CO tragedy evokes 1966 tower killings

AUSTIN (KXAN) - It has been 14 years since Gary Lavergne wrote the book “A Sniper in the Tower.”

But he expects book sales to increase in the coming weeks.

“Every time something like this happens, sales go up,” said Lavergne.

With the country’s eyes focused on the movie theater shooting in Aurora, CO, Lavergne’s book details every known movement of Charles Whitman in the days leading up to the Texas Tower shooting.

A crime that set the precedent for mass murder in a public place like the one that happened Friday.

“The University of Texas tower shooting in 1966 was America’s introduction to mass murder as we think of it today.”

Lavergne says although many have duplicated Whitman’s act of killing multiple strangers in public, lessons learned from the tower shooting will make it difficult to pull off a such a lengthy attack.

“It is probably the most significant crime ever committed on American soil in terms of what it did for law enforcement,” said Lavergne who cites the creation of SWAT teams and new training for such situations.

Witnesses in Colorado say the suspected shooter fired into the movie theater for a matter of minutes.

Whitman fired for nearly an hour and a half before being shot dead by officers.

Cell phones, internet, and media coverage also make it difficult for public shootings to rival the duration of Whitman’s.

However, there are some things that have not changed in similar tragedies 46 years later.

“I’m not convinced that with all our science and experience that we genuinely know what causes this,” said Lavergne. “If we knew, we could predict who is going to do this and we still cannot”

But having written three books about killers and mass murder, Lavergne has noticed some trends.

“They all have a huge, huge ego. They are selfish and self-centered people,” recalled Lavergne who speculated that the fame and notoriety gained by Whitman could appeal to would-be killers.

“The young man is probably getting exactly what he wants,” he said about theater shooting suspect James Holmes. “He is on every website, every television station and every newspaper.”

As attention turns to Holmes and his possible motivation for the shooting, Lavergne expects people to use words like “crazy” and “insane” as they try to justify such deadly behavior.

But Lavergne says killers do not always need the justification the public often seeks after the crime.

“It does not mean they are sick, it does not mean they are insane,” said Lavergne.

“Many times it just means they are mean.”