There is no University of Texas without the Tower shooting of 1966. Whether they know it or not, the students that have walked the campus have carried that history with them every day since. The massacre that occurred that summer day left a school, a city and a nation horrified and confused. Today, our students are more familiar with those emotions than the unsuspecting victims and witnesses Whitman left in his wake. Now, fifty years later, we cannot afford to forget the events that took place in those 96 minutes.
The Sniper
In the years following the shooting, experts have debated the affect a brain tumor had on his mental health.
On the morning of Aug 1, 1966, Charles Whitman purchased a shotgun, a carbine and 14 boxes of ammunition. How has the process of getting guns changed since then?
An in-depth study of Whitman's life finds his troubled relationship with his father to be a factor in the Tower shooting.
The Victims
Thomas Ashton
Robert Boyer
Thomas Eckman
Mark Gabour
Karen Griffith
David Gunby
Thomas Karr
Marguerite Lamport
Claudia Rutt
Roy Schmidt
Paul Sonntag
Billy Speed
Edna Townsley
Harry Walchuck
Kathy Whitman
Margaret Whitman
Baby Boy Wilson
Thomas Ashton
Robert Boyer
Thomas Eckman
Mark Gabour
Kathy Griffith
David Gunby
Thomas Karr
Marguerite Lamport
Claudia Rutt
Roy Schmidt
Paul Sonntag
Billy Speed
Edna Townsley
Harry Walchuck
Kathy Whitman
Margaret Whitman
Baby Boy Wilson
The Survivors
Roland Ehlke
Adrian Littlefield
Roland Ehlke
Adrian Littlefield
New memorial honors victims of UT Tower shooting
A boulder engraved with the names of Whitman's 17 victims will be unveiled at a ceremony on Monday. Read how the new memorial came to be.
The Heroes
“I remember seeing that white flag and the shots died down and people started coming out from under cover by the dozens, and then hundreds. But nobody said anything.”
On an uneventful Monday morning at Brackenridge Hospital, nurse Norma White sent her staff home early.
Co-op manager Allen Crum, along with APD officers, succeeded in stopping the sniper on top of the UT Tower.
“I had a very simple plan that day and it was to kill the sniper or be killed because I had to stop him from hurting other people.”
Houston McCoy, one of the Austin police officers who shot the sniper atop the University of Texas Tower fifty years ago, is remembered by his daughter as a humble man.
Inside the Tower
The authors of a new book outlining the history of the shooter and the events leading up to it discussed the investigative process.
With his book, A Sniper in the Tower, Gary Laverne provides a comprehensive account of Whitman's life and the mass murder that made him infamous.
Director Keith Maitland and his team spent six years collecting stories from witnesses and survivors of the UT Tower shooting.
The Texan
Five decades after the UT Tower Shooting, The Daily Texan remembers the most infamous tragedy in the University's history by republishing articles from past issues.
What started as a slow news day turned into one of the most important days in the school's history.
The morning after the 1966 UT Tower shooting — what is known today as one of the worst mass shootings in modern U.S. history — The Austin American’s front-page headline read, “'Everyone’ Loved Him.”