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Hey weirdos, I'm Alayna.
I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
hello earthlings hello tall greys and um short greys as well what do they call this do that sorry my brain's just going into it's connected okay uh because you're talking about aliens in the berkshires yes there's a bridge where ufo incident happened it's on the new unsolved mysteries all that fun stuff and they've like put up a plaque and everything thing oh I think they call it an off -world incident on the plaque and I think it is just the most delicious way to explain an alien coming down like it like a an off -world incident yeah I like otherworldly yeah like it's just off this world like it's
just such a strange way of saying it but like a poetic one in a weird way yeah like that's like you just being like oh excuse me I'm I'm just going to go off -world for a minute.
Off -world? I'm going into space.
See you later. I'm going off -world.
Does space not count as the world?
No, I think just Earth is the world.
Is that how it is? I don't think of it like that.
Oh, that's how I always see it.
I think of the world as like the whole fucking shebang.
Yeah. I never thought of it that way.
I always think the world is Earth.
Because it's our world, and other people have their own worlds.
Or other creatures have their own worlds.
but it's all a world no it's all a universe no I look at it as it's all a universe but this is our world see for me I feel like world and universe are like synonymous you're blowing my mind a little bit you're blowing my mind a little bit I don't see those as synonymous at all well that's our brains I know we're harping on this but you know it's an interesting discussion you're the greatest in all the world to me it's like the whole planet it like all earth but if i say you're the greatest in the universe that's a step up oh okay yeah yeah i guess i see that but i can see why you would think for me
if i tell you you're the greatest in the world i also mean you're the greatest in the universe well that's good to know yeah because to me i was thinking you were downgrading really i mean usually i usually don't say world i usually just say universe yeah yeah interesting i never think of these maybe though it's because because like your kids say like if like we're talking about like imaginary things they say in all world yeah like do we have that in all world yeah so maybe that's why you think of it the way you think of it yeah because they're always saying like is that in all world yeah our
planet where we are yeah and our reality is what i think of it as yeah like our world is our reality outside of that i don't know it's fucking bleak either way or maybe it's It's great outside of this.
I mean, it's got to be great somewhere.
It does. It has to be.
But I feel like you get the good with the bad, the happy and the sad, no matter where you go, probably.
I'm assuming. I don't really want things to be like super fucking awesome all the time because then you would lose that feeling.
You wouldn't be as grateful for the great times.
You don't want it to be so fluctuating as it feels like it is now with everybody.
yeah but it's like you want a little bit of dips just so you can appreciate the highs yeah no this got so like theological i know what it started with me being like isn't it funny that it says off yeah wow look at us look at us go wow that just got insanely deep yeah and you know um another deep thing before we get into the story is um apple did some kind of weird update month ago but we just start finding out about it we're not up on anything we never know what's happening we're too busy having theological discussions exactly too busy talking about off world incidents yeah you know but we're
always behind on shit like you guys know this about us we're six years into this we know each other now you know us we're always behind shit we don't know what's going on in this industry at all we shut the door at the end of the recording recording and we say bye uh but it's been brought to our attention which is probably a good thing that someone told us oh no it's great i'm glad somebody did but that apparently apple has done this update in november uh where you're not getting our new episodes automatically how horrible for you like you have to hit follow on our thing on apple podcasts now
like there's three little dots at the top and if you hit it and just hit follow that way you'll get automatically updated with our new episodes because like you could be but who knows you might not even be hearing this you might not even be here for this awesome discussion that we just had you might hear about this six months from now so can you imagine if you haven't and you're just one of those lovely people which if you're listening right now you are that just like either is already following us figuring it out or you've like searched and found this episode like you actively went and found
this episode to get and listen to then you're incredible one you're incredible thank you but two you can just follow and it'll do it for you yeah and that'll be great and it'll help out the show too and we appreciate it so if you do that just that would be sick and also you'll get all the episodes you know we'll all automatically be in a better place because of it what a weird thing to do yeah you know it was strange it's very strange it was um that's our that's the only like Like real, like, you know, podcasty thing we have to talk to you about.
Before we get into the whole episode, a quick little – this is a trigger warning just because the episode is something that is pretty relevant for recent years.
This is about a mass shooting.
I'm going to be describing what happened during the shooting.
It can be triggering for a lot of people.
Some of you may, you know, have even been touched personally by one in recent years.
so we wanted to make sure that you knew right up up front that we will be discussing it and it could be a little distressing.
So if it is and you want to skip this episode, we get it.
We totally understand.
Maybe just put it on mute and let it run all the way through.
No, I'm just kidding.
You don't have to do that, but that would be sick.
But we totally get it if you want to go to the next episode.
We love you for it either way and if you're sticking around, here we go.
go. Today we're going to be talking about a pretty infamous case that I know a lot of people have probably heard about.
I didn't know all the like detailed details of it, but we're going to be talking about Charles Whitman, also known as the Texas Tower Sniper.
Oh, sounds familiar.
Yeah. It's a gnarly one.
It's you, so that checks.
It's awful. It's tragic.
It's also like confusing why why it happened but i think it had a lot to do with there's i think there was a lot of undiagnosed mental illness here that it was in the 60s yeah it's not like oh okay okay i think we talked about this on crime countdown at one point yeah i'm sure we mentioned it on crime countdown um but this was in 1966 mass shootings were virtually unheard of in the united states which is crazy to think about now in 2024 we're like what do you mean it wasn't just like a known thing every day that you get a new one imagine being in that place yeah so this so whitman's spree that happened
in 1966 it shocked the nation i mean shocked and what was worse at the time is that by most accounts he was kind of by an outsider's point of view you know the picture of an all -american man which made his actions all the more confusing to a very 1960s society right because this very picture of you know like the the happy husband with the you know a happy wife the american dream kind of thing outwardly he looked like a very you know again the picture of a 60s happy all -american man looks can be deceiving he was also well liked he had a you know a successful successful question mark on paper military
career okay on paper okay you look deeper into it and there was a lot of shit going on all right um he had a beautiful wife and he once out of the military he had at least started pursuing a college degree in preparation for an architectural engineering oh wow career so it's like he was everything you could hope for but behind this facade of an American middle -class success story, there was a very deeply troubled man whose personal history and what we find out to be acute medical problems would actually go a little bit of the ways to explaining what happened here.
But nobody else really knew it was happening.
So who was Charles Whitman?
Tell. Who? Do tell.
I ask. Do tell. Charles Charles Whitman III was born June 24th, 1941.
So today and I didn't realize that.
I was waiting. I was like, girl.
Oh my God. Do you know that that is the current day?
I did not plan this.
No, it happens a lot.
It's weird. Like I pinky promise all of you that I did not plan this.
That's weird. In fact, I was supposed to do this one last week and I didn't.
Weird. That's really weird. Oh, today.
So he was born today in 1941 in Lake Worth, Florida, and he was the first of three boys born to C .A.
and Margaret Wilson.
From the outside, this family appeared to be the perfect American family.
Just everything you could want to be.
You know, C .A., the dad, was a financially successful business owner.
He was supported by this lovely wife of his who kept the books for the business, also Also managing to, you know, keep the household afloat, raising the three children, her three lovely boys.
Yeah. Like, what else could you ask for?
Behind closed doors, however.
I was waiting. Things were not very idyllic.
Yeah. C .A. Whitman was very obsessed with appearances, very obsessed, and he was also a very strict disciplinarian.
He did not hesitate to use physical punishment with his children and also his wife.
Oh, wow. wow uh he was an asshole it does sound that way um in fact he said later i did on many occasions beat my wife but i loved her no no no if you can beat your wife you don't know what love is that's not good try though i he doesn't even say i hit my wife which is bad enough i beat my wife which to me sounds so much like barbaric so much it's like they're all barbaric on every level but it's like for some reason the term beat my wife just sounds it gives me like shivers and to say it in in the same sentence as but i also love her and also he says it like what and it's like okay but he was also equally
as unashamed about his abuse of his children he said i'm not ashamed of the shamed of any spankings i don't think i spanked enough if you want to know the truth about it i think they should have been punished more than they were punished he sounds horrible he sounds delightful yeah yeah yeah uh from a very early age charles young charles was described as as being an extremely bright, very spirited boy.
One neighbor said he was a noisy little devil.
Uh -oh. But they said, but he was a nice little boy and made a handsome man.
And it's true. If you look up a picture of Charles Whitman, he did make a very handsome man.
And he looks like an all -American boy.
He really does. And it's true.
