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 (19 page)


7. BE GENTLE ⁴

Most husbands do not find it necessary to list being courteous and gentle to their wives as a goal or a special effort. However, Charlie did sincerely struggle to control himself. Larry Fuess observed: ''Originally when he first got married he was like his father, subject to violence, but he had improved. He suppressed hostilities."
⁵

While he knew little about intimacy and normal demonstrations of love in a marital relationship, he did love Kathy. Other relationships and responsibilities caused more problems, and he compensated with a nice pretense. "Everybody is uptight when they go to school,

Charles Whitman at the University of
Texas. Prints and Photographs Collection,
CN06517,
The Center for American History,
The University of Texas at Austin.

Page 53

but Charles was really high strung. He really got uptight about things, courses and tests," commented a friend.
⁶"Nice" became a mask that hid frustration and anger. As he came closer to a decision to surrender to his anger, the facade became larger and more unwieldy. He continued to chew his fingernails even though that habit bothered him because he considered it childish. "Charlie was like a computer. He would install his own values into a machine, then program the things he had to do, and out would come the results," said Larry Fuess.
⁷And so, Charlie Whitman programmed himself to be nice.

Sometimes, however, Charlie suspended the acting and the nice front fell. Barton D. Riley, an architecture instructor and confidant of Charlie, related how Charlie lost his temper when he made a "C" on a project because he misunderstood the directions.


He hit the table with his fist and, without a word, just walked out. Charlie was used to excelling. He later came back and apologized and always in the future made certain he knew what I was talking about.

Larry Fuess remembered an incident where Charlie nearly got into a fight in the middle of the streets of Austin. Charlie and the driver of the car in front of them apparently aggravated each other enough for Charlie to have interpreted their exchange as a challenge. Larry, unaccustomed to public fighting, sat stunned as Charlie ripped off his rings and threw them on the dashboard of his car, then ran out of the car for an encounter on the street. To Larry's relief, the driver sped away. "I thought he wanted to get out; I was ready," Charlie said as he returned to his seat.
⁸

For the most part, however, Charlie continued to play the nice role. His teachers believed him to be more mature than most students his age, and his classmates liked him. "About all I can say is that the Charles I know is just a nice guy," claimed the wife of a friend. But Whitman also seemed to enjoy watching others squirm. On one occasion, Riley, a former military man, lost his temper with a classmate of Charlie's and gave him a military-style tongue lashing. Afterwards, he happened to look at Charlie and observed "the most contented grin on his face."
⁹One of Charlie's more astute academic advisors described him as an "overstriver." He believed Charlie

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had to work harder to get what he wanted, and what he wanted was to surpass the accomplishments of his father. "He had hoped he would someday be able to financially, politically, and socially outdo me," said C. A. Whitman, claiming to quote from a letter written by his son.
¹⁰

Charlie spent an inordinate amount of time setting goals, making lists, and laboring over details. The bulk of his efforts at most endeavors consisted of thought and organization. Actual results and closure were rare. Minor setbacks bothered him immensely, mostly because he worked so hard. His architectural designs were much like his temperamentnot original, but competent and efficient. Riley described his designs as "strong, nothing wastefuldirect. Although not particularly creative, they answered the problem. As a result he was an 'A' student."
¹¹

In spite of his preoccupation with making money and outdoing his father, Charlie accepted monthly allowances from C. A. Whitman. Reports varied, but during this period he routinely received from $180 to $380 a month. The elder Whitman continued to purchase new cars for his family. He bought a new, black, two-door, hardtop Chevrolet Impala for Charlie's use. C. A. presented the car, along with other new cars, to members of his family during the Christmas holidays of 1965. Charlie and Kathy had been using a tan Dodge, a model that their friend Elaine Fuess had once called the ugliest car ever made. It ran well, however, and Charlie did not want the new Impala. "He hated that car," said Larry Fuess. And Charlie would hate that car as long as he had it. According to Charlie, his father bought a number of cars at a very good price; Charlie apparently felt that he had been forced by his father to take a new car he could not afford. Charlie and Kathy would later borrow $3,400 from the Austin Teachers' Federal Credit Union to pay for it.
¹²Most likely it reminded him of his father's success, something that eluded the ever-impatient son. Moreover, the car probably became a constant reminder of his seeming inability to stand up to his father. By the latter part of 1965, Charlie's attitude toward his father turned into a consuming hatred.

