Charles Joseph Whitman (June 24, 1941 – August 1, 1966) was an American mass murderer and Marine veteran who became known as the 'Texas Tower Sniper'. On August 1, 1966, Whitman used knives to kill his mother and his wife in their respective homes, then went to the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) with multiple firearms and began indiscriminately shooting at people. He fatally shot three people inside UT Austin's Main Building, then accessed the 28th-floor observation deck on the building's clock tower. There, he fired at random people for 96 minutes, killing an additional eleven people and wounding 31 others before he was shot dead by the Austin Police Department.