A lot of the Whitman's neighbors found C .A., however, to be a disagreeable man.
but according to um gary laverne who wrote the book sniper in the tower the charles whitman murders um he said that basically the neighbors care nearly universally characterized charlie along with his brothers as good normal boys and they characterized the mother as a perfectly good mother okay um despite being an abusive and very highly critical father following his son's death CA would tell reporters that Charles was, quote, a brilliant student who never caused trouble for his family.
He's like, I did beat the shit out of him as a child, but he never caused us trouble.
I was like, that's good.
So why did you beat the shit out of him then?
Yeah. Not that even causing trouble would warrant that.
No, but it's just like, wow.
By the time he entered grade school, it was pretty clear that Charles was advanced for his age.
Many of his teachers said that he was very capable and actually a clearly gifted student.
His teacher suspicions were confirmed, in fact, in 1947 because he was given an IQ exam and he measured 138 .9.
Wow. So he wasn't just gifted in academics, though.
He also really loved music and he started taking piano lessons around age four.
And he went on to honestly be a very successful, like he would have been a successful pianist. And he was in a local band, actually, who played the piano. know also he was he did well it's weird that he seems so well -rounded he started off very well well -rounded and things went awry things started to turn um but if there was anything about which Charles was truly passionate it was guns oh um C .A.
Whitman the father said I'm a fanatic about guns uh he said I was I raised my boys to know how to handle guns and following the shooting evidence Evidence of Charles's love of firearms was obviously talked about in the press quite a bit.
Yeah. And in a lot of those reports was a photo of a two -year -old Charles Whitman standing on a beach holding two rifles, both taller than him.
No. Yeah. Nope. Have your own opinions about guns.
This is mine. No one's telling you that you can't have them.
But that's, I don't love that.
But again, however your opinion on guns is, you are allowed to have guns.
habit that's totally fine uh but that that that the idea of a two -year -old holding two rifles is uh not for me it's just not for a lot of people yeah it's not for me it's for you that's fine um but this would seem to be one of some of the things that you know they had in common like the father and the son sure um and ca often actually bragged about this he bragged and said charlie could plug a squirrel in the eye by the time he was 16 so there's why though you're gonna eat the squirrel yeah maybe who knows but um having spent most of his childhood um in an orphanage actually c .a whitman the father
he really struggled and worked hard to get everything he had well that's one thing i will say for him he grew up with nothing so he worked to get everything he had that.
And also growing up in an orphanage, you can now see where some of his behaviors probably manifested from.
And disciplinary style.
Especially orphanages around that time.
Yeah. And I don't know a lot about obviously his childhood aside from being in an orphanage.
But when you hear that, it makes a little more sense why he's very angry.
Yeah. So and obviously C .A.
Whitman drove drove his sons to be high achievers as well.
He wanted to be a high achiever.
He wanted perfection out of his family, which nobody can be perfect.
No, absolutely not.
You're driving for something that can happen, which is going to cause a breakdown eventually.
But Charles was the eldest son and he was the one to push harder.
Charles's father pushed him to join a ton of clubs and associations like the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts.
He attained the highest levels of achievement in both of those.
you know like an eagle cub an eagle cub you know tbt young charles also inherited his father's obsession with um accumulating as much wealth as possible so he got a job right away as a paper boy as soon as he could meet the age requirement um which is good that's great um and he was successful because he was successful in most of the if not all the things he did at that point But on the rare occasion that he did get any kind of feedback or criticism for his performance, he tended to, quote, personalize customer complaints.
Which at first, when I heard that, I was like, I didn't remember his birthday.
And I was like, is he a Capricorn?
I was like, no, he's not.
He's a Cancer. Yeah.
Which I guess maybe that also could make sense.
Cancers can be very highly emotional and sometimes don't get offended.
They can be vindictive.
Oh, okay. Interesting.
things just the idea okay the idea of like personalizing criticism for your performance seems very Capricorn for me yeah um because I tend to do that yeah you know like immediately becomes personal for me which is not like a greatest attribute to have it it harms you more than anything else but I feel like it can be like obviously like it can do with your sign but also your upbringing I think that probably had a lot to do with it in his case yeah that That makes a lot of sense.
It almost sounds like it was like his dad criticizing him.
And telling him you have to achieve this.
Right. By the time he entered high school in 1955, he was, again, Charles was well -liked, pretty popular, excelled at most things, really had a lot going for him.
His school friend Frank McCarty actually said he was a thinker who never went off half -cocked.
He was completely normal.
now the idea of him being a thinker who never goes off half cocked comes back later when he commits the atrocities that he committed because he wasn't half cocked right he went and it was planned he planned it down to the second so that is almost a little scary of like a sentiment to have about him definitely is um but uh so like most people who were interviewed following the murders this guy frank mccarty remembered really nothing unusual about his high school career reputation charles's wow um mccarty really was just like yeah i don't know during his freshman and sophomore years he had good
grades good attendance by his junior year his grades had kind of dropped somewhat um and he ended up having 26 absences that year that's a lot 16 of those were because he had a surgical procedure done and he had to recover from it okay that surgical procedure was to remove a blood clot on his left testicle oh wow yeah but even with all that he ultimately graduated seventh in his class in 1959 damn with a 3 .3 gpa with all of those absences and like all of that shit he had to get through yeah that's crazy so that's interesting um on the night of his graduation he went out to celebrate with some
friends and you know they They ended up drinking.
Yeah, duh. Yeah, duh.
Like, obviously. And when he returned home later that evening, C .A.
lost his shit on him for coming home slightly drunk.
In fact, it was said he lost all control of his temper.
Charles told later, Charles told his priest and former Boy Scout troop leader, Father Joseph DeLuck, that his father beat him severely and threw him into the pool where he almost drowned.
ground what the fuck yeah so when people question i mean obviously a lot of people go through horrible things which is a horrible thing to think about like this and they don't go off to do the things that he did but i think there's also a couple of injuries involved to his head yeah that we'll find out later that i think also contributed to mental illness and you know some neurological issues yeah and some this kind of mixed with this kind of upbringing came out horribly it makes sense you know what time it is it's time for a fresh approach to dog food and that's where the farmer's Dog comes in.
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Hey there, my weird weirdos.
I want to take a minute to recommend another podcast called Who Took Misty Copsey?
In September of 1992, 14 -year -old Misty Copsey leaves the Washington State Fair with her best friend and is never seen again.
Her body is never found.
At the time, Western Washington is home to prolific serial killers like the Green River Killer, which leads to different theories on who's responsible for what happened to Misty.
Over the course of eight episodes, host and cold case investigator Sarah Kalin speaks with Misty's friends and family, looks at police records, and different anonymous tips to try to figure out if Misty's disappearance is the work of a serial killer or someone who knew her.
No suspects are ruled out.
After 33 years, Sarah Kalin hopes to answer the question, who took Misty?
You guys are going to love this.
If you listen to Morbid, we know that you love a cold case and we always tell you a cold case is never cold.
So definitely give this a listen.
Definitely look into the case.
Listen to Who Took Misty Copsey wherever you get your podcasts.
podcasts. And after years of this, after years of his father's constant abuse, and honestly his like tyrannical behavior at this point, like he's like a dictator in that house.
It was the last straw.
So, and he was 17 years old at this time and he had been accepted to Georgia Tech. And he would have, if he went there, he was going to have to at least remain financially dependent on his dad but instead he chose to enter the military because he wanted to escape and he wanted to start building his own life so he was like i want to cut ties it was a way out on june 27th 1959 just three days after his 18th birthday he enlisted in the marines and a week later he boarded a bus for jacksonville so he was off uh charles whitman had listed enlisted in the marines obviously to escape the unrealistic
expectations the abuse of his father all of it um everything yeah just get out of that house but which also it's it needs to be said his mother was somebody he could like count on really and try to really like you know protect her sons from everything but she also was being abused right um but and from what i can see his mother was never abusive never anything but a good mom yeah um a great mom to be honest um but he had tried to get get away from all that.
But he soon learned that he had just kind of traded one extremely regimented life for another.
Now he's just going to be under the control of someone else.
Right. After completing basic training, he was sent to Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba.
Wow. A very difficult post given, especially at the time, the increasing tension between U .S. and the Cuban governments at the time.
But Charles tried to make the best of his 18 -month assignment there.
And in an effort to to be more well -rounded as a person, he took a lot of classes while he was stationed at the base.
And apparently he took classes from sanitation to history, like all the way across the board. He was trying to keep detailed notes all the way through.
He had this thing in his head where, and he carries this a lot through his life, that he needs to be busy.
He cannot be alone with his own thoughts, I feel like.
That's not great. And this is a prime example of it.
