A Sniper in the Tower (25 page)

Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

Tags: #History, #United States, #General, #State & Local, #Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), #True Crime, #Murder, #test

BOOK: A Sniper in the Tower

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suggested and expressed the all-American boy." For approximately one hour Charlie opened up and became as candid as he would ever be about his own state of mind and true feelings. He did refer to several commendable achievements as a marine, but he tended to dwell on his lack of achievement and what he saw as impediments to reaching his goals. Heatly noted a self-centered and egocentric patient, but one who made clear he wanted to improve himself. Charlie became emphatic; something was happening to him and he didn't seem to be himself.
¹⁹

Heatly surmised that the real reason for the visit was Charlie's distress over the separation of his parents. Charlie described the "gross disharmony" of the Whitman household and his summons to Florida to retrieve his mother. He then related how C. A. Whitman phoned frequently and relentlessly in vain attempts to convince Charlie to intercede with his mother. The invectives against C. A. Whitman continued. Charlie included a clear enunciation that he was just like his father, especially in the manner in which he treated his wife. Charlie admitted to assaulting Kathy on two occasions, though he added that she feared him less now because of his greater efforts to control his violent behavior. He described his father as a semi-literate but demanding near-perfectionist who had achieved a great deal. Therein lay a significant difference between the father and son, and a source of much turmoil. C. A. Whitman had achieved much; Charlie had not. He dwelt on his childhood and his relationship with his father. Charlie readily admitted that he lived for the day when he could consider himself his father's superior in society and in all other fields of human endeavor.
²⁰

Charlie's lack of real accomplishment and achievement became a mental cancer. Making Bs when he knew he could make As disconcerted him. With Heatly, he talked rapidly for long periods and demonstrated overt hostility. Then he would slow down and come very close to tears. Heatly made numerous, but largely unsuccessful attempts through inquiry to get Charlie to become more specific about his experiences. Charlie did share one fantasy with Heatlyhe often thought "about going up on the Tower with a deer rifle and shooting people." Heatly was nonplussed. He had heard many references to the Tower by students over the years. The Tower spawned many sick jokes such as "I feel like jumping off the old Tower!" To

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Heatly the Tower was a "mystic symbol" of the university and the frustrations of college life. Since its construction it had become impossible for many to think of UT without thinking specifically of the Tower. The doctor interpreted Charlie's Tower reference as a "transient feeling" or an expression of depression common among students.
²¹Heatly concluded that Charlie was not dangerous, but asked him to return at the same time one week later and/or to call at any time he needed help. Further treatment depended completely on Charlie's initiative. Dr. Maurice Heatly would never see Charlie again. Minutes after Charlie Whitman left his office, Dr. Maurice Dean Heatly recorded his notes on the session. He had no idea that the document, numbered 8009, would become the most scrutinized document of his career and that it would change his life forever.

As the university would later correctly argue, Dr. Heatly had three courses of action available to him after his session with Charlie on 29 March 1966. First, he could have determined that Charlie was not a psychiatric case. Second, he could have scheduled a series of visits for further observation, which was what he attempted to do. Serial visits, however, are voluntary and must be agreed to by the patient. Third, he could have diagnosed Charlie as psychotic and committed him involuntarily.

Commonly, references to harming individuals, e.g., "I am going to kill my wife tonight," tend to be taken more seriously than references like "I'd like to blow up the whole damn school," or in this case, "going up the Tower with a deer rifle and shooting people." Many perfectly sane individuals, especially college students, make sick jokes and have fantasies about killing their teachers, boyfriends, girlfriends, parents or spouses. Moreover, Charlie never demonstrated a behavior pattern that could justify a hard commitment. He had been making such statements for years. Five years earlier fellow Goodall-Wooten dorm residents summarily dismissed the idea as facetious. To most people he was "nice." Only minutes before the Heatly session, Dr. Cochrum still thought of Charlie in those terms.

