Original subtitles

I, Jimmie Carter, do solemnly swear.

That I will faithfully execute.

That I will faithfully execute.

The office of President of the United States.

If we were going to go on a crusade across

the nation to try to do away with the homosexuals.

Luis Robinson emerged from being booked.

Yesterday a violent hijacker, now accused of

killing two people, seriously injuring two others

and terrorizing about two dozen hostages.

I didn't intend to kill him.

I just wanted to make everybody

on the bus realize that I was serious.

So how about making yourself

a part of that 200 year tradition?

Take stock in America with United States savings bonds.

David Berkowitz indicted

for murder, also known as Son of Sam.

His lawyer said if he is brought to trial

he will use insanity as a defense.

I just can't believe he's dead.

It's terrible, but I just thank God that

Elvis died here at Graceland instead of

on the road just like any other rock and roll singer.

It's just a great loss to everybody

and there's just like an empty feeling inside.

Citizens subjected to violence,

vandalism, theft and discomfort.

The blackout has threatened our safety.

We've been needlessly subjected to a night of terror.

Here it is mid-morning about 10:20 a.m. and looting

is still going on at this particular supermarket.

The reason; there are no cops here.

Have you recently had a close encounter?

I want to speak to someone in charge!

I want to lodge a complaint.

Close encounter with something very unusual.

What the hell is going on around here?

Who the hell are you?

Indiana emergency.

Sir, this is a dire emergency.

A real serious thing, I've just taken a prisoner.

It's not a crank call.

I've got a 12 gauge sawed off automatic shotgun.

There should be a lieutenant there, too.

I was in Vietnam, so I've been in firefights before.

I wasn't nervous, I wasn't afraid.

I just, I figured I'm here to cover this event.

Man with a gun, possible hostage situation.

They're on the fourth floor, control.

We need to shut down the elevators, 129 East Market Street.

Get back, gentlemen.

Get back away from the window.

Buck went up to the stairs,

but he's not answering for anyone.

Secure that front door.

Clear the lobby.

Going right down the stairs now.

10-9, sir.

We're en route down the stairs, he has a loaded 1042.

Everybody stay ready, use caution.

They got down to the corner and Tony's lost.

He doesn't know where his car is.

He's walking east on Market from,

east on Market from Pennsylvania towards Delaware.

He does have a shotgun wired to the subject's head.

They turned left toward Washington Street

and right there is a parking garage.

All cars, he's south

on Pennsylvania from Market, south on

Pennsylvania from Market on foot.

Marion County downtown, the subject holding

the two city police officers hostage is now

walking southbound on Pennsylvania from Market.

Suspect has entered

a parking garage on Pennsylvania.

Bill, we gotta cross over for a better shot.

Look in the window.

Get outta here, alright, excuse me.

We think he's trying to take a car.

We estimate he knew where his car,

but he refused to give it to him.

Suspect's

coming back onto Pennsylvania.

Suspect's moving.

From the looks of it, one movement

of his trigger finger and Hall's head is gone.

Southbound for now.

Every time we'd stop someplace he wanted a car.

He said, till the car gets here we'll start walking.

We went down to Washington Street and started walking west.

We're following the suspect

westbound on Washington Street, control.

We're on the north side of Washington Street.

You need to block off Washington Street

somewhere before Rush Street.

Stand by, they've stopped.

The longer he stood there and tried

to talk to people, the madder he got.

Because he wasn't getting any of

the cooperation that he wanted.

No one knew what Kiritsis was going to do.

For all they know he was going to shoot him right there.

They're moving again, control.

Westbound on Washington.

The uniformed officers were kind of rushing ahead.

And there were several detectives walking together,

talking about, well, gee, what can we do about this?

You know, the first thing that they taught us

is you try to find out what the problem is

and set up some type of communications with the guy.

So I stepped forward and started calling his name.

I saw Mike Grable with his arms open.

Common gesture, I'm unarmed, I can't hurt you.

What do you want?

He turned around and he screamed at me.

He says, "Are you crazy?"

He says, "You want me to kill this guy?"

Tony turned around and actually

pulled Hall as well as the shotgun.

Then they slipped and fell, both of them.

Hold your fire, hold your fire!

Got up and I remember the look on his face.

He was real surprised that that shotgun didn't go off.

And then he reached down into his belt

and that's the first time I realized he had

a pistol stuck in the front of his pants.

It started to come out or come loose

and as he was getting up, both of them

were getting up, he reached for his weapon.

And I'm thinking to myself, well, if he pulls

this gun and points at me, I'm going to shoot him.

Tony was close enough to take that pistol out

and shoot a couple, three policemen.

If Tony pulled that pistol, if he'd have fired

I think someone would have killed him.

They would have had to.

As I got closer I heard Tony and he was very angry.

And he was yelling at the policemen.

He said he liked police officers,

some of his best friends are police officers.

He said, "Now, do your job."

That was sort of the dichotomy of the way he thought.

Is he's doing this wild, crazy act,

but yet he thought they should be doing their jobs

to stop him from doing what he's doing.

We're passing Capitol.

Traffic's blocked ahead of you.

I knew we were in trouble.

All he wanted all the way across town was a car.

An officer had parked a car, long ways,

right by the path that we were taking

with the door open and the motor running.

And I thought, we'll never make it

to the other side of the street.

And sure enough, when we got to that door he said stop.

I knew it.

He told me to turn around and he raised my sweater,

I knew what he was after, he wanted my handcuffs.

As we're approaching the intersection we hear a bang.

It startled all of us because the

first thing we looked at was Hall.

