America's Most Shocking Cases - Twisted

[bunniefuu]

[music playing]

Next, I take you outside my own morgue

for an inside look at America's most shocking cases.

NARRATOR When a father and daughter are struck

with a mysterious illness, a forensic investigation

reveals a dark family secret.

Gradually, little signs of trouble emerged.

People have to think, you know,

man, if that can happen there, it

could have happened anywhere.

NARRATOR And then the first mass

m*rder on a college campus-- [screaming]

[g*nsh*t]

--shocks the nation.

We don't want to believe that somebody

could do such an evil thing.

MAN I mean, this guy was playing God.

You die, you die, you die.

[theme music]

In this next case, four years after an autopsy concludes

that Frank Hilley d*ed of an unfortunate illness,

an exhumation reveals something far

more unsettling and bizarre.

NARRATOR To just about everyone who knows them,

the Hilley family of Anniston, Alabama, seems to be

living the American dream.

But underneath the facade of middle class normalcy,

something is going on--

something unimaginable.

It's very early on a Friday morning.

Delirious and confused, Frank Hilley

is wandering the front lawn of his home,

mumbling incoherently.

My mother said that she found him in the front yard at

in the morning in his underwear.

And he was pretty disoriented.

NARRATOR Terrified, Marie rushes her husband

to the nearest hospital.

When my mother called me on the phone

to tell me that my father was in the hospital,

she sounded worried.

She sounded very concerned.

She wanted to find out what the problem was.

NARRATOR To Michael Hilley, his mother's anxiety

comes as no surprise.

She and Frank have been married for nearly years.

MICHAEL HILLEY My parents met when they were in high school.

From what I remember my dad saying,

it was from the first time he saw her,

he knew he was going to marry her.

NARRATOR In May of , the couple ties the knot

and quickly settles down in their hometown

of Anniston, Alabama.

MICHAEL HILLEY Anniston, Alabama, is a unique town.

It's divided by railroad tracks.

GARY CARROLL The west part of the town

was kind of the lower class.

And then on the east side of town,

there were some rich homes.

NARRATOR Having grown up poor, they worked hard to make

a better life for themselves.

MICHAEL HILLEY My father was a supervisor

at a water pipe foundry.

That was one of the main industries in Anniston

at that particular time.

PHILIP E. GINSBURG Marie worked as a secretary,

and a very good one.

She was a smart woman.

NARRATOR Together, they crossed the tracks of their tough town

and started a seemingly idyllic family.

They're the typical middle class

family that had two children.

PHILIP E. GINSBURG From the outside,

the Hilley family looked like a model family.

But gradually, little signs of trouble emerged.

Marie had a desire to be among people who were better

off, better educated, better social class

than she thought she was.

She wanted to live where you dressed

for dinner, where you drank out of crystal

glasses or something.

PHILIP E. GINSBURG Frank seemed to accept that for a long time.

But eventually, the pressure started to wear on him,

and he seemed to be getting a serious drinking habit.

NARRATOR By the mid-'s, it's clear that Frank's overall

health is suffering.

MICHAEL HILLEY My father first started to get sick in .

There were little episodes of him

not feeling well, feeling sluggish.

He was just tired and listless, under the weather,

didn't feel like eating.

Some attributed it to the fact that maybe

the drinking was getting to him and wearing him out.

NARRATOR But in the days leading

up to his hospitalization, Frank goes into a rapid decline.

The week prior to him actually going into the hospital,

he was in the doctor's office on almost a daily basis.

He was unable to keep any food down.

They didn't know what the problem was.

And then that led, ultimately, to that episode
[ … ]

in the front yard on that Friday morning.

NARRATOR Frank is admitted to Anniston Memorial Hospital

at AM that morning.

Doctors run a battery of tests and deliver

a stunning diagnosis.

Frank's liver is failing as a result of infectious hepatitis.

They diagnosed him as hepatitis in the hospital

based on evidence of some liver dysfunction,

based on evidence of his symptomatology.

NARRATOR Doctors expect the infection

to pass within a few weeks and for Frank

to make a full recovery.

But after just two days in the hospital,

Frank's condition suddenly takes a turn for the worse.

MICHAEL HILLEY I walked into the hospital room.

