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[Music] % [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
00:01:46
listening I'm your host the captain and somebody that is with me never from generation why is Nick drinking a
00:01:53
Michelob Ultra at crimecon here's Justin thank you thank you thank you it's good
00:01:57
to be seen and it's good to see you I'm happy to be seen myself my [Music] friend on today's show I'll be drinking
00:02:09
Guinness or what I like to call the adult protein shake it's my go-to beer when I used to drink beer I was a
00:02:17
Newcastle man there you go so Newcastle was always the in between between a a dark beer like Guinness but it was
00:02:26
always a big nice brown ale if you're wondering where is the colonel well my friends he's tied up in the basement
00:02:36
along with Aaron from Generation Y we decided to do a little bit of a wife swap if you know what I mean don't worry
00:02:44
we won't hurt him so let's gather around grab a chair grab a beer and let's talk
00:02:49
some true [Music] crime [Music] Sunday July 31st 1966 6:45 p.m. I don't understand what
00:03:17
it is that compels me to type this letter Perhaps it is to leave some vague reason for the actions I have recently
00:03:27
performed I don't really understand myself these days I'm supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young
00:03:35
man however lately I can't recall when it started I've been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts these
00:03:46
thoughts constantly recur and it requires a tremendous mental effort to concentrate on useful
00:03:55
and Progressive tasks in March when my parents made made a physical break I noticed a great deal
00:04:02
of stress I consulted a Dr cochrum at the University Health Center and asked him to recommend someone that I could
00:04:11
consult with about some psychiatric disorders I felt I had I talked with the doctor once for about 2 hours and tried
00:04:19
to convey to him my fears that I felt come overwhelmingly violent impulses after one season I never saw the doctor
00:04:28
again and since then I've been fighting my mental turmoil alone and seemingly to
00:04:35
no avail after my death I wish that an autopsy would be performed on me to see if there's any visible physical disorder
00:04:44
I've had some tremendous headaches in the past and have consumed two large bottles of edin in the past 3 months it
00:04:52
was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife Kathy tonight after I pick
00:04:58
her up from work at the telephone company I love her dearly she has been as fine as a wife to me as any man could
00:05:07
ever hope to have I cannot rationally pinpoint any specific reason for doing this I don't know whether it is
00:05:14
selfishness or if I don't want her to have to face the embarrassment my actions would surely cause her at this
00:05:22
time though the prominent reason in my mind is that I truly do not consider this world worth living in and am
00:05:30
prepared to die I do not want to leave her to suffer alone in it I intend to kill her as painlessly as possible
00:05:39
similar reasons provoked me to take my mother's life also I don't think the poor woman has ever enjoyed life as she
00:05:47
is entitled to she was a simple young woman who married a very possessive and dominating man all of my life as a boy
00:05:55
until I ran away from home to join the Marine corpse the rest of the letter is handwritten and
00:06:05
[Music] illegible how you doing tonight Captain I'm doing great awesome thanks for asking no problem
00:06:27
tonight's case is something that I've been a little obsessed with for a while sadly it's because of the rise of mass
00:06:36
shootings here in America right and I realized that this isn't the original mass shooting that America ever saw but
00:06:44
I think it could be one of the most popular ones or well-known ones do you think yeah definitely so this is
00:06:52
the case of Charles Whitman and the University of Texas Tower shooting or Texas tower sniper is what he was known
00:07:03
as and on July 31st 1966 Charles Whitman sits down to write the letter that you just heard
00:07:11
he's not understanding these I guess uh impulses he's having he's struggling with I guess homicidal Tendencies and
00:07:23
this fantasy of going up on this Tower and gun people down yeah he definitely has some anger management problems just
00:07:33
a few and uh he decides that he's going to start with his own mother his mother had recently moved to his his part of
00:07:46
town and he went over to her house and went inside and bludgeoned her and then ended up stabbing her to death yeah
00:07:56
what's interesting is after he beat her to death he actually took her body and placed it back into her bed to make it
00:08:04
look like she was sleeping yeah he put a sheet over her and then he wrote do not
00:08:11
disturb on a note put it on the front door like You' do at a hotel I guess uh but this is her home I'm just thinking
00:08:20
about this and I'm thinking I've never seen anyone put a do not disturb sign on a door to a home and I'm kind of freaked
00:08:29
out that he thought that this would deter people uh so now if I ever see somebody with a do not disturb sign on
00:08:36
their door I'm definitely calling in a a welfare check on them but yeah yeah just
00:08:40
instantly call 911 his wife is at work she's working a 6 to 10 shift and he goes and gets her
00:08:51
and takes her home he had planned to murder his wife in a way where she wouldn't suffer