During the next four months there would be no significant demonstrations of dangerous behavior witnessed by anyone which would justify an involuntary commitment. No one appreciated how volatile Charlie was becomingnot even Kathy. Francis Schuck, Jr., while on a visit to the Whitmans shortly after Kathy began her teaching

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career, observed that Kathy's job gave the young couple more financial security than they had ever before enjoyed. The faculty member closest to Charlie, Barton Riley, who had him in two classes and two labs during the semester of the Heatly session, reflected only five months later, "Surprisingly, this dang guy, I thought, had high values."
²²

III

He took drugs. Charlie had convinced himself that chemicals could give him energy to do more, and to do better. Of course the drugs made things worse. They very likely caused one of his more painful frustrationsheadaches. Dexedrine, an amphetamine capable of inducing insomnia, became his drug of choice. It also caused mood swings and extreme nervousness. Often used for weight loss, that was not a side effect Charlie suffered. According to Larry Fuess, "[H]e had a weight problem as long as I've known him. He was always going on a diet." Another of his friends claimed Charlie took the pills "like popcorn" and in March 1966, he stayed awake for three days and two nightsgoing home only for food and a shower. During the same semester, Nelson Leissner visited his sister Kathy. They fixed food and brought it to Charlie, who did not return home from campus during his brother-in-law's two-day visit. Nelson's visit was most likely sometime between 23 May and 3 June, a period Charlie's friends deduced he got no sleep at all. It became a Leissner family joke that Charlie visited Needville to catch up on his sleep. The family knew he took something to stay awake, but they claimed he showed no signs of serious drug abuse.
²³

Others claimed he gave pills to friends who studied with him. Clearly, he had a steady supply of an illicit substance he knew to be illegal. He cited his source as "a friend," someone off campus. During periods of extreme stress, Charlie used Dexedrine to stay awake for very long periods of time. During "finals week" in June of 1966, he allegedly stayed awake for a period of five days and nights, and two days later he repeated that miraculous feat. If true, he would have endured a two-week period with very little sleep.
²⁴

Clearly, Charlie considered the possession of the pills only a minor violation of the law. He did not believe that the drugs changed

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his behavior. It was, Charlie asserted, "no big deal, they won't hurt you." But the drugs did hurt him. Their use affected his work, his relationships, and his reasoning. The greatest single effect on him was a loss of efficiency, which racked his mind and caused him to doubt his self-worth. During the fall of 1965, after a long period without sleep, Charlie decided to take a one-hour nap. A classmate had great difficulty waking him. Other classmates witnessed Charlie struggling for three to four hours over calculations that should have taken fifteen minutes. At times he visibly shook and could not hear the volume of a normal spoken voice. He drifted, and sometimes had to be shaken in order to gain his attention.

He simply did not know what he was doing with the drugs and denied their effects. He once indicated to a friend his preference for Dexamyl because it was better than Dexedrine and did not give him headaches as often. In truth, Dexamyl contained Dexedrine and small amounts of amobarbital, a barbiturate. Fewer headaches resulted from the fact that when Charlie took Dexamyl he was taking less Dexedrine and counteracting those reduced dosages with a "downer." He also took Librium to go to sleep.
²⁵In addition to illicit drugs, the medicine cabinet in the Whitman home on Jewell Street contained thirteen bottles of prescription drugs from seven physicians.
²⁶

There is considerable debate over the extent of Charlie's drug use and how much it altered his behavior. An investigation by the Texas Pharmacy Board, for purposes of providing testimony for the Texas Legislature, would later conclude that he was a serious abuser. The testimony clearly implied that drugs played a major role in Whitman's psychological problems. The conclusions were based on affidavits of students who witnessed his drug use.
²⁷Other acquaintances have a more moderate view. Leonardt Kreisle, an engineering professor and Charlie's former academic advisor, dismissed the conclusion. "I had seen him many times, and I never saw dilation of his pupils. If he did use drugs he didn't use much." In a statement to Austin police, Larry Fuess wrote: "I personally never saw Charles J. Whitman take drugs to stay awake. I was aware that he carried a bottle of medicine, but I do not know for sure what was in it."
²⁸

