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Product Description
The bodies kept falling, the blood was real, and the man on the deck, a consummate actor for a number of years, was no longer acting.
On August 1, 1966, Charles Joseph Whitman ascended the University of Texas Tower and committed what was then the largest simultaneous mass murder in American history. He gunned down forty-five people inside and around the Tower before he was killed by two Austin police officers. During the previous evening he had killed his wife and mother, bringing the total to sixteen people dead and at least thirty-one wounded. The murders spawned debates over issues which still plague America today: domestic violence, child abuse, drug abuse, military indoctrination, gun control, the insanity defense, and the delicate balance between civil liberties and public safety.
Amazon.com Review
A true crime classic, Gary M. Lavergne's book gives the most complete analysis of the man who climbed the tower at the University of Texas in 1966 and shot 45 people, besides killing his wife and mother the night before. Also revealed is the shocking information about Whitman's family life; he was not the all-American young man gone suddenly insane as he was depicted in the media. Instead, the dark secrets of his relationship with his father and his father's own violence is woven into this account of calculated evil. This book has been hailed by experts as an excellent depiction of a case that defined mass murder, the largest mass murder in U.S. history at that time.
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