And when I did, I immediately knew something was wrong.

I didn't know what, but I could just

sense that something was wrong.

My mother was sitting in a chair.

She appeared to be asleep.

So I walked over to the bed and, sure

enough, he wasn't breathing.

They tried briefly to resuscitate him,

but they couldn't.

He was dead.

NARRATOR Frank Hilley is pronounced dead

at AM on May , .

He is just years old.

Yeah, the day my father d*ed, it was--

that was the worst day of my life.

NARRATOR Frank's body is sent to the hospital

morgue, where Dr. [inaudible] performs a routine autopsy.

During the external exam, he finds a swollen abdomen.

When he cuts into the body, he discovers

the liver is firm and yellow.

Dr. [inaudible] believes these findings

are consistent with infectious hepatitis

and lists it as the official cause of death.

But the question now is, how could Frank have contracted it

in the first place?

I was hearing that my dad got sick from drinking

the water at work.

Industries in Anniston used a lot of chemicals, all of them.

And so the local health authorities,

they went through the various water sources

where Frank worked and tested all the water there.

And they found nothing.

NARRATOR After a thorough investigation,

the source of Frank's hepatitis remains a mystery.

Life at the plant soon returns to normal,

and the Frank Hilley case is officially closed.

Three months later, Mike heads off to college.

But in the wake of his father's death,

the Hilley women struggle to carry on.

And I went to high school that fall,

and there was a lot of screaming matches going on.

NARRATOR Over the course of the next few years,

the stress begins to take a toll on Carol's health.

PHILIP E. GINSBURG After Frank d*ed,

Carol was not in particularly good shape.

She seemed agitated, unhappy.

And she felt just a little sick a lot of the time, little aches

and pains here and there.

NARRATOR But then one day at church in the spring of ,

Carol's aches and pains take a dramatic turn for the worse.

That Sunday, I didn't feel well.

I sat there and I was like, oh, god, please look away.

And I started feeling sick.

So I left.

I got to the parking lot and I threw up.

It was terrible-- I mean, just throwing up continually,

not being able to, you know, ease the feeling,

even by throwing up.

It was just-- it was bad.

I hated it.

At that point, Marie took her to the hospital.

They examined her very closely.

And when all was said and done, they found nothing obvious.

NARRATOR But Carol's sickness continues to intensify.

CAROL HILLEY I couldn't hold any food down.

I was losing weight.

I think I weighed, like, pounds.

NARRATOR Most striking, however,

is that these symptoms are freakishly

similar to those her father experienced

the year before he d*ed.

I was seeing in my sister exactly

what my dad had gone through.

The symptoms were pretty much identical.

NARRATOR But tests on Carol's liver functions

continue to come up negative.

The doctors are perplexed.

Could Frank have fallen victim to some undiagnosed disease

that Carol inherited, or are the similarities

merely coincidental?

The Hilley family is desperate to find

out before they lose Carol too.

MICHAEL HILLEY She was scared.

I could hear the fear in her voice.

It was underneath the surface, but I could hear it.
[ … ]

NARRATOR For the past four months,

Carol Hilley has been plagued by a mysterious illness

with symptoms that are eerily similar to those

her father experienced in the days before he d*ed.

MICHAEL HILLEY My mother seemed very concerned.

She doesn't understand why they can't

find out what's wrong with her.

NARRATOR But just as the family is beginning to lose hope,

a new theory emerges.

One doctor in particular started

to wonder if perhaps this was in her mind

and there was an emotional, psychological problem.

JAN GARAVAGLIA Depression and stress can manifest physically

in multiple ways.

With Carol, they thought it was manifesting

in abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and even in anorexia.

And they felt a lot of her symptoms

were due to the stress and the depression

of losing her father.

NARRATOR In August of , -year-old Carol Hilley

is admitted into the psychiatric ward

at Caraway Methodist Hospital.

For the next several weeks, she undergoes

intense psychotherapy.

CAROL HILLEY That was probably the most

miserable time I've ever had.

Because I had no idea what I was doing there.

You know, just the hospital was all I knew.

NARRATOR Doctors give Carol intravenous fluids

to replenish her body with the nutrients

she lost during her three months of continuous vomiting.

