest with care.
18:19
Speaker 1: The clock tower's walls were more than thirty centimeters stick,
18:22
Speaker 1: making his position almost impregnable. From below. Behind the imposing parapet,
18:27
Speaker 1: he had a bird's eye view in every direction. It
18:31
Speaker 1: was a spot he had thought of often.
18:33
Speaker 8: Five years before he did it. He looked at the
18:36
Speaker 8: tower and then looked at a friend and said that
18:39
Speaker 8: would be a great place to go up with a
18:42
Speaker 8: deer rifle and shoot people.
18:45
Speaker 1: His friends hadn't taken that kind of talk seriously now
18:48
Speaker 1: would have been considered a joke was becoming a cruel reality.
18:56
Speaker 1: Squinting through his scope, Whitman first targeted Claire Wilson, an
19:00
Speaker 1: eighteen year old student who was eight months pregnant.
19:05
Speaker 16: If he had wanted to, he could have placed a
19:08
Speaker 16: bullet between her eyes, but instead he went down the
19:12
Speaker 16: body and zeroed in and focused on a fetus and
19:16
Speaker 16: killed an unborn baby as his first target.
19:24
Speaker 1: The bullet pierced Claire's abdomen and killed her unborn child.
19:28
Speaker 1: As she fell, her boyfriend Thomas Eckman bent down to
19:31
Speaker 1: help her. He was shot as well and died instantly.
19:37
Speaker 1: Claire was left bleeding on the ground, but she survived.
19:45
Speaker 15: The first thing that I noticed was a loud report
19:49
Speaker 15: from the firing of a rifle. I began to hear
19:55
Speaker 15: people screaming. Someone standing fairly near me next to the
19:59
Speaker 15: student union building shouted at me that someone was on
20:02
Speaker 15: the tower firing.
20:07
Speaker 1: As he got closer, Cliff Drummond came upon a scene
20:10
Speaker 1: of pandemonium. As victims dropped and people ran for cover
20:13
Speaker 1: from the sniper in the tower.
20:17
Speaker 5: The cashiers said, you guys are not go out there.
20:19
Speaker 4: Somebody's shooting a gun.
20:20
Speaker 15: He was popping out, selecting our target, focusing in on it,
20:25
Speaker 15: and firing and pulling back in a manner of a
20:29
Speaker 15: very small number of seconds.
20:31
Speaker 8: This was not the act of a person who didn't
20:34
Speaker 8: know what he was doing. It is the act of
20:36
Speaker 8: someone who is preparing for in his own line of war.
20:41
Speaker 1: Charles Whitman's assault on Austin came without warning. Nothing like
20:46
Speaker 1: it had ever happened previously. There had been many mass
20:49
Speaker 1: murders in America, but their drama had been played out
20:52
Speaker 1: in private. Never before had a gunman taken aim on
20:56
Speaker 1: complete strangers in a public place and methodically them down.
21:02
Speaker 16: The thing that stopped everyone and made them probably more
21:06
Speaker 16: of a target than they would have been normally. They
21:09
Speaker 16: couldn't believe what was happening. They froze, and they looked
21:13
Speaker 16: up at that what you know, what's going on here?
21:16
Speaker 16: And that wham, they're here.
21:20
Speaker 1: Robert Boyer, a professor of mathematics, was due to take
21:23
Speaker 1: a position at Liverpool University in the autumn, lay dead
21:27
Speaker 1: on the South Moor. Then Thomas Ashton, who was attending
21:34
Speaker 1: a course before starting volunteer work in Iran, lay mortally wounded.
21:41
Speaker 1: Four minutes after Whitman opened fire, Austin police started to arrive.
21:46
Speaker 3: We've got out. I don't know the details there yet,
21:50
Speaker 3: but we got all the going After the with rival.
21:54
Speaker 1: More than one hundred city policemen, the Highway Patrol and
21:57
Speaker 1: Texas Rangers began to converge on the camp. At first,
22:03
Speaker 1: it was not clear what tactics to use against the sniper.
22:07
Speaker 1: Charles Whitman had everybody pinned down, but eventually the bravery
22:11
Speaker 1: of a few officers would end the carnage. In August
22:25
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, gunfire from the top of the clock
22:28
Speaker 1: tower on the campus of the University of Texas had
22:31
Speaker 1: law enforcement officers and the university population running for cover.
