Christine Chubbuck Tragedy – LIVE! On Air!

She not only had suicidal thoughts for a long time, but a propensity for planning her final exit.

As she thought more about ending her life, part of her planning was disguised as a feature story on suicide using an interview with a local Deputy Sheriff. Her questions? Just how was it effectively done, what kind of gun was often used, where did they aim to know they’ll hit the target?

Around this time, a week before the fateful day, Chubbuck told night news editor Rob Smith that she had bought a gun. She joked about killing herself on air. Smith later said that he did not respond to what he thought was Chubbuck’s “sick” attempt at humor, and changed the subject.

With clever forethought, she smuggled in the gun in a bag of puppets she sometimes used on her show. Everything seemed completely normal.

Except, co-workers said, she was unusually cheerful, even sitting on the lap of her sometimes co-newscaster’s lap, flirting happily with someone who had previously rejected her. Her brother, Greg said Chubuck seemed happy lately… “Besides, her mood seemed up Saturday and Sunday, she baked a cake. She improved her tan.”

“I guess she was putting her house in order,” said her mother.

Chubbuck had even written the script to be read after the shooting.

Later colleagues said Chubbuck surely wrote “critical condition” instead of “was pronounced dead” because she was known as an exacting reporter, she wanted to be accurate and not assume her death. After all she called it an “attempted suicide.”

On the morning of July 15, 1974, Chubbuck also confused co-workers by claiming she had to read a newscast to open “Suncoast Digest”, something she had never done before. After reading a few news stories she read the script that she alone had prepared and approved.

According to her brother Greg she must have planned to spare some family viewers.

Some of the most vivid reportage on her death includes an extensive article in the Washington Post in 2016, as her case became famous again through film. That article reprinted some of the coverage from the time, including earlier reporting by Sally Quinn.

Only a few days before her suicide, Chubbuck had done one of the most social, outgoing things ever in her life. She hosted a party at her home–it’s said about 30 attended–and was reported to be a good hostess, happy. Later, friends, and co-workers realized that in her own, odd way, Christine was saying goodbye.

Chubbuck’s death made headlines around the country and oddly inspired the 1976 film “Network” starring Faye Dunaway and Peter Finch. It centered on problems about content she experienced as a newscaster.

Chubbuck’s show, “Suncoast Digest,” remained on the air for some time. Not surprisingly, the station left the tragic Chubbuck ending as never-mentioned history. It seems likely that the brutal recording exists, but if so it’s unclear who has it. Some maintain that station owner Robert Nelson kept it. His widow, Mollie…does she have it among her effects? Others say the recording of Chubbuck’s suicide exists and has now been turned over to some entity, perhaps a law firm, for archiving in a secure fashion. Whoever has it, they’re not sharing the archive, perhaps for reasons of simple good taste, perhaps for additional reasons.

Understandably, Christine’s family would be horrified by the tape of her suicide used in entertainment. Another story maintains that the tape is in possession of Christine’s mother, Peg. As the documentary evidence of a stunning, tragic event, the whereabouts of the tape itself rises to the level of mystery.

He has a powerful point. How many people even know that Christine survived the loss of her first, early love, from death in an automobile accident? Or that she did volunteer puppet shows for special groups, many times?

Christine Chubbuck grew up in the upscale Ohio suburb of Harbor with her parents, George and Peg, and two brothers, Tim and the younger Greg. The only daughter of a high-end automotive and manufacturing industry salesperson and a housewife, Christine was talented and smart. While in middle school, she was a flutist in the high school marching band. She later developed an interest in acting at private school and enrolled in the University of North Carolina summer acting program.

Christine was a bright, gifted student with a sharp wit and a nationally ranked kayaker, but since she was about 10 she never felt that she fit in.

Greg recalls his older brother, Tim, taking him aside and telling him their time with “Chrissie” would be short-lived.

“We have to hug Chrissie extra hard because we aren’t going to have her very long,” Greg recalls. “He was 12 and I was 8 and in the back of our minds we always knew that our time with her was not going to be infinite.”

Greg says his parents spent over $1 million, over 20 years, with psychiatrists and psychologists to “help Chrissie find peace.” In the end, of course, it wouldn’t work.

However trying her teen years were, Christine went on to earn a degree in broadcasting at Boston University, worked at a Florida cable station, and attended a summer film workshop at NYU. She later secured jobs at public television stations in Pittsburgh and Canton, Ohio. Christine moved to Florida to live with her mother after her parents divorced. She worked as a hospital computer operator before landing a job as a reporter, then a host at WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida.

“It was her show,” says Greg. “It was one person doing all of it with very low pay.”

Everyone in the family went out of their way to help Christine with her television career. Her mother paid for designer dresses to make sure she looked good on air. Despite having her own morning television show, Greg says his sister never felt she was good enough.

“I think, ” said her mother, “She was saying, ‘Look, world. I’ve been here all along. How about a date Saturday night? But her last act was the most selfish thing she ever did. She brought her death into other people’s homes.”

Behind the tragedy ending the life of this sincere and idealistic young woman, there will always be the most enduring mystery of all: the human psyche.