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On August 1, 1966, Charles Joseph Whitman ascended the University of Texas Tower, in Austin, and in 96 minutes fired 150 high-powered rounds of ammunition down upon an unsuspecting university family. Students, faculty and staff members, and visitors heard "strange noises" and thought nothing of it until they saw bodies and blood on the sidewalks. The shooter killed or wounded nearly 50 people that day.
The Whitman story is enduring because it was our introduction to public mass murder and school shootings. It also preys on our worst fear: A stranger aims and kills you because he wants to -- and he doesn't give a damn that he, too, is about to die.
I researched and wrote A Sniper in the Tower from 1995 through 1997. The university-press trade paperback is in its fifth printing, and the tragedy at Virginia Tech will most likely push it into a sixth. One reason the story of this crew-cut, blond, blue-eyed, "all- American" boy will not go away is that it encompasses many of the salient psychological and criminal-justice issues we debate today. Like the tower tragedy, the Virginia Tech incident will see passionate discussion about whether or not violence is the result of organic disease. Is the killer's brain different from ours? Did drugs influence his actions? Was he taught to kill by the military? By his father? Did his situation push him to do what he did? Why wasn't this young man helped?
Within a week of the Texas shootings, Travis County officials announced that a brain tumor had been discovered during Whitman's autopsy. Some claim that it had to have produced a seizure of sorts, which overrode his ability to both control himself and discern the difference between right and wrong. Other Whitman disciples (yes, he has disciples) advance the "amphetamine psychosis" theory: that his abuse of Dexedrine brought about a chemically induced psychotic episode. Then there are those who advance his prior military indoctrination as the culprit: He had been trained as a Marine to kill. Other "explanations" include the fact...