Charles Whitman ////// 229 | Forensic Files

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[Music] % [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
listening I'm your host the captain and somebody that is with me never from generation why is Nick drinking a
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to be seen and it's good to see you I'm happy to be seen myself my [Music] friend on today's show I'll be drinking
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some true [Music] crime [Music] Sunday July 31st 1966 6:45 p.m. I don't understand what
it is that compels me to type this letter Perhaps it is to leave some vague reason for the actions I have recently
performed I don't really understand myself these days I'm supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young
man however lately I can't recall when it started I've been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts these
thoughts constantly recur and it requires a tremendous mental effort to concentrate on useful
and Progressive tasks in March when my parents made made a physical break I noticed a great deal
of stress I consulted a Dr cochrum at the University Health Center and asked him to recommend someone that I could
consult with about some psychiatric disorders I felt I had I talked with the doctor once for about 2 hours and tried
to convey to him my fears that I felt come overwhelmingly violent impulses after one season 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's any visible physical disorder
I've had some tremendous headaches in the past and have consumed two large bottles of edin in the past 3 months it
was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife Kathy tonight after I pick
her up from work at the telephone company I love her dearly she has been as fine as a wife to me as any man could
ever hope to have I cannot rationally pinpoint any specific reason for doing this I don't know whether it is
selfishness or if I don't want her to have to face the embarrassment my actions would surely cause her at this
time though the prominent reason in my mind is that I truly do not consider this world worth living in and am
prepared to die I do not want to leave her to suffer alone in it I intend to kill her as painlessly as possible
similar reasons provoked me to take my mother's life also I don't think the poor woman has ever enjoyed life as she
is entitled to she was a simple young woman who married a very possessive and dominating man all of my life as a boy
until I ran away from home to join the Marine corpse the rest of the letter is handwritten and
[Music] illegible how you doing tonight Captain I'm doing great awesome thanks for asking no problem
tonight's case is something that I've been a little obsessed with for a while sadly it's because of the rise of mass
shootings here in America right and I realized that this isn't the original mass shooting that America ever saw but
I think it could be one of the most popular ones or well-known ones do you think yeah definitely so this is
the case of Charles Whitman and the University of Texas Tower shooting or Texas tower sniper is what he was known
as and on July 31st 1966 Charles Whitman sits down to write the letter that you just heard
he's not understanding these I guess uh impulses he's having he's struggling with I guess homicidal Tendencies and
this fantasy of going up on this Tower and gun people down yeah he definitely has some anger management problems just
a few and uh he decides that he's going to start with his own mother his mother had recently moved to his his part of
town and he went over to her house and went inside and bludgeoned her and then ended up stabbing her to death yeah
what's interesting is after he beat her to death he actually took her body and placed it back into her bed to make it
look like she was sleeping yeah he put a sheet over her and then he wrote do not
disturb on a note put it on the front door like You' do at a hotel I guess uh but this is her home I'm just thinking
about this and I'm thinking I've never seen anyone put a do not disturb sign on a door to a home and I'm kind of freaked
out that he thought that this would deter people uh so now if I ever see somebody with a do not disturb sign on
their door I'm definitely calling in a a welfare check on them but yeah yeah just
instantly call 911 his wife is at work she's working a 6 to 10 shift and he goes and gets her
and takes her home he had planned to murder his wife in a way where she wouldn't suffer
at least that's what he thought in his head so you would think pull out a gun shoot her but instead he will end up
stabbing her to death which to me is totally not a quick way to die it's a brutal way to die and it's a horrible
way to die right according to him happily married but he doesn't want his next actions to fall back on
his wife or his mother and we'll go into more of that later but yeah cuz when he
returns to his typewriter to continue this note he claims that he killed his mom and his uh wife just to spare them
yeah from what was going to take place now what I wonder is he obviously wasn't trying to spare their life but he was
maybe trying to to uh spare their I what I guess embarrassment or the fact that these individuals would be connected to
