Introducing: 'Darkness: The UT Tower Sniper'

Darkness

The Drag Audio Production House

True Crime

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2023

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On August 1, 1966, a sniper climbed the steps of the University of Texas at Austin’s 27-story tower. Seventeen people were killed and more than 30 others were injured. Fifty-six years later, mass shootings make headlines nearly every week. And the University of Texas tower looms over campus, a reminder of one of the first mass school shootings in United States history that has long been forgotten.

In season four of “Darkness,” host Sara Kinney walks through the day of the University of Texas Tower shooting and outlines its legacy among the decades-long epidemic of gun violence in schools. Hear from survivors, heroes and family members about their day in 1966, their lives since then and the state of gun control today.

Transcript

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0:00.0	If people pick one symbol of the University of Texas or they carry it away as an
0:09.3	undergraduate, what is it? It's the tablet. On August 1st, 1966, a sniper climbed the steps of the University of Texas at Austin's 27-story tower.
0:31.6	Hello, this is Michael Paul. 27 story tower. Tower.
0:34.0	This is Michael Hall at the History Department on the University campus.
0:39.0	There's just been a gunshot on the main tower outside the main building.
0:44.3	Still shooting, it sounds like rifle shots.
0:46.7	Well we got all the units going out there
0:49.3	this truck and killed car with rival.
0:51.2	17 people were killed and more than 30 others were injured.
0:56.0	Then all of a sudden a high powered rifle bullet went past my right ear.
1:00.0	And that was when we saw people lying on the mall.
1:05.0	So my first thought was it was an electrification because it just feels like this huge jolt.
1:12.0	You know, I didn't really feel pain. And so I started falling and then it felt like I was melting into the concrete.
1:21.0	It was one of the first mass school shootings in U.S. history.
1:25.7	It's very hard for people in modern day America to realize that this kind of thing did not happen. It was
1:40.2	incredibly shocking. I'm Sarah Kinney and I'm the host of season four of
1:46.4	darkness. I grew up going through school shooting drills and now I'm a student
1:50.9	here at the University of Texas.
1:53.6	It seems like every week, there's news of another mass shooting.
1:57.4	And this season of darkness is about one that happened on my campus,
2:02.2	the tower shootings of 1966.
2:05.0	Have you noticed when they start talking about school shootings?
	...

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