I hear this crash off to the side and so I panned over.

There was just some gawker that, poor guy,

had driven up on this whole scene

and he was looking and ran into

the telephone pole, so I went back to Hall.

Tony went over to the car that was,

the marked police car was running, door open.

He slid in and he pulled Hall in behind him.

This wire around Hall's neck was extremely tight

and I think Hall was having trouble breathing.

Let's see if I can get a ride.

Does anybody got a car?

Come here, Bill, Bill come here.

Does anybody got a car?

Jack!

Mike and I talked about it a number of times.

It just never, ever got any easier talking about it because,

what are you going to do?

What are you going to do?

And that's really what the officers

said to him, some, several officers,

I think, said, what are you going to do?

And we didn't know what he was going to do.

And I'm not sure Tony knew what he was going to do.

Mark, you've been following

another aspect of this hostage situation.

What can you report to us at this time?

Well, Tom, right now the suspect

and his victim are proceeding westbound

on Washington Street in an Indianapolis

police car with red lights flashing.

The car is number 2-132.

It was proceeding west on demand

from the kidnapper, apparently, as a consequence

and part of the hostage situation

that developed about an hour ago.

We are about two to three hundred yards away

in line of sight from a red brick apartment building.

The victim and assailant are on the third floor of wing C,

but it's still not known what the man's,

the problem is, a psychiatric problem, if that be the case.

There is very likely to be some very serious

conversation going on within the apartment building.

Doug O'Brien, WIBC News.

He went inside with me and several officers followed him.

He went into his apartment and we went

and talked to him for a little bit.

He says everybody get away from this door,

don't come near this place.

He says, I got it wired.

He said this whole building will go up.

♪ WNAP

Indianapolis.

We are back in contact with Doug O'Brien.

And Doug you say you have gotten a recent advisory

from Chief of Police Eugene Gallagher.

Can you give us that situation?

That's correct, Gallagher tells us

that the apartment apparently is wired somehow

to be set off by nitroglycerin.

And they're advising everybody to stay away

from the east side of this building

because if the nitro is, in fact,

there, and if, in fact, it does go,

it's going to blow out the east side

of this three story apartment building.

There are officers trying to negotiate with

the gunman and there is a S.W.A.T. team right

outside the building waiting for any eventuality.

I had a position where I was straight across

from the next building that I could look at

to the west that was Tony Kiritsis's window.

Myself being a sniper, I am setting up

something to put my gun on, to put my rifle on

and wait for any word to do whatever we need to do.

Mark Watkins just got through

talking with police chief Eugene Gallagher

and here is his report.

Chief Gallagher indicated

that police had considered trying to shoot

the man downtown as he was proceeding west

on Washington Street with his hostage.

However, the men, the police department

got a good look at the setup on the hostage

involving the gun next to the man's head.

He was wired around his fingers and around his arm.

So if he let go of it he would still pull the trigger.

He had a cable around the man's throat attached

to the shotgun, so there's no way to get

the shotgun away from the man's head.

So I told him, whatever you want, just let me know.

He didn't say anything about his intentions?

He said that he was going to get everything he wanted

or he would shoot the man, that's about all.

He never did tell me exactly what he wanted.

He just kept walking.

Did Mr. Hall say anything

as you were walking along the road?

No.

No.

He appeared to be fairly calm for the situation that,

he did what he was told and walked when he was told

to walk and stopped when he was told to stop.

Would you describe

the suspect as being extremely nervous?

No.

For the situation I'd say he's fairly calm.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

You've known Tony for a number of years.

What kind of guy is he?

Well, he's always been a kind of reasonable man.

He just seems to be excited over,

he felt he's being beat out of some money

over this real estate deal, and apparently,

this loan company, whatever loan company it is.

If he says he's going to do something

is he the kind of guy that'll do it?

Well, I would say yes, as long as I've known him.

Now you were up there

talking through the door to him.

What did he tell you?

Well, he just told me that he wasn't going to go to jail.

And he's going to see to it he's treated right

on that loan that they beat him out of,

or he probably wouldn't come out of there,

neither would Mr. Hall, whoever that is,

apparently the president of

this real estate or loan company.

Now, do you think knowing him

that saying something like that he really means it?

I definitely do, without any question.

You could see up there in his

apartment he had strings all the way across.

Well, what happened, he had cans of gasoline with candles.

And if a string broke and the candle went down

and it hit the gasoline, then away it went.

And because of that the snipers couldn't do anything.

I mean, they had a bead on him, many, many times

up there where they could have popped him if they want.

But they're afraid if they broke

the window with the shot, that it

would trigger this thing and away she went.

The dangers that lay, they were up there.

I mean, he'd been telling us all

along the place is totally wired.

I mean, it looks wired from everything we can see,

you know, confirm with EOD, state police,

sheriff and all of our brain thrust together.

It looked like it was a very well wired apartment.

I went out and talked to him through

the doorway asking him to please come out.

And it was almost like he was almost crying,

but he couldn't come out.

He was sorry, he was sorry, he was sorry,

but he could not come out.

And please don't come in, Bobby, because it's wired.

The information got to the core people

out at the apartment complex that hey,

this guy's known to law enforcement.

Well, what's he been involved in?

Well, not in that way, you know, they see him.

He's a west side guy, comes in the restaurant

where they have coffee in the morning.

Really?

Get them out here.

Frank, you know Tony fairly well.

Do you know what precipitated this, what happened today?

Well, this has been going on for like three or four years.

It's concerning some property that he owns

that he wants to get financed or the bank wants

to second mortgage it or something of this nature.

