IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

Zombies or Dumb Students? About 100 Brains Missing From University

The University of Texas at Austin is missing about 100 brains — including one believed to have belonged to clock tower sniper Charles Whitman.

AUSTIN, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin is missing about 100 brains.

That's about half of the specimens the university had in a collection of brains preserved in jars of formaldehyde. One of the missing brains preserved is believed to have belonged to clock tower sniper Charles Whitman.

The co-curator of the collection is psychology Professor Lawrence Cormack. He tells the Austin American-Statesman that undergraduates and others may have been swiping the brains for years "for living rooms or Halloween pranks."

The Austin State Hospital had transferred the jars of brains to the university about 28 years ago.

Although identifying information was removed from the collection to protect confidentiality, co-curator Tim Schallert says Whitman's brain likely was part of the collection.

Image: Charles Whitman
Charles J. Whitman, a 24-year-old student at the University of Texas, is shown in this 1966 photograph. Until the carnage at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., on Monday, April 16, 2007, the Aug. 1, 1966, sniping rampage by Whitman from the Austin school's landmark 307-foot tower had remained the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history.AP file
— The Associated Press