But her condition only continues to deteriorate.

CAROL HILLEY I was starting to feel a little numb in my toes.

And from there, things just really went crazy.

I was starting to feel numb all the way up above my knees.

And by then, I could not walk.

and I couldn't see real good either.

You know, everything was like I was looking through a,

you know, magnifying glass.

NARRATOR Carol is knocking on death's door.

And her doctors are at a loss.

They had done everything they could

think of to try and figure out what was wrong with her.

MICHAEL HILLEY She was scared.

I could hear the fear in her voice.

It was underneath the surface, but I could hear it.

I thought, you know, that I'm going to die if somebody

doesn't do something.

NARRATOR In a last ditch effort,

Marie transfers Carol to the University of Alabama

Hospital in Birmingham where Dr. Brian

Thompson reviews the case.

But it isn't long before his examination raises

a whole new set of questions.

PHILIP E. GINSBURG He looked at her fingernails.

And there, across each fingernail, was a white line.

NARRATOR These white lines are known as Aldrich-Mees lines.

And they most commonly indicate one thing--

poisoning.

Dr. Thompson immediately takes samples of Carol's hair

and nails to be tested for exposure

to heavy metal poisons.

JOSEPH EMBRY The arsenic levels in the hair and nails

were very, very high, about times the normal level.

Acute arsenic poisoning causes very bad GI

symptomatology, often abdominal pain, tremendous diarrhea

and vomiting.

NARRATOR Dr. Thompson is now certain

that arsenic is the culprit in Carol's

long, torturous illness.

But the question is, how could she have possibly been

exposed to this deadly toxin?

PHILIP E. GINSBURG Arsenic is used

in rat poison and other poisons that are used

around households and farms.

And so Carol could have been exposed to arsenic

through one of those sources.

The other way you can get arsenic poisoning

is from someone else who intentionally

wants to poison you.

NARRATOR After a six-month battle with an unknown illness,

tests reveal that -year-old has been poisoned with arsenic.

JAN GARAVAGLIA I think Carol was very close to death.

Her arsenic levels were very high.

And I don't think Carol could have

lived much longer with the symptoms she was having.

She was clearly on the road to dying.

NARRATOR It's a shocking diagnosis.

But Carol believes she knows how she was

exposed to the deadly poison.

The minute they told me what was wrong with me,

I knew it was my mother.

NARRATOR In fact, Carol's mother

has been giving her sh*ts for more than three months.

CAROL HILLEY She didn't say what it was.

She just said it might help me get my feeling back in my feet.

And I'm like, OK.

So I let her do it.

She said a friend of ours that was a nurse gave it to her.

So I believed that.
[ … ]

There was no reason not to.

NARRATOR But now she realizes that, all this time, her mother

has been injecting her with arsenic.

All the stuff she'd been doing, now it makes sense,

you know?

JAN GARAVAGLIA It's extremely rare

to be injected with arsenic.

And it's her mother.

So she just went along with, her mother

was doing the right thing.

And lo and behold, her mother was trying to k*ll her.

NARRATOR But why didn't Carol tell

anyone about the sh*ts earlier?

She said, if I told anyone, that the lady

that gave it to her could get fired from her job.

NARRATOR And that's not all.

When Michael learns about the sh*ts,

he makes a shocking connection.

My mother had given my dad injections too.

So now I had some suspicions that my dad had been poisoned.

NARRATOR Now both Carol and Mike

are forced to come to terms with the fact

that their mother may have m*rder*d

their father then tried to k*ll Carol as well.

I should have been something, but I wasn't.

I wasn't surprised.

I wasn't angry.

I wasn't anything.

MICHAEL HILLEY Being suspicious of your mother

is never an easy thing.

And you try to--

I tried to find ways to disprove what

I knew deep down she was doing.

NARRATOR Now authorities have no choice

but to launch a full-scale investigation

into Marie Hilley.

I subpoenaed the record for Frank Hilley

from the regional medical center.

And then I contacted the director of Alabama Department

of Forensic Sciences.

And after I read the list of the symptoms that Frank had,

they said, this is going to be a classic arsenic poisoning case."], index ,…}

NARRATOR On September , , Lieutenant Carroll brings Marie"], index ,…}

Hilley in for questioning.