him after he did this Tower shooting yeah you I know with his mother he felt that she didn't have the best life so it
was almost a mercy killing but his wife she had a she was married to him they were happily married he's
self-medicating at this point and he's taking meth and fibin yeah might not be thinking too straight so I you know I
can analyze what he was thinking but why he chose the way he would do this is a whole other uh question yeah so after
he's murdered his wife he starts collecting things and he goes and writes some bad checks and buys some weapons he
already owns a bunch of weapons but he's going to purchase more and he has a Foot
Locker he was exmilitary so that's what they're used to carrying a lot of their stuff around is a Foot
Locker and he gets rope he gets food he gets water yeah they they claimed that he had enough supplies for two weeks and
then 700 rounds of ammo and again I think anyone that's paid attention lately you know
that a a mass shooting's not going to last very long this guy was planning for the Long Haul he figured would be doing
this for a while that's kind of creepy right yeah well you think if you continue shooting from a tower and for
two weeks that if they don't come and get you and kill you that at some point people are just not going to go around
that Tower yeah you think this is the Arsenal that we know that he had he had a Luger 9mm pistol he had a Smith and&
Wesson 357 Magnum uh revolver had a uh an M1 carbine rifle a Remington Model 141 it's a 35
caliber uh rifle a Remington 76 mm rifle Sears Model 60 semi-automatic shotgun it's 12 gauge
just a lot of guns and then he had a uh a 25 caliber pistol as a I guess his final backup
this guy believed he had like 10 hand yeah so he's got all of this and he packs it all up in his foot locker and
decides I'm going to go down to this Tower and set up all my weapons and start gunning people down but he has to
get there first and it's not the it's not like you can just show up with all this and walk up there and no one's
going to notice so he's got to off you skate a little bit and he's got to use some social engineering to get in so he
uh arrives at the parking lot he says he's like a research student or something to that effect right yeah it's
weird cuz I I actually saw a documentary where they talk about him wearing like repair man like a repair man outfit like
a janitor yeah yeah but then for some reason when he gets there he's like this might not work so he tells the guy at
the parking lot um I'm a researcher so he's allowed to park in the parking lot he gets a dolly he puts everything in
his you know Foot Locker and he covers it up and he puts it on the dolly and he wanders right into the building jumps on
the elevator and goes up to the top floor because he's trying to make it to the rooftop different reports will say
27th or 28th floor but regardless he has to carry all this upstairs once he gets
there but he he comes across uh Edna who is like the receptionist and initially he he tells her I'm here
to repair something and she doesn't really buy his story and she says she needs to call someone to verify and when
she turns her head to call he actually beats her and drags her bloody body like behind a couch and hides her there he
doesn't kill her or he doesn't shoot her right away he's actually beaten her first and then he's going to the
stairwell because you have to go up these this flight to get up to the rooftop and it's like three I think
three or four flights of stairs that he has to drag this you know Dolly with all
his crap on and when he's going back a family shows up that's wanting to go up on the rooftop also and do the uh the
tour so now he's stuck in this this situation where he's just beat this poor old lady and then there's this family
there and that's when he starts shooting and he opens fire on the on the family first yeah he ends up killing two of the
family members not really for sure how many he wounded but I know that he killed two the first guy is I hope I'm
saying this what right but it's uh Mike gabbar that's he's actually a Cadet for the Air Force and so he starts shooting
and he wounds multiple family members and kills two of them instantly once he figures they've retreated or they're no
longer in in his line of sight he actually goes back over to Edna and shoots her and finishes her
off and then he ascends these stairwells and uh it said that because he had this heavy
Dolly with all the stuff on it every single step made a huge bang sound and people heard it in the building and
didn't quite know what it was but it was him dragging this dolly up this flight of stairs have you seen footage of like
what his Viewpoint would be looking down off the top yeah yeah he had it's it's it's high enough to give me the heebie
jeebies as far as like cuz I'm afraid of heights so when they start showing like
what he would be seeing when he looked down on people it's a lot higher up than you would think and sadly it gave him a
really good field of vision and kill zones yeah to you know go on this you know uh
Rampage here well right and let's but let's stay on that point for a second because yes good vantage point but you