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at least that's what he thought in his head so you would think pull out a gun shoot her but instead he will end up
00:09:09
stabbing her to death which to me is totally not a quick way to die it's a brutal way to die and it's a horrible
00:09:17
way to die right according to him happily married but he doesn't want his next actions to fall back on
00:09:27
his wife or his mother and we'll go into more of that later but yeah cuz when he
00:09:32
returns to his typewriter to continue this note he claims that he killed his mom and his uh wife just to spare them
00:09:43
yeah from what was going to take place now what I wonder is he obviously wasn't trying to spare their life but he was
00:09:51
maybe trying to to uh spare their I what I guess embarrassment or the fact that these individuals would be connected to
00:10:01
him after he did this Tower shooting yeah you I know with his mother he felt that she didn't have the best life so it
00:10:10
was almost a mercy killing but his wife she had a she was married to him they were happily married he's
00:10:19
self-medicating at this point and he's taking meth and fibin yeah might not be thinking too straight so I you know I
00:10:27
can analyze what he was thinking but why he chose the way he would do this is a whole other uh question yeah so after
00:10:39
he's murdered his wife he starts collecting things and he goes and writes some bad checks and buys some weapons he
00:10:48
already owns a bunch of weapons but he's going to purchase more and he has a Foot
00:10:55
Locker he was exmilitary so that's what they're used to carrying a lot of their stuff around is a Foot
00:11:02
Locker and he gets rope he gets food he gets water yeah they they claimed that he had enough supplies for two weeks and
00:11:12
then 700 rounds of ammo and again I think anyone that's paid attention lately you know
00:11:21
that a a mass shooting's not going to last very long this guy was planning for the Long Haul he figured would be doing
00:11:29
this for a while that's kind of creepy right yeah well you think if you continue shooting from a tower and for
00:11:37
two weeks that if they don't come and get you and kill you that at some point people are just not going to go around
00:11:43
that Tower yeah you think this is the Arsenal that we know that he had he had a Luger 9mm pistol he had a Smith and&
00:11:53
Wesson 357 Magnum uh revolver had a uh an M1 carbine rifle a Remington Model 141 it's a 35
00:12:07
caliber uh rifle a Remington 76 mm rifle Sears Model 60 semi-automatic shotgun it's 12 gauge
00:12:18
just a lot of guns and then he had a uh a 25 caliber pistol as a I guess his final backup
00:12:27
this guy believed he had like 10 hand yeah so he's got all of this and he packs it all up in his foot locker and
00:12:35
decides I'm going to go down to this Tower and set up all my weapons and start gunning people down but he has to
00:12:44
get there first and it's not the it's not like you can just show up with all this and walk up there and no one's
00:12:51
going to notice so he's got to off you skate a little bit and he's got to use some social engineering to get in so he
00:12:59
uh arrives at the parking lot he says he's like a research student or something to that effect right yeah it's
00:13:05
weird cuz I I actually saw a documentary where they talk about him wearing like repair man like a repair man outfit like
00:13:11
a janitor yeah yeah but then for some reason when he gets there he's like this might not work so he tells the guy at
00:13:20
the parking lot um I'm a researcher so he's allowed to park in the parking lot he gets a dolly he puts everything in
00:13:30
his you know Foot Locker and he covers it up and he puts it on the dolly and he wanders right into the building jumps on
00:13:38
the elevator and goes up to the top floor because he's trying to make it to the rooftop different reports will say
00:13:45
27th or 28th floor but regardless he has to carry all this upstairs once he gets
00:13:52
there but he he comes across uh Edna who is like the receptionist and initially he he tells her I'm here
00:14:03
to repair something and she doesn't really buy his story and she says she needs to call someone to verify and when
00:14:11
she turns her head to call he actually beats her and drags her bloody body like behind a couch and hides her there he
00:14:24
doesn't kill her or he doesn't shoot her right away he's actually beaten her first and then he's going to the
00:14:33
stairwell because you have to go up these this flight to get up to the rooftop and it's like three I think
00:14:40
three or four flights of stairs that he has to drag this you know Dolly with all
00:14:44
his crap on and when he's going back a family shows up that's wanting to go up on the rooftop also and do the uh the
00:14:56
tour so now he's stuck in this this situation where he's just beat this poor old lady and then there's this family
00:15:05
there and that's when he starts shooting and he opens fire on the on the family first yeah he ends up killing two of the
00:15:13
family members not really for sure how many he wounded but I know that he killed two the first guy is I hope I'm
00:15:19
saying this what right but it's uh Mike gabbar that's he's actually a Cadet for the Air Force and so he starts shooting
00:15:31
and he wounds multiple family members and kills two of them instantly once he figures they've retreated or they're no
00:15:39
longer in in his line of sight he actually goes back over to Edna and shoots her and finishes her
