The Postcard
A postcard that was distributed by Coastal Cards Ltd. of Clacton-on-Sea. On the back of the card they have printed:
'Humour is the sole relief
of error and tension.'
The artwork was by Duncan.
The card was posted in Deal, Kent using a 3d. stamp on Monday the 1st. August 1966. It was sent to:
Mrs. H. Sternberg & Everyone,
12, Evelyn House,
Greatorex Street,
London E1.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Aunt Mimi & Everyone,
The weather here is so far
lousy with the rain teeming
down every minute.
Now and again the sun comes
out and when it does, it is
glorious.
When I arrived here on Saturday,
I got stuck in the great sea of
mud that has surrounded the
camp.
Love,
Steven xxx"
The University of Texas Massacre
So what else happened on the day that Steven posted the card?
Well, on the 1st. August 1966, Forty-three people were shot, 13 of them fatally, by Charles Whitman, a student at the University of Texas at Austin and a former U.S. Marine sniper.
He fired from the observation deck on the 28th. floor of the tower overlooking the campus. Earlier in the day, Whitman had murdered his mother and his wife.
At 11:48 a.m., Whitman began shooting victims at random, and was not stopped until 96 minutes later, when policemen Ramiro Martinez and Houston McCoy were able to reach the sniper's perch and kill him.
An autopsy showed later that Whitman had a brain tumor.
The Shooting
At approximately 11:25 a.m. Whitman reached the University of Texas at Austin, where he displayed false research assistant identification to a guard in order to obtain a 40-minute parking permit with the explanation he was delivering teaching equipment to a professor.
Whitman then wheeled his equipment toward the Main Building of the university. He entered the Tower between 11:30 and 11:35 a.m., and may have timed his entrance to the tower in order to coincide with the 11:45 student class changeover to maximize the number of available targets walking around the campus.
Upon entering the Main Building, Whitman found the elevator did not work. An employee named Vera Palmer—believing Whitman was a repairman—informed him that the elevator had been "turned off" before reaching for a switch to activate it for him.
Whitman smiled as he thanked Palmer, stating, "Thank you ma'am", before repeatedly saying:
"You don't know how happy
that makes me... how happy
that makes me."
He exited the elevator on the 27th. floor, then hauled the dolly and equipment up a final flight of stairs before moving down a corridor toward the observation deck.
Inside the reception area, Whitman encountered 51-year-old receptionist Edna Townsley; he bludgeoned her into unconsciousness with his rifle butt—splitting her skull—before dragging her body behind a couch.
As Whitman hid Townsley's body, he was surprised by a young Texan couple named Donald Walden and Cheryl Botts, who entered the room from the observation deck as he leaned over the couch.
Botts later stated that she and Walden believed Whitman, holding a firearm in each hand, was about to shoot pigeons; she smiled and greeted Whitman, who smiled back and said, "Hi, how are you?"
Both observed a dark stain on the carpet close to where Townsley had been seated, which Botts assumed was varnish.
Moments after Walden and Botts exited the 28th. floor, Whitman constructed a makeshift barricade to the floor entrance using Townsley's desk, two chairs, and a wastebasket.
As he was about to enter the observation deck, he was surprised by a vacationing Texarkana family attempting to navigate the barricade.
As 16-year-old Mark Gabour attempted to prise the entrance to the staircase open, Whitman wheeled and fired at the family with his shotgun, killing Mark and his 56-year-old aunt, Marguerite Lamport, and seriously wounding 19-year-old Michael Gabour and his 41-year-old mother, Mary, before resealing his makeshift barricade.
Michael Gabour Sr. and William Lamport (who had been following their family members to the reception area) were uninjured; both briefly ran from the stairwell before attempting to provide care for their family members, then running for help.
Gabour encountered Vera Palmer exiting an elevator on the 27th. floor to relieve Edna Townsley's receptionist position; he frantically cautioned the young woman as to the ongoing homicidal commotion. Palmer immediately returned to the ground floor.
After again securing the makeshift barricade, Whitman fatally shot Townsley once in the head before wheeling his footlocker to the six-foot-wide observation deck, where he wedged the dolly against the sole entrance door.
He then donned a white headband and unpacked his weapons from the footlocker, which he placed around all four sides of the deck.
At 11:48 a.m. Whitman began shooting from the observation deck 231 feet (70 m) above the ground.
His targets were random individuals between the ages of 17 and 64 upon and around the campus, although the majority were young students, including an 18-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant and whose unborn child was fatally shot—the first individual Whitman shot from the observation deck.