have to be a pretty good shot when do you think yeah and uh he was exmilitary he was in the Marines he got uh an
expert badge uh which is not the highest badge you can get but the second highest
right so he's pretty good shoo yeah and he you know the Marines they have a pretty good their test especially back
then I'm sure was pretty hard to pass when I was in the Army I actually hit 40 out of 40 but I don't think I had to
shoot at as many targets as the Marine back in 1943 did once he's up on the tower he distributes his
guns on all four sides and it's like a an observation deck but there's a square in the middle and then there's the
perimeter so you can only walk around on the perimeter of this and there's little
gaps and holes in the the concrete rails so he's shoving the barrels of these weapons through and
making sure that no matter what side he's on there's always a weapon there and then he's got his uh his rifle in
his hand that's going to be his primary weapon that basically the way to think of this is think of Meg Ryan and Tom
Hanks and Sleepless in Seattle and think about the last scene that's kind of how the tow is set up and
another thing this allows him to do is you know you have a shotgun and you're this high up shotgun is not going to
kill somebody possibly at that range or it's going to be really hard to hit someone with a shotgun rifles they got
they have the range or even as pistols but one of the shotguns is just laying there sticking out as he walks
past it he'll just pull the trigger and it goes off and then he's around the corner shooting at somebody else so it
gives the illusion that there are multiple people up this observation deck firing what's also interesting about the
position he's in is I believe that these walls are concrete and they're over 30 cm thick so basically he has the ability
to shoot and the only thing that that law enforcement could shoot back at would be like the top of his head yeah
so even if they shot the wall that he was right behind it was not going to penetrate through the wall no and when
he starts firing uh the few police officers that are around that you know they were issued revolvers and shotguns
at the time you know 38 caliber pistol it's I mean the bullet's GNA make it up there but then once it hits that that
cement block that you know concrete wall it's it's not doing anything and they tiny Target to to pinpoint and it's just
not going to work out for them at all because they're outgunned and they he has the higher ground so they can't they
can't do anything one of his first victims that he shoots when he gets on this Tower is a pregnant woman well this
shows you how big of a piece of [ __ ] this Charles guy is because it's not like he shoots her in
the head or the arm or the chest or anything he goes right down and shoots her in her pregnant belly and it's it's
almost I mean no I won't even say it's almost it is his intent to shoot her in the belly because he's a good shot he'll
make some other shots up here that are far further distance through tiny holes so he knows where he's shooting her yeah
and of course people are are running out to save her and her boyfriend and they are now targets and
this is what snipers do that first shot isn't always the shot to kill somebody sometimes that first shot is to wound
somebody and then all your buddies come out to save you and that gives the sniper more targets to pick
off yeah so it's a disabling shot well he and the I believe he picked a pregnant woman because more people are
likely to run to the aid of her exactly than than anybody else he goes on and shoots multiple people and there's like
three friends that are from like the Peace Corps that are just going out for lunch he guns them
down it it's just PE random people throughout their day and I think it's I don't know what 20 minutes into the
shooting that now everyone down below understands what's happening and are starting to are starting to take cover
starting to to duck out hide well and that's what's strange is uh you know if you've been ever if you've ever been
outside playing at night and you hear possibly a gunfire or maybe a firework or something sometimes it's hard to
figure out where it's coming from so it sounds crazy but like you said it takes people over 20 minutes to kind of
figure out one that there's somebody shooting from the tower and because there's so many people
that are going out in open areas looking around trying to figure out where this fire is coming from there's a uh a
journalist named Richard Hill who hears that somebody's been shot at the Tower so he grabs his pen and paper and drives
on down because he doesn't understand that there's a sniper and so he gets there jumps out of
his car and he sees a bunch of students like huddled underneath like an awning or something and they're telling them
you know like take cover and they're like you better not walk out there and they're actually laughing when they say
it they're saying man you better take cover you better get out of here and Richard doesn't it doesn't click you
know it's he doesn't take them seriously because he's not understanding the situation and I hate to say it but I'm
kind of like these kids I might laugh at the wrong time at when something's just