When she was being questioned by Lieutenant Carroll,

she denied it time after time after time after time.

NARRATOR But then Lieutenant Carroll gets a lucky break.

Carol, she said her mother kept

the vial that she drew the injection from in her purse.

So when I looked in her purse, she had two empty prescription

medicine bottles in her purse.

The bottles were completely void of any liquid,

but there was a dry film residue inside one of the bottles.

And I decided go ahead and submit that to be tested.

NARRATOR A month later, the lab work returns.

There was, in fact, arsenic peroxide

in that particular bottle.

NARRATOR Lieutenant Carroll now believes

he has enough evidence to find Marie guilty of the attempted

m*rder of her daughter.

But in order to put her behind bars for life,

he must now prove that Marie k*lled her husband.

And the only way to do that is to dig up Frank's body,

buried over four years earlier.

Well, an exhumed body is always a crapshoot.

Because you never know what you're going to find.

NARRATOR Investigators have just

uncovered evidence that Marie Hilley poisoned her daughter.

Now, they suspect that, four years earlier, she also

poisoned her husband to death.

But in order to prove that Frank Hilley did

not die of hepatitis, investigators

will have to exhume his body.

JAN GARAVAGLIA You never know if an exhumation

is going to help you or not.

You may find a body that is perfectly preserved

and dried out with a little bit of mold.

That would be great.

Or you may find a body that is so decomposed that it's gone

to a skeleton with very little information that

could be gained.

So you never know what you're going

to get with an exhumation.

NARRATOR On October , , Frank Hilley's body is

dug up from its plot at Forest Lawn Gardens.

We had the cemetery workers present to do

the actual physical digging of the casket.

NARRATOR Frank's remains are then

transported to the Department of Forensic

Sciences for a second autopsy.

When I first saw Frank Hilley's body,

he was a decomposing, mummified adult male, consistent

with the age of years at the time of death.

There was some mold on his face.

There was loss of the soft tissue in his face

and in his body in general, so that his skin

was shriveled and hard.

NARRATOR Dr. Embry starts with the external exam.

JOSEPH EMBRY I was looking for findings suggestive of arsenic

because of the history.
[ … ]

I looked for Mees lines in his nails.

I looked for hyperpigmentation of his skin.

But I found no evidence of any arsenic poisoning

or other abnormalities.

NARRATOR Unfortunately, the internal exam

yields no new clues either.

But the pathologist still has one card left to play.

The next step was to collect samples

for testing for poisons.

NARRATOR Dr. Embry sends the tissue

samples to the Department of Forensic Sciences

to be tested by a toxicologist.

Now, all they can do is wait.

Oh, it took a few weeks for them to do all the testing.

But the results were dramatic.

The arsenic levels in Mr. Hilley's liver

was about times the normal level.

And the level in his kidney was approximately

times the normal level.

NARRATOR It's a stunning revelation.

Frank Hilley did not die of infectious hepatitis.

He was poisoned to death.

And all signs point to his wife of years, Marie.

PHILIP E. GINSBURG As far as the detectives

could put it together, Marie had started

poisoning Frank in food.

Little by little, over time, she had increased the amounts

that she could give him.

And I think when he was in the hospital and the final day

that he d*ed, she was with him.

And I think she gave him one final injection.

I believe she was poisoning my sister in the same manner

that she did my dad.

If she had received another dose of the poison,

I think it probably would have done her in and k*lled her.

NARRATOR Investigators now have the proof

they need to charge Marie Hilley with the m*rder of her husband

and the attempted m*rder of her daughter.

MICHAEL HILLEY But her first question to me-- you

don't think I did this, do you?

And my thought was, yeah, I think you did.

And I think you know that I know you did.

NARRATOR But what could possibly drive

a woman to m*rder her husband then

try to k*ll her own daughter?

On the surface, the motive is money.

Marie received over $, insurance-- life insurance--

money from Frank.

CAROL HILLEY She had a life insurance on me too.

It wasn't much.

Makes me feel real good.

You could at least put a lot of money on my head or something.

NARRATOR But the extent of Marie Hilley's depravity

goes far beyond simple financial gain.

JAN GARAVAGLIA She actually watched them suffer.

