The Texas Tower Massacre

The Texas Tower Massacre

 

Charles Joseph Whitman was an ex-Marine who in his youth had been an Eagle Scout and an altar boy.  At the age of 25 he stabbed to death his wife and his much loved Mother.  He then calmly made his way to the observation tower atop the 27 story Administration Building of the University of Texas in Austin where he barricaded himself in.  From that panoramic view above the beautiful tree-shaded lawns of the 232 acre campus he shot to death 14 people and wounded another 31.

 

 

 

That incident took place on the 1^st August, 1966.  The ramifications and significance of that brief period of destructive madness echo down through the passage of time and haunt us to this day.

 

The massacre was world news.  In 1966 when it happened it was inexplicable and evoked a bewildered response.  Newspaper accounts of the incident were read by hushed groups.  The media ran with the story for weeks.  The event was beyond rational analysis.  The society that we were back in the sixties just could not think with such an unprecedented act of senseless violence.

 

Whitman was eventually gunned down by two brave police officers who broke through the barricade protecting the crazed gunman.  Many equally brave private citizens grabbed hunting rifles from their vehicles and gave covering fire for the police to make their assault.  Due to the rapid reaction of the police and citizens, the whole affair from the firing of Whitman’s first shot to the final burst of police gunfire that killed him, was over in one hour and thirty six minutes. 

 

The ‘Texas Tower Massacre’ was an unprecedented event that disturbed the psyche of the whole western world.  Terrible acts of violence were not of course unknown to history,  but prior to 1966 violence was for a reason.  The reason may have been love, jealousy, lust, hate, revenge, greed, race or whatever, but always there was a reason.  The reasons were always lacking in logic to a more rational person, but there was a ‘reason’ why the perpetrator did what he or she did.   The perpetrator could justify their actions.  The resultant violence was contained within the parameter of that line of ‘reasoning’.  Whitman’s violence was different, it was random.  It was not a violence that was brought about for a reason.  It was death and destruction as an end in itself.  Whitman himself could find no reason for what he was about to do.

 

He left a sad suicide note explaining that he was deeply troubled by strange and violent thoughts and that he had terrible headaches.  It gave no hint of an explanation for his actions.  The suicide note made it clear that Whitman had no idea why he felt compelled to do something that he acknowledged was irrational. 

 

The police report showed that at the time of his death Whitman was carrying ‘some pills’.  From Whitman’s personal diary (‘Daily Record of C. J. Whitman’) we know that these pills were Dexedrine which was one of the very first of psychiatry’s mass-marketed drugs.  Dexedrine has properties very similar to methamphetamine.  It can cause psychosis and it can also cause headaches.  Whitman had been to see a psychiatrist sometime before the shooting because he was feeling depressed by his home situation.

 

In the age of innocence that was 1966 we never dreamt that a time would come when ‘inexplicable’ mass shootings of civilians would be so commonplace that they would be in and out of the news within a few days.  Then it got worse.  In a bid by pharmaceutical companies to improve market penetration psychiatric drugs were promoted into schools.  The excuse was that they were needed in order to handle a plethora of newly discovered (invented) childhood ailments.  Young children in playgrounds and classrooms began to be gunned down by equally young and utterly drug-deranged classmates.

 

The perpetrators of these mass random killings have all been on psychiatric drugs… or  desperately trying to get off them.  As psychiatric drugs have spread around the world, so the inevitable shootings and violence and tragic loss of life spreads with them.  The U.S. is no longer the sole province of these senseless mass killings. 

 

The emergence of mass random killings was coincident in both time and place with the advent of psychiatric drugs.  Nothing else but psychiatry’s mind-bending drugs could cause a derangement such as would be required to reduce a person to the inhuman state where he or she could kill indiscriminately and casually both loved ones and complete strangers.  There are no recordings of such incidents, none whatsoever, prior to the introduction of psychiatric drugs.

 

How many have died since Charles Whitman’s inaugural psychiatric drug rampage?  How many more have to die?  The next time that you hear of a mass shooting check the following day’s newspapers.  There will be a line down the bottom of the article mentioning that the killer had been taking psychiatric ‘medication’.  The article will be accompanied by a psycho-babble quote from a psychiatric spokesperson.  The whole psychiatric industry goes into well rehearsed, disinformation mode when these events happen.

 

Pharmaceutical companies and prescribing psychiatrists have not had much to worry about in the past.  Next week marks the 42^nd anniversary of the Texas Tower Massacre.   Charles Whitman’s inaugural psychiatric drug rampage on the 1^st August, 1966 signalled the arrival of the brave new world of psychiatric ‘medication’.  Despite the efforts of some very determined and educated groups and private individuals, many of them victims of psychiatric drugs who understand full well what is causing these shootings, no action has been taken other than to place warning labels on the pill bottles.  That is akin to handing out cluster bombs marked ‘Use With Care’. 

 

A small brain tumour was found at Whitman’s autopsy.  Pathologist Coleman de Chenar said that the tumour was “certainly not the cause of the headaches” and “could not have had any influence on his psychic behaviour”.  Despite that pronouncement it was posited that somehow it was the tumour which had caused Whitman’s behaviour.  The plausibility of that theory depended solely on the basis that nothing else within the range of our experience presented itself.  That is no longer true, in fact it is now either naive or deliberately deceptive.  The pathologist was entirely correct.

 

Charles Whitman was by no means the first person in the world to have a brain tumour, he was however amongst the first generation of the public to take psychiatric drugs.  We recognize his symptoms now as acknowledged side effects of psychiatric drug medications.

 

The lack of gun control is also sometimes cited as the reason for mass shootings.  It is prudent to remember that it was the public who, by seizing hunting rifles from their pick-ups, as soon as the bizarre ‘Texas Tower’ circumstances became clear, were a crucial part of the response that stopped Whitman’s rampage so quickly.  That covering fire from the public, requested by the quick thinking police, ensured that the killings virtually stopped at that point.  The public being armed was seen as an asset by those police, not as a threat.  The police were not carrying weapons that could cover the necessary distance to the top of the tower.

 

Whether or not we need the public’s guns controlled is not a subject for this article; the plain and obvious fact that we need psychiatry controlled most certainly is.  Until we make psychiatry and pharmaceutical companies legally and financially responsible for the results of the insane marketing and peddling of these drugs, then be prepared for more random mass shootings. 

 

A whole generation of journalists, almost without exception, saw fit to ignore the blatant problems associated with psychiatric drug usage.  Some are now blinking in the sunlight of truth with recent articles showing a true understanding of the problem is starting to emerge.

 

To be fair, it has not been easy without a study of the abundant and complex information to be appraised of the real situation.  Couple that with the bottomless pit of pharmaceutical company largesse and you have the whole problem in a nutshell.

 

The Texas Tower Massacre marked our civilisation’s unknowing rite of passage into a new era of psychiatric induced insanity. Forty two years and untold deaths later, enough is enough.  It must finally stop, otherwise we are all mad.

 

Philip Barton

26th July, 2008