so atrocious or just ridiculous like what we're now huddled underneath this awning uh so well it's just a nervous
laughter Richard is walking and he's being shot at now because he didn't quite get it he was
actually just going to report about probably Edna yeah and didn't know um and there's if you ever find yourself in a
situation like this there's line of sight and if they can see if you can see them then they can see you and then
there's cover and concealment concealment just means you're behind I don't know a car or an
awning so the person can't SE can't see you but cover right is you're actually behind a wall or behind an embankment
that gives you protection so a lot of these people are just concealing themselves behind just
chairs and whatnot and if Charles sees them behind something and sees them moving he can
can still fire upon them and that bullet's going to go right through whatever they're hiding behind and hit
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[Music] 50% all right we're back cheers mates well do you know if they knew how many
shooters there were in the town no they didn't know until the final moments and they assumed yeah they definitely
assumed there was more than one there was more than one because of the amount of Fire coming from the tower the amount
of gunshots coming because like I said he would just pull the trigger you know on a 12gauge shotgun on one side and
then run over to the other side and take take a pop shot at somebody how you watched the YouTube clip of the
yeah yeah it's like weird cuz at first it seems like a movie I mean like this clock tower it kind of has that hint of
um Back to the Future yeah the the Clock Tower and and so when you see it in black and white and all you see is the
gunm smoke coming and it's so unclear who's shooting or if there is a shooter almost looks like it's coming out of
nowhere and when you hear multiple shots fired in quick secession you you don't assume that's
one person and then when you have the police officers returning fire you can't really make out how many people are
shooting how many perpetrators there are it's just Madness uh he ends up hitting an electrician named Roy Dell
Schmidt from 500 yards away says five foot this guy had been hiding behind his car
for over 30 minutes since the since the shooting started and he thought it's safe I'll Stand Up Now was there anybody
as the shooting um was taking place that ever said this possibly could be Charles
Whitman no they they I at from my knowledge uh they were just responding to the incident and they had no idea
that his wife and mother were at their homes well because he because he put a do not disturb sign on
the mother's door so nobody Disturbed it there it is that's why his note worked uh he shot another he shot another man
that was behind a uh I guess like a construction barricade or a spindle and there was just like a small like six
inch gap between the wood and he was able to hit this man [ __ ] that's a good sh yeah it's it's just brutality and
he's very efficient at it so the shooting lasts about 96 Minutes yeah from start so like roughly like the the
length of a Jud appti film you like my awful references I said Sleepless in Seattle uh Back to the Future and now
Jud after I'm like Sleepless in [ __ ] Seattle we have a shooter or or multiple Shooters the law enforcement doesn't
know but at some point when you have 30 over 30 cmers of concrete basically blocking the psychopath you have to
enter the tower now you're going to get to go up in the elevator or you can go by stairs but at some point you're going
to have three three floors that you have to go through just by stair to get to the observation deck where the the the
shots are being fired but now you're you're going to have to send officers in there and you don't know how many
shooters there are the when you get up to that observation deck there's a lot of
windows so you're exposed to the shooter still if the shooter looks inside he can
see you and there's very little uh cover or concealment for you when you first step out onto that observation deck how
many offic do they send up to the observation deck well this one police officer named ramero
martinz he was off duty that day and he heard about the shooting so he came up and he doesn't he he's just showing up
uh and it sucks because these officers when they're going there they're having to walk through the dead bodies to get
to the Tower there's no real concealment for them they're having to zigzag and run to the tower to get there well
Martinez he's going up the elevator and he gets off and he runs into three other
police officers three other guys uh a guy named Allan crumb Houston McCoy and there's special he's a public safety
agent and his name is Dub Cohen public safety agent what what is that I'm assuming he's a uh security guard for
the campus yeah can you imagine you you have to have the biggest konus to decide
hey I'm going to go up there I have no clue how many shooters there are but I'm going to go up there who's coming with
me and you got four guys and being that this is Texas people you know Don't Mess
with Texas they all have guns so Cohen had actually gone home and got his rifle brought it back and gave it to one of
the officers I'm still waiting to read a story where the law enforcement officer
