Biography

Charles Joseph Whitman (June 24, 1941 – August 1, 1966) was an American mass murderer and Marine veteran who became known as the 'Texas Tower Sniper'. On August 1, 1966, Whitman used knives to kill his mother and his wife in their respective homes, then went to the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) with multiple firearms and began indiscriminately shooting at people. He fatally shot three people inside UT Austin's Main Building, then accessed the 28th-floor observation deck on the building's clock tower. There, he fired at random people for 96 minutes, killing an additional eleven people and wounding 31 others before he was shot dead by the Austin Police Department. Whitman killed a total of seventeen people; the seventeenth victim died 35 years later from injuries sustained in the attack. He had developed several disturbing symptoms in the months preceding his rampage, including intense headaches, emotional turmoil and intrusive thoughts. In a confession-suicide note written the night before the violence, he requested an autopsy be conducted to determine whether there 'is any visible physical disorder'. The procedure was performed on August 2, where the neuropathologist found a small tumor deep in Whitman’s brain.