She watched their illnesses.

She watched that horrible feeling she was giving to them.

That is not normal.

That's a psychological problem.

That's a sociopath.

Marie Hilley had a severely distorted personality.

MICHAEL HILLEY She had a very outgoing personality.

But she also had a very evil side to her that was not

evidenced by overt behavior.

Because she could cloak it very well.

She was incapable of real feeling or empathy.

She learned in her life to manipulate other people,

but never with a sense of what was right or wrong.

MICHAEL HILLEY She was a very cold, calculating individual

who didn't care who she hurt or k*lled in the process

of getting what she wanted.

PHILIP E. GINSBURG People who don't

fit the picture of what she wants

her life to be are not people.

They're obstacles.

They're an interference to what she wants.

A husband who did not make a lot of money

was not a husband to be loved.

It was to be a husband to be disposed of.

And hard as it is to believe, the fact

that Carol was a difficult child, acting rebellious,

interfering with the smooth pattern of Marie's life,

it seems like that must have played into Marie's willingness

to poison her own daughter.

NARRATOR And it isn't long before stories

begin to surface that Marie's psychotic deeds don't

end there.

GARY CARROLL Marie experimented with arsenic poisoning

with other people.

I know she poisoned me on one occasion.

Her son's wife thought that she might

have been poisoned at one time.

MICHAEL HILLEY She had poisoned one of Carol's friends.

GARY CARROLL Marie would prepare brownies for the kids

that lived next door.

And they began to experience stomach problems and nausea.

NARRATOR The sensational story quickly

gains national media attention.

And the trial is set for May , ,

in her small hometown of Anniston, Alabama.
[ … ]

MICHAEL HILLEY The trial in Anniston

was a well-attended circus.

I mean, you turn on the radio, that's all you hear about.

Pick up a newspaper-- front page news.

And I'm thinking, my god, this is my mother.

That was one of the few times in my life

I wanted to be invisible.

NARRATOR Marie maintains her innocence throughout the trial.

She never actually admitted that she did anything that

would have harmed either her husband or her daughter,

either one.

NARRATOR The prosecution's star witness

is Marie's own daughter, Carol.

A lot of people thought that she

would never be able to testify against her mother.

But she showed them.

And she did great.

I hated it.

I hated the trial I hated it.

I didn't want to do it, but I had to.

They told me not to look at her.

And of course, you know, you have to kind of glance,

you know?

And-- but she showed no emotion whatsoever.

NARRATOR After three hours of deliberation,

the jury finds Marie Hilley guilty.

The judge condemns her to life in prison

for the m*rder of Frank and years for the attempted

m*rder of Carol.

CAROL HILLEY When the verdict came, when they

asked her if she had anything to say, she said she didn't do it."], index ,…}

And-- and she mouthed over to me, I love you.

You know, yeah, right.

And that was about the extent of it.

I believe, if Marie Hilley had not been discovered,

I think that she would have probably k*lled more people,

maybe other members of her family--

her son or somebody that she could collect insurance on.

I think that this particular crime is shocking to people

because it comes out of a family that appeared to be

a very normal American family.

And people have to think, you know,

man, if that can happen there, could it happen anywhere else?

This next case examines how one man changed the face

of v*olence in America--

[g*nf*re]

--and the pivotal role his autopsy played in the quest

to understand what happened.

NARRATOR It's a scorching summer

morning at the University of Texas in Austin.

As students cross the campuses west and south mall

on their way to classes, an engineering student

named Charles Whitman is standing on top

of the school's landmark tower.

GARY LAVERGNE He's over six feet

tall, blonde hair, blue eyes.

He's quite an impressive physical specimen.

NARRATOR But the seemingly all-American boy next door

isn't there to take in the view.

Charles Whitman had it in his mind that he was going to die.

But he was going to die in a big way and take a lot of people

with him.

NARRATOR On top of the clock tower at the center

of the University of Texas campus,

a -year-old student named Charles Whitman carefully

unpacks a cache of weapons from his Marine-issue foot locker.

At exactly AM, he picks up one of the r*fles

and trains it on Claire Wilson, an -year-old student who

is also eight months pregnant.

He intended to sh**t her through the fetus.

