Unheard Witness: The Life and Death of Kathy Leissner Whitman

Written For A General Audience, This Book Taps Into And Reorients The Narrative Of The 1966 Ut Tower Shooting--the First Mass Campus Shooting--to A Person And Side Of This Crime That Have Been Too-long Overlooked: Kathy Leissner Whitman, Who Was Married To The Tower Shooter. This Book Explores Kathy's Experience With Domestic Violence At The Hands Of The Shooter, Charles Whitman, And Her Murder As Well As The Murder Of Kathy's Mother-in-law The Night Before His Rampage. Scott-coe Uses Kathy's Letters, Which Have Not Been Available Until Now, To Her Husband And Family To Craft A Biography That Provides A Rare Glimpse Of How One Woman Expressed--and Sought To Change--her Life With A Coercive And Sometimes Violent Partner, During A Time When Domestic Abuse And Mass Shooting Were Not Part Of Our Vocabulary. She Traces Kathy's Life, Focusing On The Years She Spent With Whitman, From Their Whirlwind Courtship In Her First Year At Ut, Through Her Graduation And Beginnings Of A Career As A Teacher Despite Domestic Turmoil, Up To The Last Weeks Before Her Death At Age 23. In Doing So, Scott-coe Challenges Assumptions About Kathy And Charles That Have Been Baked Into This Story, And More Broadly, About How Intimate Partners Should Respond To Domestic Violence. Kathy's Story Is Framed By An Introduction And Conclusion That Place This Tragedy In The Context Of The Largely Invisible Epidemic Of Domestic Abuse In The United States And The Link Between Mass Shootings And Violence Against Women In The Home-- Provided By Publisher.