It's a financial type situation and I felt like

he feels like he's been discriminated against

or something and this is, I think,

precipitated this hostage and seizure.

Okay, what happened after the other two incidents?

He one time held a city official, seven or eight years ago.

Then he held his sister.

Yes.

For some time.

Yes.

What happened after those two incidents?

Did he just go free?

Well, I arrested him one time for assault and battery

with intent to kill and he was put on probation.

He took a couple shots at his brother.

Any advanced warning on this,

or is this something that just came out

of the clear blue sky this morning?

See, I don't know because I haven't

seen Tony for two or three years.

And I see his brother, like, weekly.

And Tony communicates with his brother quite a bit

and he's got a lot of respect for him.

And he thinks, probably, more of his brother than anybody.

And that's who they're going to get now.

Yes, yes.

Thank you, Frank.

I was on business in Brown County

and my wife hit me on the radio

and said call home right away.

I went into a service station on,

east of National on 46, it was a Shell station.

And I went in and I said, "Steve, may I use your telephone?"

And he said look up at the TV.

He said look what the hell's going on in Indianapolis.

And I looked up there and I said,

my God, I said, that's my brother.

That's how I learned.

You think the worst when you see that.

You know?

Get killed, killing somebody,

all the things you don't want to happen.

I called Frank Levin and told him I would be on my way.

And he asked me, he said, "Jim, do not drive."

He said, "We're going to send a helicopter."

He said, "Where can it land?"

He has three brothers,

but he doesn't like two of them.

The one he does like, Jimmie Kiritsis,

was called to his brother by helicopter from Brown County.

He, Tony Kiritsis has rejected any attempts

for anybody to get near the apartment to talk with him.

The situation is, he says he's not insane,

he knows what he's doing.

Good, Josh, thank you.

And, of course, Josh is on the scene

and any moment anything develops there we'll be on the air.

It was very obvious from those early

conversations that we were dealing

with somebody who is very, very sick

and was capable of being violent.

I'm going to mention the evacuation.

Beg pardon?

I'm going to mention the evacuation.

Any reason to?

To give us some way to get into it.

Do your own thing, but uh...

Is there any reason not to do it?

Hell, I don't know.

If there's any reason not to.

I've never done this before.

Howard, the gunman, Mr. Kiritsis

and the mortgage executive, Mr. Hall,

are still in the third floor apartment.

Nothing much has changed, except that about 500

people are being evacuated from these apartments.

They're going to be spending the night

at various Indianapolis area motels.

Howard, we understand the gunman is watching channel six.

He's made a request and here to fulfill it we

have Deputy Marion County Prosecutor, George Martz.

Tony, as you know, I've talked to you on the telephone.

You've made certain specific demands

and in attempting to comply with these demands

I have requested a personal friend of yours,

Mr. Cliff Chapman, to read a statement to you

on behalf of Meridian Mortgage and Hall-Hottel.

This statement I am reading has been

authorized by Mr. M.L. Hall, the Chairman

of the Board of Meridian Mortgage and Hall-Hottel.

This is a public apology to Anthony Kiritsis

for all wrongs Meridian Mortgage or Hall-Hottel

have committed in respect to Mr. Kiritsis, thank you.

That was a statement from Cliff Chapman

of the mortgage company. Paul, we're not allowed to

ask Mr. Chapman any questions.

That was one of several demands made

by the gunman Mr. Kiritsis. He is an employee of the--

This has been a special report

from Eyewitness News Center.

Sorry, there was a little confusion

there and noise in the background,

but Kiritsis was angry, apparently over

the mortgage loan arrangement with Mr. Hall's company.

He demanded an apology, demanded that

any financial remuneration that was going

to come because of penalties, because of

what had been done, be paid by the company.

His demands were met, he asked that

it be on Channel Six and on WIBC.

And that is what we know at this date.

Hank, are you still out there?

Yes, I'm here.

Are there any other demands that you know of?

There apparently were some other demands.

Hold on a second, I'll find out exactly what they are.

No arrest, no psychiatric treatment.

The admission of guilt by the people,

which he has now received, as well as

appropriate damages, which again,

were promised in the statement here this evening.

As to whether it will ensure Mr. Hall's release,

that we'll have to wait and see.

So that's what we've been doing

as we've been doing all day, just waiting.

Thank you, both of you, Hank and Dennis.

We've brought you this live report

and the statement that was made

because we have been requested to

do so by the police department.

We believe in a case like this it is important

that we cooperate and I'm sure you'd agree, too.

We'll now return you to our regular programming.

We will keep you in touch of any

other developments, goodnight.

This has been a special report

from Eyewitness News Center.

Fred Heckman was the major domo

here on news radio at that time, WIBC.

He was well respected and he was like

a Walter Cronkite here in radio.

♪ WIBC

And Fred said that at some point,

Jim Hillyard, who was our program director,

called him into the office because they

were all live on the radio and said,

"Fred, what are we going to do about all those fucks?"

Yes, I can, Jan, and we have been here all night.

At the beginning of the night and right up until

just a few minutes ago there's been kind of

an uneasy stillness around the apartment complex.

Now, in the last few minutes,

things have become pretty tense.

I'm standing here now with Jimmie Kiritsis.

He's not a desperado like he's being painted up to be.

He's not a thief.

He never asked for a five million dollar

ransom like it was reported.

He never held my sister, three years ago or last October,

or whenever it was, they said it was, for $50,000 dollars.

Them statements are untrue.

And naturally, he's quite concerned

with the profile that's been painted of him.