While he was generally a good student and really excelled in most of his classes.
He also found himself really drawn to the firearms training again because he loves guns.
He was brought up to love guns.
Gary Laverne wrote fairly early in his Marines career, Charlie established himself as very proficient with guns.
He took copious notes on the care and techniques of firing a three caliber M1 carbine.
At the end of the detailed notes, he scribbled in large letters, world's finest, exclamation point, exclamation point, Exclamation point.
On the firing range, he consistently achieved high scores and actually ended up earning a sharpshooter's badge.
And in a very macabre bit of foreshadowing, he would be remembered as, quote, an excellent shot who appeared to be more accurate against moving targets.
Wow. Which is a horrific bit of foreshadowing here.
That's chilling. In general, his conduct during this period was pretty good.
And it appears people liked him.
His fellow Marines liked him.
Everything was pretty normal.
According to Larry Phillips, who was stationed at Guantanamo with Charles Whitman, he said Charles would, quote, do anything for others in his squad.
However, at one point, Phillips and Whitman were in a serious accident.
And that seems to have been the result of Charles' complete disregard for danger while in most situations.
Really? He had a very, like, I'm invincible way of looking at things.
he was very he could be very like irresponsible when it came to like those kind of situations and really following the rules by the book and so an accident happened and he ended up getting a head injury from it it was like a jeep accident yikes while at guantanamo charles learned of a scholarship program for enlisted soldiers um that was known as the naval enlisted science Science Education Program, or NESEP, which was developed as a way of training soldiers in math and science to try to compete with Russia, essentially.
Charles applied in February 1961 and was actually among the few Marines selected to participate and started the program in mechanical engineering at University of Texas Austin in September, which this is very highly prestigious.
absolutely it is um he had spent his entire life now under the thumb of his father and commanding officers just under the thumb of everybody above him but now he had a newfound freedom he wasn't under anyone's thumb now he could study he was part of this scholarship program and he had difficulty adjusting it's it's almost like when people come out of prison yeah and they have trouble adjusting to the being not regimented and not regulated um one night not long after After moving into his dorm, Charles and two other students illegally poached a deer and brought the animal's dead carcass back to
the dorm. Why? Which, like, I'm tapping my head right now.
Like, think. Yeah. Use the gray matter between your ears.
Maybe don't do that.
A local resident spotted them doing this, however, like, coming back into the dorm.
And was like, hey, what the fuck?
They reported the poaching to the authorities and police followed a trail of blood back to the UTA campus.
purpose they entered whitman's dorm room and they found the two of them skinning the deer in the dorm shower what's weird is you did say he took a sanitation course yeah and then he just then he just dragged a deer through the hallway and brought it into the the shared bathroom yeah and then just was skinning it in the shower that's bizarre that's unusual behavior can you imagine walking walking in to take you're just at your college dorm you're like i got a show yeah you walk into that i'd be like oh oh you gotta go and it's like what like that's bizarre behavior it absolutely should have been
a pretty red flag to me like that's first of all that's not smart decision making skills like i'd be like what happened here and two it's like that's That's fucked up.
Yeah. That's fucked up.
I don't know if people just looked at it like, oh, he likes to hunt.
And it's like, but that's like fucked up.
I don't know. Even if you like to hunt, it's like, I don't need to see a deer being skinned in my fucking shower.
Like, what are you doing?
Yeah, I don't know.
Like, do your business elsewhere.
Yeah, if you want to do that, go for it.
But don't do it in my shower.
There's a time and a place for everything.
And my shower is not it.
But it's so weird. but what's crazy about this is he got off with a light sentence he was forced forced to pay a hundred dollar fine so they were just like this is very bizarre very red flaggy behavior but we're just gonna make you pay a hundred bucks you don't drag a deer through the hallway again after killing it for no reason like okay skin it in the shower just a hundred bucks please yeah so fuck so he was arrested at the time like he got arrested for it on the spot like you know so after that arrest it was really just the first of several incidents that really indicated that Whitman was not taking this program
seriously. That literally sounds like a Florida man incident.
It really does. Like, Florida man poaches deer illegally, skins it in local shower.
It's true. I'm not past this yet.
No. It's true. It really is very Florida man -ish.
I mean, he is from Florida.
He's a Florida man.
So it makes sense. He's a Florida man.
He's a Florida man.
To our Floridian listeners, we love you.
you we love you you're not that florida no we love florida but it is very florida we had another crime countdown we had like four segments of florida i miss crime countdown daily so much fun hi max uh but yeah he wasn't taking this program seriously evidently he also wasn't handling the increased freedom very well obviously because once he's up to his own devices that's what he does like that's the first thing he does It's like I get going a little buckwild.
Oh, bad choice of words.
I get going a little wild like when you have your own freedom.
That's a different guy.
That is buckwild. That's what that is.
You took that far too literally, my friend.
But during his first year at UTA, Charles was focusing way more on all that kind of shit.
And also he was a gambler.
He loved gambling and he was focusing on it.
And he was focusing on every other weird, you know, wild hobby that he had going on.
Oh, man. So his grades started plummeting.
Yeah. He just wasn't focusing on it.
No one was making him.
Right. So he wasn't.
It's like your first year when you get to do online courses.
You're gonna fail that shit.
Unless you're awesome.
Because... Online courses are tough.
Figuring out how to self -discipline is one of the hardest things you will do at first. Absolutely.
And this is where he was.
So given his reputation as a prankster, and because he did...
people he liked Billy Pranks he was a jokester yeah you know all that stuff so and he would also make like outrageous comments a lot but like they just took that as like he's just a joker okay that kind of thing um but his friend Francis Shuck didn't think much at all when one night the two of them were sitting out on the dorm balcony and Charles pointed up to the top of the campus clock tower and said a person could stand off an army from atop it before they even even got to him and of course his friend didn't why would they think yeah no why would you think anything about that he's rattling
off a future plan and he's somebody who came from a military background like to a degree makes sense that he would make a comment like that i guess like i i don't know that i would think twice about that yeah so he just sat there and listened to him and then he went on like like charles charles went on and he's and he was like he described basically a scenario where someone could just fire from the top of the tower and just kill spectators with a rifle now again we look back on it knowing what we know and we go oh my god like foreshadowing we knew but think about it how many times hopefully everybody's
on board with this or i'm gonna sound weird but how many times have you been somewhere weird like some like weird ravine or something where you're like oh my god that goes down so far and you're like oh my god imagine if somebody just like threw somebody down there like you think something weird and fucked up and you're just like guys imagine that yeah it's not because you're planning to do it it's because you're like whoa like i'm just like that's crazy that's a wild thought you know like you think of these things and you think like how scary is that yeah like you're not who knows maybe he posed
it that way like how fucked up is that how fucked up would that be like you know and then his friends just like oh yeah that'd be fucked up holy shit you're fucked like you can't yeah that wouldn't strike me as like somebody telling me a plan especially if he's shown absolutely nothing to me that makes me think he's making a plan to do that exactly so no I understand why that really ring alarm bells in that moment hindsight is 2020 obviously now after a year of pretty poor grades and some really shitty pranks uh Charles finally started to take his schooling a little more seriously the following
year thanks in large part to meeting this woman named Kathy Leisner in February 1962.
Unlike Charles, Kathy was very focused on her goal of graduating.
She was getting a degree in education and she wanted to be a teacher.
Nice. But she was very charmed by Charles and they started dating very soon after meeting and she kind of kept him on the path.
Kept him in check. She gave him something to be like, you know what, I better get my shit together because look at this girl focusing on her shit.
Yeah, hell yeah. And Kathy definitely had a positive influence on Charles, But having spent most of his time hanging out with friends and playing pranks on campus and gambling, his grades were just too abysmal to really pull out of the bottom here.
Oh, wow, not that bad.
He was getting one A, and it was in algebra, which...
A for algebra. But the rest were all, like, barely Ds.
Like, he was... Oh, wow, he let it get crazy.
He really did. He had some Cs in there, but they were, like, there was a lot of really abysmal ones.
He did show a slight improvement in the summer of 1962, after he married Kathy that August. So she really did, she had a good influence.
And he seemed to be taking the program more seriously at that point, I think because he saw a future.
His future is with Kathy now.
He knows he has to get his shit together.
I just brought up their wedding pictures, and it's so, they just look like any other like old -timey married couple.
Like they look super happy.
He looks very like a normal guy you'd wave to on the street.
The way he talks about her is like, He adored her from what he said.
Now, unfortunately for the Marine Corps, who had invested a lot into him at this point, these little improvements were just not enough.
They weren't enough to justify him continuing that scholarship.
