June 24, 1941 - Charles Whitman
The 1966 University of Texas tower shooting marked a turning point in American public consciousness about mass violence — it was among the first such attacks to unfold in a public space at scale, observed by witnesses and responded to by both police and armed civilians. Whitman's methodical preparation, his military marksmanship training, and the elevated position he chose gave him a tactical advantage that held law enforcement at bay for over an hour. The posthumous discovery of a brain tumor introduced a medical dimension that has made his case a persistent subject of inquiry into the neurological and psychological roots of extreme violence.
From Wikipedia
Charles Joseph Whitman (June 24, 1941 – August 1, 1966) was an American mass murderer and Marine veteran who became known as the "Texas Tower Sniper". On August 1, 1966, Whitman used knives to kill his mother and his wife in their respective homes, then went to the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) with multiple firearms and began indiscriminately shooting at people. He fatally shot three people inside UT Austin's Main Building, then accessed the 28th-floor observation deck on the building's clock tower. There, he fired at random people for 96 minutes, killing an additional eleven people and wounding 31 others before he was shot dead by the Austin Police Department.
Whitman killed a total of seventeen people; the 17th victim died 35 years later from injuries sustained in the attack. He had developed several disturbing symptoms in the months preceding his murderous rampage, which included intense headaches, emotional turmoil and intrusive thoughts. In a confession-suicide note written the night before the violence (see excerpt below), he requested that an autopsy be conducted to determine whether there "is any visible physical disorder." The procedure was performed on August 2, where the neuropathologist found a small tumor deep in Whitman’s brain.
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