22:36
Speaker 1: One of the first City of Bostin policemen to arrive
22:39
Speaker 1: was Houston McCoy.
22:41
Speaker 17: I looked up there on the north end there was
22:43
Speaker 17: one shot. Then right in the middle there was a shot,
22:47
Speaker 17: and then did on south there there was a shot.
22:52
Speaker 1: Whitman had positioned weapons on every side of the tower,
22:56
Speaker 1: shooting from east, west, north, and south. He gave the
22:59
Speaker 1: impression that there was more than one sniper.
23:02
Speaker 4: I thought there was at least three of right there, you know, it.
23:05
Speaker 1: Was a time of uncertainty in America.
23:08
Speaker 4: Thing to hit my mind.
23:09
Speaker 17: It was all these political factions going on, and everybody's
23:12
Speaker 17: saying there's going to rebel against America and all this stuff,
23:15
Speaker 17: and it's thought that this mightight be the time the
23:17
Speaker 17: revolution is started.
23:19
Speaker 1: You know, radio reporter Neil Spelse was one of the
23:23
Speaker 1: first newsmen on the scene.
23:25
Speaker 16: You know, as you drive up to the campus, you
23:28
Speaker 16: hear sirens, you hear bullets, you see people running, you
23:31
Speaker 16: see people screaming, and so I started broadcasting right away.
23:36
Speaker 3: This is Negl Spels and Red Rovert from the University
23:38
Speaker 3: of Texas campus. This is the warnings of the citizens
23:41
Speaker 3: of Austin stay away from the university area. Traffic is
23:44
Speaker 3: now converging on this area and there is a sniper
23:47
Speaker 3: on the university powerfying at will.
23:51
Speaker 1: Patrol Officer Jerry Day responded to the emergency shortly after
23:54
Speaker 1: the shooting began.
23:56
Speaker 11: And the first thing I saw was too young ladies,
23:59
Speaker 11: about seven and they were shot down. One of 'em
24:05
Speaker 11: apparently was still was in terrible shot, her whole chest blow.
24:09
Speaker 3: Now he is definitely under the clock on the south
24:12
Speaker 3: side and police are returning the fire. After sniper. There's
24:16
Speaker 3: no report as to who this man may be, or
24:19
Speaker 3: what he's doing up there, or what part did this
24:21
Speaker 3: abart madness.
24:22
Speaker 4: I didn't knew I had to do something.
24:24
Speaker 11: I mean, you see, you see those bodies laying there
24:27
Speaker 11: forwhere and this.
24:28
Speaker 4: Gotta be stopped.
24:31
Speaker 1: As the bloodshed continued, people risk their lives to try
24:34
Speaker 1: and rescue the wounded and dying.
24:37
Speaker 14: Ran. How many have you gone after rescue today too?
24:41
Speaker 14: What did you have to do? Run hard and keep low?
24:46
Speaker 14: Did you have any trouble getting them up? Or? Uh?
24:48
Speaker 14: Did any shots come close to you while you were
24:50
Speaker 14: out there? The shots came close to me. It just
24:52
Speaker 14: the last one. He was dead. He was dead way,
24:54
Speaker 14: he was a little hard.
24:55
Speaker 13: Picked up too limp, not like someone's not there.
25:00
Speaker 14: How many have you seen that are dead today? There's
25:03
Speaker 14: one whole nay more.
25:06
Speaker 1: Cliff Drummond spotted one victim slumped against a parking meter.
25:11
Speaker 15: Not moving at all, and it was clear that there
25:14
Speaker 15: was some blood around his face and neck.
25:18
Speaker 1: He and another student made a dash into the line
25:20
Speaker 1: of fire to help him.
25:23
Speaker 15: We took off and it was then that, without hearing
25:26
Speaker 15: any shots, I had a very definite understanding that the
25:31
Speaker 15: pavement was exploding around us. We picked this young man up,
25:36
Speaker 15: who had obviously been shot in either the throat or
25:38
Speaker 15: in the mouth, and a car came racing down the drag,
25:43
Speaker 15: saw that we were there, and it screeched to a stop.
25:47
Speaker 15: They opened the back, We picked the m r. And
25:50
Speaker 15: they roared off south down the drag.
