Prior to arriving at the University of Texas, Whitman had stabbed his mother and wife to death—in part to spare both women "the embarrassment" he believed his actions would cause them.

1919) had been abandoned as a child and raised in a boys' orphanage in Savannah, Georgia, and described himself as a self-made man who ran a successful plumbing business, in which his wife worked as a bookkeeper.

[8]: 8 Three days after his birthday, without his father's knowledge, Whitman enlisted in the United States Marine Corps; he was deployed to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on July 6.

Whitman's initial military service was exemplary, and he earned a sharpshooter's badge and the Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal while stationed in Cuba.

Two years later, in September 1961,[8]: 19  Whitman enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied mechanical engineering via a scholarship approved and funded by the Naval Enlisted Science Education Program.

"[3]: 46 On August 17, 1962, Whitman married Kathleen Frances Leissner, a teaching student whom he had met at the university six months previously, and to whom he had become engaged on July 19.

[3]: 47 Despite a November 1963 court-martial pertaining to instances of gambling and usury,[17][n 2] Whitman achieved the rank of Lance Corporal while stationed at Camp Lejeune.

He was honorably discharged from the Marines in December 1964 and returned to Austin where—in March 1965—he enrolled in an architectural engineering program at the University of Texas as his wife worked as a biology teacher at Lanier High School.

[19] In early March 1966, Whitman's mother announced her decision to divorce her husband after over 25 years of marriage because of his continued physical and emotional abuse.

Reportedly, Whitman was so fearful that his father would resort to violence against his mother as she prepared to leave him that he summoned a local policeman to remain outside the house while she packed her belongings.

[3]: 32, 49 On one occasion two months after his parents' divorce, Whitman sought professional help from a campus psychiatrist named Dr. Maurice Dean Heatly to discuss the sources of pressure, frustration, and distress within his life.

[20][21] Heatly's notes regarding this one-hour session reveal Whitman—whom Heatly observed to be a somewhat self-centered and egocentric individual[8]: 71 —had disclosed he had endured increasingly frequent headaches; his sense of self-loathing over the fact he had struck his wife twice throughout the course of their marriage; his resultant fear of becoming a frequent woman beater in the mold of his "demanding" father;[8]: 71  and his frustration regarding his father's almost daily phone calls to him pleading with him to persuade his mother to return to Florida.

[3]: 51 Shortly after midnight (at approximately 12:30 a.m.), Whitman drove to his mother's Guadalupe Street apartment and stabbed her to death before placing her body upon her bed and covering her with sheets.

[25][n 4] He then returned home and, at approximately 3:00 a.m., repeatedly stabbed his wife through the heart as she lay asleep in their bed before—in largely illegible handwriting—finishing composing his first suicide note.

He also packed assorted cans of food in addition to coffee, vitamins, Dexedrine, Excedrin, earplugs, three-and-a-half gallons of water, matches, lighter fluid, rope, binoculars, a machete, three knives, a small Channel Master transistor radio, toilet paper, a razor, and a bottle of deodorant.

[31] At approximately 11:25 a.m.,[3]: 31  Whitman reached the University of Texas at Austin, where he displayed false research assistant identification to a guard in order to obtain a 40-minute parking permit with the explanation he was delivering teaching equipment to a professor.

[33] As Whitman hid Townsley's body, he was surprised by a young Texan couple named Donald Walden and Cheryl Botts, who entered the room from the observation deck as he leaned over the couch.

Gabour would later recall encountering Vera Palmer exiting an elevator on the 27th floor to relieve Edna Townsley's receptionist position; he frantically cautioned the young woman as to the ongoing homicidal commotion.

[40] Initially, several individuals upon and close to the campus mistook the sound of gunfire for noise sourcing from a nearby construction site,[27] or thought that persons falling to the ground were participating in either a distasteful joke or a symbolic protest against the Vietnam War.

[42] As the shootings continued, several police officers and civilians provided suppressive fire from the ground with firearms of varying calibers including pistols, shotguns, and hunting rifles,[44] forcing Whitman to remain low and predominantly fire through the three large storm drains located at the foot of each of the four feet high observation deck walls, where he continued to find targets, including a 29-year-old electrical repairman, Roy Dell Schmidt, who was fatally shot 500 yards (1,500 ft; 460 m) from the tower,[45] and 30-year-old funeral home director Morris Hohmann, who was shot and seriously wounded seconds after entering Whitman's view from behind the cover of the ambulance in which he had been traveling to ferry wounded individuals to local hospitals.

[48] Civilian Allen Crum (40), a retired Air Force tail gunner, became aware of the shootings when he observed teenager Aleck Hernandez lying close to the University Book Store Co-Op he managed and surrounded by several individuals.

After positioning Mary Gabour on her side to prevent her from drowning in her own blood, the two men continued ascending to the reception area, where they discovered the mortally wounded Edna Townsley.

[68] In the minutes immediately following the media announcement of the end of the University of Texas tower shooting, several hundred students, staff, and citizens within the vicinity of the Main Building emerged from cover and silently converged upon and around the campus.

[72] At Whitman's home, investigators also discovered a collection of written admonitions he had apparently read on a daily basis stored inside an envelope.

[74] Beyond those killed and injured within the main building and the first two individuals shot from the observation deck of the tower, the precise order of Whitman's firing cannot be ascertained.

Her father, Raymond Leissner, refused to harbor hatred towards his son-in-law, who had murdered his only daughter, choosing to believe the tumor discovered upon Whitman's autopsy was the cause of his homicidal and suicidal ideations.

[107] Both Ramiro Martinez and Houston McCoy were awarded Medals of Valor by the city of Austin for their roles in ending the University of Texas tower shooting.

[56] Martinez has granted several interviews in which he has discussed his role in ending the University of Texas tower shooting and in which he generally portrays himself as the predominant force in "scoring" with his firearm shots upon Whitman and thus ending the massacre,[58] whereas McCoy, who died in December 2012,[108] resisted drawing attention to himself, saying of his actions in an interview granted to the Austin American-Statesman the year prior to his death he wished for no mention of Whitman be included in his obituary, stating: "I do not want what I did that day to define me ... but I guess you have to do that, mention the incident.

[110] On the twentieth anniversary of the University of Texas tower shooting, Whitman's father consented to a press reporter's request for an interview regarding his son's mass murder spree.

[112] At 11:48 a.m. on the fiftieth anniversary of the shootings in 2016, the University of Texas observed two minutes of silence prior to the unveiling of a stone monument engraved with the names of the fatalities at the Tower Garden.