I would like to resolve it if everybody's

willing and everything goes well,

maybe we can resolve it this morning.

Okay.

He started to make a number of legal claims

about how he had been cheated and how

he had these legal claims against

the Meridian Mortgage company.

And also one of his demands that they finally were

able to get was that he was not to be prosecuted.

He called it an immunity agreement.

The local authorities said well,

maybe we ought to get some lawyers involved.

At mid-afternoon, one of Kiritsis attorneys,

John Ruckelshaus, came out to the apartment complex

but would say nothing about his decision.

I got a call from Chief Gallagher and says,

Jack, Tony wants you here as his lawyer.

Well, you know, like when Harry Truman

sent me a telegram and got me in the Army

and I said yes, so out I went.

Have you examined the immunity offer yet?

We don't know yet.

We're just out here and we're going in.

That's all I can say.

They both were brought in, basically as lawyers for him.

They were trying to defuse the

situation as much as everybody else.

But at the same time protecting their client's interests.

Considered, no.

Have there been any additional demands?

No additional demands.

What about the problem with the immunity?

Have you made up your mind whether

you're going to give it to him or not?

This is a problem that will have to be resolved

by the Marion County Prosecutor's office.

Well, what are they going to do?

I mean, is there any indication they're going

to reject it or approve it, or what?

Immunity has been discussed a

number of times in the conversation.

However, there's been no resolution of the question.

Basically, then, we're at the same

point we have been for the past 30 hours.

That's, he's calling the shots and we're just waiting.

That would be a pretty fair assessment, yes.

Apparently, Lou, within the last 25

or 30 minutes the situation has deteriorated some.

To what extent, exactly, we don't know,

although there has been a good deal

of yelling and screaming going on

over the telephone and through the door.

It became apparent to us during the course

of this event that Tony Kiritsis's real window

on what was occurring was WIBC radio.

He was in contact with Fred.

Fred was back in contact with him,

but he was also listening.

The Army bomb squad that's here

has begun to try and think of ways to somehow

get in without setting off the explosives.

We're told unofficially, they could get in without

setting them off if Kiritsis were incapacitated.

That particular moment when the report went

that the S.W.A.T. team was prepared to move,

it became frighteningly clear what

kind of implication there was to

this kind of live broadcast journalism.

Paul, the situation right now is actually rather tense.

Within the past 20 minutes Tony Kiritsis

gave an order that everyone get out of the building.

There, of course, have been police in the building

as well as some friends and relatives

of Tony who have been talking with him.

He gave an order to get out of the building.

You don't want to say anything to set the guy off.

And maybe what you're saying doesn't

appear to be incendiary, but it is.

So Fred was kind of thrust into

the position as a negotiator.

Do it.

Okay.

We're not live, just go ahead and do the interview.

Okay, fine, fine.

Okay, they're setting up a negotiating

team inside this van in back of us.

How effective do you think that will be?

Well, I think at this time we have to try almost anything.

Tony is coherent enough to reason with somebody

and his attorney is talking on his behalf.

And I think it will be productive.

And then the FBI sent in this hostage

negotiator psychologist who had a heck of a reputation.

I mean, he had a countrywide reputation on these things.

And he, of course, was trying to size Tony up

as to how to handle him and how to direct questions to him,

don't get him excited and all this kind of stuff.

And he really knew what he was doing.

I had a fella in class and it was Mr. Gallagher.

He got on the phone to the director of the FBI

and asked if I could be sent out

there to assist them in negotiating.

He was the first person that

described himself as a profiler

and I'd never even heard the term before.

But he said that he could, by looking at

how Mr. Kiritsis had built his gun and how he dressed,

he pretty much had Tony's mental side pegged.

He's the one that then told us certain things to do

and certain things not to do in dealing with him.

And in formulating our approach of basically

conceding to Tony, that was all based upon

the psychology of Mr. Kiritsis that Patrick came up with.

He said that a person with this personality type

needs to be in control of the situation.

And anytime that you try to take that back,

then we're going to have a situation

that becomes very, very dangerous.

In Indianapolis a man named Anthony Kiritsis

is still holding a hostage, a real estate executive.

The drama is in its second day

and our man, Mike Jackson, is there.

What kind of a man is Anthony Kiritsis?

Friends of his who have come out to

the apartment complex to dissuade him

from doing anything rash say he is

an emotional man, a man prone to anger.

Police say he has a record, mainly for beating people up.

One policeman, who didn't want to be identified,

a man who said he grew up with Kiritsis,

says he is a good friend and a bad enemy.

He had purchased this 17 acres of land

and cleared many of the trees himself,

hoping to start a shopping center.

He said he had some commitments from

a grocery store chain offering about

three million dollars to start a center.

Then he says the mortgage company

moved in and lured the prospective

clients away to other properties.

One of Kiritsis' demands was that

the company apologize for that and it did.

Today, Kiritsis said in a radio station

telephone interview he does not believe

the company's apology and intends to go free.

Authorities say their only hope is to keep

Kiritsis talking, so his family and friends

are doing that through the door of his apartment.

They are convinced that if the

talking stops people will die.

Mike Jackson, NBC News, Indianapolis.

Kevin, it may well be that Fred

has become perhaps involved in negotiations.

He merely got a phone call from the FBI,

they asked him to come out as quickly

as possible and he has done so.

We were able to sit down with Fred and tell Fred,

hey, make upbeat comments, get him pepped up again.

And he would do it and all of a sudden Kiritsis responded.

They could understand a mood and understand

a mood well enough to sort of utilize where it is

in an up or a down cycle to control and manipulate.