25:57
Speaker 1: Thirty five minutes into Whitman's massacre, eight people lay dead
26:01
Speaker 1: and seven more had been wounded.
26:04
Speaker 3: This was a.
26:05
Speaker 15: Huge scale that was unfolding before us, and it was
26:11
Speaker 15: real and it was deadly. There were a lot of
26:13
Speaker 15: people down, a lot of people that we knew were dead,
26:16
Speaker 15: we didn't have any idea how many, and a lot
26:19
Speaker 15: of blood in a lot of places.
26:22
Speaker 1: Charlie Whitman turned his blistering fire on the businesses of
26:25
Speaker 1: Guadaloupe Street with deadly effect. Recent high school graduates Paul
26:32
Speaker 1: Sontag and Cloudia Rutt were both shot dead. A teenage
26:38
Speaker 1: paper boy was picked off while riding his bike. Forrest
26:43
Speaker 1: Priest was running down the street, moving quickly to his
26:45
Speaker 1: right when something made.
26:46
Speaker 5: Him stop, and approximately ten seconds after that, a very
26:51
Speaker 5: high power rifle bullet came past my ride ear and
26:54
Speaker 5: it hit a gentleman named Harry Walchuck who was standing
26:56
Speaker 5: aside a little news stand in my ride.
26:58
Speaker 1: Harry Walchuck, ah SCHTI student and father of six, died
27:02
Speaker 1: later in surgery.
27:03
Speaker 11: I saw a wounded man out in the middle of
27:05
Speaker 11: Waterloop Street and Minor Pire, and he just sitting there
27:08
Speaker 11: and he's holding his arm, and.
27:11
Speaker 4: I told him, want to get up and get out
27:12
Speaker 4: of here.
27:13
Speaker 14: Piece of what I do?
27:14
Speaker 4: What I do? This was the question of the day
27:17
Speaker 4: for everybody.
27:19
Speaker 14: Anyway.
27:19
Speaker 11: I went over to the middle of the street and
27:22
Speaker 11: I stood him nothing and put him behind a tree.
27:27
Speaker 16: There was this odd feeling that ran through my head
27:31
Speaker 16: several times. How long can this go on? How long
27:36
Speaker 16: can this continue? Yes, there are people shooting back at him,
27:39
Speaker 16: but how are they going to get to him?
27:43
Speaker 1: The former marine in his citadel, had the citizens of
27:46
Speaker 1: Austin in his sights and it's policemen at bay. There
27:50
Speaker 1: seemed to be only one way to end it.
27:53
Speaker 17: I just thought he was in a ford. There's only
27:56
Speaker 17: got one way. We had to get him that fort
27:58
Speaker 17: with him.
28:00
Speaker 1: In his fault. On top of the University of Texas
28:02
Speaker 1: clock tower, Charles Whitman listened to the reaction to his
28:05
Speaker 1: mayhem on a transistor radio.
28:08
Speaker 3: It's a battle now. It's a battle between the sniper
28:10
Speaker 3: and the police. It started out as a one sided
28:13
Speaker 3: affair with a man taking off targets from a good
28:17
Speaker 3: distance away.
28:19
Speaker 11: He was very militaryly inclined. He had the whole program
28:23
Speaker 11: set up for himself. He was in a killing field
28:27
Speaker 11: and he was the killer. And we found out later
28:32
Speaker 11: that he had left to note that he was going
28:35
Speaker 11: out to kill the pigs, and he considered everybody a pig.
28:40
Speaker 15: He had shot people who were either running or moving.
28:43
Speaker 15: He was actually a better marksman with a moving target
28:46
Speaker 15: than he was with a stationary target.
28:49
Speaker 1: Whitman's marksmanship was stunning. He shot and killed Roy Schmidt,
28:53
Speaker 1: an electrician who had taken cover with some reporters five
28:55
Speaker 1: hundred meters away.
28:57
Speaker 3: We just upper smoke and fired again.
29:00
Speaker 1: The police carried only thirty eight caliber pistols and shotguns,
29:03
Speaker 1: none of which had the range to reach Whitman in
29:05
Speaker 1: the tower. An aeroplane with a police marksman aboard was
29:10
Speaker 1: flown over the tower to bring him down, but as
29:13
Speaker 1: the plane approached, Whitman fired at it.