had an elephant gun yeah seems like a great time for one in this scenario well the interesting thing
about this is we don't have the militarization of police until much later yet here's a perfect example of
why they might need rifles or they might need armored vehicles or stuff like that
or pretty much a SWAT team is what I'm looking for respond to this not the Beat cop with a pistol well break down how
they decide to enter the towers observation deck all three of them came out onto the observation deck and one of
them stood at the door and faced you know whatever Direction while the other two started going around Each corner
looking for the shooter so the one guy staying there he's he's there just to see if if this shooter comes around the
corner he's there to to Ambush him so the other yeah these other two guys they're going around Each corner and
they have to expose themselves they have to whip out their no they have to lean over that
seems like a very weird law enforcement practice they have to lean got be careful with your words here they have
to lean lean to the left yeah how you said it I didn't you know you can't make that [ __ ] up I know
and they check the first Corner coast is clear they go to the next corner and they they're hearing the
shots and they're getting louder and louder so they know that're you know they know they're getting close but
again they think there might be two guys up here so they're they're kind of freaked out and they see Charles
is sort of gunning somebody down so they come up and one of them shoots him and the other one jumps down to his
knees and they both fire upon him and hitting Charles and Charles had actually sort of turned towards them at this
point to engage them right and and they claim that hou they give credit to Houston
McCoy I think for the the kill but like we know the full story I think they're I
think not only both of them should be you know responsible for the kill but also the third guy that got onto the
observation deck as well but I think they credit Houston McCoy because of his name yeah and if he was the first guy to
shoot whatever it is um but they they want to make sure this guy's down so they they double tap him they go over
and they give him a a fatal shot or the execution shot just to make sure and I don't blame him one bit because this
guy's been terrorizing this entire city almost for the last you know hour and a half and just in case he's not quite
dead they finish him off and they meet back up with you know their their squad just to make sure that there's nobody
else but they're pretty sure now like okay we got them and they actually are having to duck because the police down
on the ground are still shooting at them so a few bullets actually Ricochet by their heads while after yeah that would
be my luck I'd go in there I'd kill the shooter and then I'd get shot they have to inform people fairly quickly to cease
fire this the shooters down and and sadly as soon as they get the word out everybody comes pouring out of the
buildings and they just knew that they' killed this one guy up on the observation deck they weren't too sure
if there was anyone else in the tower somewhere else on another floor could you imagine hundreds of people coming
out and now they're targets too if if this wasn't the only guy right but at some point you have to come out you know
when they said they the coast is clear at some point you have to take yeah I just I would just assume that there
would be more you know with the large amount of police presence they'd be like everyone stay down everyone stay where
you're at Let's uh make sure that this is all good yeah and you also wonder about if
there was a second shooter and you let all these individuals out now you have hundreds and hundreds of people if there
was a second shooter that somehow got from the top of the tower all the way to outside again that they could just
appear I didn't even think of that they could just blend right in I mean that's what the Parkland shooter guy did he was
able to walk away and not picked up until later so after hearing the all clear people are out and they uh now
have identified Charles whitmann and they're going to his home or they're going to find his dead
wife yeah and they're going to find his murdered mother also and that's where they're
going to find his note and is is it fair to say it's a suicide note yeah I would
say it's a suicide note uh or is it a homicide there you go you know uh it's almost both I call American Mass
Shooters our version of a suicide bomber but they are able to kill a lot more people because they can shoot at them as
opposed to to just trying to set themselves off in the middle of a crowd but in this note he
mentions uh that he loved his wife he mentions that she was a wonderful person and that he had these horrible thoughts
and that he hopes that they can do an autopsy on him and look at his brain and see if there was anything that caused
him to do this and they do do that and they end up finding a small tumor they say it's the size of a of a
pecan or a peon depending on where you're at uh it's not it's not a Tuma uh but it's pushing up between his Thalamus is
hypothalamus and if this is all you know about the story well hey this guy was happily married everything was great and