[g*nsh*t]

[screams]

His thinking was, it's two for one.

Two for one.

NARRATOR Next, he fatally sh**t her boyfriend--

[g*nsh*t] - [screams]

NARRATOR --Thomas Eckman.

This guy, I mean, was absolutely

an accomplished rifleman.

Incredible sh*t.

Marine training honed those skills

and sharpened those skills.

NARRATOR Robert Hamilton Boyer is his next victim, a professor

and father of three.

But the senseless k*lling has only just begun.

Within minutes, an alert goes out over the police radio.

Officer Jerry Day is one of the first responders

to arrive on the scene.

Somebody called in and said there was a sh**ting.

[radio chatter]

All units proceed to the tower.

NARRATOR Dodging a hail of b*ll*ts,

he sprints across the campus's west mall.

JERRY DAY There were bodies everywhere.

I could see people laying down everywhere,

especially on the south mall.

Everybody was carrying the people

and doing what they could.

And I said, we've got to put a stop to this.

NARRATOR When Officer Day finally reaches the tower,
[ … ]

he rushes to the th floor, just one

flight below the observation deck

where Whitman is f*ring his r*fle.

And I found four bodies.

And all of them were sh*t with a shotgun.

And an -year-old boy was still alive.

NARRATOR On his way up to the observation deck,

Whitman had ruthlessly opened fire on the Lamport and Gabour

families.

JERRY DAY I went to try to take care of the -year-old boy.

And he was trying to take my p*stol away from me.

He wanted to go up there and k*ll the SOB.

And I told him I'd do it for him.

NARRATOR As Day assesses his next move,

Officers Ramiro Martinez and Houston

McCoy arrive on the scene.

Armed with two r*fles and a . caliber revolver,

the three policemen race up the last flight of stairs.

JERRY DAY I wasn't afraid.

I was just almost ready to feel the impact.

NARRATOR Officer Martinez kicks open

the door to the observation deck and the men charge through.

We thought we was going to really have a g*n battle.

He had enough amm*nit*on and everything

else to last for a few days.

NARRATOR Day heads west.

[g*nf*re]

Martinez and McCoy head east.

But as Day rounds the corner of the stairwell,

Martinez and McCoy are already f*ring on Whitman.

[g*nf*re]

They sh**t round after round into his head, neck, and chest.

Martinez stepped out and sh*t at him with his p*stol.

But Houston McCoy stepped out and k*lled him

with that shotgun.

[g*nf*re]

And it was over.

NARRATOR minutes after f*ring his first b*llet,

Charles Whitman is finally dead.

Officers immediately search his body, find his ID,

and dispatch a unit to his nearby home on Jewell

Street in South Austin.

They broke into the house and discovered

that Whitman's wife had been stabbed three

or four times in the chest.

NARRATOR Next to her body, the police

find a rambling, half-handwritten, half-typed

su1c1de note in which Whitman writes,

"It was after much thought that I

decided to k*ll my wife Kathy.

I love her dearly.

I cannot rationally pinpoint any specific

reason for doing this."

In the note, Whitman indicates he has k*lled his mother too.

Officers rush to Margaret Whitman's apartment

building just a short drive away.

GARY LAVERGNE He k*lled her by stabbing her to death.

He placed her in bed and made it look like she was asleep.

In the letter that Charles Whitman writes,

he says he wants to prevent her from being embarrassed.

NARRATOR Investigators are stunned.

And by the end of the day, the entire nation

is reeling from news reports of the m*ssacre.

[g*nf*re]

The scope of the crime is enormous.

dead, injured.

What he did was--

it was unprecedented.

You know, people did not take g*ns to the top of a building

and randomly sh**t and -year-old kids.

I mean, that's craziness.

GARY LAVERGNE Today, we have the Virginia Tech tragedy.

We have Columbine and a number of school sh**t

that raised our consciousness.

But nothing like this had happened before.

It was not in our experience back then.

[g*nsh*t]

NARRATOR And now the nation has one pressing question.

Why?

Within hours of the sh**ting, investigators

scramble to find an answer.

They begin by questioning everyone

who knew Charles Whitman.

People liked him and admired him and thought,

oh, he's a great guy.

