Serial Killer of the Month: Charles Whitman…All American

“Charles Whitman killed 12 people from a 28 story-high observation deck from distances up to 400 yards… and where did he learn to shoot?! The Marines…[this] individual show[s] what one motivated Marine and his rifle can do. And I expect you all to be able to go home and do this yourself when I’m done with you.”

—Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket

Charles Whitman was the youngest eagle-scout in scouting history when he received his in 1953, at the age of 12. A good looking blonde boy, he was an average kind of guy. His father was particularly hard, often beating his mother, expecting much from his sons. His son Charles was an excellent student, a completer, an organized do-it-the-best kind of boy. After coming home drunk one night about the time his father went crazy, beating the boy, and finally throwing him violently into the family swimming-pool, where Charlie nearly drowned. He joined the Marines shortly thereafter. He spent 18 months in Guantanamo Bay on active duty, where he was a reckless gambler. He would back out on paying huge gambling debts. But he would violently demand payment on his wins. At one point he skipped out on a debt, and carried a .357 with him for several months until he heard that the bookie was in jail for auto-theft charges. He was honorably discharged from the Marines after being court-marshalled for having an un-military pistol and threatening a fellow soldier over a gambling debt. Charles was a good boy. He married a nice girl, he loved his mother, hated his father. He was an average kind of American nice guy, really. What I mean to say is that he was a really together kind of guy, perhaps a little tightly wound, but not a serial killer sort. Which is probably why he isn’t technically a serial killer. He is a mass murderer. And it all went something like this:

On July 31, 1966 Charles Whitman wrote a letter explaining that he was going to kill his wife and mother, because he was going to do something which would in turn ruin their lives. He did this to his mother with a bayonet wound in the chest and a bullet through the head. She struggled, as was evidenced by her crushed right hand. Apparently he slammed it in a door – her wedding ring’s stone was knocked free of its setting, the ring was so disfigured. He killed his wife while she slept, bayoneting her four times. His letter says, “I intend to kill her as painlessly as possible.” He obviously hadn’t heard of drug overdose, or head shots. He left notes explaining that his mother and wife were sick and wanted to be left to rest. He called both their jobs to explain that they would not be there that day. He drove to the belltower at the center of the University of Texas at Austin. He explained that he was delivering a crate of equipment to a professor. He brought his own rented trolley to help move the huge crate. It was his Marine crate and it contained enough supplies, weapons and ammo, to let him fight off a small army for a long time. Whitman’s arsenal included a 9mm pistol, a .357 magnum revolver, a .30 caliber M-1 carbine, a .35 caliber pump-action rifle, a hunting knife, a sawed off 12-gauge shotgun and a 6mm bolt action rifle with a Remington 4 power scope, 14 boxes of ammunition and a can of Hoppe’s #9 gun-cleaning solvent. Also in the crate were a large variety of tinned foods, transistor radio, deodorant, shaving cream and a razor, coffee, sandwiches, Dexedrine (a kind of speed of which Whitman was very fond) and Excedrine. He brought jugs of water and gasoline. He was about to kill 13 total strangers and wound 31 more. First he hauled his crate to the elevator. The elevator was broken and a woman recognized Whitman as the repairman. She unlocked it, gave him the key saying, “It’s all yours.” He replied, “You can’t believe how happy that makes me.” He kept mumbling this to himself and smiling as the door shut behind him. When he got to the 28th floor Edna Townsley stopped him going onto the observation deck. He spit her skull open with the butt of his rifle, and shot her. He hid her behind a couch. A young couple came in from the deck, unaware of what had just happened. He pointed his gun at them. They smiled and said “Hello.” Whitman smiled and said “Hi, how are you?” They went on down-stairs. A friendly word can get one a long way – that is your lesson. “The luckiest couple in Austin” is how the paper described them. Whitman barricaded the door to the observation deck with his crate. He prepared. A couple of kids, Mike and Mark Garbor, were peering at him over his barricade. They surprised him, and he shot them with his shotgun. The entire Garbor family was heading up the stairwell. The blast sent them tumbling down the stairs leaving one boy and their mother dead, the rest wounded and unable to move. Whitman stepped out onto the six foot deep walk surrounding the belltower. With its four foot tall cement wall and rain-spouts which could serve as rifle slits, it was a seemingly impregnable fortress. At 11:48 the carillon finished its peal of bells. Whitman lifted the 6-mm Remington to his shoulder, peered through the scope, and bodies started falling one after another over a four block area. Most of the 13 were killed in the first 15 minutes, and many others were wounded. After about ten minutes the police were alerted and more than 100 police men and highway patrolmen arrived. But Whitman’s bunker was completely brilliant. He could shoot anybody that approached the building, and nobody could shoot him. So a light plane was brought in with a sharpshooter on board. Whitman managed to shoot at the plane successfully many times, while the shooter could never get a bead on Whitman, because the plane shook with every round that hit it. And there was a choppy wind above the campus to boot. But while the plane was flying around Whitman ignored the street below, and police were able to get into the building. A young officer, Ramiro Martinez, arrived late having just come onto his shift for the afternoon, found himself the first into the tower. He had a shotgun and his revolver. He was alone. Houston McCoy, one of the workers on the first floor was very mad, and said he wanted to come along. Martinez deputized McCoy and gave him his service revolver. Up they went. To make a long story short, they shot Whitman before he shot them. Here is the good bit: a psychiatrist Whitman has seen several weeks before, the only time he ever went to a shrink, said at a news-conference shortly after the spree, that Whitman was very agitated and wanted to “go up to the tower and shoot some humans.”

Read more from the SLUG Archives:
Serial Killer of the Month: Richard Speck
Written in Blood: May 1996