As in much of the rest of his day-to-day life, his outwardly cordial relationship with his father appeared to be an act. Charlie's friends could not comprehend how C. A. Whitman could possibly believe

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he had a good relationship with his son. But occasionally, Charlie and his father spent time together, appearing to enjoy each other's company. They had a mutual love of guns and hunting. Sometime in 1965, while visiting Charlie and Kathy in Austin, C. A. Whitman and Charlie visited Chuck's Gun Shop. On that trip Charlie ordered a 6mm Remington with a four-power scope, and the elder Whitman placed an order for a .243-caliber Winchester Sako bolt-action rifle. C. A. Whitman told the store employee that they were going deer hunting. Charlie would return to the shop several times to make payments on the rifles. On one of the trips, he indicated that his father sent money to pay the notes on the purchases, but Kathy used the occasion to inflict a good-natured "guilt trip." Shortly afterwards, during a visit by their friend Francis Schuck, Kathy showed off her "deer rifle," a new fur coat.
¹³

Charlie first related a smoldering resentment of his father during an unusual friendship he formed with A. J. Vincik, one of very few people with whom Charlie ever had long conversations. Vincik ran a trailer sales firm at 4810 Burnet Road in Austin. His business interests included insurance, real estate, and mechanics. Vincik, who met Charlie through scouting, confirmed Charlie's obsessions with money and proving himself. He also provided keen insight into some of Whitman's other beliefs and thoughts. With Vincik, Charlie never indicated an outright hatred for his father, but rather a shame. In spite of C. A.'s remarkable road to success, he embarrassed Charlie. It bothered him that his father grew rich cleaning cesspools. With Vincik, Charlie shared the fiction that he did not have enough time to devote to his various ambitions. In reality, his problem was not time but his inability to set priorities. Charlie saw himself as driven and achievement-oriented, and he bitterly resented others who were less so. In that respect he greatly resembled his father. "[P]eople should have more initiative, get more things done, be recognized, and step up in life," Charlie said.

After his brief employment at NASA, he held government employees in very low regard, seeing them as unproductive and unambitious. Charlie maintained that he could do the work of eight NASA employees in thirty minutes.
¹⁴But Charlie could hardly deny that he fit much of the description of what he despised. He may have been ambitious, but he did not produce. His ever-changing

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goals and an inability to make up his mind limited his accomplishing anything. He showed no patience to persevere. Vincik helped Charlie get his real estate license, and Charlie would become bonded as an insurance agent and real estate broker on 1 May 1965, but he never sold anything.
¹⁵In truth he had achieved little and had excelled at nothing since becoming the nation's youngest Eagle Scout at age twelve and being rated a sharpshooter in the marines. He accepted money from and thus still partially depended on a man he considered a source of embarrassment. He could not have been pleased with himself and the uncertainty of what he would become. It tortured him.

Kathy continued to focus on becoming an effective science teacher.

During a long conversation with A. J. Vincik, Charlie expounded on his religious beliefs. Vincik concluded that despite his friend's strict Roman Catholic upbringing, Charlie did not practice the Catholic faith because of the Papacy and its condemnation of birth control. He did believe in heaven, but in a departure from Catholicism he doubted the existence of hell. Instead, to Charlie, life on earth was hell. He saw God not as a single entity or a Blessed Trinity but as a strange combination of pantheism in the Hindu tradition, and a corruption of St. Thomas Aquinas's proof of the existence of Godthe Uncaused Cause.

The Whitman theophany held God to be energy, and since energy is essentially the movement of molecules and all matter is made up of molecules, God is everywhere. Followers of the Hindu tradition believe that God can be found in everything. No record of Charlie's involvement in the study of comparative religious dogma exists; he probably pondered the existence of a God, and in his rebellion against Catholicism, developed his own pantheistic folklore. According to Charlie's logic, God (energy) can neither be created nor destroyed, ergo, God is omnipotent. Being reared in Catholic traditions and educated in Catholic schools, Charlie may have been exposed to St. Thomas Aquinas's argument from motion, which asserts that our senses make the world's motion evident. Further, no

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