And in the winter of 63, he lost the scholarship and was called back to active duty and stationed at Camp Lujan. Now, when he entered the military after high school, he was trying to get away from an abusive home life um which probably made that transition a little easier because he was leaving an abusive home life and going into a place where he was also regimented but in a different way and not being personally abused you know by someone he loved essentially um but this time the transition back into the military was a little more difficult he's coming from independence he had that taste of freedom
yeah um he had failed pretty spectacularly probably for the first time in his life at UTA.
But his being assigned to Camp Luzhen meant that he had to leave Kathy behind in Austin because she was finishing her degree program.
These challenges kind of set him off on the wrong foot right away on the base, and things really only got worse from there.
From the moment he arrived on base, he was very difficult, very insolent, very immature.
His immaturity came out big time in this time period, way more than it had in the past when he was kind of being, again, highly regulated.
His early record of good conduct had earned him a little leeway because he had that good behavior in the past. But after a few months, it was becoming clear that he really didn't want to be a Marine.
Now, according to Gary Laverne, Charles, quote, had become embittered and formed a hatred of the Marines, especially after he was informed that his time spent in Austin would not count as part of his active duty enlistment.
To make matters worse, although he was now back in, you know, the rigid confines of the military, he continued his problematic gambling and other really fucked up behaviors that got him in trouble at UTA.
In October of 64, Charles and a friend got into a fight with four or five other Marines.
And during this whole fight, he was actually knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked in the head and face.
Yikes. Like, repeatedly.
Very harmed. Another TBI.
He spent a few hours in the infirmary for dizziness and headaches and he was given aspirin and then sent back to his bunk.
Aspirin. No doubt concussed.
Yeah. No fucking doubt.
With the Jeep accident a few years earlier.
And the years and years of being abused.
That's the second of actually abused.
Because think about it.
When he came home that night after his graduation, his dad beat him severely and then threw him in the pool where he almost drowned.
That's also lack of oxygen to your brain.
Absolutely it is. So there's a lot happening here that is not good.
Oh, man. Yeah, it's really bad.
So if the first phase of Charles's military career was a success and the second was a struggle, then this third would be considered a complete fucking abysmal failure.
Oh, no. Throughout his time in North Carolina, Charles was honestly always in trouble, always admonished for being challenging, disruptive.
He was still carrying on the excessive gambling.
rambling he would carry non -military weapons and get in trouble for that his behavior took an even more dramatic turn when he tried and failed to get his scholarship back that NESCP one in April 63 which honestly was the worst thing that could have happened was him failing to get that back because it just made him hate the military more and it made him more bitter in November of 63 his superiors had finally run out of patience and Charles was actually actually court -martialed for quote gambling usury and i looked it up usury is lending money at high like crazy high interest rates oh shit and the unauthorized
possession of a non -military pistol and he was ultimately found guilty he was sentenced to 30 days confinement and 90 days hard labor oh and then he was demoted back to the rank of private yeah so things are not going well Maybe just do a little discharge.
Doesn't seem like this is a great environment for him.
He doesn't like it and it doesn't seem like he's a good member to have. I don't think this is working out on either side.
No, I don't think so either.
Throughout 64, though, his life had taken, obviously, a very significant turn for the worse.
And he seemed to be struggling on literally all fronts.
He hated the military at this point.
He regretted enlisting at all, but still had a large amount of time left before his discharge.
So desperate, he turned to his father in hopes that his father's connections with Florida state representatives could help him win an early discharge.
It took nearly a year, but it actually worked and CA's connections paid off.
And he was, Charles was honorably discharged from the Marines on December 6, 1964.
And that's when he went back to Texas.
to join back with kathy okay so that's why i said before he had a successful military career because he was honorably discharged yeah but it was a shit show while he was there yeah it started off bright but really plummeted um so he had a chance at a bright future but he had literally gambled it away like quite literally um it was only after his deaths when his diary was discovered among his possessions and that's when anyone really learned how much misery he was in during this period of time, he referred to this time as, quote, the pit of life's experiences.
Wow. Yeah. Not only did Charles' diary entries from his final year in the military really show how desperate he was to be discharged, but it also showed how much he was very much investing in his marriage to Kathy and how it pained him to be away from her.
Wow. Charles wrote in an entry from November 63, quote, it is so good to know that she loves and understands me.
She's definitely the best thing I have in my life or as I say my most prized possession I don't love that strange way of saying it yeah women aren't possessions like um people are not possessions having failed at his first attempt at getting a college degree at UTA um and then his failed military career uh Charles had kind of come to see the relationship with Kathy as literally the only good thing in his life at that point it was the only thing that was keeping him going to be honest um in the final days of his active duty, Charles wrote in that diary, quote, God, I can't stand the core.
My love for Kathy and my sense of responsibility to our unborn children is the only thing that keeps me from going berserk.
At times it seems as if I'm going to explode.
So he's already showing that he's not handling his own inner turmoil well.
No, not at all. Also, she's not pregnant, just so you know, but he was just thinking like in the future.
Yeah. So he's no longer being controlled by the the military.
And Charles and Kathy ended up moving back to Austin.
And at this point, he's like, all right, I'm ready to take off.
I'm ready to succeed.
I want to be a family man.
I want to be successful.
So what are you going to do?
He re -enrolled at UTA, not with the scholarship program or anything, just his own thing.
And before long, unfortunately, the old feelings of self -doubt and frustration started creeping back into his mind.
And he himself wrote in his his diary about his concerns for his own mental health.
Oh, wow. Yeah. And he said, I think she is just neglecting me as she says she is getting lazy.
He's talking about Kathy.
He was very insecure about their marriage.
He was always worried that it wasn't where it should be.
He said, I'm undecided what to do, but I definitely feel as though there's something unusual in my mental state.
I notice an unusual uneasiness inside myself.
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Now, when he re -enrolled in the fall of 65, he changed his major from mechanical engineering to architectural engineering.
He was excited about this option because he thought, like, he likes creative endeavors.
He thought this was going to be really where he can express his creative side.
And during this period, he also found a job as a bill collector for the Standard Finance Company that he could pay his bills and him and Kathy's bills, but they didn't really have a lot of extra money.
And by April, he took a new position as a teller at the Austin National Bank.
He was determined at this point to fill his time.
Fill, fill, fill that time.
Don't have any time alone to think about your thoughts.
When he wasn't working, wasn't going to school full time, he volunteered as a scoutmaster with a local Boy Scout troop.
But by January of 66, he had been asked to be relieved of his duties as scoutmaster because the pressures he was feeling from work and school were just too much. He couldn't handle the volunteering part.
But that shows you how hard he was trying to fill his time.
He was volunteering on top of all the shit he was doing.
He just didn't want to be by himself.
Now, despite the fact that his post -military life seemed to be going in a positive direction, There were definitely signs that he wasn't doing well emotionally, or physically, for that matter.
By January of 66, he had put on, from everybody around him, they said, he very quickly put on a noticeable amount of weight.
And he was suffering from frequent severe headaches, exhibited symptoms of very severe anxiety.
He would chew his fingernails, he would sweat, even if it was cold, like he was just always on edge.
and the self -doubt and insecurities he felt about his marriage and professional life, it appeared to be coming up way more frequently now that he was back home with his wife.
In his diary, he wrote, As I look back over my past few adult years, they seem so wasted.
Will I ever accomplish anything I set out to do?
Wow. So he was just really falling into an abyss.
Just sad. bad. Things continued this downward trajectory, too, as they entered 1966, because Kathy's really busy with her teaching schedule and her school schedule.
And so it ended up being like a frequent stressor on their marriage.
They would get in arguments a lot that because he didn't really know what to do when she wasn't there.
And he would panic.
She's like, you need to have your your own life.
Exactly. And he wasn't.
And your own. He couldn't handle it.
Adventures and. Yeah.
And he was able to maintain good grades during this period, which is interesting.
It's impressive. He struggled to make friends.
Most people found him pretty difficult to deal with at this point.
His mood had changed.
His attitude had changed.
Yeah. Which is a very big turn from when he was in that highly regimented but very abusive home.
Mm -hmm. People liked him.
