14. Christine Chubbuck: July 15th, 1974
Forty-two years ago, the host of a television show called Suncoast Digest, which focused on local personalities and events, did the unthinkable during a live broadcast. The 29 year-old presenter, announced live on TV that: “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living color, we bring you another first – an attempted suicide.” The Sarasota, Florida native immediately pulled a .38 caliber revolver from under her desk and shot herself in the head. Fifteen hours later, she died in a hospital.
Her brother Greg recently proclaimed that the tape of the incident is lost forever, as the family grabbed all copies after a court injunction. In her last act of desperation she did at least spare her grandparents the grief of watching. According to her brother, who was interviewed a few years back by People Magazine: “My grandparents lived across the street from my sister and she was extremely close to both of them. They watched every one of her shows, except my grandfather had an appointment with his doctor and he didn’t feel like driving so my grandmother drove him and they missed the only show they had ever missed my sister on – the show she killed herself. She knew they weren’t going to be watching that show.”
A few years back a couple of movies were created showcasing the journalist’s life and death. However her family was never interested in watching them as her brother openly stated: “Nobody wants to know who Christine Chubbuck was. They want to sensationalize what happened at the end of her life. A public suicide is not a source of joy for a family.”
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