Charles Whitman

COMING SOON!

Although happily married, 25-year-old Charles Whitman was a worried man. He knew that he was in the grip of a terrible compulsion and on the verge of doing something appalling. Finally, on 31st July 1966 his self-control snapped and after killing his wife and mother so that they would be spared the shame he climbed the white granite tower of the University of Texas administration building, and started shooting at anyone who moved below. Fifteen people died and thirty were injured before police assault teams got close enough to gun him down.

Biography

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Charles Whitman
born: 23-06-1941
birth place: Florida, USA
died: 01-08-1966

Charles Joseph Whitman was born on 24th June 1941, and seemed destined to live the American Dream, coming from a wealthy, prominent family with a home that was the envy of the neighbourhood. Young Charlie was a gifted all-rounder, good at both sports and school, a talented pianist and Eagle Scout.

This idyllic lifestyle was not all that it seemed, however; Whitman’s father was a strict disciplinarian, prone to violence committed on both his sons and his wife. Shortly before Whitman’s 18th birthday, he came home from a party drunk, and was beaten severely by his father, and thrown into the swimming pool, where he nearly drowned. This humiliation proved the final straw for Whitman, and he enlisted in the US Marine Corps a few days later, reporting for training on 6th July 1959.

Determined to prove his worth, Whitman took well to his initial training at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, earning performance medals and excelling at rapid fire shooting, especially where moving targets were involved. He utilised every opportunity to excel, and was granted a scholarship to study engineering, to be followed by Officer’s Candidate School.

Whitman began his studies at the University of Texas in Austin on 15th September 1961 and immediately floundered, without the rigid discipline that he was accustomed to, first at home and then in the Marines. His grades plummeted, he took to gambling and, despite a minor improvement to his behaviour when he married Kathy Leissner in August 1962, the US Marine Corps withdrew his scholarship in February 1963, forcing him to return to active duty.

He was stationed in North Carolina, where he found the return to restricted military life oppressive, and was also court-martialled for gambling, costing him all the rank he had accumulated up to that point. Desperate to escape, he approached his father, who used his connections to reduce Whitman’s enlistment time, and he was discharged in December 1964.

Determined to redeem himself in his father’s eyes, he returned to University in Austin, taking a job to support himself, and serving as a Scout Master in his spare time. Despite his outward application, he seemed to lack any sense of self-worth, recording schemes for self-improvement in his diary, and meticulously listing ways how he could be a better husband to his wife, Kathy.

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