29:18
Speaker 16: But Whitman is sitting there on top of that with
29:20
Speaker 16: a place to rest his arms and look up at
29:23
Speaker 16: that plane and fire a shot, and that plane got
29:26
Speaker 16: out of there quickly, or it would have crashed because
29:28
Speaker 16: he could have brought the plane down.
29:31
Speaker 1: His marksmanship allowed him to bring down a policeman.
29:34
Speaker 3: There has been a report of a policeman that has
29:36
Speaker 3: been shot.
29:37
Speaker 17: When I looked down, I saw Billy Speed. Officer Billy
29:40
Speaker 17: Speed get hit right up here on this right shoulder.
29:43
Speaker 16: The shot that killed police Officer Billy's Speed was placed
29:48
Speaker 16: through an opening no more than this far, maybe six
29:52
Speaker 16: inches apart, and he from the top of the tower
29:56
Speaker 16: shot down between those two supports on a railing and
30:01
Speaker 16: went right through there and hit Billy's Speed with a
30:03
Speaker 16: fatal shot.
30:06
Speaker 4: He was the only Ulster killed that day.
30:09
Speaker 11: He's sort of in some strange prophsided that left.
30:16
Speaker 1: An hour into Whitman's massacre, the body count stood at
30:19
Speaker 1: eleven dead and twenty wounded. Out Gunned police officers and
30:25
Speaker 1: civilians went home to retrieve their own high powered rifles.
30:30
Speaker 11: The whole community turned out as like a militia out there.
30:33
Speaker 11: I mean, they were after this guy. They didn't know either,
30:36
Speaker 11: how many were out there.
30:37
Speaker 4: Nobody knew really what it was at the top.
30:42
Speaker 1: As increasing numbers of armed civilians fired at the tower,
30:45
Speaker 1: the sniper himself was pinned down.
30:47
Speaker 11: Firepower from downstairs kept him under those walls, and his
30:53
Speaker 11: plan went to mop right there.
30:55
Speaker 4: It just really stopped him.
30:58
Speaker 1: But the police was struggled too.
31:01
Speaker 18: Back in those days, we did not have communications, we
31:04
Speaker 18: did not have henheild radios. And once the policeman was
31:07
Speaker 18: out of his car, he was on his own. And
31:09
Speaker 18: what I was trying to do is find someone from
31:12
Speaker 18: the police department that could tell me, Hey, do we
31:14
Speaker 18: have a plan or.
31:14
Speaker 4: This is what we're doing.
31:15
Speaker 18: But I couldn't find anyone.
31:18
Speaker 1: Ramiro Martinez, Jerry Day, and Houston McCoy independently decided to
31:22
Speaker 1: make their way to the observation deck separately. They approached
31:27
Speaker 1: the tower, they.
31:30
Speaker 8: Ran through gunfire, or dealt with death and dead bodies
31:36
Speaker 8: and blood and gunfire, and they had no idea how
31:41
Speaker 8: many people were up there. There could have been ten
31:44
Speaker 8: snipers for all they knew.
31:47
Speaker 1: Houston McCoy made his approach through an underground maintenance tunnel.
31:52
Speaker 1: Jerry Day met a civilian named Alan Crumb at the
31:54
Speaker 1: tower who insisted on being his backup. He had a
31:58
Speaker 1: rifle and together they went up to the reception floor
32:01
Speaker 1: just below the observation deck. There they found the tourists
32:05
Speaker 1: that Whitman had shot on the stairs.
32:10
Speaker 11: And then I found poor bodies, one of them setting
32:14
Speaker 11: up his lady had been shot out from under him.
32:16
Speaker 4: An eighteen year old boy, a fourteen year old boy.
32:20
Speaker 11: Belong to paces by a shotgun laying on the floor.
32:25
Speaker 4: And then the ant.
32:27
Speaker 11: So the eighteen year old boy house talking to him,
32:29
Speaker 11: and he grabbed me and he wanted my gun, and
32:31
Speaker 11: he said, I'm going up there and kill the oba.
32:34
Speaker 4: I said, well, I'll go up there for you.
32:38
Speaker 1: Ramiro Martinez was close behind.