00:15:47
off and then he ascends these stairwells and uh it said that because he had this heavy
00:15:55
Dolly with all the stuff on it every single step made a huge bang sound and people heard it in the building and
00:16:04
didn't quite know what it was but it was him dragging this dolly up this flight of stairs have you seen footage of like
00:16:13
what his Viewpoint would be looking down off the top yeah yeah he had it's it's it's high enough to give me the heebie
00:16:22
jeebies as far as like cuz I'm afraid of heights so when they start showing like
00:16:27
what he would be seeing when he looked down on people it's a lot higher up than you would think and sadly it gave him a
00:16:36
really good field of vision and kill zones yeah to you know go on this you know uh
00:16:45
Rampage here well right and let's but let's stay on that point for a second because yes good vantage point but you
00:16:53
have to be a pretty good shot when do you think yeah and uh he was exmilitary he was in the Marines he got uh an
00:17:03
expert badge uh which is not the highest badge you can get but the second highest
00:17:10
right so he's pretty good shoo yeah and he you know the Marines they have a pretty good their test especially back
00:17:16
then I'm sure was pretty hard to pass when I was in the Army I actually hit 40 out of 40 but I don't think I had to
00:17:25
shoot at as many targets as the Marine back in 1943 did once he's up on the tower he distributes his
00:17:36
guns on all four sides and it's like a an observation deck but there's a square in the middle and then there's the
00:17:45
perimeter so you can only walk around on the perimeter of this and there's little
00:17:50
gaps and holes in the the concrete rails so he's shoving the barrels of these weapons through and
00:17:59
making sure that no matter what side he's on there's always a weapon there and then he's got his uh his rifle in
00:18:06
his hand that's going to be his primary weapon that basically the way to think of this is think of Meg Ryan and Tom
00:18:15
Hanks and Sleepless in Seattle and think about the last scene that's kind of how the tow is set up and
00:18:24
another thing this allows him to do is you know you have a shotgun and you're this high up shotgun is not going to
00:18:34
kill somebody possibly at that range or it's going to be really hard to hit someone with a shotgun rifles they got
00:18:40
they have the range or even as pistols but one of the shotguns is just laying there sticking out as he walks
00:18:49
past it he'll just pull the trigger and it goes off and then he's around the corner shooting at somebody else so it
00:18:57
gives the illusion that there are multiple people up this observation deck firing what's also interesting about the
00:19:04
position he's in is I believe that these walls are concrete and they're over 30 cm thick so basically he has the ability
00:19:16
to shoot and the only thing that that law enforcement could shoot back at would be like the top of his head yeah
00:19:25
so even if they shot the wall that he was right behind it was not going to penetrate through the wall no and when
00:19:34
he starts firing uh the few police officers that are around that you know they were issued revolvers and shotguns
00:19:41
at the time you know 38 caliber pistol it's I mean the bullet's GNA make it up there but then once it hits that that
00:19:52
cement block that you know concrete wall it's it's not doing anything and they tiny Target to to pinpoint and it's just
00:20:01
not going to work out for them at all because they're outgunned and they he has the higher ground so they can't they
00:20:11
can't do anything one of his first victims that he shoots when he gets on this Tower is a pregnant woman well this
00:20:19
shows you how big of a piece of [ __ ] this Charles guy is because it's not like he shoots her in
00:20:26
the head or the arm or the chest or anything he goes right down and shoots her in her pregnant belly and it's it's
00:20:36
almost I mean no I won't even say it's almost it is his intent to shoot her in the belly because he's a good shot he'll
00:20:45
make some other shots up here that are far further distance through tiny holes so he knows where he's shooting her yeah
00:20:56
and of course people are are running out to save her and her boyfriend and they are now targets and
00:21:05
this is what snipers do that first shot isn't always the shot to kill somebody sometimes that first shot is to wound
00:21:15
somebody and then all your buddies come out to save you and that gives the sniper more targets to pick
00:21:23
off yeah so it's a disabling shot well he and the I believe he picked a pregnant woman because more people are
00:21:32
likely to run to the aid of her exactly than than anybody else he goes on and shoots multiple people and there's like
00:21:43
three friends that are from like the Peace Corps that are just going out for lunch he guns them
00:21:52
down it it's just PE random people throughout their day and I think it's I don't know what 20 minutes into the
00:22:01
shooting that now everyone down below understands what's happening and are starting to are starting to take cover
00:22:11
starting to to duck out hide well and that's what's strange is uh you know if you've been ever if you've ever been
00:22:18
outside playing at night and you hear possibly a gunfire or maybe a firework or something sometimes it's hard to
00:22:26
figure out where it's coming from so it sounds crazy but like you said it takes people over 20 minutes to kind of
00:22:35