NARRATOR On the surface, Whitman seemed

to be leading a charmed life--

a Marine scholarship at UT, an adoring wife, and a leadership

role with the Boy Scouts.

But as they dig deeper, investigators

learn that Whitman was actually a very troubled man.

And in his su1c1de letter, he expresses

a deep hatred for his father.

Do you understand that?

I'm the boss!

Not you!

Charles Whitman's father was physically and emotionally

abusive of his entire family.

Charles Whitman's father also was a big g*n proponent.

So he grew up in a house that g*ns were a big part of
[ … ]

and v*olence was a part of.

NARRATOR By the spring of , Whitman's life

is spiraling out of control.

TOBY HAMILTON This guy was failing on every front.

He was not doing well in school.

And he got fired by the Boy Scouts.

He was not able to hold a job.

His marriage is falling apart.

NARRATOR And it isn't long before Whitman begins taking

his frustrations out on Kathy.

He b*at his wife.

Once you've been abused, you've got these thoughts.

People feel vulnerable.

And they don't like that.

And they want to become perpetrators

rather than victims.

They become more dangerous.

Kathy had been pushing him to visit

a psychiatrist, because he was a very troubled young man.

I have this fantasy that I--

NARRATOR The police soon discover that just six months

before the sh**ting, Whitman had, in fact, visited

the university's psychiatrist.

One of the things that Whitman complained about

was frustrations against the university

and his academic problems.

NARRATOR Whitman also complains of incapacitating headaches.

It's making it harder to think.

I've got clouded judgment.

NARRATOR But that's not all.

Whitman told him that he thought

about going up to the top of the tower with a deer r*fle

and k*lling people.

I'll sh**t them in the head if I can.

Actually, Whitman--

GARY LAVERGNE And the psychiatrist

wrote a report that, today, seems very, very disturbing.

He interpreted that as a passing fantasy.

The doctor then invited Whitman to come back

in a week to talk some more.

But Whitman didn't show up.

In those days, there were mental institutions,

and you could easily have somebody committed to one

for days for observation.

As soon as he said that he was thinking of climbing that tower

and sh**ting people, he should have said,

well, I think that you ought to go right into the hospital

until you aren't feeling that way anymore.

And let's find out why you're feeling that way.

NARRATOR Digging deeper, the police

also learned that Whitman had been taking the drug dexedrine.

Dexedrine is an amphetamine.

It was common on college campuses back then.

We know that Whitman took dexedrine to stay up all night

and study regularly.

Amphetamines are central nervous system stimulants.

They cause you to be more active, more awake, more alert.

They could also cause nervousness, jitteriness.

They can increase your blood pressure.

With chronic users, they can even

cause psychosis and hallucinations and paranoia.

And amphetamines produce a particular kind of psychosis.

It's always a paranoid psychosis.

NARRATOR In fact, on the day of the sh**ting,

Officers McCoy and Ramirez found a vial of the amphetamines

stuffed into one of Whitman's pockets.

Investigators now wonder if an amphetamine psychosis,

along with Whitman's troubled past,

are to blame for the sh**ting spree.

But Whitman himself seemed to believe there was

another unknown factor at play.

In his su1c1de note, the -year-old had written,

"I don't really understand myself these days.

Lately, I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational

thoughts."

And at the end of the letter, Whitman

had made an unusual request.

Do an autopsy on me.

Find out what's making me this way.

I know it's different from everybody else.

NARRATOR Just a few hours after the sh**ting, Charles Whitman's"], index ,…}

body is sent to the Cook Funeral Home, where

pathologist Dr. Coleman de Chenar is assigned

to the highly charged case.

The public is hoping that the autopsy will, in some way,

help shed new light on the crime.

The autopsy wasn't to determine the cause of death.

We know what k*lled him.

The autopsy is searching for what could have possibly made

this young man do what he did.

NARRATOR Dr. De Chenar's first order of business

is to test for amphetamines.

I think the investigators had dr*gs as their chief suspect.

Every time we do an autopsy of somebody that does something

violent, we're hoping that we can have a precipitating

factor that we're looking for.

NARRATOR But when the toxicology results arrive,

Dr. De Chenar is surprised to find no trace

of dr*gs in Whitman's system.