32:41
Speaker 4: I got on the elevator.
32:44
Speaker 18: And pushed to the twenty seventh floor and I said, uh,
32:49
Speaker 18: perfect act of contrition. It's a prayer the Catholics say,
32:52
Speaker 18: if you are expecting to get into some danger or
32:57
Speaker 18: you may die.
33:00
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Jerry Day descended to the twenty seventh floor to
33:03
Speaker 1: call for backup. He had the lift arriving and cocked
33:07
Speaker 1: his thirty eight. The door slid open.
33:13
Speaker 17: I had my shot, got off safety and party right
33:15
Speaker 17: of Jerry Day, and I think I remember the other
33:19
Speaker 17: officers saying that they all had their thirty eight two
33:23
Speaker 17: party of Jerry Day.
33:24
Speaker 4: So we had Jery Day for sure.
33:27
Speaker 11: I'm point in my room over right now and more.
33:31
Speaker 11: I smiled like I was glad to say that.
33:36
Speaker 1: Alan Crumb had followed Ramiro Martinez.
33:39
Speaker 18: When I first started going up the steps by myself
33:43
Speaker 18: before Ellen Crumb volunteered to come up with me, I
33:45
Speaker 18: felt very.
33:46
Speaker 19: Lonely and I could have gone. I would have continued
33:56
Speaker 19: by myself.
33:58
Speaker 18: But I'll tell you what that Ellen Crumb, when you
34:01
Speaker 18: volunteered to go with me, So that was like the
34:04
Speaker 18: Rock of Gibraltar.
34:07
Speaker 1: They went up to the observation deck. Officer Martinez went outside,
34:13
Speaker 1: backed up by Houston McCoy armed with a shotgun, and
34:16
Speaker 1: Alan Crumb.
34:18
Speaker 17: All of us followed Martelles out and I turned around
34:22
Speaker 17: and went my back to Marties. I told the civilia,
34:24
Speaker 17: don't you know, you just stay right here as you
34:27
Speaker 17: didn't think it comes around at the southwest corner.
34:34
Speaker 1: All around them, bullets fired by people on the ground
34:36
Speaker 1: were hitting the tower's walls and parapet.
34:39
Speaker 17: Three splats hit right above my head were ground fire.
34:43
Speaker 17: Somebody saw my head, you know, and.
34:46
Speaker 4: They didn't aim too good.
34:49
Speaker 1: Over ninety minutes, forty five people had been shot. While
34:53
Speaker 1: Alan Crumb kept watch at the southwest corner, Ramiro Martinez
34:57
Speaker 1: and Houston McCoy moved towards the norm east. The nervous
35:02
Speaker 1: civilian accidentally fired his weapon. It's alerted Whitman, who had
35:06
Speaker 1: taken refuge from the withering fire below the parapets on
35:09
Speaker 1: the tower's north side.
35:12
Speaker 20: He was sitting there and when Crumb fired the round,
35:15
Speaker 20: he was looking south and Martinez McCoy came around from
35:21
Speaker 20: the northeast side.
35:23
Speaker 18: Well, I fired or shot at right away.
35:25
Speaker 4: He started firing down to down town just that quick.
35:30
Speaker 18: And I kept advancing and shooting, and uh, into my gun.
35:35
Speaker 4: McCoy was behind me at the time with.
35:37
Speaker 18: A shotgun and he shot.
35:39
Speaker 17: It and uh, I remember his mouth was open and
35:43
Speaker 17: and uh saw that's not relive just for that, he
35:47
Speaker 17: just kind of slid down. It in my mind's eye
35:50
Speaker 17: and this is just what I see now, you know that, Uh,
35:54
Speaker 17: as he was sliding down out of I kind of
35:56
Speaker 17: seen that that rifle was dropping, dropping.
35:59
Speaker 14: Out of his hand.
36:01
Speaker 1: Officer Martinez threw down his empty gun and grabbed his
36:04
Speaker 1: colleague shotgun. He ran to Whitman and fired at point
36:08
Speaker 1: blank range. The clock in the tower read one twenty four.
36:20
Speaker 18: It's just been like a robot. But when I saw
36:24
Speaker 18: this dead guy right then I became a human being again.
36:30
Speaker 4: I had fear.