Several of those killed or injured were shot on or near a section of Guadalupe Street known as the Drag, which is home to coffee shops, bookstores, and other locations popular with students and is located to the west of the Main Building.
Numerous others were shot from the other three sides of the observation deck. In the first 15 minutes after Whitman first fired from the tower, he shot the majority of his victims.
Initially, several individuals upon and close to the campus mistook the sound of gunfire for noise sourcing from a nearby construction site, or thought that persons falling to the ground were participating in either a distasteful joke or a symbolic protest against the Vietnam War.
One student within the tower at the time of the shootings, Norma Burger, later recollected looking from her fourth floor window and observing six individuals sprawled close to the tower.
Initially, Burger expected the six to get up and walk away laughing before she observed copious amounts of blood by their bodies and saw another individual fall to the ground.
Another individual who had been shot recalled that as she pleaded with a bystander for a doctor, the individual tersely replied:
"Get up! What do you
think you're doing?"
However, the reality of the unfolding events quickly dawned on all present upon the campus, and several individuals risked their own lives to rescue the wounded. Ambulances from local funeral homes and an armored car were also used to reach the casualties.
As the shootings continued, several police officers and civilians provided suppressive fire from the ground with firearms of varying calibers including pistols, shotguns, and hunting rifles.
The return fire forced Whitman to remain low and predominantly fire through the three large storm drains located at the foot of each of the four foot high observation deck walls, where he continued to find targets. These included a 29-year-old electrical repairman, Roy Dell Schmidt, who was fatally shot 500 yards (460 m) from the tower.
Also shot was 30-year-old funeral home director Morris Hohmann, who was seriously wounded seconds after entering Whitman's view from behind the cover of the ambulance in which he had been traveling in order to ferry wounded individuals to local hospitals.
Police chartered a two-seater light aircraft, from which sharpshooter Marion Lee attempted to obtain a clear shot of Whitman as the aircraft orbited close to the tower. However, rising heat waves created turbulence, limiting the stability of the aircraft and thus Lee's ability to aim.
Whitman fired two shots into the aircraft before pilot Jim Boutwell navigated to a safe distance, from which he continued to circle, seeking to distract Whitman and further limit his ability to fire from the tower.
The Police Response
Four minutes after Whitman opened fire from the tower, at 11:52, the Austin Police Department received their first report of shootings at the University of Texas. All available police officers and highway patrolmen in the vicinity of the university were immediately dispatched to the site.
One of the first officers to arrive, 23-year-old Austin patrolman Billy Speed, took refuge with a colleague behind a columned stone wall. Whitman shot through a six-inch space between the columns of the wall and killed Speed with a single shot to the chest.
Civilian Allen Crum — a retired Air Force tail gunner — became aware of the shootings when he observed teenager Aleck Hernandez lying close to the University Book Store he managed and surrounded by several individuals.
Initially, Crum believed a fight was in progress, but quickly realized the teenager had been shot and that the assailant was continuing to fire from the tower.
Unable to make his way back to his store safely after assisting in first aid to Hernandez, Crum proceeded to the tower, where he offered to help the police. Inside the tower, he accompanied Department of Public Safety Agent William Cowan and Austin Police Officer Jerry Day up the elevator; Cowan having provided Crum with a rifle.
Officer Ramiro Martinez was off duty at home when he heard news reports of the ongoing shooting at midday. Having called the police station to offer assistance, Martinez was instructed to go to the campus to assist in redirecting traffic.[
Upon arrival, he found other officers already performing these duties, and thus ran toward the tower where, having ascended the elevator to the 26th. floor, he encountered officers Day and Cowan, and Allen Crum.
Austin Police Officer Houston McCoy also proceeded to the Main Building; he was able to safely cross the campus as he encountered a university employee familiar with the underground tunnels of the campus. He and a small number of other officers were able to safely reach the Main Building.
McCoy took the elevator and encountered Crum, Day, and Martinez. On the 26th. floor, Day, Crum, Cowan, Martinez, and two other officers named Jack Rodman and Leslie Gebert (who had separately ascended to this floor) encountered a distraught Michael Joseph Gabour.
Gabour was hysterically shouting that his family had been murdered inside the tower by the gunman as he clutched his wife's bloodstained white shoes. Gabour attempted to wrestle a rifle from one of the officers.
Day and Cowan restrained the distraught man as Rodman and Gebert returned via elevator to the ground floor, where they instructed Vera Palmer to switch off all elevators within the building before they began securing all perimeter entrances.