I thought that was fascinating.

Kiritsis was pretty easy to chart.

But what you had to be very careful,

when he was down in that low level

that's the area where despair sets in and they

make judgments like I've nothing to live for,

so I might as well kill this SOB.

There have been some published reports

this afternoon quoting prosecutor James Kelly,

who has been out of town during this incident,

he's in Los Angeles attending a conference,

quoting Kelly as saying that if immunity

from arrest is what's needed to prevent death

or prevent injury, he is prepared to grant it.

Good evening, I'm in a room near

the police headquarters outside the apartment

of Tony Kiritsis where he's holding Dick Hall hostage.

We've been requested airtime by

the Marion County Public Prosecutor's office

in order to give an address by

Deputy County Prosecutor George Martz,

an address apparently aimed at Tony Kiritsis himself.

Now, here's Mr. Martz.

Thank you, at this time I would like to read

a letter from the office of the prosecuting attorney

of Marion County, James F. Kelly, prosecutor.

This document is dated February 9, 1977.

It's entitled letter of immunity

granted to Anthony George Kiritsis.

Mr. Anthony George Kiritsis,

the Marion County prosecutor, James F. Kelly,

does hereby confer and grant to

Anthony George Kiritsis immunity from prosecution

with reference to the abduction of Richard Hall

and all subsequent acts done or alleged

to have been done or caused by

the said Anthony George Kiritsis.

This document is signed James F. Kelly,

authorized by David L. Rimstidt.

Mr. Kelly has been contacted by

myself on two occasions today,

the last time approximately 10 minutes ago.

He is fully aware of this agreement

and you have his assurance that the terms

of this agreement will be strictly enforced.

I know there were some meetings there

where Ruckelshaus confronted Rimstidt after

the immunity tender was made and put him

on the spot and said, "Do you intend to honor this?"

Used some colorful language in that regard.

And, as he described, Rimstidt making

some squirms and turns and said yes.

A few moments ago I spoke with Tony's brother, Jimmie,

to see how he feels about the offer of immunity.

If you just bear with us maybe

we'll have something, hopefully.

When was the last time you talked to Tony?

I talked to him this morning.

Is he still calm?

Yes, very calm.

How do you feel about the offer of immunity?

Do you think it's a good one?

Yes, it's a very good one.

Have you recommended it to Tony?

I told him it was a very good one.

I don't recommend it, he can, he's very capable

and very intelligent and he'll make up his own mind.

From your point of view, though, it's a good one?

Yes, it's a, under the circumstance, a very good one.

He may just walk away.

Are you hopeful this thing can wind up today?

Yes.

Let me ask you another question.

If immunity is granted, what effect might this have,

do you think, on people who might be

considering the same course of action?

Some people might consider that this

would encourage them to do this kind of thing.

What do you think?

Well, I think that's a possibility,

but I don't think it has anything to do

with the situation that we're confronted with.

I mean, that possibility.

We had to do what was necessary and it's been

worked out to everyone's satisfaction.

The police agencies were thoroughly consulted,

prosecutor's office worked with them.

And in this particular instance

it was the thing that was done.

Do you think the public would

accept the man who had put a shotgun

to another man's head going free?

Well, there's going to be some

that will object to it, sure.

And there's going to be some that will

think that it was the proper thing to do.

We're going to be second-guessed, but that's part of life.

The big demand has been immunity.

First, the opportunity to voice his complaint

against the mortgage company of which Hall

is an executive, but secondly, the grant of immunity,

that nothing be done to him because

of what Tony Kiritsis has done.

That offer has been offered, that offer has been made

to Tony Kiritsis by the Marion County Prosecutor's office.

And the big question tonight as it was last night,

and as it was this morning, is whether

Tony Kiritsis is going to accept that.

The sun is setting out here, but the story

is certainly far, far from over and so we wait.

And then we have the concept of creating a stage.

That's why we all retreated to the

lobby of that apartment building.

That was meant for him to see on television to suck him out.

We knew that once he saw it he'd say

to himself, that's where I should be.

Right, I talked to him, I bet,

half a dozen times on the phone.

The last of which I called him and said we got the note,

promissory note for five million bucks.

No answer, phone rang, rang, rang

and the next thing I heard somebody said,

"Oh God, here he comes down."

He's coming out, he's coming out!

While you people are watching

on television thank you for taking such a--

We interrupt our program schedule

to bring you the following special report from ABC News.

Turn the goddamn cameras on!

I'm gonna show you something.

Read that, pal, read it!

Turn the cameras on, all three, hold it!

I want on national television!

I've been called a kidnapper,

an extortionist, a thug and everything else!

I want it on all three national channels!

I've got friends all over the country!

You read it!

And I go through the double doors

and I am struck by what is the most

bizarre scene I've ever seen in my life.

They goddamn near made me blow his goddamn brains out!

We have these ranking officers and Fred Heckman

standing behind Tony who's holding the gun

to Dick's head and out here in the audience

are all of these cameras and reporters.

And it's as though the oxygen has gone out of the room.

Everybody is on edge.

To as being the illegal--

Hold it, hold it, I want this goddamn thing understood.

I'll read it!

February 10th, 1977, I want a glass of water!

This statement is being made to try

and state the items that Mr. Kiritsis alludes,

and I don't like that word.

I charged and they've admitted it.

Alludes to as being illegal and

unethical acts of the Hall Group.

This lease negotiation approved the Kiritsis site

and had a definite interest in building there.

Give me a drink, pal.

Give me a drink.

Good enough?