36:31
Speaker 18: I could feel the heat, I could feel the strain,
36:34
Speaker 18: My adrenaline had stopped pumping. My knees just kind of buckled.
36:39
Speaker 18: My legs felt like the rubber and I said, I
36:43
Speaker 18: need to get the hell out of here.
36:45
Speaker 17: So I told Martinez, you go tell Jerry Day to
36:47
Speaker 17: call the off. The police department had off. The police
36:49
Speaker 17: department announced over the radios that it's all over.
36:53
Speaker 11: After that, Martinez run downstairs hollering, I.
36:55
Speaker 4: Got it, and I got him.
36:56
Speaker 14: I got him.
36:57
Speaker 3: It was a real spouse for the bulletin from the
36:59
Speaker 3: KTB your radio news room, a sniper is dead.
37:05
Speaker 11: It didn't seem like ninety minutes that same It seemed
37:08
Speaker 11: like a few and then it's but then it's in
37:12
Speaker 11: like a thousand years, and it seemed like we were
37:15
Speaker 11: all in war.
37:17
Speaker 1: As words spread, people gathered silently beneath the tower.
37:23
Speaker 4: From out of nowhere.
37:24
Speaker 21: It just seemed like people came pouring pouring in from everywhere,
37:28
Speaker 21: and we went about the business the end of taking
37:30
Speaker 21: the bodies down the receptionists that had had been killed.
37:35
Speaker 4: Uh on the tower.
37:37
Speaker 21: Phil counter and I found an old army like it
37:40
Speaker 21: might even been one of the witnesses.
37:41
Speaker 20: We use that for a gurney or stretcher and took
37:44
Speaker 20: her down in the elevator.
37:46
Speaker 15: There were literally a few thousand people there, very close.
37:51
Speaker 15: It was extremely hot. It was now extremely quiet, and
37:57
Speaker 15: there were guns everywhere, and everyone had the muscles pointed
37:59
Speaker 15: up and or down at the street as they brought
38:04
Speaker 15: down the Gabors and later brought down Whitman, and people
38:10
Speaker 15: then began to quietly disperse and go their own way.
38:14
Speaker 15: But it was very sad in Austin that night.
38:18
Speaker 1: In the aftermath of the mass murder in Austin, some
38:21
Speaker 1: who knew Charles Whitman was shocked and amazed.
38:24
Speaker 5: He was always kidding and joking and just full of life,
38:28
Speaker 5: and I like to be around him.
38:32
Speaker 22: Bad enough with what he did with people, But the
38:34
Speaker 22: idea of killing Kathy and his mother just seemed incomprehensible
38:38
Speaker 22: because he just cared so much about them.
38:42
Speaker 1: Charles Whitman was dead, but could there be an explanation
38:46
Speaker 1: for his butchery? Officers from the Austin, Texas Police Department
38:58
Speaker 1: ended the nineteen minutes massacre at the University of Texas.
39:02
Speaker 1: Once Charles Whitman was himself dead, people wanted to know
39:05
Speaker 1: why he had become a mass murderer. Attention focused on
39:12
Speaker 1: his father. Charles Whitman sor.
39:15
Speaker 11: I only think the factor in this is his mental
39:18
Speaker 11: strength from his actual study.
39:19
Speaker 8: He was trying to prove a point to himself, to
39:22
Speaker 8: his family, me and his mother, and all of the
39:25
Speaker 8: microphones are in his face, and he says some very
39:29
Speaker 8: very controversial things.
39:31
Speaker 4: I love guns.
39:32
Speaker 8: I'm a fanatic about guns, and I taught my children
39:35
Speaker 8: how to use guns.
39:37
Speaker 15: He's been hunting with me ever since he was a youngster,
39:39
Speaker 15: and he has his own rifles and everything else, and
39:41
Speaker 15: I taught him the use of him as well as the.
39:43
Speaker 4: Value of him.
39:47
Speaker 1: The investigation led police to more weapons in the former
39:50
Speaker 1: Marine sharpshooters home.
39:54
Speaker 9: An amazing assortment of rifles, shotguns, pistols, knives.
39:58
Speaker 1: They also found the self guarding writings of Charles Whitman.