Right. Because I think that's the only thing he knew but it's also so indicative of like the the brain trauma that he had gone through you after all that like people changed completely irreversibly yeah completely and to make matters worse he also struggled to maintain employment and he changed his job several times between 65 and 66 which is a stress on his wife too and i'm sure that led to arguments also yeah she's really the one earning the most money at this point which is hard and he he doesn't even want to be like home without her and she's like do i have to do everything and to the world
around him he seemed like a nice young man who you know despite some interpersonal difficulties appeared to be patient driven to succeed trying to make the best of the situation but he was living in an almost constant state of panic anxiety unease discontent nothing positive wow so it's pretty significant that he himself recognized these signs and symptoms of like mental illness and neurological issues um in himself at the at the moment because at multiple points between 64 and 66 he did undergo routine physicals and evaluations through the military and he and if he had mentioned these things
outside of his diaries at any point he might have been able to at least start on the path to like stopping the tragedy that was about to happen yeah you know like just mention it to someone you wonder what would have been done because i don't yeah i know obviously like therapy back then and especially for men wasn't what it is now but i know something well we're heading toward the 70s so it's got to be progressing like somewhat you know i do wonder what would have happened but at the same time unfortunately like most americans at this time period he was facing the stigma of mental mental illness
mm -hmm and in fact he himself actually had some pretty archaic views on the matter while he was struggling well it makes sense with where he was brought up and you know his lifestyle yeah precisely and in 64 when his brother Patrick was actually having a difficult time emotionally Charles wrote in his diary I just found out that Pat ran away from home a couple of days ago and had a car accident in Kissimmee Florida he was injured pretty bad the boy has definite emotional and psychological problems until he puts forth some effort to make good i don't want anything to do with him wow which shows
you how i'm sorry but it's like it shows you how archaic his own views are like yeah like fuck that guy until he does his own shit and fixes it i don't want anything to do with him when support is probably what patrick was looking for and so it's interesting because it's like you can see them that he is volunteering all all his time taking all these courses trying to do all this stuff on his own yeah and it's like that opinion in and of itself shows why he's not reaching out for help exactly he thinks this is his problem and he probably fears being cut off by his family I mean if he thinks that about his brother
right then he probably thinks the same thing would happen to him so I'm not gonna say anything that's really sad and it really is because of how he was raised and abused he perceived emotional problems and mental illness to be a form of weakness.
And given that his post -discharge life hadn't really been working out the way he wanted it to, and that he was struggling to achieve even the most modest of his goals, he probably felt as though his symptoms would have kind of really further derailed any future success for him.
So instead of seeking help for the clear growing depression and anxiety and distorted thinking that he was having, he just tried to suppress it all and just carry through like nothing was wrong he was not doing a great job at it obviously because it was a lot more severe than i think he could have handled on his own yeah um and everything was far from fine uh entering the new year he was struggling academically professionally personally literally in every way you could struggle but he continued to invest as much as he could into his marriage um at that point like we were talking about before kathy
Kathy was the primary earner in the family.
That was also a big blow to his ego, especially at that time.
And despite the fact that he outwardly said he adored his wife and acted as if he adored his wife, they had hit a rough patch in their marriage.
And the previous summer, Kathy had actually confided to a friend that she was thinking about divorce.
Wow. According to her friend, Fran Morgan, Kathy said Charles was, quote, a perfectionist and expected too much from her, which is his dad.
uh -huh um and as an example kathy told her friend charles would quote wipe his hand behind pictures hanging on the wall looking for dust and on at least three occasions he had lost control of his violent temper and hit her oh so he's taking notes from his father a hundred percent um so that's why i say like he says he adores her and also motherfucker you're at home yeah if There's dust behind those pictures.
Dust the fucking picture.
That's on you, baby.
She's out making the bacon.
Working and going to school.
Yeah. Getting the bacon.
And now you make it.
Yeah. And in early March 66, Charles faced another huge stressor because he got a call from his mother on the night of March 2nd saying his father, C .A.
there, had become very violent and she was afraid of him.
Charles anonymously called the Lake Worth Police Department and reported a disturbance at the home of C .A.
and Margaret Whitman, telling the dispatcher they're going to kill each other.
Oh, God. But when an officer arrived at the house, everything was quiet.
A short time later, he called the police again, this time saying that his father had, quote, threatened to do bodily harm to his mother and that he was on the way to Florida but worried something bad would happen before he got there.
Oh, that stress is unbelievable.
unbelievable. It's unclear what actually happened here, but two days later, Charlie did succeed in convincing his mother to finally leave his father.
Wow. After all those years.
And she returned back to Austin, Texas with him and settled into an apartment near where Kathy and he were living.
It's also worth noting, because I feel like listening to this story, I'm like, oh, he's probably in his mid -30s at this point.
He's in his early 20s.
Yeah, he's young. For anybody that doesn't know this story, he's in his early 20s, and this is everything he's going through at this point.
It's a lot. Now, Margaret and CA's separation was definitely an additional strain on an already increasingly emotionally fragile Charles.
Although he wasn't exactly hostile, CA made strong and repeated attempts to convince his wife to come home.
It was bordering on harassment at that point, especially after what he had done.
It's like, fuck off.
It's like you've been abusive to her your entire marriage.
Later, he would say, I'm not ashamed of the fact that I I spent $1 ,000 a month on the phone bill begging her to come back.
I kept begging Charlie to come back to me too.
I promised Charlie that if he'd only persuade his mama to come back, I'd swear never to lay a hand on her.
This is so toxic. That's also putting it on your child.
Yeah. And you have to imagine, I mean, like I was just saying, he's in his early 20s and he was the oldest. Yeah.
Younger. Earlier he mentioned one of his brothers ran away from home.
They're younger. It's like they're experiencing all of this firsthand.
Yep. it's so sad how toxic this family is yeah and charles said later that his father was calling daily or every other day i mean like a thousand dollars on the phone bill back then and that and he's putting it on his child you have to convince your mother to come back no no my friend right you're the one that fucked up in your marriage it has nothing to do with your child and their relationship between either one of you he's not part of your marriage like that's what a lot of of people need to understand like you your child is not part of your marriage in that way you have no responsibility to
get you two back together or figure anything out that's that's on you dog and it's like what the fuck dude and maybe you should have fucking thought one day she was gonna leave if you kept beating her yeah like you're just mad because she finally hit her breaking point and you lost out on the thing that you like to hit when you're mad exactly like that's fucked Now, at a time when his mental health was clearly deteriorating rapidly, getting drawn into this separation and divorce later would really only make things worse for Charles.
Not only would it likely have made him even more paranoid about his own marriage, which was by then in trouble, but he also felt an urge to protect his mother and smooth things over with the whole family because he's the oldest. So the stress had actually become bad enough that Charles did finally start talking to his friends about what he called the, quote, gross disharmony in the Whitman household.
In late March, he actually finally sought professional help from the UTA Student Health Center.
Oh, OK. He attended a one -hour session with a psychiatrist, a one - or two -hour psychiatrist session.
session uh when the session ended the doctor recommended that Charles come back the following week for ongoing treatment and to call if they he was in crisis or needed help before then well that's great but he never came back and they can't force you to and it should be noted that well it was definitely like on he needed to return for help like that that was part of the you know he's an adult he needs to come back right for help um there might have been a reason for him not wanting to come back because according to other students who had seen that same psychiatrist dr maurice dean heatley around
the time of charles's visit they reported that he was uh very unimpressive he was not a good doctor his demeanor his clinical approach not good one student bill helmer said that while he was explaining his marital problems to the doctor that the doctor quote talked on the phone on the phone to a driller engaged in the installation of a well on the heatley ranch and then he just wrote this guy a prescription for librium okay so as much as it was it was definitely he's an adult he needs to if he's gonna go back he should go back but it's like or seek alternative that could have possibly been the reason he didn't
go back yeah if that's your first experience i guess i can understand not having a lot of faith in that probably approach but in interviews with the authorities directly after the shootings that that would later occur, those closest to Charles would actually deny noticing any neurological deficits or evidence of a disability in his state of consciousness.
So nobody was reporting that they noticed something.
He was disassociating things like that.
But that wasn't entirely true.
I don't know why people were reporting that.
Because in the months leading up to that summer, Charles had clearly been demonstrating some odd behavior, some disordered thinking.
Some of this definitely could have been attributed to uh what had been prescribed to him in the spring which was like amphetamines oh um and he ended up becoming addicted to them was that sorry was that when he went to the psychiatrist like handed him a prescription first first fucking appointment you just get amphetamines jesus christ and he became addicted to them um yeah but there were other symptoms like he had some increasingly bizarre beliefs about god and spirituality that that were, like, becoming more and more bizarre.
And he had a very noticeable lack of inhibition when it came to talking about things in front of people.
Okay. Like, he was inappropriate, you know?
Okay. And he wasn't like that before.
Every once in a while, you know, like, when he was in the military, I said, like, he would sometimes, like, make a crazy comment or something.
That was, like, a little different than what this was.
