STUDENT SHOT AFTER KILLING 15

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31128, 3 August 1966, Page 17

STUDENT SHOT AFTER KILLING 15

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

AUSTIN (Texas), August 2.

An honours student killed his wife, his mother, and 13 other persons in actions w’hich started in the dead of night yesterday and ended when a policeman shot him dead at the University of Texas.

The student, Charles Joseph Whitman, aged 24, a former Marine, altar boy and boy scout, crouched on a ledge of the 26-storey university tower and sprayed the campus with bullets for 80 minutes.

Police found an arsenal of weapons in the rooftop observation deck.

Whitman was studying architecture at the university. The first to die during his murderous rampage were his mother and 23-year-old wife. Then he went to the university and from the tower overlooking the campus he killed 13 more people—including an unborn baby—and wounded 31. Whitman was finally gunned down when police entered the tower by an underground entrance and climbed above him. When he turned round to get them they mowed him down with pistols and shotguns. SMALL ARSENAL Whitman had surrounded himself with a small arsenal of weapons in his perch, and screaming students fled into university buildings as he sprayed a deadly accurate stream of shots down on them. A university professor fell dead. A pregnant woman In a street near the campus was wounded in the stomach and her unborn baby killed.

Police used an armoured car to move through the carnage and retrieve the wounded during Whitman’s shooting from the tower.

Today flags are flying at half-mast in the city. Classes at the university have been cancelled for the time being. Police began piecing to-

gether the last hours of the mass killer.

This day began when Whitman stabbed his wife, Kathy, to death and left her nude body covered by a sheet on a bed in their flat. Police said he left notes which indicated he was mentally disturbed. MOTHER’S FLAT Then he moved on to his mother’s luxury flat near the university and shot her in the back of the head. He also stabbed her. He left a note there saying he wanted to relieve her of her suffering. One note said that if there was a heaven he was sure his mother was there and out of pain and misery. Police Lieutenant Merle Wells said Whitman had also left a note showing that he intended to kill his wife when he picked her up from the telephone office where she worked at night Police said the note concluded: “3 o’clock both wife and mother dead.” Lieutenant Wells said Whitman had been suffering from headaches and had visited a psychiatrist His note referred to a “depressed feeling, a feeling of violence.” CAMERA LEFT

Whitman also left a note Tor police telling them of a camera and film in his flat and asking them to have it developed.

Police said the film was in colour and because there are no places in Austin which can develop a colour film it had to be sent to Dallas, 180 miles away.

Whitman’s mother had been separated from her husband for about six months. Police said Whitman apparently hated his father “with a mortal passion.”

A “do not disturb” note was left on his mother’s door, ap-

parently to prevent discovery of the body. Whitman then headed for the university with his armoury of weapons in a chest. GUNS DETAILED Police later detailed them: three high-calibre rifles, (one with a telescopic sight), a 12bore sawn-off shotgun, a German Luger pistol, a largecalibre revolver, a giant hunting knife, and a large quantity of ammunition. Whitman pretended to be a maintenance man going to do a job in the university tower.

He hauled his weapons into the university’s crowded main building, together with water and food, made his way to the lift and went up to the 26th floor.

From there he pulled his load up three flights of stairs to the foyer of the observation tower and opened up with his assortment of weapons. FIRING VARIED

Sometimes he fired rapidly in bursts, at other times allowing half a minute between shots.

People down below saw him —a fair-haired figure—moving around the tower, picking off his victims with deadly accuracy.

Bullets whined against the tower’s stonework as police with telescopic rifles, crouching behind trees and buildings, returned the fire; but they could not get him until they entered the building.

Today people who knew Whitman were dumbfounded. Neighbours and fellow students described him as a pleasant, easy-going young man. GOOD STUDENT He and his wife—a former science teacher and a graduate of the university—were a happy couple, they said. “They were two of the nicest young people I have met,” said one young student. His father-in-law, Mr Raymond Leissner, said: “He was just as normal as anyone I ever knew.” The university said Whitman’s academic record was above average and there was no disciplinary record against him.