Meanwhile Martinez and Crum ascended the stairs to the 27th. floor. As they climbed the stairs to the observation deck, Crum asked, "Are we playing for keeps?", Martinez responded, "You're damn right we are", to which Crum replied, "Well, you better deputize me". Martinez replied, "Consider yourself deputized."
Midway upon the stairwell leading to the reception area, Martinez and Crum found the bodies of Marguerite Lamport and Mark Gabour, and the severely injured Mary Gabour and her son, Michael.
Michael Gabour—slumped against a wall at the base of the stairway—had initially been knocked unconscious and had only recently awakened. He gestured to the observation deck as he informed Martinez and Crum, "He's out there."
After positioning Mary Gabour on her side to prevent her from drowning in her own blood, the two men continued ascending to the reception area, where they discovered the mortally wounded Edna Townsley.
Martinez and Crum were the first individuals to reach the observation deck. Martinez first dislodged the dolly Whitman had wedged against the door before instructing Crum to remain positioned outside the door with his firearm focused to provide cover from their right, and to shoot any individual who appeared in his sights from this southwesterly direction, as he proceeded warily to the left.
McCoy and Day separately reached the observation deck shortly thereafter: McCoy immediately followed Martinez to Crum's left; Day—arriving at the observation deck shortly after McCoy—proceeded to Crum's right.
Believing he heard the sniper's footsteps proceeding toward the corner of the observation deck he covered, Crum fired a single shot from his rifle into the southwest corner of the parapet, directing Whitman away from his line of fire.
End of The Shooting
At approximately 1:24 p.m., while Whitman crouched close to the northwestern wall of the observation deck with his firearm focused toward the southwest corner of the deck for the source of Crum's rifle shot, Martinez and McCoy rounded the northeastern corner.
Martinez jumped from cover and immediately fired in Whitman's direction, missing with most or all of his revolver shots. Almost simultaneously, McCoy leaped from cover as Martinez rapidly fired in Whitman's general direction; he recollected observing Whitman's head looking over the light ballast.
McCoy fired at Whitman's white headband, hitting him between the eyes with several pellets and killing him almost instantly. McCoy fired his shotgun a second time, hitting Whitman on his left side.
Whitman fell to the ground; Martinez then grabbed McCoy's shotgun, ran to Whitman's prone body, and fired a direct shotgun blast into Whitman's left arm at point-blank range.
As civilians and police were initially unaware the sniper had been felled, those upon the ground continued firing at the tower, narrowly missing Martinez. McCoy instructed another officer to notify a police dispatcher to announce to Austin's news media outlets that the sniper had been killed.
As these instructions were relayed, Allen Crum waved a white handkerchief from above the parapet to signal the sniper's siege from the tower was over.
Several of the immediate media broadcasts and publications erroneously referred to Crum as the sniper waving a white flag in a public gesture of surrender.
Perpetrator's Identification
An examination of Whitman's possessions revealed identification cards. By 3 p.m., his identity had been formally established and his name broadcast nationwide. Whitman's father—upon hearing news reports of his son's identification—contacted the Austin police and provided both his son's address and that of his former wife.
Shortly thereafter, police discovered the bodies of both women and the suicide notes Whitman had left close to their bodies.
At Whitman's home, investigators also discovered a collection of written admonitions he had apparently read on a daily basis stored inside an envelope. On the outside of the envelope, Whitman had penned a final message:
"8-1-66. I never could quite make it.
These thoughts are too much for me."
The Victims
Charles Whitman killed seventeen individuals and wounded at least thirty-one others over the course of thirteen hours before he was killed on the observation deck of the UT Tower.
All but two of those killed and all injured sustained their wounds after Whitman reached the 28th. floor of the main building less than two hours before his own death.
The fatalities included an unborn baby boy, a 17-year-old girl who succumbed to her injuries one week after the University of Texas tower shooting, and a man shot from the tower at age 23 who also succumbed to his injuries 35 years after the event and whose death was officially ruled a homicide.
Aftermath of the Massacre
The University of Texas remained closed for one day following the tower shootings—reopening on the 3rd. August. All flags across the campus were flown at half-staff for over a week.
The tower observation deck remained closed to the public until 1968. Following the suicides of four students from the observation deck between 1968 and 1974, a decision was made to permanently close the observation deck to the public.
The observation deck was reopened to public access in 1999, but only via appointment guided tours. All visitors are screened by metal detectors before they are permitted to enter the premises.
A New President of Nigeria
After three days of confusion about the whereabouts of kidnapped President Ironsi, General Yakubu Gowon became the President of Nigeria.
The Troggs
Also on the 1st. August 1966, the Number One chart hit record in the UK was 'With A Girl Like You' by The Troggs.