figure out one that there's somebody shooting from the tower and because there's so many people
00:22:44
that are going out in open areas looking around trying to figure out where this fire is coming from there's a uh a
00:22:52
journalist named Richard Hill who hears that somebody's been shot at the Tower so he grabs his pen and paper and drives
00:23:02
on down because he doesn't understand that there's a sniper and so he gets there jumps out of
00:23:10
his car and he sees a bunch of students like huddled underneath like an awning or something and they're telling them
00:23:17
you know like take cover and they're like you better not walk out there and they're actually laughing when they say
00:23:23
it they're saying man you better take cover you better get out of here and Richard doesn't it doesn't click you
00:23:30
know it's he doesn't take them seriously because he's not understanding the situation and I hate to say it but I'm
00:23:37
kind of like these kids I might laugh at the wrong time at when something's just
00:23:43
so atrocious or just ridiculous like what we're now huddled underneath this awning uh so well it's just a nervous
00:23:52
laughter Richard is walking and he's being shot at now because he didn't quite get it he was
00:24:01
actually just going to report about probably Edna yeah and didn't know um and there's if you ever find yourself in a
00:24:12
situation like this there's line of sight and if they can see if you can see them then they can see you and then
00:24:19
there's cover and concealment concealment just means you're behind I don't know a car or an
00:24:28
awning so the person can't SE can't see you but cover right is you're actually behind a wall or behind an embankment
00:24:38
that gives you protection so a lot of these people are just concealing themselves behind just
00:24:47
chairs and whatnot and if Charles sees them behind something and sees them moving he can
00:24:57
can still fire upon them and that bullet's going to go right through whatever they're hiding behind and hit
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[Music] 50% all right we're back cheers mates well do you know if they knew how many
00:27:29
shooters there were in the town no they didn't know until the final moments and they assumed yeah they definitely
00:27:37
assumed there was more than one there was more than one because of the amount of Fire coming from the tower the amount
00:27:45
of gunshots coming because like I said he would just pull the trigger you know on a 12gauge shotgun on one side and
00:27:52
then run over to the other side and take take a pop shot at somebody how you watched the YouTube clip of the
00:27:59
yeah yeah it's like weird cuz at first it seems like a movie I mean like this clock tower it kind of has that hint of
00:28:08
um Back to the Future yeah the the Clock Tower and and so when you see it in black and white and all you see is the
00:28:16
gunm smoke coming and it's so unclear who's shooting or if there is a shooter almost looks like it's coming out of
00:28:24
nowhere and when you hear multiple shots fired in quick secession you you don't assume that's
00:28:32
one person and then when you have the police officers returning fire you can't really make out how many people are
00:28:41
shooting how many perpetrators there are it's just Madness uh he ends up hitting an electrician named Roy Dell
00:28:51
Schmidt from 500 yards away says five foot this guy had been hiding behind his car
00:29:01
for over 30 minutes since the since the shooting started and he thought it's safe I'll Stand Up Now was there anybody
00:29:10
as the shooting um was taking place that ever said this possibly could be Charles
00:29:17
Whitman no they they I at from my knowledge uh they were just responding to the incident and they had no idea
00:29:26
that his wife and mother were at their homes well because he because he put a do not disturb sign on
00:29:35
the mother's door so nobody Disturbed it there it is that's why his note worked uh he shot another he shot another man
00:29:44
that was behind a uh I guess like a construction barricade or a spindle and there was just like a small like six
00:29:52
inch gap between the wood and he was able to hit this man [ __ ] that's a good sh yeah it's it's just brutality and
00:30:03
he's very efficient at it so the shooting lasts about 96 Minutes yeah from start so like roughly like the the
00:30:12
length of a Jud appti film you like my awful references I said Sleepless in Seattle uh Back to the Future and now
00:30:22
Jud after I'm like Sleepless in [ __ ] Seattle we have a shooter or or multiple Shooters the law enforcement doesn't
00:30:30
know but at some point when you have 30 over 30 cmers of concrete basically blocking the psychopath you have to
00:30:41
enter the tower now you're going to get to go up in the elevator or you can go by stairs but at some point you're going
00:30:49
to have three three floors that you have to go through just by stair to get to the observation deck where the the the
00:30:59
shots are being fired but now you're you're going to have to send officers in there and you don't know how many
00:31:05
shooters there are the when you get up to that observation deck there's a lot of
00:31:10
windows so you're exposed to the shooter still if the shooter looks inside he can
00:31:18
see you and there's very little uh cover or concealment for you when you first step out onto that observation deck how
00:31:26
many offic do they send up to the observation deck well this one police officer named ramero