This was, like, I'm going to talk to you about my sex life kind of thing when, like, I've known you for an hour.
interesting um in an interview with authorities the day after the shooting happened charles's friend john morgan told investigators that the last time he had spoken with charles they had spent hours quote talking about philosophy religion marriage problems sex etc and charles had some way out ideas about those subjects really yeah and he wasn't afraid to share them according to morgan charles was uncharacteristically open about his marriage problems problems he seemed as he said quote over sexed and talked at length about how much he hated his father which were all things he just wouldn't have talked
about before like wouldn't have gone into that yeah much of detail about um there were also strange other strange changes in his behavior as well that spring he had spoken extensively with instructors about his depression and told several of them that he planned to drop out of school at the end of semester which previously he was like very committed to completing this degree like that was one of his main goals so these type of comments would have definitely seemed strange yeah out of place like somebody would have been like wow that's a weird change and we should look at that and also that spring
after an argument with kathy he left the house and was just missing for an entire day kathy didn't know where he was and And he returned the following day.
I mean, that sounds like it was out of character.
Yeah, very out of character.
He hadn't done that before.
Yeah. On the afternoon of July 31st, 1966, Charles and Kathy Ait visited the home of John and Fran Morgan around 4 p .m. And John noticed then that Charles, quote, acted different and was extremely quiet.
Okay. About two hours later, the couple left the Morgans.
Charles drove his wife to work at the telephone company, and she was scheduled to work until about 10 p .m. Okay.
So she was working really hard. She's got two jobs.
Cathy's supervisor later confirmed that she did finish her shift and left work a little after 10 p .m., and it was the last time anyone saw her alive.
Oh, no. Now, after dropping Cathy off at work, Charles returned home, sat down at his typewriter, and he wrote, quote, I don't understand what it is that compels me to type this letter.
Perhaps it is to leave some vague reasons for the actions I've recently performed.
Oh, no. now the letter was dated and time stamped 6 45 p .m which means he hadn't done anything yet um but this indicates that whatever reservations he might have had about his plans that he was going to carry out they were gone by this time when he sat down at the typewriter uh he went on to write I don't really understand myself these days I'm supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man however lately I cannot recall when it started I've been a victim of many So he shared that with the doctor.
And then the doctor prescribed him amphetamines.
good i never saw the doctor again and since then i've been fighting my mental turmoil alone and seemingly to no avail after my death i wish that an autopsy would be performed on me to see if there are any physical visible physical disorders so he was literally being like something is drastically wrong with me i can't do this i'm just gonna i don't know why i'm about to do what i'm about to do but i'm going to and after i die which i plan to die today i want you to find out what's wrong with me like that's a scary series of plans and thoughts yeah you know like for someone to be so aware of the struggling
but so and so aware that like something is severely wrong with me but i don't know what it is i can't imagine that feeling no and i know a lot of like i know a lot of our listeners probably either know people or have felt that that way that you're like something's wrong with me and i don't know what it is right like i can't imagine feeling that way it must be so out of control that's the thing when you're not in control of your own shit and like you don't feel like you can get in control yeah that's scary it is scary like that's i can't imagine that feeling i really can't and based on the note
left behind it's obviously clear that he intended to die that day either he was going to do it or he was going gonna have the police do it um but what's not clear here are his reasons for what he said he did next killing his mother and his wife oh he killed his mother too yep he hadn't done it yet but he said it was after much thought that i decided to kill my wife kathy tonight i love her dearly and she has been a very fine wife to me i cannot rationally pinpoint any specific reason for doing this.
That's terrifying. Yeah, it is.
Charles was equally vague about killing his mother.
He said similar reasons provoked me to take my mother's life also.
It's like no reason.
I can't pinpoint it.
He just feels compelled.
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Now when he finished writing the note, he went back to the phone company to pick up Kathy, a little before, like basically at 10.
Oh, and she has no idea.
No idea. They returned home.
What's worse is they returned home.
A short time later, he got a call from his mother.
He left Kathy at home, went to his mother's apartment building and she met him at the front door.
She introduced him to the doorman, Dick Tomlinson, explaining that Charles intended to to study while he was here like you know just nice little casual combo the two of them went up to the fifth floor apartment and once inside he wasted no time killing his mother it is unclear exactly what happened like in what order it all happened because there was actually no autopsy done on his mother which i'm a little confused about that's strange um but authorities found a length of black rubber hose at the scene and assumed she was strangled but there was also a a severe injury to the back of her skull,
which Gary Laverne notes, quote, is commonly interpreted to be a gunshot wound.
But he said no autopsy was performed on Margaret and those reports cannot be positively confirmed.
But he also stabbed his mother in the chest with a large hunting knife.
Wow. Mm -hmm. So she was either shot, strangled, or stabbed, or all through, like she was all those things, but one of the, who knows what the cause of death was.
that's insane. I do wonder why she didn't – I know sometimes people can put it in their will that they don't want a non -topsy, so maybe.
This is obviously complete speculation, but because she had been suffering at the hands of her husband for so long, maybe she was worried that, like, that might end her life someday and she didn't want something to happen to him.
Maybe. Because she wanted him to be, like, around for the kids.
Yeah, you don't know.
I don't know. But I'm – Because that's so strange that they just – That they didn't do a non -topsy.
On a murder victim.
him that's what blows my mind it's like what like i would think like nine out of ten times well and before leaving the apartment he charles washed his hands then sat down at the table and wrote a note he wrote i have just taken my mother's life i am very upset over having done it however i feel if there is a heaven she is definitely there now and if there is no life after i have relieved her of her suffering here on earth wow and once he'd finished the note he carried his mother to her bed covered her body with the bed spread and left the apartment around 1 45 a .m it's just so bizarre it's so bizarre and it's
so like it's it seems like he's so removed from the situation but one part of him is still so present and connected like placing her in bed yeah you know and to think that like he relieved her of suffering yeah it's very disordered after And after inflicting the most amount of suffering.
It's bizarre. It is.
Now, he returned home around 2 .15 a .m. and entered the house very quietly.
He snuck up to the bed where Kathy was sleeping, in their bed, pulled back the covers, and stabbed her in the chest with the hunting knife five times in rapid succession, killing her almost immediately.
Oh, my God. now with kathy murdered he replaced the bedding and covered her back up and then went back to the letter he started writing earlier on the typewriter and in the margins he wrote 3 a .m both dead isn't that chilling it's just so callous now he had killed the two most important people in his life yeah it's a i don't know if it's like he because he says he doesn't know why he did it it's like did he but part of me just wonders did he do it so that they didn't have to be aware of what he did afterwards like what he was planning on maybe and i don't maybe he didn't even realize that that was the reason consciously
that was it or something it was he had such disordered thinking that there's like really no way to tell no there's not and he sat down at the table again and he wrote three more notes to his brothers and father and then he prepared for the next step now the most shocking i mean there's so many shocking things about this case but the way that he was so prepared like i said he didn't go into things half -cocked that's what one of his friends said he didn't he was very prepared for this this was not the impulsive act of a desperate man.
He had planned meticulously for his trip to the UTA campus, and he intended to be there for a long time.
Really? After finishing his notes to his brothers and father, he went to the garage to get his old military footlocker.
And into that footlocker, he loaded supplies, including three and a half gallons of water, three and a half gallons of gasoline, a hatchet and machete, an alarm clock, several hunting knives 12 cans of different food tons of lengths of rope he also packed a 35 millimeter remington rifle an illegally customized 12 gauge shotgun a 6 millimeter remington bolt action rifle a 357 magnum revolver a 9 millimeter lug i think it's a luger i don't know i don't i think it's a luger pistol and a 30 caliber caliber m1 carbine capable of rapid firing that's what he's bringing with him charles left his house
a little after 7 a .m and went into the direction of the uta campus but he stopped at the hardware store on the way and rented a two -wheel dolly to transport all this gear then he stopped at the bank and cashed two checks in the amount of 125 each okay then he was like you know what i don't think i have enough guns and ammo So he made three more stops at Davis Hardware, where he bought another .30 caliber carbine and several more boxes of ammo.
Sorry, is that a gun?
I believe so. Okay.
Then at Chuck's Gun Shop, he bought more ammo on top of that.
And then he stopped at the local Sears and bought a pump -action shotgun and more ammo.
The fact that you could buy a shotgun at Sears is absolutely mind -boggling.
It's Texas. this all i think of is and mean girls when she goes you could try sears that's i was thinking that too you could try sears that's how much this man is bringing three more stops to get three more giant things of ammo and at least two more guns when he already has at least what an absurd amount with him in a nuts amount of ammo and like canned food oh yeah and like three and a half gallons of water when i say he was planning to be there for a while he was planning to be there for a while he was going to cause some damage.