Like most other aspects of his life, the truth about Charlie's drug abuse may well lie somewhere between two extremes. In this case, however, the opposing views can be reconciled. Most likely, he seri-

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ously abused drugs on occasion, staying up for days at a time to study for final exams or other important tests. On those occasions classmates witnessed serious pill-popping and its disturbing effects on Charlie. Under normal circumstances, while interacting with family, teachers and neighbors, he probably took few or no Dexedrine tablets. Further, if his headaches were related to his Dexedrine use, they were likely caused by the drop of Dexedrine levels in his blood when he reduced his dosage, indicating an inconsistent drug intake. To combat headaches he took an over-the-counter remedy called Excedrin, which contains caffeine, a stimulant believed to assist in headache relief by dilating blood vessels. By his own account, Charlie took hundreds of Excedrin tablets in short periods of time.
²⁹Charlie was not a drug addict, but drugs did affect his efficiency, which is what ultimately troubled him most.

Like his use of drugs, Charlie's violent temperament has been debated. Secondary sources include various unnamed "classmates" reporting how he had physically assaulted a Saudi Arabian student who sat in Charlie's chair by mistake. Reportedly, he threw the hapless student out of the classroom altogether.
³⁰Larry Fuess, Charlie's closest friend at the time of the alleged incident, flatly refuses to believe the story. In any case, other than fighting while in the Marine Corps, which led to his court martial, and his admission to Dr. Heatly that he got physical with Kathy on two occasions, there are no other significant reports of violence. Most people thought he was nice. Dr. Kreisle thought that too much had been made of Charlie's temper. "He did sometimes lose his cool. He got impatient with people when they said they'd do something and didn't do it.... He knew something was wrong with his head."
³¹

By 1 August of 1966 many forces had contributed to a decision by Charlie Whitman to become one of the most violent and destructive individuals in American criminal history. Those forces were demons crusading to conquer his mind, and soon they would win. But many people face similar demons and they do not fight back by becoming violent.

Dr. Heatly was right. Charlie was oozing with hostility.

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1 Lawrence A. Fuess; Connally Report, pp. 910.

2 APD Files:
University of Texas Transcript
, Charles J. Whitman.

3 FBI Files:
Cole Report
, 17 August 1966, pp. 2021; Connally Report, p. 4.

4 FBI Files:
Cole Report
, 17 August 1966, p. 18; Unidentified clipping in AHC dated 5 July 1973;
Austin American-Statesman
, 1 August 1986;
Time
, 12 August 1966.

5 FBI Files:
Cole Report
, 9 August 1966, p. 3, and 17 August 1966, p. 24, Leduc Statement, p. 6; C. A. Whitman quoted in Time-Life, p. 49.

6 FBI Files:
Cole Report
, 17 August 1966, pp. 1112; Time-Life, p. 50; Margaret Whitman's unfinished letter is in APD Files; APD Files:
SOR
by Sgt. Rutledge, 4 August 1966.

7 Dr. Dana Farnsworth quoted in
Austin American-Statesman
, 9 September 1966.

8 Texas DPS Files:
Intelligence Report
, 10 August 1966;
Life
, 12 August 1966;
Texas Observer
, 19 August 1966; Time-Life, p. 49.

9 Lawrence A. Fuess; Time-Life, p. 49; AJS.

10 Time-Life, p. 49; Lawrence A. Fuess; Texas DPS Files:
Intelligence Report
, 10 August 1966.

11 C. A. Whitman quoted in
Austin American-Statesman
, 7 August 1966; AJS.

12 Elaine Fuess quoted in
Austin American-Statesman
, 7 August 1966.

13 APD Files: Travis County Blood Bank,
History of Donations
.