Nation: The Madman in the Tower

  • Share
  • Read Later

(8 of 9)

Fifty feet away from him, in the northwest corner, crouched Whitman, his eyes riveted on the corner that Crum was about to turn. Martinez poured six pistol shots into Whitman's left side, arms and legs. McCoy moved up, blasted Whitman with a shotgun. Martinez, noting that the sniper's gun "was still flopping," grabbed the shotgun and, blasted Whitman again. As an autopsy showed, the shotgun pellets did it: one pierced Whitman's heart, another his brain. Crum grabbed a green towel from Whitman's foot locker, waved it above the railing to signal ceasefire. At 1:24 p.m., 96 murderous minutes after his first fusillade from the tower, Charlie Whitman was dead.

Tumors & Goof balls. Whitman's bloody stand profoundly shocked a nation not yet recovered from the Chicago nurses' murders. One effect was to prompt a re-examination of U.S. arms laws and methods of handling suspected psychotics (see boxes). There was a spate of ideas, some hasty and ill conceived. Texas Governor John Connally, who broke off a Latin American tour and hurried home after the shootings, demanded legislation requiring that any individual freed on the ground of insanity in murder and kidnaping cases be institutionalized for life. New York's Senator Robert Kennedy proposed that persons acquitted of all federal crimes on the ground of insanity be committed for psychiatric treatment. Had Whitman lived to face trial, said Kennedy, he would "undoubtedly" have been acquitted because "he was so clearly insane."

An autopsy showed that Whitman had a pecan-size brain tumor, or astrocytoma, in the hypothalamus region, but Pathologist Coleman de Chenar said that it was "certainly not the cause of the headaches" and "could not have had any influence on his psychic behavior." A number of Dexedrine tablets—stimulants known as "goofballs" —were found in Whitman's possession, but physicians were not able to detect signs that he had taken any before he died.

Half-Staff. Precisely what triggered Whitman's outburst is a mystery. And it is likely to remain so, though psychiatrists will undoubtedly debate the causes for years. The role of Whitman's father in shaping—or misshaping—his son's personality has already come under intense scrutiny, but other psychiatrists feel that the cause of his illness must be sought in his relationship with his mother. Whatever its cause, Charlie Whitman's psychosis was poured out in detail in his farewell notes, which, a grand jury said, will be released only to "authorized investigating agencies, since they contain unverified statements of an insane killer concerning an innocent individual."

In the end, Charlie Whitman and his mother returned together to Florida, he in a grey metal casket, she in a green-and-white one. With hundreds of curiosity seekers gawking and jostling in a rolling, palm-fringed cemetery in West Palm Beach, mother and son were buried with Catholic rites. Charlie had obviously been deranged, said the Whitmans' priest, and was not responsible for the sin of murder and therefore eligible for burial in hallowed ground.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9