A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders Kindle Edition

I was in Austin this weekend and one of the places we visited was the University of Texas. In particular, I wanted to see the famous tower where Charles Whitman, a 25 year old student, shot and killed or wounded scores of people on August 1, 1966. I remember the event as if it were yesterday, despite there not being 24/7 news back then. This was a big deal, and the newspapers were full of details of the shooter and the shot and the police who cornered and killed Whitman. We walked around the tower and to me it seemed impossible that one man, even with a scoped rifle, could shoot that many people,as well as murdered his wife and mother before his shooting spree. I decided to download a book to read about it - my memory becoming hazy in old age.

Author Gary Lavergne's "A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders" is a well-written, fairly non-sensational book concentrating on both the personalities and the events of the day. Lavergne examines the life of Charles Whitman and his family, which was, as we say, dysfunctional. But millions of people come from dysfunctional families and they're not up in a tower, "hunting" people below with scoped guns. What caused Whiman to...snap? I'm not sure we'll ever know - the autopsy showed a small brain tumor - and Lavergne tries to answer the questions, but seems as baffled as the rest us would be. He also writes briefly about the victims and a fair amount about the Austin Police response that day. No one was prepared for August 1st in Austin; these shootings have sadly and tragically been upped in number so that today, police and medical units have become pretty good at disaster response. What was inconceivable then has becom common-place today.

Gary Laverne's book has photos in the Kindle version as well as a couple of maps of the area around the Tower. But it's still difficult to picture what truly went on that horrific day in August, 1966.

I first read about Charles Whitman in “The Saturday Night Special” by Robert Sherrill (1973)--somehow I missed the media frenzy in 1966.

Gary M. Lavergne's 1997 book, “A Sniper in the Tower,” deserves to be on the bookshelves of anybody concerned with personal safety: politicians, law enforcers, security professionals, safety officers, mental health professionals—and all us potential victims. The year 1997 is a long time ago and my reviewing a book nearly twenty years old may be too late for most, but the book is still in print and still has value. I'm still working in the contract security industry and the story of Charles Whitman helps to make it harder for the next angry young man to repeat Whitman's deadly rampage. Lavergne's book is only as good as his sources and I have some complaints—but I regard “A Sniper in the Tower” as a valid reference source and I'd use it if I were teaching seminars on what's called “active shooter incidents” today.

The United States in 1966 was a different world. Police procedures were totally different—some people think that's a bad thing. SWAT didn't exist. Two-way police radio communications was very limited. Whitman's shoot-out made it on live television broadcasts, an immediacy that was new at the time. Many of the events of the day are lost to history, buried in myth. The author did his best to sort out fact from myth but there are a few problems.

Take Andrew Kehoe, Bath Township, Michigan; on 18 May 1927 this ex-school board member murdered 38 people (mostly elementary school children—some sources give 45 murder victims) and injured 58 more. Whitman was neither the first nor the worst school mass murderer in American history.

Or how about the “unique” response of private citizens to Whitman shooting up the town. Try Northfield, Minnesota, 7 September 1876 when the James Gang was shot to pieces during a botched bank robbery. Or how about Coffeyville, Kansas, 5 October 1892 when the Dalton Gang was shot apart during a botched double bank robbery. There are Depression-era incidents where citizens took to the streets to help out the town constables. No, Austin's response to Charles Whitman wasn't unique—just rare in Urban America.

I'm bothered when people who aren't gun savvy fail to do enough research. I'll allow that the caption on page 117 about Whitman's “35mm Remington” was a typo—35mm is more often a camera, or a cannon. Robert Sherrill got it wrong in “The Saturday Night Special,” too—and it was just the caption in “A Sniper in the Tower.” Gary Lavergne got it right in the rest of the book.

On the other hand, the descriptions of Charles Whitman's Marine Corps training didn't sound right to me. My Uncle Ron was a drill instructor at MCRD San Diego for years—and was my Recruit Training Regiment Sergeant Major while I was in boot camp! I've studied military training methods of the United States Marine Corps and United States Army, especially rifle marksmanship training. I was a unit trainer for rifle, machine gun, and 40mm grenade launcher during a 27 year military career. The current Marine Corps sniper program was born after Whitman went to college in 1961—and I cannot find any record of moving targets used in rifle qualification for Marines. Major Land (USMC retired) created the first post-World War Two Marine Corps sniper school in Hawaii during 1961. Connect Charles Whitman to the Pacific FMF if you can. As for the M1 Carbine, the Marines ditched that weapon in infantry battalions after the Korean conflict because the Carbine wasn't as effective as the M1 Rifle. Yes, there were several M1's in US service: the M1 Rifle fired what civilians call a .30-06 cartridge from an eight-shot clip and the M1 Carbine fired a straight-walled .30 caliber cartridge with a smaller powder charge and a lighter bullet.
Gun-savvy readers may recall that the 6mm Remington cartridge is in the .243 Winchester class, with almost identical ballistics. Or that the 6mm Remington was originally the .244 Remington, but slow rifling twist limited the .244 to varmint bullets; the faster rifling twist in the 6mm Remington turned the same cartridge into a light deer hunting round. The 6mm Remington is more powerful than the 5.56mm fired from the M16 assault rifle but lower powered than the old .30-06 service cartridge found in the M1 Rifle (also called the 'Garand' after its designer). Oddly enough, the 6mm Remington was only slightly more powerful in terms of muzzle energy than the older .35 Remington—I'll cut the ballistics lesson short, but the .35 Remington in the hands of a competent rifleman had an effective deer hunting distance of 200 yards, the 6mm's flatter trajectory gave it something like 300 yards for deer hunting. The M1 Carbine's 110 grain bullet was positively low-powered compared to the two of them, but in expert hands was effective to 200 yards against human enemies on the battlefield.