Alright, go easy.

Yeah, and I'm sober friends.

I had six drinks in 1976 and I haven't had any this year.

This was presented to us and was potentially

a good business deal, but we found

it impossible to agree on terms

satisfactory to our best interest.

Their best interest!

I went up there to borrow money to build

a 10,000 foot restaurant that would have grossed

between a million and two million bucks a year and

these motherfuckers shopped it to somebody else!

I had a lessee who guaranteed me

$100,000 dollars a year rent plus 10% over

a million dollars and I could have built

the building for $220,000 bucks and put

$100,000 dollars worth of equipment in it!

Listen to this one.

It's almost funny.

This trooper right here.

Come here, Mark, hell of a good friend of mine.

A lot of friends of mine here seen me,

has seen me about every night for

three or four years out in a couple

of restaurants around here having coffee.

Too goddamn desperate to do anything else.

So goddamn mad, couldn't think good

and he always wondered what was wrong, now he knows.

Right, Mark?

Yes, man.

Hell of a man, good cop, this guy.

Good cop.

His eyes, the eyes of Tony

will occasionally dart around the room,

and if he will, if he sees someone

he recognizes he will acknowledge them

and perhaps have a comment or two about them.

All week he has talked about revenge.

Part of that revenge is being acted out tonight.

And almost an empty and hollow look in the eyes

of Dick Hall as he gazes around the room.

And he will make eye contact with people,

but it's almost as though he is, it's just

a proforma gesture showing very little emotion.

Yeah, I suspect he must believe

that is what he must do because he could trigger

the situation if he should react one way or the other.

This brave young man and his father would have said,

Tony I'll tell you what we're going to do.

Because you're a nice fella and basically, really,

we love you, we wouldn't hurt you for anything,

we'll take the cream, we'll take the front

10 acres there for $130,000 and you can have

the back seven where all the hogs shit.

Mr. M.L. Hall, this gentleman's father

also states that he personally takes

responsibility for these improprieties.

I'm gonna frame that, I'm through.

Where's my attorney?

He had this thing about he wanted everybody to hear

what had been done to him, how he was wronged.

I mean, that was his litany over and over and over again.

Should we keep on with this, what if

he kills this man in front of everybody?

Let alone the language which was not heard

on TV at that time on any channel.

And it was surreal.

I think he wanted to tell his side of the story.

As far as the public knew Kiritsis was a madman.

He was bright enough that he understood that

and saw how he was being portrayed.

And so I think he called Fred to try to get his story out.

If I can get Fred to let me air my side of

the story then maybe people will see my point.

Hi, Fred.

Hello, Tony.

You're gonna be late for work in the morning, pal.

I think I'm gonna sleep late.

I don't know if you can get away with that, can you?

Not really.

I have to, I have to say again

that Mr. Fred Heckman here of WIBC.

Fred Heckman, in my opinion, was a jewel.

He was thrown into a bad situation,

but he was a gentleman through the whole damn thing.

I have some people that might be watching this

in various places and I'm not trying to be funny.

And I never did like notoriety

and I don't like it any better tonight,

but my aunts in Akron, Ohio and my cousins

and some damn good Greek friends in the state of Florida,

and some people I was in the Army with in New England.

And I want them to know that, by God, I was right.

Lee and Lou, Paul Page is back

in the back of the room now and we're going

to try and make some contact with Paul.

Go ahead, Paul.

Tom, we continue to watch in the back of the room.

I'm keeping my voice low because of

the nature of the circumstance here.

We have a man who is very anxiety-prone.

He continues to stand with an automatic shotgun

jammed up against the back of the man's skull.

Tony continues to move from a position

of happiness to one of somewhat depression.

It's a very, very, very dangerous atmosphere at the moment.

If the shotgun fell there's no real change in the room,

it would not only injure his hostage,

it's going to injure an awful lot of people in this room.

We'll continue to watch and we'll report back.

And I also want to apologize to this man's family.

I am sorry I humiliated this man, this way,

even though he must have surely had it coming.

Every once in a while he'd look at Hall

and the back of his head, and boy,

and the look on his face, I thought,

oh God, he's going to pull that trigger.

I went to Gene Gallagher and I said,

Gene, I'm getting a little nervous.

He's almost sounding suicidal.

And Mullaney was standing right next to me

and he said, my God, he's going to shoot him on television.

That was the scariest part, to me.

He would laugh and then he would cry.

Yeah, yeah, you know for a goddamn dummy I lucked out.

I want to take, I'd like to please,

a lot of nice people called me in two or three days

and told me that they were behind me.

We're behind you, Tony.

And I want to thank them.

We're behind you, Tony.

I want to thank my brothers, Jimmie and George

and Mark and John, Johnny there.

I can't think of his last name, Johnny Ferguson.

Billy Cotton and the people that supported me.

And I can tell you, by God, I was in trouble.

I was in a hell of a lot of trouble.

You saw one of these goddamn things off

and kidnap somebody I'm going to tell you something,

I'm sorry, but there ain't much left in that old road.

I said when I started out I figured I'd be on a long,

narrow, one-way dead end road and that's what it was.

Tony was becoming so riled up that Gallagher was going,

okay, this is it, you know, I've got to do something.

Because he's going to blow this guy's head off on live TV.

If they felt that Tony had finally gone

to the point too far that he was going to

eliminate Dick Hall, Tony was going to be taken out.

Chief Gallagher told Josh, when I retire

come talk to me about the plan to kill Tony.

They had talked to a doctor at the hospital and said,

what's the best way to kill Tony instantly?

