"I do not quite understand what it is that compels me to type this
letter. Perhaps it is to leave some vague reason for the actions I have
recently performed. I do not really understand myself these days. I am
supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However,
lately (I cannot recall when it started) I have been a victim [note the interesting word choice] of many
unusual and irrational thoughts." (My emphasis; full letter here)
Thus wrote Austin sniper Charles Whitman, shortly before he went on the shooting spree in August of '66 that killed 16 and injured 32. He also wrote that he had been suffering tremendous headaches and wanted an autopsy done to see if there was an organic defect.
This man had been in the Marines. It is well known that the military for many years did experiments on personnel who were not only NOT informed about what would be done to them or what the fallout might be ("that might skew the results"), but whose names in many cases were not even recorded, iow they were used as totally anonymous guinea pigs, and then simply sent back to their respective military unit (many of them were "borrowed" from various military branches). Little was known about the long-term effects of the experiments, and yet
the volunteers, after a stay at the arsenal, were blindly pushed back
into the Army at large, with no follow-up care. (op cit)
Might Charles Whitman have been one of those tragic victims?