And he does. But he was planning to do even more.
Seems like he was planning to be there for like days.
Oh, I think he was.
And honestly, he made it really hard for them to stop him.
Really? He had thought of every single thing in this.
And people got hurt trying to stop him.
People died trying to stop him, like police officers.
So while checking out at Sears, it occurred to Charles that actually he hadn't made any attempt to explain why his mother wouldn't be in work that day and that they would end up wondering why she wasn't there and that could interrupt his plans because he planned to be there for a long time and he didn't want to be interrupted by them trying to figure out where she was so he drove back to the apartment he placed a call to his mother's boss told them she was sick and wouldn't be in that day then he rearranged everything in the footlocker packed it all back up and he was on his way at about 11 a .m
and what about kathy nobody's going to be looking for kathy apparently that didn't cross his mind he arrived at the campus a little before 11 a .m and he used the two -wheeled dolly and made his way towards the little guard shack at the foot of the tower now when asked his purpose in the tower he explained that he was there to deliver some equipment and he showed them his campus id card and because he had been been given lab access as part of his studies, his campus ID actually indicated that he was responsible for transporting large equipment.
So the guard had literally no reason to believe that this was anything other than what he was saying it was.
I have to bring equipment up there.
Why would you think anything else?
Yeah. And again, at this point, school shootings weren't a thing.
Mass shootings weren't a thing.
This was not a thing.
So he allowed him to enter the tower, and once inside he started charles started frantically pressing the button for the elevator and it didn't feel it wasn't working um so finally the woman at the reception desk was like oh i got you and she switched on the power and the elevator came on he looked at her and said thank you ma 'am you don't know how happy that makes me although just before he entered the elevator he turned around and shot and killed the receptionist edna townsley and then dragged her her body behind the desk so that no one would find her oh my god so after she turned on the elevator for him
and he said thank you so much ma 'am that makes me really happy boom gone yeah riding the elevator to the top of the tower he barricaded the door behind him and then stepped out onto the observation deck and set out the equipment all over the place the first rifle shot rang out at 11 48 8 a .m shelton williams who was a senior at the school recalled a lot of people thought it was a car backfiring.
I attribute this to the fact that I'm from west Texas but I knew immediately that it was gunshots.
The first person to be hit was Marguerite Lamport who was a 45 year old tourist visiting the campus that afternoon with her family.
Oh god. Her nephew Mark Gabor was also shot struck with a bullet.
The family had planned to view the city from the top of the tower and they were super frustrated because they found the door barricaded.
Right. So Mark and his His brother started pushing aside some things that were in front of the door, and Whitman fired at them through the door with a pump -action shotgun.
Mark and Marguerite were killed almost instantly, and several other family members were wounded.
The first call to police came in just after the shooting started, and officers were dispatched to the scene.
John Pipkin, a senior at UTA, remembered being in a nearby cafe when it all started.
He said, we were eating sandwiches when some guy busts open the door and jumps up on the bar and starts screaming for everybody's attention he's yelling you got to hear what i'm saying there's a sniper up on the tower and he's shooting people everybody in the place starts laughing and saying yeah right a sniper in the tower let's drink to the sniper so everybody raises their beers and makes a big joke of it and about that same time we suddenly started hearing sirens oh my god mass shootings were so fucking non -existent that this was a joke if someone ran into a place today and said someone's shooting
oh everybody not a one person would think that's a joke not a one person no no way but everybody raised their glasses and said to the sniper in the tower that's how non -existent these were it's yeah wow now what's from his position so high in the tower charles could never have seen the faces of the people he was shooting at he was just firing indiscriminately and like you said he was better at shooting a moving target oh yeah he was a sharpshooter right freshman david bayless said i ran towards batts hall and i just gotten inside side when the bell rang people started pouring out of the classrooms
it was lunchtime and everyone was in a hurry he actually tried to stop all the other students from walking out directly into the line of fire telling everyone someone's shooting out of the tower no one believed him and they all just pushed past him and walked right out into the line of fire and to feel that helpless like you're trying and no one's believe and again what do you do to make people believe you this was was no one believed him if someone said that today the entire thing would go into lockdown but by the time it became clear that he was telling the truth it was too late and the quad
exploded into chaos people were running in every direction trying to find any kind of cover junior bob higley said he was killing indiscriminately aiming wherever he saw targets riding their bicycles looking out windows walking down the drag 18 year old Paul Sontag was shot next and was killed instantly just walking and his body fell right in front of the university co -op and his girlfriend Claudia Rutt was walking next to him and she was also killed and shot and killed instantly oh my god by then most of the students who were able to able to had escaped um and had gone to safety somewhere but there
were still so many others who were just now now pinned down by the gunfire, and they were terrified to move.
Yeah. Because if he saw you move, he was shooting you, so some of them were just pretending to be dead on the ground, just hoping that he wouldn't shoot in their direction.
Or just trying not to move a muscle.
And some of them had found hiding spots, but they were hiding spots where they couldn't get somewhere else, so they were just hiding behind something and they couldn't get out of there.
Michael Hall, who was a history professor at the time, said, to my left there were three live oak trees.
A young man was crouched down behind one of them, his fingertips touching the bark terrified staring up at the tower it just like paints such a picture it does and like the students and faculty on the quad the officers who came to the scene couldn't get very close because they were targets as well right as one reporter described it blood literally ran on down on the sidewalks throughout the sprawling campus as the sniper picked off victim after victim charles had planned his assault very well and had set up stations around around the observation deck which allowed him to move quickly from one
station to the other and could fire in multiple directions so no one especially law enforcement knew where the next shot was coming from and they probably assumed like it was multiple people yeah they had no idea so they would be approaching from one end he's shooting out of the other he can shoot from that in a second right and so it made getting closer to the tower very risky and almost most impossible claire wilson and her boyfriend tom eckman um they hadn't heard the shots when it actually began they had been drinking coffee at a cafe like nearby and they decided they were going to put another
nickel in their parking meter before it ran out and they were just going to walk across the campus so she said we were walking across the south mall holding hands when all of a sudden i felt like i'd stepped on a live wire like i'd been electrocuted and this is she She told a reporter in 2006, I was eight months pregnant at the time.
Oh my God. And Tom reached out for Claire, but then he was hit too, and they both fell to the ground.
She said Tom never said another word. I was lying next to him on the pavement, and I called out to him, but I knew he was dead.
Later, when it was all over, she also lost the baby.
Oh my God. That's heartbreaking.
Or I should say, he killed the baby.
Yeah. Despite all the chaos going around the quad, there were still some people who didn't even even realized what was happening.
It was the mid -1960s and the anti -war movement was beginning to gain momentum, especially on college campuses in the U .S. So people were just becoming kind of accustomed to seeing protests and other public events around them in these environments.
So Claire recalled, a conservative -looking guy in a suit walked by and I yelled at him, please get a doctor.
He looked annoyed and said, get up.
What do you think you're doing?
I think he thought it was guerrilla theater because we had started doing things like that to bring attention to the war in Vietnam.
The conservative man didn't know what was going on, but when 33 -year -old math professor Robert Boyer saw Claire and Tom fall to the pavement, they immediately knew something was wrong, and he ran for help.
Robert's friend, Alfred Child, remembered Boyer as a free spirit by choice and inclination and told a reporter he did not believe Americans were gentle enough and that they were far too competitive, aggressive, and easily swayed towards war and killing.
seeing two young people in obvious trouble Robert ran in their direction to offer help but before he could reach them a bullet hit his abdomen his kidney was absolutely destroyed and there was extensive internal damage it sent him flying across the steps that led up to the tower and his body landed at the foot of the Jefferson Davis statue and he died a few minutes later just trying to save students and minutes later after witnessing the carnage unfolding in front of him 22 year old austin police officer billy speed decided i'm not fucking waiting anymore like they were all hiding because they
were trying to figure out some kind of plan to get up to the tower they didn't want to all just run out at once that would cause more chaos right but um billy speed was like fuck that i'm going to take this guy out he's 22 wow Wow.
With a fellow officer providing cover fire, Billy and this other officer, Jerry Culp, made a break for the tower and got as far as the Davis statue when Charles saw the two men and took aim, just as they were able to hide behind the base of the statue. The first shot hit the base and exploded the base like concrete flying everywhere.
Holy shit. The second shot hit Speed near the right shoulder, but the bullet traveled to his chest and sent him just flat on his face.