And he said, put a gun behind his ear and pull the trigger.

My role, if I was given the nod,

was to try to jam the shotgun itself with

the cylinder on the side where you eject shells.

And if you notice, there was a sleeve

across that cylinder part of that gun.

It would have been almost impossible

for me to grab it and jam it at the time.

Chief Gallagher, he had a gun in one pocket

and a handkerchief in the other.

When he pulled the handkerchief out that meant

that he was going to shoot and kill Tony.

He said three times, he reached into his pocket

for the handkerchief during the press conference.

And he said three times he put it back.

This is Chief Gallagher of the Indianapolis

Police Department and also a damn fine man

and this man was fair with me, damn fair with me.

Well, I'm gonna tell you, this man is safe.

The only thing I wanted at the time was for

this to end without anybody getting hurt.

Had I went for the shotgun, made a mistake,

Dick Hall would have been dead, Tony Kiritsis been dead.

Tony, sorry to interrupt, we're going to--

Hi, come here, you're awful bashful.

I'm the shy one.

Would you like to smile for us?

For you, I will.

I shaved before I came over here and you never

even came out, get that goddamn thing done.

We're going right now, Tony.

If you wasn't a good attorney

I don't know what I'd do without you.

I did not, was not aware at the time

that there was negotiations in the back

to bring this out to Tony that he had won.

Waiting on that settlement. Waiting on damn attorneys.

Waiting on that five million dollars that I just stole.

Pardon me?

Give Tony some more room in here.

We ought to have some more water.

I need a little and I--

Come here, babe.

Here, Dickie. I'm on the job.

Give it to Dick.

Give Dick, here Dick.

Got it?

George, if you don't get out from

in front of them goddamn cameras--

Oh, I'm sorry.

You're not going to be in any more of my shows.

I'm upstaging you. You know that?

I'm sorry, sorry, sorry.

You're doing a single, my apologies.

Mark, pull my pants up.

What, what are you?

Those bastards did that.

If you had a little bit of butt in there,

you wouldn't have to have pulled them up.

That's it, I've had it.

I'm sorry, it was my turn.

It was my turn to bat, you believe that.

Tony, you want to go back and winter in until Billy gets--

Yeah, let's get out of here.

Where's it cool?

Where's Frank at?

Where's it cool?

I want to thank, I want to thank the people

that supported me, I want to thank the people

that were fair, I'm sorry about my language

and I'm sorry that this thing had to happen.

Tony, follow me.

Okay.

Follow John, Tone.

We're going with you.

We're talking, we're talking, we're talking,

this news conference is going along.

It's being broadcast live and all of a sudden

the focus of the news conference and his hostage

move out into this other room and the media's

kind of standing there like, what's going on,

what's going on, what do we do?

Okay, so they are out of sight.

They are at the apartment complex still.

So then at the end it was just the payday,

was the five million dollar promissory

note that we were willing to give.

And that was to be done when he released

the hostage we would sign the note

and that would be the end of the story.

Okay, Paul, I'm presently outside the building

where the really amazing news conference,

of sorts, took place moments ago.

What happened was that that ended and Tony

and Dick Hall, again still attached by the gun,

moved down a hallway in that building.

At that point the police ordered all

news personnel out of the building.

It's nice and cool in here.

Harry, Tony wants to talk to you.

Tony, there's people out there,

lots of people out there.

Go on live, go on live.

Stay there, there's nothing we can do.

Go on live, go to him, go to him!

Get him to go to him.

Paul, here at the scene you may not be able to see me,

we're not allowed to use lights.

A dramatic development just a few moments ago,

we did hear a gunshot.

At this point we do not know exactly what it means.

We heard a gunshot, there is no way

of knowing what exactly developed, just before--

Stand by.

Yeah, I thought he killed Hall.

I mean, it was, I knew what a shotgun sounded like

and I knew that was a shotgun.

Come on.

Mac, pick that up.

Mac's got it.

Okay, we're getting over to George Martz.

And is Hall out of danger?

Sure, we got him.

We got him, he's okay.

Where's Tony?

I have no idea.

I don't know, I don't give a shit.

We heard one shot.

What happened?

I don't know what, I can't explain the shot, but, but--

Would you go find out for us?

I'll find out.

George, louder!

The hostage is out, he's okay!

The hostage is released and is alright.

There is no indication yet as to what the gunshot was.

There is no indication as to the condition of Tony,

but Martz says the hostage is alright.

The hostage is alright.

We heard one shot.

We do not know at this point why we heard it.

But the deputy prosecutor says that the hostage is alright.

Okay, okay, I've got some information.

Some new information apparently.

Tony did shoot the gun, but only as a demonstration that,

indeed, it was real, only as a demonstration.

Okay, there's some

activity down the block here.

We're going to see what else we can find out.

Okay.

We're putting him in the car now.

Watch your head, Tony.

Let's step back, let's move back.

More blasts.

Another shot behind us.

If I were Mr. Hall I'd go home.

I don't know.

Is he still in the building?

Yeah.

Can you just, can you reconstruct

what you know about the time from when

they left us till all was resolved?

They went into the command, what was the command post,

they negotiated and they released Mr. Hall.

He walked out in the hall and

we took him down to another room.

So there was more negotiation inside.

Do you know the nature of it?

Nope, sure don't.

Who undid the wires, for example?

I don't know, I wasn't in, I was not in the room.

I don't, I really, I really don't care.

He's, he's, we got him, everybody's alive, nobody got hurt.

Do you think this thing was handled correctly?

Is the agreement any good that you signed?

