A Sniper in the Tower (76 page)

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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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other radicals. Individuals reacted in different ways. Claire Wilson's father reportedly sold all of his guns, but most Americans, as is common after high profile murders and crime waves, purchased more guns in order to protect themselves.
15
The question remained: Had the availability of weapons and the ease with which Charles Whitman purchased his arsenal caused or at least contributed to the Tower incident?
Those concerned with child welfare and with the victims of domestic abuse quickly used Charles Whitman's upbringing as an example of the dehumanizing effect of spanking and other corporal punishment. Children's rights advocates saw the Tower incident as a forum to demonstrate what childhood abuse and domestic violence could do to an adult. The incident helped to give rise to the "abuse excuse." Many opponents of corporal punishment consider spanking, as such, abusive. Others, many of them successful parents of well-adjusted children who grow to become responsible adults, see spanking as immediate negative reinforcement for unacceptable behavior. The larger question remained: Had Charles Whitman's upbringing helped to condition him to become a mass murderer?
The most startling discovery, however, occurred during the autopsy of Whitman's body, when Dr. Coleman de Chenar noted that Whitman's skull was unusually thin (2 to 4mm) and found a tumor "in the middle part of the brain, above the red nucleus, in the white matter below the gray center thalamus," which was "a fairly well-outlined tumor about 2 × 1.5 × 1 cm in dimensions, grayish-yellow, with peripheral areas of red as blood." In his report Dr. de Chenar described the tumor:
The tumor of the brain is composed of elements of the connective tissue of the brain (glea) and of blood vessels of enlarged calibers. Some of these blood vessels have thick walls, others thin ones, with defective construction of the layers and microscopically small bleedings into the surrounding intercellular spaces, however, only a dozen or less red blood cells enter those spaces around. The cells are rather small, round or elongated, with a small amount of cytoplasm and mostly well staining nucleus. The chromatin substance of the nucleus is well organized, round or
 
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somewhat elongated or, in some places, vesicular. Cell divisions occur only very exceptionally, indicating a minimal level of activity, just on the borderline to malignant formations. There are areas of cell death (necrosis), surrounded by a fence-like arrangement (palisade formation) of elongated cells.
16
Dr. de Chenar did not think that the tumor had any correlation to psychosis or persistent pains, like headaches.
17
For many of Whitman's friends and family, the tumor has become the culpritsomething in his brain had made him somebody else. Many have been comforted by the fact that in his notes he asked for an autopsy to explain what he did. The suggestion was that he knew, as one of his teachers stated, that ''something was wrong with his head." This case became part of a much larger ongoing debate over whether brain disease can cause violent behavior. In this case, could the tumor, or his intuition that something was physically wrong with him, have caused him to go berserk?
Victims' advocates and law enforcement officials, hardened by the evil they see on the streets and in some homes, have simpler explanations. Maybe Charles Whitman made a deliberate decision to kill people; maybe he knew exactly what he was doing and that it was wrong. Maybe he was just mean as hell.
III
Or was he crazy?
Mrs. L. J. Hollorn, a neighbor of the Whitman family in Lake Worth, Florida, thought, "He must have just lost his mind." C. A. Whitman asked reporters and the world to realize that his son was clearly a sick man: "I am at a loss for what reason he had. I feel he was definitely sick. I can say nothing but that he was a wonderful lad in the past. I am proud that I had a son like him up to this point."
18
Robert Kennedy, a former U. S. Attorney General and Senator from New York, candidly asserted that had Whitman lived he would have undoubtedly been acquitted because "he was so clearly insane."
19
Dr. Robert Stokes, an eyewitness to the carnage, and the doctor who
 
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officially pronounced Whitman dead, believed he suffered from an acute schizophrenic break.
20
Less than three weeks after the incident, Bill Helmer wrote in the
Texas Observer
of his experiences during the shootings. In his article he offered his own theory:
A crackpot, a nut, a maniac almost never possesses the skill of a Whitman, or the manner. He was cool, efficient, and totally rational in every way except his impulse to kill, and in that he was determined, unflinching, and extraordinarily competent. He planned his deed with more good sense than most people can bring to bear on the job of packing a suitcase for a trip. He executed his plan with no sign of indecision or compromise. Another sniper might have indulged himself in shooting into the bodies on the mall, or knocking out a tempting plate glass window, or lobbying a few bullets into the Capitol or downtown Austin. Whitman did absolutely nothing for dramatic effect; he labored only to kill, in the "one shot, one man" military tradition.
21
Helmer's observations voiced a sentiment common among eyewitnesses; Whitman made them angry. Another of Helmer's observations was that if Whitman had only done something trivial, like shooting a car or breaking a number of windows; if he had only shot the statue of Jefferson Davis or tried to shatter the "bubble gum" lights atop police cars, just for the hell of it, it would have been easier to think of him as crazy. But because Charles Whitman had done none of those things, he made people extraordinarily uncomfortable. The
Texas Observer
wrote, "If Charlie was a monster then so are we all."
22
Barton Riley, the faculty member who likely had spent the most time with Whitman and who had gone to extraordinary lengths to help his troubled student, believed in a much simpler explanation:
I don't think he was insane. He was fed up with everything. He hated his father, his mother was miserable. Something was wrong with his family. . . . [H]e decided to

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