Austin Police Department had, according to the author, 15 Remington rifles in .35 caliber on hand. That's only part of the equation—how much ammunition was on hand? And how many APD officers had fired the department's rifles? I am skeptical of an M-14 rifle with a 'tripod' (page 200) because I know the difference between a tripod (three legs) and a bipod (two legs) and because the then-new M-14 rifle was a “machine gun” capable of full-auto fire and because there weren't enough M-14 rifles in the United States military to replace all of the World War Two M1 Rifles; it's possible, but I'd need more information. At least one police officer had the skills and a weapon that matched Whitman's: Lieutenant Bert Gerding used a personal-owned military surplus Springfield rifle to shoot Whitman's .35 Remington off the ledge, rendering it inoperable with .30-06 armor piercing ammunition.

Whitman purchased his M1 Carbine and a semi-automatic shotgun the morning of his rampage. No record of Whitman sighting in his M1 Carbine exists—but as an experienced marksman, it probably shot close enough that Kentucky Windage put Whitman on target. The Tower observation deck was 231 feet above ground level, but competent riflemen know to aim a little lower for the apparent distance—someone within 600 feet of the tower base was in deadly peril from either the M1 Carbine's bullets, or from the .35 Remington slide-action rifle. Cutting down the 12 gauge shotgun made it handier in a stairwell, but compromised hit probability a mere 50 feet away compared to the APD's 12 gauge riot shotguns. Note that Whitman had a number of firearms and ample ammunition prior to his last-hour gun buys, especially his deadly 6mm Remington light deer rifle.

I routinely shoot 100 yard rifle targets with my .357 Magnum revolver—it just takes talent and experience. Police at the time still qualified with .38 Special revolvers and 12 gauge shotguns firing buckshot to 50 yards, but today the limit is generally 25 yards. Perhaps today's police with their better weapons are not as effective as the old timers? My point is that hardware was only part of the equation. Police need skills other than shooting people—and police were not (nor are they currently) prepared to take on armed guerrillas in full-blown urban combat. I'm not discounting SWAT, unfortunately—the police Special Weapons And Tactics teams are improvements over the ad-hoc police teams of the Sixties but it's still too much to ask your local police agencies to fight guerrillas in urban combat.

“A Sniper in the Tower” records the events of the day but is limited by the knowledge of Lavernge's sources. I learned some hard facts: Whitman was shot by McCoy at a distance of 50 feet and the two head shots left injuries consistent with part of the buckshot being blocked by cover—perhaps the spotlights deflected some of the buckshot pellets? Then Martinez rushed forward with McCoy's riot gun (after emptying his own .38 Special service revolver at Whitman) and then fired the last two buckshot shells into Whitman's body. Apparently APD exercised “fire discipline” by restricting its police officers to only four buckshot shells, a practice that continues in many large agencies today.

This book is a treasure trove of information. Whitman's gunfight was televised live, bringing an immediacy not present a mere ten years ago. Did I mention that 1966 took place on a different planet?

Laverge listed many of the otherwise unknown heroes of the hour, such as the emergency room supervisor who was called The General, Leeda Lee Bryce. Most of the heroes will remain nameless, lost to history—many risked their lives to pull injured people out of the line of fire.

I liked the follow-up Laverge conducted at the end of his book, updating the fates of the survivors including father Charles Whitman and APD Officers McCoy and Martinez.

One last question: why are we repeating past mistakes?

A fairly decent account of Whitman's early life and the events leading up to the day on the Tower, as well as the actual shootings and Charlie's ultimate demise. However, the author wades in too deeply in his attempted analysis of Whitman and why he did what he did. None of the factors described concerning his past or his personality could conceivably account for the utterly incomprehensible behavior of 8/1/66. And calling Charlie a monster or evil is just ridiculous. But I suppose that at the time this was written we knew a lot less than we do now about neuroscience. The only remotely plausible explanation is the presence of the tumor in a critical area of Charlie's brain. Even Charlie's notes reveal that he knew something was happening in his head, and he was battling those impulses. We are all the sum total of the competing forces in our brains, most of which we are unaware. If a significant defect occurs (tumor, brain injury, dementia, etc.) outward behavior can be altered in very unpredictable ways.