00:31:35
martinz he was off duty that day and he heard about the shooting so he came up and he doesn't he he's just showing up
00:31:45
uh and it sucks because these officers when they're going there they're having to walk through the dead bodies to get
00:31:54
to the Tower there's no real concealment for them they're having to zigzag and run to the tower to get there well
00:32:03
Martinez he's going up the elevator and he gets off and he runs into three other
00:32:09
police officers three other guys uh a guy named Allan crumb Houston McCoy and there's special he's a public safety
00:32:20
agent and his name is Dub Cohen public safety agent what what is that I'm assuming he's a uh security guard for
00:32:29
the campus yeah can you imagine you you have to have the biggest konus to decide
00:32:36
hey I'm going to go up there I have no clue how many shooters there are but I'm going to go up there who's coming with
00:32:42
me and you got four guys and being that this is Texas people you know Don't Mess
00:32:49
with Texas they all have guns so Cohen had actually gone home and got his rifle brought it back and gave it to one of
00:32:57
the officers I'm still waiting to read a story where the law enforcement officer
00:33:02
had an elephant gun yeah seems like a great time for one in this scenario well the interesting thing
00:33:10
about this is we don't have the militarization of police until much later yet here's a perfect example of
00:33:18
why they might need rifles or they might need armored vehicles or stuff like that
00:33:23
or pretty much a SWAT team is what I'm looking for respond to this not the Beat cop with a pistol well break down how
00:33:31
they decide to enter the towers observation deck all three of them came out onto the observation deck and one of
00:33:42
them stood at the door and faced you know whatever Direction while the other two started going around Each corner
00:33:53
looking for the shooter so the one guy staying there he's he's there just to see if if this shooter comes around the
00:34:00
corner he's there to to Ambush him so the other yeah these other two guys they're going around Each corner and
00:34:07
they have to expose themselves they have to whip out their no they have to lean over that
00:34:15
seems like a very weird law enforcement practice they have to lean got be careful with your words here they have
00:34:21
to lean lean to the left yeah how you said it I didn't you know you can't make that [ __ ] up I know
00:34:30
and they check the first Corner coast is clear they go to the next corner and they they're hearing the
00:34:41
shots and they're getting louder and louder so they know that're you know they know they're getting close but
00:34:47
again they think there might be two guys up here so they're they're kind of freaked out and they see Charles
00:34:54
is sort of gunning somebody down so they come up and one of them shoots him and the other one jumps down to his
00:35:04
knees and they both fire upon him and hitting Charles and Charles had actually sort of turned towards them at this
00:35:12
point to engage them right and and they claim that hou they give credit to Houston
00:35:20
McCoy I think for the the kill but like we know the full story I think they're I
00:35:26
think not only both of them should be you know responsible for the kill but also the third guy that got onto the
00:35:33
observation deck as well but I think they credit Houston McCoy because of his name yeah and if he was the first guy to
00:35:40
shoot whatever it is um but they they want to make sure this guy's down so they they double tap him they go over
00:35:49
and they give him a a fatal shot or the execution shot just to make sure and I don't blame him one bit because this
00:35:59
guy's been terrorizing this entire city almost for the last you know hour and a half and just in case he's not quite
00:36:10
dead they finish him off and they meet back up with you know their their squad just to make sure that there's nobody
00:36:20
else but they're pretty sure now like okay we got them and they actually are having to duck because the police down
00:36:30
on the ground are still shooting at them so a few bullets actually Ricochet by their heads while after yeah that would
00:36:38
be my luck I'd go in there I'd kill the shooter and then I'd get shot they have to inform people fairly quickly to cease
00:36:48
fire this the shooters down and and sadly as soon as they get the word out everybody comes pouring out of the
00:36:59
buildings and they just knew that they' killed this one guy up on the observation deck they weren't too sure
00:37:07
if there was anyone else in the tower somewhere else on another floor could you imagine hundreds of people coming
00:37:15
out and now they're targets too if if this wasn't the only guy right but at some point you have to come out you know
00:37:22
when they said they the coast is clear at some point you have to take yeah I just I would just assume that there
00:37:30
would be more you know with the large amount of police presence they'd be like everyone stay down everyone stay where
00:37:37
you're at Let's uh make sure that this is all good yeah and you also wonder about if
00:37:43
there was a second shooter and you let all these individuals out now you have hundreds and hundreds of people if there
00:37:49
was a second shooter that somehow got from the top of the tower all the way to outside again that they could just
00:37:56
appear I didn't even think of that they could just blend right in I mean that's what the Parkland shooter guy did he was