His next stop is the brain.
[ … ]

When he tried to remove the brain,

it almost literally fell apart in his hand.

NARRATOR The organ is a mess, torn to bits

and riddled with buckshot.

But as Dr. De Chenar deftly works his way

into the inner lobes of the brain,

he makes a shocking discovery.

We were all amazed.

NARRATOR While dissecting the brain of mass m*rder*r Charles

Whitman, Dr. Coleman de Chenar finds something

completely unexpected.

He discovered a tumor.

NARRATOR But while some brain tumors can affect behavior,

upon closer inspection, Dr. De Chenar concludes

that this particular growth cannot be

blamed for Whitman's actions.

He saw a brain tumor.

He identified a brain tumor.

He didn't think it was significant.

NARRATOR That afternoon, the public learns about the tumor

in a local paper.

And many refuse to believe that it's

unrelated to the heinous crime.

We don't want to believe somebody

could do such an evil thing.

And so we search for answers.

And the tumor gives us a nice, neat, little package

to say, oh, it was a tumor.

The theory of the tumor gives us a culprit.

That changes the investigation from, really,

one of a regular m*rder investigation

into an intense medical investigation.

NARRATOR The public's overwhelming desire

to understand Whitman's motivations prompts

the governor of Texas, John Connally,

to gather the brightest doctors in the country In an effort

to reexamine the entire case.

It was a star-studded panel.

They were the best.

They were looking at everything

to find out anything they could, because this

is just not something that happened in America.

NARRATOR One by one, team members carefully

study the slides of Whitman's brain tumor

under a high-powered microscope.

And what they ultimately determine

turns the case upside down.

And the pathologists on the commission said, this

is not a slow-growing tumor.

This is a rapidly growing tumor, a really bad tumor.

NARRATOR In fact, the commission

soon comes out in opposition to de Chenar's initial finding.

They now believe that the tumor could

indeed have led to Whitman's debilitating headaches.

Even more shocking, the commission

concludes that it could also explain his drive to k*ll.

That's because the bean-sized tumor is pushing up

against the thalamus, the part of the brain that regulates

sensation, motor skills, consciousness,

and, most importantly, impulse control.

If you interrupt the thalamus, you get a loss of ability

to prioritize, a loss of judgment, a loss of ability

to inhibit impulses and desires.

The tumor location is important

because different parts of your brain do different things.

Tumors in this area may be associated

with some behavioral problems.

This tumor may have pushed Whitman over the edge.

He had the impulse, a desire, to go up to the top

of that tower and sh**t people.

That thought had occurred to him a year

or more before he did this.

I'm going to sh**t as many people as I possibly can.

But what this tumor did was, it unhooked him

from those parts of his brain that say, don't say that,

don't do that.

Most people who get a brain tumor are not violent.

Most people who are mentally ill are not violent.

Most people who have been terribly abused

are not violent.

That's not how we do things in here!

But when you put those three factors into one individual,

I think the chances of v*olence are very high.

NARRATOR But while the commission's findings suggest

that Whitman's tumor may have played a role in the sh**t,

there is simply not enough hard evidence

to make a definitive ruling one way or the other.

The Connally commission states,

we're never going to definitively

say whether that tumor precipitated this heinous act.

And I have to agree with that.

It would be wildly speculative.

Could it have played a role?

You bet it could have played a role.

But it may have not played a role.

NARRATOR To this day, people continue

to speculate about what drove Whitman to k*ll.

While some people believe the tumor may have played a role,

others are convinced that Charles

Whitman was simply an evil man.
[ … ]

I don't think the tumor had anything to do with it.

And I really don't think his childhood

had much to do with it.

I just believe that this is the way he was.

I mean, this guy was playing god on that tower.

You die, you die, you die.

One of the frustrating things about this case

is that none of us will ever know with absolute certainty

why Charles Whitman did what he did.

When something as shocking as this happens,

people turn to science in their struggle to understand why.

Science has come a long way since the s.

There's still so much we don't know.

You're never going to find anything

in a brain that can definitively tell

you why somebody did something.

The human brain doesn't work like that.

So sometimes, we just have to accept

the fact that the autopsy doesn't

always provide the answers.

[music playing]

MAN (WHISPERING) Atlas.