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they thought dangerous – at least for long enough for a thorough psychiatric examination. But most states insisted that the individual commit themselves voluntarily or that their family or the courts place them in hospital care. Usually the doctor could only try and persuade the patient that voluntary commitment was in their own best interest. Unfortunately, most psychotics were not amenable to having themselves locked up and, in the 1960s, most families regarded mental illness as a shameful thing and resisted formal commitment to a mental institution until it was too late.

Medical opinion, at the time, believed that the best way of catching psychotics before they began shooting was a long-term programme of mental hygiene. They favoured more psychological testing in schools and colleges, and the spread of community clinics to give instant help to all who needed it. What was needed was a massive investment of money and manpower. Far too little was known about the psychology of the spree killer, psychiatrists conceded. The problem was they erupted infrequently – and few survived to tell the tale. Those who did, the medics said, were a vital research resource. Pilot studies of juvenile offenders in Massachusetts and Illinois at that time indicated that many potential psychotics may be identifiable, and even curable, if caught in their teens. And the medical profession had still not given up on the idea that they could find the cure to all mental illness in the chemistry of the brain. Generally, though, it was considered that there was little hope of some sort of psychiatric Geiger counter or cerebral pap smear test to spot psychotics in advance. Instead, Americans were advised to put their faith in President Johnson’s Great Society and those massive welfare resources that were set to pare down the danger of sudden, irrational murder.

Whitman’s murderous spree had also been seen to be associated with the Vietnam War, which was bringing true-life violence directly into America’s living-rooms every night at the time. The first televised war, network coverage of Vietnam became the backdrop to the late 1960s and early 1970s. It brought with it an unprecedented tide of assassinations, urban violence and spree killings. By the end of the war, the American Army or Marine veteran had turned in the public perception from an upstanding citizen who had served his country to a degenerate butcher who might explode at any moment and kill again at the slightest excuse. This attitude was made explicit in the 1976 film Taxi Driver. Made just one year after the end of the war, it showed Robert De Niro as a brooding ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran Travis Bickle. The film follows the insomniac psychopath as he meticulously prepares himself to declare war on the world. It ends, predictably, in a violent bloodbath.

However, although Charles Whitman was a Marine, he was honourably discharged in 1964, a year before President Johnson committed ground troops to Vietnam Whitman experienced none of the alienation that the veterans of that unpopular war suffered.

Two films were made about Charles Whitman. In Targets, made in 1968, director Peter Bogdanovich switched the action to a drive-in cinema, where a psychotic sniper picks off the innocent viewers of a horror film. The Deadly Tower, in 1975, gave a literal version of event, though policeman Ramiro Martinez sued the network NBC for $1 million over his unflattering portrayal. However, these films were not entirely without precedent in America. In 1952, a film called The Sniper had been released. It was about a youth who shot blondes. And in 1962, Ford Clark published a novel called The Open Space. In it, the protagonist climbs a tower in a Midwestern university and begins picking off people. As far as the police could ascertain, Whitman had neither seen the film nor read the book. The material Whitman had assembled for his murder spree remained in police custody until 1972. Then it was auctioned off to augment the fund set up to help the victims of his crimes. Whitman’s guns fetched $1,500 from