00:38:02
able to walk away and not picked up until later so after hearing the all clear people are out and they uh now
00:38:14
have identified Charles whitmann and they're going to his home or they're going to find his dead
00:38:25
wife yeah and they're going to find his murdered mother also and that's where they're
00:38:31
going to find his note and is is it fair to say it's a suicide note yeah I would
00:38:37
say it's a suicide note uh or is it a homicide there you go you know uh it's almost both I call American Mass
00:38:47
Shooters our version of a suicide bomber but they are able to kill a lot more people because they can shoot at them as
00:38:56
opposed to to just trying to set themselves off in the middle of a crowd but in this note he
00:39:04
mentions uh that he loved his wife he mentions that she was a wonderful person and that he had these horrible thoughts
00:39:13
and that he hopes that they can do an autopsy on him and look at his brain and see if there was anything that caused
00:39:20
him to do this and they do do that and they end up finding a small tumor they say it's the size of a of a
00:39:31
pecan or a peon depending on where you're at uh it's not it's not a Tuma uh but it's pushing up between his Thalamus is
00:39:44
hypothalamus and if this is all you know about the story well hey this guy was happily married everything was great and
00:39:52
then he had homicidal thoughts and he goes on this Rampage and has a tumor case closed right yeah it's it's it's
00:39:59
one of those things where it gives you an answer and then also makes you on some level feel bad for Charles whitmann
00:40:09
like maybe he couldn't control himself but I think there's evidence to point that maybe this tumor could be a
00:40:18
percentage of the cause but not the full cause I always have a scale of nature versus nurture when it comes to any Mass
00:40:25
shooter serial killer whatever and I always think there's a blend I don't think it's always nurture or it's always
00:40:32
nature I always think it's a percentage of well we've had a lot of you know there's a lot of people that struggle
00:40:40
and fight every day that have cancerous tumors and they're not going around and shooting individuals but the brain works
00:40:48
in mysterious ways so you wonder if it just grows at a certain point if this makes people more capable of this kind
00:40:57
of action but I think of the DC snipers or the Parkland shooter or a lot of these other people and it's not proven
00:41:05
that they all had tumors a lot of them are either radicalized or just did they have any idea of when this tumor started
00:41:16
they said it was pretty malignant and that it had there's disagreements about this
00:41:23
tumor a lot of disagreements and some people say it's not even a tumor or they don't even believe it exists so you're
00:41:30
right when you said it's not a tumor uh well and maybe the reason why again why would somebody claim that there was a
00:41:39
tumor when there wasn't well we got to go back to the idea that Whitman was an officer was a US Marine and that would
00:41:50
explain away this crazy behavior this psychotic behavior it also explain a way why our um the Marines did nothing about
00:42:00
it did nothing about this person so it gives them kind of a let them off the hook way out by saying well we didn't
00:42:11
know anything about this and Charles wasn't crazy there was no sign of that he had a tumor but when we look at
00:42:18
Charles's upbringing in his childhood there's some things in there and uh his father father was a domestic
00:42:28
abuser well let's start with the fact that Charles was a handsome young kid he had like blonde hair I think blue eyes
00:42:38
kind of like the all- American Boy youngest Eagle Scout in America think of the youngest kid to ever become a eagle
00:42:46
scout at the time which that's pretty cool he is the quintessential All-American boy uh I'm assuming it's
00:42:55
because his father pushed him he he was overbearing I wonder too is it like another excuse like well this guy was
00:43:04
beaten by his father um but back in the 50s there was a lot more physical punishment that
00:43:12
happened so he's beaten by his father he hated his father and uh there's an incident that's
00:43:19
talked about a lot where when he got older a teenager he uh oh the one where he was 19 drunk and he
00:43:29
comes home and his dad is so upset with him that he beats him to a bloody pulp and
00:43:36
then tries to drown him in the pool yeah and well here's the thing though is like
00:43:41
I mean he he did have a father he had a mother they had a pool things could have been worse this
00:43:49
is true but he is living in a very hostile environment and his he's watching his
00:43:58
mother get beaten and verbally abused emotionally abused this is just the most unhealthy living situation for anyone to
00:44:08
be in and it's his father that is the the evil one in this whole thing and he hates his father with a passion right he
00:44:18
seems to be one of those fathers too where it's like no matter what you do it's not good enough like you become
00:44:25
like the Young Eagle Scout in American history at that point and it's not good enough for your father no I mean he's
00:44:32
the youngest Eagle Scout yet he still gets you know almost killed for going out and
00:44:39
drinking and this is the amount of pressure that's put on Charles so he he joins the Marines but even before this
00:44:47
