Chris’ closest friend, if she had one, was Andrea Kirby. Andrea, 32, was the sports reporter for Channel 40. She was Southern, petite, divorced and had a way with men. Andrea was also tough and ambitious.
Andrea had recently been hired by a Baltimore TV station and was leaving Sarasota in a few days. That depressed Chris somewhat because she saw her friend leaving and going on to bigger and better things while she was left behind. It was Andrea to whom Chris confided her plan to proposition George. Andrea had no patience with Chris’ tendency to feel sorry for herself. Occasionally she would say, “That’s right, Chris. Just kick yourself in the ass.” What she didn’t say was that she and George were already seeing each other. “When Chris found out that George and I were going out, that depressed her,” Andrea said.
●The owner of station WXLT-TV is Robert Nelson. He had owned radio stations in the area and three years ago had started this new channel, and ABC affiliate. That station was getting off to a slow start. Their equipment was old, their staff was small, very young and inexperienced. Everybody did everything. They concentrated on the more sensational news in the area, violence, crime, accidents, “blood and guts,” as Chris would often put it. Channel 40, sometimes referred to as “Funny Forty,” estimates its highest viewing audience at 10,000 sets.
Chris’ program had ratings of 500 homes. In season maybe 1,000. She was not by any means a “big TV star,” but she wanted to be. She wanted to be recognized, she was hard working, diligent and competent.
Her friends and family say she hated Nelson because she thought he seemed unconcerned with the quality of the station. She complained often about what she saw as the number of tasteless and violent stories on the air, about the station pandering, in her opinion, to its advertisers, about the lack of pay. When she died she was making little more than $5,000 a year. That was for putting on a morning talk show, doing sometimes four or five stories a day and occasionally working on weekends, anchoring the evening news. She was bitter about the fact that Nelson seemed to want only those who would work for the least amount of money, not those who were the most talented.
Chris’ suicide put station WXLT-TV on the map. Nelson proudly showed his collections of clipping about it to a visitor. “We got the whole front page of the Daily News,” he boasted.
●On the Friday night before Chris killed herself, she had a terrible fight with Mike Simmons, the news director, about her story being cut, in favor of a shootout.
“She was very emotional, would get unusually upset about these things,” said Simmons. “She would, well, throw tantrums a lot.”
A week earlier she had thrown a terrible tantrum when the director placed a bouquet of plastic flowers on her interview table. In front of her guest, a state politician, she had flung the flowers across the studio, screaming, “I won’t have these damned things in my studio.” Everyone was a little unnerved by that scene.
●She had had very few dates in the past months. When she had invited men, several times, to have dinner, they had accepted, then not even bother to show up or call. “I don’t think Chris has had more than 25 dates in the last 10 years,” her mother said.
●Last summer she had had an ovary removed. The doctors told her then that if she didn’t have children within the next two or three years she probably never would. And, of course, there were no prospects.
She had no real friends. She was a strange combination of someone who at once wanted, needed desperately, the support and friendship of others and in another way rejected others out of a sense of defensive pride. Her initial image was one of a self-confident, totally contained, together young woman. She would seem haughty, distant, standoffish really. Yet when people began to know her she evidenced such a crying need for a completely committed relationship that it drove them away for fear they couldn’t give her what she wanted.
“There was a haunting melody in Chris,” said Mrs. Chubbuck. “She gave so many presents, spent so much money, not to buy their friendship … but because she wanted to. It’s almost like her life was a little out of gear with other people. She was the only person I ever knew who would walk into a room and every head would turn … yet nobody ever came over and asked for her phone number. It’s been like that since she was 13.”
Chris Chubbuck lived at home with her mother and her older brother, Timothy, 32, an interior decorator. But it wasn’t the usual situation of a 29-year-old “spinster” living at home. She had left a small town in Ohio several years ago and moved into her family’s summer home on Siesta Key. Two years later, her parents were divorced and her mother moved down. Her younger brother Greg, 28, later came down and began to work in contracting. And last year, Timothy developed mononucleosis and moved down from Boston to live in the guest cottage, replacing Greg who had become engaged.
“It’s sort of like an adult commune,” said Mrs. Chubbuck. “Everybody thinks it’s a little odd, we know that, but it’s a nice arrangement for us. We all have our own privacy.”
Mrs. Chubbuck was 53 last week. She has long, shoulder-length gray hair and a round, open, friendly face, carefully make up over her tan. She describes herself as a “53-year-old hippie who’s with it.” Her conduct throughout the whole suicide episode had been exemplary. Too exemplary, some thought.
“That’s a tough cookie,” people would remark.