Oh, no. And at first, the other officers were like, oh, he got hit in the shoulder.
Like, that's sucks.
But, like, he'll be okay.
But then they saw that his uniform was just soaking in blood.
Charles changed position at this point because he hit his target.
That gave the officers the opportunity to pull Billy to safe, to at least a safe location out of the sun and the line of fire.
And several civilians, including one nurse, ran over to them to try to provide aid and try to make Billy comfortable at least. but they tried.
Billy Speed died a short time later and it's like these civilians all ran up to him you know what I mean like people were trying to help each other.
Now again it's understandable that the officers at the scene were hesitant to advance too quickly and risk more injuries I mean yeah because they also don't want to run out and endanger the people around them if you start shooting wildly or run out of officers yeah but after Officer Speed was killed it seemed that a lot of the other officers lost any inhibition and became determined to get to the tower and stop him.
One officer asked the commanding officer if they should shoot on sight, and the officer replied, you shoot the shit out of him.
Yeah. While the officer began making a plan to reach the tower, Charles kept firing from various points.
Nearly an hour had passed already.
Holy shit. And his remaining time, in the remaining time he had, He would end up killing 29 -year -old Roy Smith, who was an electrician, who tried to run his truck for cover.
Harry Walchuk, who was a graduate student hiding near a newsstand.
Thomas Ashton, who was a student attending a Peace Corps training class.
Oh my God. Thomas Carr, a young man who was walking down the street, just walking down the street.
Just taking a walk.
And Whitman's final victim was Karen Griffith, who was a 17 -year -old who was shot and ended up dying a week later from her injuries.
Oh, God. Now, finally, after more than an hour and a half, four officers managed to make their way into the tower with underground tunnels.
Oh, wow. Two of the officers guarded the front door while officers Romero Martinez and Houston McCoy started climbing up the stairs slowly.
slowly and once they made it up to the top floor they just made like crept up to the door and then they just burst into the observation deck but as soon as he heard the sound Charles whipped around and immediately prepared to fire but before he could officer Martinez just quickly fired six shots in his direction all six shots missed but it was like a quick like boom boom boom boom you You know, like just whatever they could do.
It did do something, though, because it forced Whitman to lower his weapon long enough that the other officer, McCoy, aimed a shotgun and fired at his head.
And it actually, in quotes, tore away his left side of his head.
Now, Charles Whitman's rampage at the UTA campus lasted a total of 96 minutes.
Which is a long fucking time.
96 minutes. in that time he killed 14 people on that campus and wounded 31 others before he was finally shot and killed by police wow when the ordeal was finally over in all 17 people were dead because his wife and mother and himself um but at this point everybody was like what the fuck happened why did he do this and how was he able to like i can't imagine the amount of questions people had And like we talked about before, unfortunately, now mass shootings are a daily occurrence, which is fucking awful.
But in the 1960s, they were so fucking rare.
And I mean, like non -existent.
So his actions literally bewildered everyone.
one. Nobody knew what to even think of this.
Within a day of the tragedy, various law enforcement agencies in Texas were dispatched to gather information about him, hoping that something in his history or recent interactions with friends, associates, employers, anything, might explain something to do with this.
Right. And those interviews did provide some insight.
And what they found was this man had been slowly unraveling for months leading up to this shooting.
But more often than not, his friends and family were just as stunned as everyone else.
And two decades later, Charles's brother Patrick recalled the complete panic and confusion that he felt when he learned what happened.
He said, I went in to listen to the TV, but the news bulletin didn't come right back.
So I called the station and I asked them to repeat the news bulletin.
At first they wouldn't repeat it.
So I said, my name is Patrick Whitman.
Would you please repeat it?
then i broke up and went and got my father from then on it was turmoil they had to sedate me wow oh my god and he was already going through his own stuff too like he had run away from home yeah and again other than like comments from people about like his academic struggles his employment issues the marital problems like everyone was like but why did you snap like this like this is a big why did you go to the school and that's why are you killing innocent innocent people like what are you doing right and why you can't like your mother and your wife the two people who supported you the most and it's
just like how did it get this bad like you plan this out how did you get this bad the brain is a very fragile organ yeah so c .a whitman had to sign off on the autopsy for charles whitman his father um because they wanted to determine whether he had had a neurological condition or some other biological impairment that could even somewhat explain how something like this could happen.
But the problem was the shotgun blast had obliterated a big chunk of his brain.
And according to the medical report presented to the governor's office, quote, all of the pieces of the brain were not recovered for the examination.
The doctors who performed the autopsy did identify a malignant glioblastoma lymphoma um in the right temporal lobe that they believe could have accounted for um some abnormal aggressive behavior yeah i'll say um but that being said the consulting neurologists were did acknowledge pretty quickly that yes there was a presence of a tumor but they said the application of existing knowledge of organic brain function does not enable us to explain the actions of whitman on august 1st so basically they're saying like yeah he has a brain tumor but not everybody with a brain tumor is gonna do this and like
aggressive behavior absolutely like that can happen yeah for sure but like this they're like we we don't have any precedent that says that this is what happens when you have this kind of brain tumor you know i mean like exactly take it and add it into all the other things that are going on and the different injuries to the head like the different you know the the history of abuse the the g -box and yeah sure take all that into of consideration, but this alone is just this alone, you know.
In the years that followed, people continued to struggle to understand why Whitman had done all this.
But just as many were happy to put the whole thing completely behind them, they didn't even want to talk about it anymore.
Reporter Robert Heard told the Austin Statesman in 1996, quote, it's worn out its welcome as something to talk about if ever it had one in the first place.
So he, you know, he thinks like we should stop talking about it i don't think disagree in a big way uh still haven't figured out why he did it so i feel like that's like a pretty important thing to talk about absolutely and gary laverne who wrote the book that we will cite in the uh in the show notes um he disagrees with that sentiment he can understand the sentiment but he was like you need to talk about it you can't just not talk about tragedies and expect them to disappear peer yeah he said superficially you could say the city and the university are in a state of denial people don't want to
go back over it and the university actually shut down access to the tower immediately after this and it was closed to the public for nearly a year before the board of regents voted to open it june 1967 um it wasn't long though and this is really tragic that before a number of students committed suicide by jumping from the observation deck in the years after that So the top floor was once again closed To the public for decades Literally You can understand why A former student Larry Faulconer said in 2006 The university stance has always seemed to be To try to erase what had happened It was like
an injury that would never heal And honestly He's pretty right Because the University of Texas And nearly all of Austin for that matter Seemed to just want it to go away Disappear They wanted everyone to move on Which I can understand that sentiment for sure like nobody wants to relive a tragedy in your especially in your hometown yeah but you can't erase it well you have to acknowledge it yeah you have to acknowledge and you have to acknowledge everybody that lost their lives exactly like you can't just pretend that didn't happen right unfortunately that's not fair you got to learn from it is what you
need to do and move forward yeah um it wasn't until 2016 that the university formally acknowledged the tragedy they hadn't even acknowledged it really 2016 that's when they placed a plaque about a half block away from the tower took a long time that's ridiculous and the plaque says the university of texas at austin remembers with profound sorrow the tragedy of august 1st 1966 this space is dedicated as the tower garden a memorial to those who died to those who were wounded and to the countless other victims who are measurably affected by the tragedy.
That should have been there.
Long time ago. In 1967, 68 at the latest. But as for why he decided and chose to murder 16 people that day, that day of all days, nobody has figured it out to, we can speculate, like we can say all these things put together, but like a lot of people go through things.
Yeah. But some people do just break.
Yeah. And there's got to be something to it and I think someday we'll find something in the brain that disconnects from another area of the brain.
Yeah. But it's like now that it's so common, unfortunately, there's got to be some kind of shared piece of disruption internally that people are going through.
Because even now we can't pinpoint why this happens and why is it happening so much now?
None of us can say that.
it's like are we spending enough time like studying this area you know are we looking at the right things it's like it's so hard to I don't know wow yeah wow what a what a case yeah it's a tough one it is a tough one and I definitely think it's important to kind of end on a note if uh if you or someone you know is suicidal or in emotional distress you guys should consider using the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline you can call or text 988 8 or even chat online to connect with a trained crisis counselor and the lifeline provides 24 hour confidential support to anybody in suicidal crisis or emotional
distress and there's also the substance abuse and mental health services administration that national helpline you can call 1 -800 -662 -HELP which is 4357 again that's 1 -800 -662 -4357 or you can text HELP4U to 435748 eight yeah and we love you we love you and we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird i don't i'm not gonna do one for this one yeah yeah i love you love you Thank you.
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