there was rumors of him bullying kids and and basically you know he he would get bullied by his father so what did he
00:44:56
do he went and bullied yeah you know other kids and I think we've all seen that I mean I remember one time um in
00:45:04
high school there was this kid that he would fight anybody and I thought what what the heck's wrong with him and then
00:45:10
I heard that uh every time that he got in a fight that his dad would hear about his dad would beat him up real bad and
00:45:18
then you you almost wonder why the heck has he get in a fight then every time he
00:45:22
gets in trouble for it he gets beat up it's almost like maybe some kind of like self-punishment at that point and it's
00:45:29
it's a cycle of violence not everybody that's been abused is going to go on and abuse others but it it is a little bit
00:45:38
of a stereotype it does happen a lot I actually wish his dad was a little bit more of a monster and would have drowned
00:45:46
him in that pool because if they would have then we wouldn't have the 17 innocent people dead we wouldn't have
00:45:53
the pregnant lady dead we wouldn't have the 30 31 wounded inent people I understand your logic but when he was
00:46:02
doing this to Charles Charles was innocent but I get it if if I went back in a time machine and yeah yeah which
00:46:11
one yeah which one would you pick Justin come on you gonna pick the Dead kid in the pool or you going to pick the the 17
00:46:18
dead people I'm gonna have to swallow swallow my pride a little bit and uh one over multiple he uh he joined the milit
00:46:27
and it was during the time of uh wasn't it the Cuban crisis Charles joined the Marines they they said that he was
00:46:35
actually really well-liked and probably had a IQ of 138 which isn't bad and then after
00:46:42
joining the Marines is that's when he's actually going to go uh to Austin and start at the University of Texas this is
00:46:50
where he also is going to marry his wife and then he actually goes back into to the Marines during the Cuban crisis it's
00:46:58
when he's meeting his wife like his first stint with the Marines he's Exemplar he is awesome
00:47:08
clean record he gets Awards all this stuff he's in a very regim regimented environment and I think that's what he
00:47:17
needed yeah but see this is one when I wonder if the tumor actually started or if there was maybe not even tumor as
00:47:27
much as there possibly could be just some mental illness that started rearing its ugly head
00:47:34
because like we said he's in the military then he goes to college he gets married then he goes back and he goes
00:47:42
from well-liked Smart hardworking to yeah they can't stand he's uh he's gambling he's
00:47:50
drinking he's acting as a lone shark and lending other soldiers money and if they
00:47:57
don't pay him or he gives them such a high interest rate that they can never pay him that he'll go and assault
00:48:06
them it's like what and it gets so bad that they end up discharging him and then that's when he
00:48:14
goes he decides well I'm going to go back to Austin and I'm going to show them I'm going to enroll into school and
00:48:21
I'm going to get my life together but he's not what drives me nuts in a lot of these mass shootings is how many times
00:48:31
there was warning signs like there was people that came out and said that he would constantly
00:48:38
point up to the tower and say that would be a great place to go up and shoot people from like if somebody says that
00:48:44
you need to tell somebody I I just covered a similar situation on my peripheral podcast where uh they were
00:48:52
telling the school officials I'm going to kill my fellow students and the school counselor said oh that's nice and
00:48:59
sent them on their way I mean it's pathetic there's so many times look what's the worst thing that can happen
00:49:06
um when I was in 8th grade I heard a kid jokingly say that he was going to kill himself to another individual the one
00:49:17
kid was getting picked on he kind of jokingly said to the guy hell it'll be funny when I'm dead after
00:49:24
I killed myself or something like that and it was like whether it's a joke or not yeah I told a
00:49:33
counselor and then they pull him down to the office well guess what he was thinking about this he was actually
00:49:40
thinking about killing himself at school because of bullying and all that stuff and and that was enough to get the kid
00:49:47
some help and then later on he thanks you and in this scenario it's like if one of these people would have came
00:49:53
forward and said Charles doesn't seem seem like that bad of a guy but he keeps saying these weird things about shooting
00:49:58
people from a tower that maybe they go get him checked out and then they find this tumor and if that is the cause of
00:50:06
what happened then maybe they get help or they get help for a mental illness or get help for the trauma that he faces he
00:50:15
saw a doctor uh I think it was psychiatrist at the University and he told that person about his fantasy
00:50:26
and they talked for a good two hours and that doctor saidwell we need to talk again and he scheduled another
00:50:35
appointment but of course Charles didn't show up to the next appointment because
00:50:39
he had other plans right but that's when the doctor needs to go to law enforcement and say we need to do
00:50:45
something especially you know an exm marine and that's what makes you really wonder was
00:50:52
it a mental illness was it some trauma as as a child or was it this tumor what what was the real reason for these
00:51:02
