![]() ![]() His second marriage lasted less than a week, he said. He is amicably separated from his third wife, Betty, after more than 25 years of marriage. He lives alone in a rambling, cluttered home on five acres in Lantana, a small city adjacent to West Palm Beach in South Florida. Some stories have said that he demanded to be paid for interviews - but there was no suggestion of that last week. "I've known Charlie for more than 20 years, and we've never talked about it," said Monte Crosby, chief plumbing inspector of Palm Beach County. No one was cruel, he said, and he tried not to mention it. For years, he said, his friends asked how he was doing. ![]() People rarely bother him now about the shooting. He has no defense from his night visitors but, awake, he holds back the storm of memories by sheer determination and self-inflicted silence. But it did, so you accept it," said Whitman, 78, a plumbing contractor. I don't know why in hell all this happened. And the nightmares that wake him up in the night are the same. He goes on with his life.īut the dreams continue, he said, of things that happened to his son Charles over the years. And the urge to explore conflicting emotions within the troubled family might never have been great. The energy to plumb the depths of his son's act is gone. It is a way, perhaps, of coming to terms with the emotional trauma of the slaughter. But in 1966, mass murder was a relatively fresh expression of private rage gone public.Ĭharles Whitman, the father, calls it an accident. In the 30 years since that day, such mayhem has become much more a part of the American consciousness. ![]() He killed 14 more people and wounded 31 before being gunned down by police at age 25. He went on that day to climb the University of Texas Tower with an arsenal of weapons and terrorize the surrounding area. The Eagle Scout, ex-Marine and graduate student first killed his wife and then his mother. Thirty years ago Thursday, his son and namesake, Charles Whitman, went berserk. The murder of his wife.Īnd one searing event branded in his soul forever, stamped upon the psyche of countless Americans, and part of the violent saga of our time. His short-term memory comes and goes.īut some memories are never lost: The death of three children - two violently, one with AIDS. He's an old man now with a touch of Alzheimer's. This story originally was published on Aug. ![]()
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