Hours after the shooting, the story was on network radio, television and on front pages of newspapers all over the world. "TV Star Kill Self," "TV Personality Takes Own Life On Air, "On Camera Suicide," read headlines of tabloids from Tokyo to London to Australia to the New York Daily News. People were stunned. Lee Harvey Oswald, George Wallace, a Viet Cong prisoner had all been shot before viewers' eyes and it riveted the world. But never in history had anyone deliberately killed herself on live television. And it was Christine Chubbuck's story.
She left no suicide note. A week before she died, she mentioned to Rob Smith, 22, the night news editor, that she had purchased a gun.
"What for?" asked Rob.
"Well, I thought it would be a nifty idea if I went on the air live and just blew myself away," she answered, and then laughed her funny cackle.
"I just changed the subject," said Rob. "That was just too sick a joke for me."
Several weeks before she died, she told Mike Simmons, 26, the news director, that she wanted to do a film piece on suicide. He gave her the go-ahead. She called the local police department and discussed methods of suicide with one of the officers. She was told that to kill oneself with a gun, the "best" method was to use a .38 caliber pistol. And to be absolutely sure of success, a wadcutter, a slug that disintegrates into tiny pieces in the body, should be used.
She was also told that the gun should be pointed not at the temple, which wouldn't necessarily kill, but at the lower back of the head. It is there that the heart and lungs, the life functions, are sustained.
When Chris Chubbuck killed herself, she followed those instructions. There seemed to be no doubt that she had every intention of killing herself. There were some who were confused by the word "attempted" suicide in her script. But those who worked with her had a ready explanation. Chris was too good a newswoman to write suicide when it might have failed. She was too precise. And even her mother thought it not unusual.
So once it had been established that she fully intended to die, obviously the question became why. And of course, why did she choose to do it the way she did?
When somebody commits suicide, especially violently and publicly, once the initial shock dies away and people can absorb what has happened, they can begin to speculate on why. This is what was happening in Sarasota one week after the death of "TV Star Chris Chubbuck." Everyone had his or her own idea of why it happened.
?She had worked for nearly a year with a young man named George Peter Ryan, a tall, handsome, blond stockbroker who read the stock reports on the local news show. George ("Gorgeous George: to some of his friends) was divorced and had had personal problems himself. He was heavily involved in transactional analysis. Chris developed a crush on him. In fact, she confided to one of her friends that she had decided that George was the perfect person to help her solve her problems. She went to George on his 30th birthday in late June with a cake. And later at the press party, she made hit clear to him in a subtle way that she was available. He rejected her.