innocent life that's where I look at it and I think you have a mix of both nature and
00:51:09
nurture his nurture was not good his childhood was not good his father was showed him that violence was the answer
00:51:19
to everything and the reason why his mother was living down the Street and his father was on the other side of the
00:51:28
country was because back home the neighbors were calling the cops and saying someone's going to die if you
00:51:35
don't get here he's going to kill her because his father was just beating the crap out of his mother so she moved
00:51:45
across country and stayed with with Charles and his wife for a bit and then got her own place and that's why she was
00:51:54
there was escaping this domestic abuse this whole environment but she walked into the arms of another devil to get to
00:52:05
escape from one another one and like you said you on some level you would think that Charles whitmann would want to
00:52:13
protect his mother especially after she gets out of this abusive situation but again Ian I'm not a psychologist so I
00:52:21
don't know but the trauma that he could have faced as a child could have been too overwhelming for possibly for him to
00:52:28
and to your question you know do you choose this one child or do you choose the 17 victims I would have preferred
00:52:35
Charles just to go back and take it out on his father the person that started this whole chain of events so you Chang
00:52:42
I'm changing my answer that's what I would prefer you just didn't get me as if we could go back into time yes we're
00:52:48
killing Charles Charles could do it himself if he likes and yeah with all the guns with his his 10 hands all at
00:52:57
once and we he can even shoot him from the tower if he wants to he said that his mom had lived a uh
00:53:06
pathetic useless life uh just being beaten at the hands of this man so he I feel he killed his mom because it was a
00:53:17
mercy killing he he was just like your your life is done you haven't lived a life you've just been a victim so I'm
00:53:23
going to end you and put you out of your misery yeah I I actually think that he killed his mother and his wife just in
00:53:32
case he lived through this that he wouldn't have to see how they reacted to him afterwards does that make sense like he
00:53:43
wouldn't have to see the shame in their eyes because he's a mass murderer or the disgust that his wife
00:53:52
would have for him for committing these crimes cries I actually think that's why
00:53:57
think you're right especially his wife because he has no motivation to murder her there's nothing there there's no
00:54:06
reason why so yeah it's it's just brutal but this is the this is the case this is the story
00:54:14
this is the shooting that I think started at all and I don't really understand how this became a
00:54:24
thing in America America do you think it's auma I don't think it's a Tuma I think it was him with a plan I I
00:54:32
disregard the tumor it might have had a factor in it but I disregard the tumor myself well I like the fact that you
00:54:40
said that the tumor might be a rumor the tumor might be a rumor and I think possibly so and that
00:54:49
would be to cover up the discharge his involvement and the United States Marines but whether it's a tumor or not
00:54:59
this was a horrible tragedy and something that um and the biggest mass shooting in history as of
00:55:10
[Music] 1966 Justin I want to thank you for joining us in the garage I've always been a fan of you and Aaron
00:55:28
big Generation Y fan if if somebody wants to check out your podcast well actually you have two
00:55:36
podcast tell me about your two shows if you don't know about that show I don't I
00:55:41
don't know what rock you've been living under you can find us anywhere iTunes Stitcher all that stuff uh when you talk
00:55:48
about True Crime you have to talk about mental illness you have to talk about domestic abuse but sometimes you can't
00:55:55
really go really deep into it in lie of the story so I started another podcast called the peripheral where I interview
00:56:05
listeners such as yourself that are listening right now about uh rape about domestic abuse about mental illness
00:56:13
about addiction uh just any story that is somebody that thinks they might be alone and hopefully others will hear it
00:56:24
and and you'll know that it's not something on the peripheral it's something that should be in the
00:56:30
mainstream yeah and hopefully I can be a guest on your show that would be awes soon all right man uh I don't think I'm
00:56:38
planning to see you until crime con con next year but until then we will we'll drink some more awesome thank you so
00:56:46
much for having [Music] me hopefully you guys enjoyed a little bit of the mashup this week check out
00:56:58
our good buddies Justin and Aaron and their podcast Generation Y it can be found anywhere iTunes any podcast app or
00:57:06
you can check them out on the web the generation wide podcast.com if you like to hear Nick and Aaron's mashup that's
00:57:12
going to be episode 291 on the Generation Y podcast feed so check that out until next week be good be kind and
00:57:22
don't Che lit up [Music] [Applause] [Music] you can start your day off right when
00:57:56
you find a professional on Angie to get your plumbing right first connect with skilled professionals
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to get all your home projects done well visit angie.com you can do this when you
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