then he had homicidal thoughts and he goes on this Rampage and has a tumor case closed right yeah it's it's it's
one of those things where it gives you an answer and then also makes you on some level feel bad for Charles whitmann
like maybe he couldn't control himself but I think there's evidence to point that maybe this tumor could be a
percentage of the cause but not the full cause I always have a scale of nature versus nurture when it comes to any Mass
shooter serial killer whatever and I always think there's a blend I don't think it's always nurture or it's always
nature I always think it's a percentage of well we've had a lot of you know there's a lot of people that struggle
and fight every day that have cancerous tumors and they're not going around and shooting individuals but the brain works
in mysterious ways so you wonder if it just grows at a certain point if this makes people more capable of this kind
of action but I think of the DC snipers or the Parkland shooter or a lot of these other people and it's not proven
that they all had tumors a lot of them are either radicalized or just did they have any idea of when this tumor started
they said it was pretty malignant and that it had there's disagreements about this
tumor a lot of disagreements and some people say it's not even a tumor or they don't even believe it exists so you're
right when you said it's not a tumor uh well and maybe the reason why again why would somebody claim that there was a
tumor when there wasn't well we got to go back to the idea that Whitman was an officer was a US Marine and that would
explain away this crazy behavior this psychotic behavior it also explain a way why our um the Marines did nothing about
it did nothing about this person so it gives them kind of a let them off the hook way out by saying well we didn't
know anything about this and Charles wasn't crazy there was no sign of that he had a tumor but when we look at
Charles's upbringing in his childhood there's some things in there and uh his father father was a domestic
abuser well let's start with the fact that Charles was a handsome young kid he had like blonde hair I think blue eyes
kind of like the all- American Boy youngest Eagle Scout in America think of the youngest kid to ever become a eagle
scout at the time which that's pretty cool he is the quintessential All-American boy uh I'm assuming it's
because his father pushed him he he was overbearing I wonder too is it like another excuse like well this guy was
beaten by his father um but back in the 50s there was a lot more physical punishment that
happened so he's beaten by his father he hated his father and uh there's an incident that's
talked about a lot where when he got older a teenager he uh oh the one where he was 19 drunk and he
comes home and his dad is so upset with him that he beats him to a bloody pulp and
then tries to drown him in the pool yeah and well here's the thing though is like
I mean he he did have a father he had a mother they had a pool things could have been worse this
is true but he is living in a very hostile environment and his he's watching his
mother get beaten and verbally abused emotionally abused this is just the most unhealthy living situation for anyone to
be in and it's his father that is the the evil one in this whole thing and he hates his father with a passion right he
seems to be one of those fathers too where it's like no matter what you do it's not good enough like you become
like the Young Eagle Scout in American history at that point and it's not good enough for your father no I mean he's
the youngest Eagle Scout yet he still gets you know almost killed for going out and
drinking and this is the amount of pressure that's put on Charles so he he joins the Marines but even before this
there was rumors of him bullying kids and and basically you know he he would get bullied by his father so what did he
do he went and bullied yeah you know other kids and I think we've all seen that I mean I remember one time um in
high school there was this kid that he would fight anybody and I thought what what the heck's wrong with him and then
I heard that uh every time that he got in a fight that his dad would hear about his dad would beat him up real bad and
then you you almost wonder why the heck has he get in a fight then every time he
gets in trouble for it he gets beat up it's almost like maybe some kind of like self-punishment at that point and it's
it's a cycle of violence not everybody that's been abused is going to go on and abuse others but it it is a little bit
of a stereotype it does happen a lot I actually wish his dad was a little bit more of a monster and would have drowned
him in that pool because if they would have then we wouldn't have the 17 innocent people dead we wouldn't have
the pregnant lady dead we wouldn't have the 30 31 wounded inent people I understand your logic but when he was
doing this to Charles Charles was innocent but I get it if if I went back in a time machine and yeah yeah which
one yeah which one would you pick Justin come on you gonna pick the Dead kid in the pool or you going to pick the the 17
dead people I'm gonna have to swallow swallow my pride a little bit and uh one over multiple he uh he joined the milit
