Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

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

A Sniper in the Tower (15 page)

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victims in the dark of night. Killing was done in private so that there would be no witnesses. Few could conceive of murderers who might make no attempt to escape and might be willing to pay for their crimes with their own lives. Shortly, more people would begin to accept those notions, not only in Austin, but in all of America.

The University of Texas at Austin had 25,511 students enrolled in 1966, but only 13,000 for the summer session. Its campus was comprised of 232 acres of Spanish-style buildings with red terra cotta tiled roofs and wide, tree-lined walkways called malls. Elaborate fountains greeted visitors at the entrance of each mall, and a consistent architectural style gave the campus character. The West Mall connected Guadalupe Street, also known as the "Drag," with the center of the campus. The larger South Mall ran from 21st Street to the center of the campus, past the famous Littlefield Fountain and statues of American, Confederate, and Texan heroes. Each mall led to the Main Building, from which rose the symbol of the universitythe Tower.

The campus, located just a few blocks north of the state capitol, was very near the center of the city. In 1966, it already had serious parking and traffic problems. The Drag formed the western border of the campus. There, small shops catered to a student and faculty clientele. Bookstores, dress shops, music stores, theaters and barber shops lined the street that by 1968 would also boast street vendors peddling cheap "stuff." Musicians played in doorways and on street corners with instrument cases opened, hoping pedestrians would throw in some change. But the Drag was not part of the campusnot officially anyway.

The University of Texas Tower, Austin's tallest building, rose 307 feet above an area of Austin which was itself 606 feet above sea level; the state capitol rose 311 feet above an area 600 feet above sea level. This meant that the Tower was taller by two feet, and for some Texans this was significant. Should any of UT's athletic teams win a national championship, all four sides of the structure were (and still are) lighted orange, and selected rooms are lit to form a "1." The top of the Tower is also lit to celebrate Texas Independence Day and

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other holidays. During World War II the Tower became a symbol of potential combat by housing Austin's air raid warning system, but on V-J Day its huge carillon played "America" while students and others in the area stood silently.
¹⁰After the war, people remembered the Tower as a source of melodious euphony emitted from its caril-

The above map is not drawn to scale nor are all of the buildings near or on the
University of Texas campus depicted. The map is meant to give the reader an idea of
where some of the events occurred on the University of Texas campus in 1966.

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lon as the world wept and greeted peace. War and peace! How much more diverse can a symbol be? Such diversity was very "Austin."

The genesis of the Tower was similar to that of many public buildings of the era. During the early 1930s, when university officials identified a need for a new main building and library complex, the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal response provided an opportunity for the university to expand its physical plant. The Public Works Administration (PWA) allotted $1,633,000.00 for the project, but nearly a year would pass before W. S. Bellows Construction Company of Oklahoma City signed a construction contract. Foundation work began shortly afterwards, and by 1937 the building had been occupied.
¹¹

The collaborative efforts of Robert L. White, the university's supervising architect, and Paul Cret of Philadelphia, created the Tower design in typical 1930s style, where colossal skyscrapers like the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings rose above cities to dominate urban landscapes. Smaller versions of the architectural style, like Huey Long's Louisiana state capitol in Baton Rouge and the UT Tower in Austin, became symbols of their locales. In the same way it became impossible to think of New York City without the Empire State Building, it eventually became impossible to think of the University of Texas without envisioning the Tower.

Its design and construction, however, were not universally lauded and in some quarters were derided. Self-appointed critics were uncomfortable because the style fit no convenient category; it has been called many things from "modified Spanish Renaissance" to the oxymoronic "Modern Classical."
¹²In a 1947 article, Thad W. Riker, Professor of Modern European History, called the Tower "a mongrel, a hybrid. It is partly classical, partly Spanish." Folklorist and Professor J. Frank Dobie became the Tower's best known and most vocal critic. He described the style as "Late Bastardian" and the crown of columns above the observation deck as the "Temple of Vestal Virgins.'' Dobie suggested that the Tower be laid on its side so that all rooms would be close to the ground. Speaking to a southwest literature class during the building's construction, Dobie was reported to have said: "It's the most ridiculous thing I ever saw. With as much room as there is in Texas and as many acres of land as the University owns, we have to put up a building like those in New York."
¹³

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Defenders of the Tower had a simple response. So what if the Tower reached for the sky! It was biglike Texas itself. Professors like Riker and Dobie could hardly deny the building became a source of pride for their students or for Texas. Almost immediately tourists began to visit the Tower in order to step out onto the observation deck on the twenty-eighth floor. By 1966 visitors reached the deck at an annual rate of about 20,000. University officials found the spectacular view useful; the deck became a convenient observation point to direct traffic by radio after UT football games. Some Tower visitors wanted a close-up view of the famous clock which served as the principal time piece for the campus community. First set when it arrived in 1936, its four faces, one on each side of the Tower, had a diameter of more than twelve feet. Quarter-hours were marked by four bells of the Westminster Chime, a bell weighing three-and-a-half tons marked each hour, and a carillon of seventeen bells allowed musicians to ring out holiday music on special occasions.
¹⁴

The first death associated with the Tower occurred in the fall of 1935 during the construction of the building. Charles Vernon Tanner, a construction worker, accidentally slipped off a scaffold and fell twelve floors to his death. The first suicide did not occur until nine years later on 11 June 1945 when an English professor and faculty member, Dr. A. P. Thomason, leapt to his death after slashing his wrists, ankles, and throat. Four years later a UT sophomore named Edward Graydon Grounds leapt from a window on the nineteenth floor. Less than a year later Benny Utense Seller accidentally fell from a window ledge in an apparent attempt to regain entrance to the building. The 1950s was a safe decade for Tower visitors; the next death did not occur until 3 March 1961 when Harry Julius Rosenstein jumped from the twenty-first floor after learning he was three academic hours short of graduation.
¹⁵

III

While Charlie Whitman languished in Camp Lejeune waiting for his enlistment to expire, he became distressed about his own mental state.


I wish so much that the Marine Corps would quit hindering my life and give me a discharge so that I could start

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leading a normal life. I have so much I want to accomplish. It seems I'll never get started. I hope I am able to discipline myself to keeping up with my correspondence courses. It seems like Kathy and I will never live together and have the troubles of normal people. God, I can't stand the Corps. 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 am
going to explode
.
¹⁶

Charlie was lonesome. He missed Kathy, and in his own unusual way he loved her. There were signs that she feared him and had been assaulted by him during his leaves. Her roommate later remembered that Kathy feared Charlie's violence and dreaded an accidental pregnancy, especially after her close call in November of 1963. Motherhood would delay the completion of her studies. Her landlady later reported that Kathy feared handing over one of Charlie's guns for safekeeping. "He'll beat me again," she was reported to have said. But Charlie wrote in his diary:

I think so much of Kathy, but when I really start to concentrate on what we have done in the past and what I would like for us to do in the future I seem to explode. Or rather I seem to think I am going to explode. I wonder how long I can go on keeping to myself (I don't associate with very many people here now, and when I do I hardly ever discuss anything serious or my true feelings with them) without going nuts. I wonder if I will ever amount to anything in this world? I have great plans and dreams. . . .
¹⁷

He loved his wife, but seemed incapable of healthy or normal demonstrations of love. Charlie Whitman had never witnessed a successful married relationship void of violence. To him a large part of being a good husband and father meant providing liberally for the material wants of his family. C. A. Whitman had succeeded at that, but Charlie certainly had not, a fact that contributed to the pressures he placed upon himself to outdo his father, and explained his obsession with making money. He discovered that success in adult life differed from

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