40:02
Speaker 12: I wonder if I will ever taste the sweet honey
40:05
Speaker 12: of success for myself and my loved ones. As I
40:08
Speaker 12: look back over my past few adult years, they seem
40:11
Speaker 12: so wasted. Will I ever accomplish anything I set forth
40:15
Speaker 12: to do?
40:15
Speaker 1: At the top of one page, he had written, I
40:18
Speaker 1: never could make it. These thoughts are too much for me.
40:22
Speaker 1: It was dated the day of the massacre. In one
40:25
Speaker 1: of his lengthy notes, Whitman asked that an autopsy'd be
40:29
Speaker 1: carried out. He was convinced that something was physically wrong
40:32
Speaker 1: with him. As it turned out, he was right. Pathologists
40:37
Speaker 1: discovered that he had a brain tumor.
40:41
Speaker 2: It was determined that he had a glioblastoma multiforma, which
40:45
Speaker 2: is a later stage, virulent, aggressive, malignant tumor.
40:52
Speaker 9: Man They said that that tumor was adjacent and involving
40:56
Speaker 9: a structure called the amygdala, and it's not uncommon for
40:59
Speaker 9: people with tumors of the amigdala to have rage episodes
41:03
Speaker 9: or rage attacks.
41:07
Speaker 1: One of the symptoms of this type of tumor is hypographia,
41:10
Speaker 1: an uncontrollable urge to write.
41:14
Speaker 12: I don't quite know what compels me to write this letter.
41:17
Speaker 12: I don't really understand myself these days.
41:20
Speaker 2: He felt very strongly that he just had to write,
41:24
Speaker 2: and although it may have been incriminating, he couldn't control it.
41:29
Speaker 2: He just had to put it on paper.
41:33
Speaker 1: The final death toll for Charles Whitman's murderous free is
41:36
Speaker 1: sixteen dead and thirty two wounded. The sixteenth victim, David Gunby,
41:42
Speaker 1: died in two thousand and one of complications from a
41:45
Speaker 1: wound inflicted on August the first, nineteen sixty six. But
41:52
Speaker 1: the victims weren't all in Austin. Something in America changed
41:55
Speaker 1: that day.
41:58
Speaker 15: What he did changed a lot of things in this country.
42:02
Speaker 15: I think it really did take away our sense of
42:05
Speaker 15: safety in public places.
42:07
Speaker 16: I think Charles Whitman's legacy is that he left us
42:11
Speaker 16: with a sense of place that was no longer private
42:15
Speaker 16: and safe, that we always have to kind of look
42:17
Speaker 16: around a little bit.
42:19
Speaker 4: And that's a horrible legacy to have left behind.
42:24
Speaker 1: On the University of Texas campus, there is a memorial
42:27
Speaker 1: garden dedicated to the victims. However, for Frederick Priest, the
42:33
Speaker 1: clock tower remains a potent symbol.
42:36
Speaker 5: It's kind of served as a marker in my life
42:38
Speaker 5: that when things had gone so well for me, I
42:41
Speaker 5: start saying, well, buck up, you've been standing.
42:44
Speaker 4: A few feet to your right.
42:45
Speaker 5: You probably wouldn't been shot that day, and you wouldn't
42:47
Speaker 5: be alive so come on, make the best of it,
42:49
Speaker 5: you know.
42:51
Speaker 1: For the men who stopped Whitman that day, it is
42:54
Speaker 1: impossible to forget.
42:56
Speaker 4: It never goes away.
42:58
Speaker 11: It's implanted in your mind, and his surfaces, but it's
43:06
Speaker 11: only adault now.
43:08
Speaker 18: Whitman's spirit still lives there. In effect, he might have
43:12
Speaker 18: gotten what he wanted.
43:13
Speaker 4: So after I'm gone, people are gonna forget me. But
43:17
Speaker 4: when they go around to get to.
43:18
Speaker 18: Texas towers, say Charles Whitman. So his name will live well,
43:23
Speaker 18: And that's sad to see.
43:34
Speaker 14: Continuing the film's on Discovery season, Tomorrow Night at nine,
43:37
Speaker 14: Laurence Olivier stars as the man trying to foil a
43:40
Speaker 14: diabolical Nazi plot in classics thriller The Boys from Brazil.
43:44
Speaker 5: Next year Tonight, though there's an unseen evil in a
43:47
Speaker 5: haunting