and it was during the time of uh wasn't it the Cuban crisis Charles joined the Marines they they said that he was
actually really well-liked and probably had a IQ of 138 which isn't bad and then after
joining the Marines is that's when he's actually going to go uh to Austin and start at the University of Texas this is
where he also is going to marry his wife and then he actually goes back into to the Marines during the Cuban crisis it's
when he's meeting his wife like his first stint with the Marines he's Exemplar he is awesome
clean record he gets Awards all this stuff he's in a very regim regimented environment and I think that's what he
needed yeah but see this is one when I wonder if the tumor actually started or if there was maybe not even tumor as
much as there possibly could be just some mental illness that started rearing its ugly head
because like we said he's in the military then he goes to college he gets married then he goes back and he goes
from well-liked Smart hardworking to yeah they can't stand he's uh he's gambling he's
drinking he's acting as a lone shark and lending other soldiers money and if they
don't pay him or he gives them such a high interest rate that they can never pay him that he'll go and assault
them it's like what and it gets so bad that they end up discharging him and then that's when he
goes he decides well I'm going to go back to Austin and I'm going to show them I'm going to enroll into school and
I'm going to get my life together but he's not what drives me nuts in a lot of these mass shootings is how many times
there was warning signs like there was people that came out and said that he would constantly
point up to the tower and say that would be a great place to go up and shoot people from like if somebody says that
you need to tell somebody I I just covered a similar situation on my peripheral podcast where uh they were
telling the school officials I'm going to kill my fellow students and the school counselor said oh that's nice and
sent them on their way I mean it's pathetic there's so many times look what's the worst thing that can happen
um when I was in 8th grade I heard a kid jokingly say that he was going to kill himself to another individual the one
kid was getting picked on he kind of jokingly said to the guy hell it'll be funny when I'm dead after
I killed myself or something like that and it was like whether it's a joke or not yeah I told a
counselor and then they pull him down to the office well guess what he was thinking about this he was actually
thinking about killing himself at school because of bullying and all that stuff and and that was enough to get the kid
some help and then later on he thanks you and in this scenario it's like if one of these people would have came
forward and said Charles doesn't seem seem like that bad of a guy but he keeps saying these weird things about shooting
people from a tower that maybe they go get him checked out and then they find this tumor and if that is the cause of
what happened then maybe they get help or they get help for a mental illness or get help for the trauma that he faces he
saw a doctor uh I think it was psychiatrist at the University and he told that person about his fantasy
and they talked for a good two hours and that doctor saidwell we need to talk again and he scheduled another
appointment but of course Charles didn't show up to the next appointment because
he had other plans right but that's when the doctor needs to go to law enforcement and say we need to do
something especially you know an exm marine and that's what makes you really wonder was
it a mental illness was it some trauma as as a child or was it this tumor what what was the real reason for these
innocent life that's where I look at it and I think you have a mix of both nature and
nurture his nurture was not good his childhood was not good his father was showed him that violence was the answer
to everything and the reason why his mother was living down the Street and his father was on the other side of the
country was because back home the neighbors were calling the cops and saying someone's going to die if you
don't get here he's going to kill her because his father was just beating the crap out of his mother so she moved
across country and stayed with with Charles and his wife for a bit and then got her own place and that's why she was
there was escaping this domestic abuse this whole environment but she walked into the arms of another devil to get to
escape from one another one and like you said you on some level you would think that Charles whitmann would want to
protect his mother especially after she gets out of this abusive situation but again Ian I'm not a psychologist so I
don't know but the trauma that he could have faced as a child could have been too overwhelming for possibly for him to
and to your question you know do you choose this one child or do you choose the 17 victims I would have preferred
Charles just to go back and take it out on his father the person that started this whole chain of events so you Chang
I'm changing my answer that's what I would prefer you just didn't get me as if we could go back into time yes we're
killing Charles Charles could do it himself if he likes and yeah with all the guns with his his 10 hands all at
once and we he can even shoot him from the tower if he wants to he said that his mom had lived a uh
pathetic useless life uh just being beaten at the hands of this man so he I feel he killed his mom because it was a
mercy killing he he was just like your your life is done you haven't lived a life you've just been a victim so I'm
going to end you and put you out of your misery yeah I I actually think that he killed his mother and his wife just in
case he lived through this that he wouldn't have to see how they reacted to him afterwards does that make sense like he
wouldn't have to see the shame in their eyes because he's a mass murderer or the disgust that his wife
would have for him for committing these crimes cries I actually think that's why
think you're right especially his wife because he has no motivation to murder her there's nothing there there's no
reason why so yeah it's it's just brutal but this is the this is the case this is the story
this is the shooting that I think started at all and I don't really understand how this became a
thing in America America do you think it's auma I don't think it's a Tuma I think it was him with a plan I I
disregard the tumor it might have had a factor in it but I disregard the tumor myself well I like the fact that you
said that the tumor might be a rumor the tumor might be a rumor and I think possibly so and that
would be to cover up the discharge his involvement and the United States Marines but whether it's a tumor or not
this was a horrible tragedy and something that um and the biggest mass shooting in history as of
[Music] 1966 Justin I want to thank you for joining us in the garage I've always been a fan of you and Aaron
big Generation Y fan if if somebody wants to check out your podcast well actually you have two
podcast tell me about your two shows if you don't know about that show I don't I
don't know what rock you've been living under you can find us anywhere iTunes Stitcher all that stuff uh when you talk
about True Crime you have to talk about mental illness you have to talk about domestic abuse but sometimes you can't
really go really deep into it in lie of the story so I started another podcast called the peripheral where I interview
listeners such as yourself that are listening right now about uh rape about domestic abuse about mental illness
about addiction uh just any story that is somebody that thinks they might be alone and hopefully others will hear it
and and you'll know that it's not something on the peripheral it's something that should be in the
mainstream yeah and hopefully I can be a guest on your show that would be awes soon all right man uh I don't think I'm
planning to see you until crime con con next year but until then we will we'll drink some more awesome thank you so
much for having [Music] me hopefully you guys enjoyed a little bit of the mashup this week check out
our good buddies Justin and Aaron and their podcast Generation Y it can be found anywhere iTunes any podcast app or
you can check them out on the web the generation wide podcast.com if you like to hear Nick and Aaron's mashup that's
going to be episode 291 on the Generation Y podcast feed so check that out until next week be good be kind and
don't Che lit up [Music] [Applause] [Music] you can start your day off right when
you find a professional on Angie to get your plumbing right first connect with skilled professionals
to get all your home projects done well visit angie.com you can do this when you
Angie that

Charles Whitman ////// 229

Part 1 of 1

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In 1966 a former U.S. Marine took rifles and climbed atop the main building tower at the University of Texas and opened fire on the people below. This induced over 90 minutes of pure run for your life panic. Tonight on a very special episode of TCG the Captain has a Guinness and hangs out with Justin from the Generation Why podcast to discuss one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history.

Check out Nic and Arron's Episode @ www.thegenerationwhypodcast.com (http://www.thegenerationwhypodcast.com)

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses Charles Whitman's 1966 tower shooting, his troubled past, and the implications of mental health issues.

Key points

The Killer's Letter. A chilling letter reveals the killer's inner turmoil and justification for his actions.
Murdering His Mother. The killer bludgeons his mother to death and stages her body.
Planning for a Mass Shooting. The killer meticulously prepares for a shooting spree, gathering weapons and supplies.
The Chaos of the Shooting. Witnesses describe the confusion and fear as multiple shots rang out.
The Officers' Brave Response. Police officers face the unknown as they enter the tower to confront the shooter.
The Tumor's Role in Violence. Discussion on whether a brain tumor influenced the shooter's actions.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I truly do not consider this world worth living in and am prepared to die.

The killer's despair and justification for his actions.

5:30WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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