Immunity agreements, are they valid in any way at all?

Will they stand up in any court?

We promised immunity.

I'm going to have a statement on this at a

later time and I would like to be able to collect

my thoughts and be able to discuss it rationally.

I'm very tired at the present time.

I'd rather not discuss it.

Have you any precedent at this

point for this kind of thing?

I just would rather not comment at this present time.

Is that press conference going to be tomorrow?

We'll, you'll be notified.

And we ended up down at Wishard in the holding

cell down there which was a padded cell.

I mean, you had a window about like this.

I was inside with Tony alone and all of a sudden Tony,

he was about five, about five, six,

something like that, stocky as hell,

and I was about six two.

And he had grabbed me around the neck like this

and said, Jack, he says, I really screwed up, didn't I?

I thought he was going to break my damn neck.

And I said, Tony, I said, you got some problems.

I said, I didn't argue with him and I didn't agree with him.

I just put the neuter in there and I got back over

there toward the door and I hit on that window

like this to get me the hell out of there.

Then they finally opened the door and I got out.

But, boy, that was a scary time.

I thought the guy was going to break my neck,

because he's strong as a bull.

In Indianapolis Anthony Kiritsis held a shotgun

at the head of a kidnapped hostage for 60 hours

demanding a promise he would not be prosecuted.

Well, he got the promise.

Today, not surprisingly, when he let

the hostage go he found the promise was

not worth the paper it was written on.

The hostage is free and Kiritsis is in jail.

Here's Mike Jackson in Indianapolis.

Kiritsis staged a bizarre

news conference that lasted almost an hour.

No one knew whether he would fire the shotgun

and kill his hostage or others.

Hostage Richard Hall's face was almost purple

because the wire around his neck was so tight.

Kiritsis was taken immediately to the county jail.

He is charged with seven crimes

including kidnapping and armed robbery.

His bail is more than three quarters of a million dollars.

He was arrested even though he had been promised immunity.

Mike Jackson, NBC News, Indianapolis.

Immunity cannot be granted to an accused.

A document was typed up and given to him

which would have granted him immunity so long

as the prosecutor's office honored the terms.

I'll say this, there was never any intention on

the part of the prosecutor's office to honor the terms.

That's pure and simply it.

He's presently in jail.

The total bond is $850,000 dollars.

Yes, ma'am?

Hall was greeted by a standing ovation,

by warm applause as he bravely faced

the news media in the city county building today.

His wife was by his side.

The strain of the events of the past

three days evident on both faces.

Hall had been advised by his attorneys

to not answer questions on the details of

his treatment as a hostage, but he did talk.

He did have some things he wanted to say.

It's been a long ordeal.

My family and I are extremely grateful

to God for a safe solution in this ordeal.

We're most appreciative of all those

thoughts and prayers that were with us

and we can't express enough our gratitude.

And then more applause as Hall,

obviously a strong, stoic individual,

left the news conference.

Many questions remain unanswered,

but for now Richard Hall says he

is content to just close the door.

Close the door on the harrowing

events of the past three days.

I eventually told Tony that I couldn't

represent him because I'm going to end up being

a state's witness in this thing and I can't do both.

I said, I'll get you a lawyer and I'll get you a good one.

That's when I got him Owen Mullin.

Well, they didn't last too long

because they didn't get along.

I mean, it's very difficult for

somebody to get along with Tony.

He doesn't want to take orders, he wants to give orders.

And Owen, of course, being a lawyer,

says you're going to do what I tell you to do.

And how he got ahold of Stanton, I don't know.

I happened to be representing a man

named Roger Drollinger at the time.

Drollinger was in the Marion County jail

in a cell next to Tony Kiritsis.

But Drollinger and Kiritsis got along real well

and Drollinger recommended me as a lawyer.

So on Drollinger's recommendation

Kiritsis decided to hire me.

In a case of this magnitude you research every

potential legal issue that you can possibly argue.

You research the insanity defense.

You research jury instructions.

You research every potential legal issue you can

because Tony was facing a life imprisonment.

Tony, of course, didn't want this defense.

His defense would have been, they had it coming.

So, it's been an all-time loser of a defense.

In fact, studies show that it's a very minute

percent of people ever assert this defense

and in those cases very few people will win it.

The theory of our defense was that Tony

was insane at the time of the offense.

If we were to investigate Meridian Mortgage

and if we had been able to prove

that Tony's allegations were true,

then it would suggest that he wasn't

out of touch with reality and he was simply

mad at Meridian Mortgage and that he just

took the law into his own hands.

That's not a defense.

Everybody saw Tony do it.

Everybody saw the horror in Dick Hall's face

and saw the possibility that that trigger's

going to get pulled intentionally,

or unintentionally, and on live TV

you're going to watch somebody die.

Erasing those images or at least allowing

the jury to say, I can understand the acts

actually occurred, but still find

somebody not guilty was a real challenge.

Mr. Stanton said, "Would you like

"to meet Mr. Kiritsis and talk with him?"

In several interviews that lasted several hours each

became very knowledegable about

what had led up to this incident in his life.

He had a very interesting and difficult life.

He was the son of immigrant parents from Greece.

They were very poor, very hardworking.

He loved his mother dearly.

His father was, apparently, quite a mean man,

physically violent toward the children.

One of the stories he told was that

at the ice cream stand that they worked at,

the younger children had to go around

the parking lot and pick up the empty

paper cups and wash them so that they

could be reused as a way of saving money.

He remembers on one occasion when they didn't

get all of them picked up quickly enough

and a car backed over some of them,

his father whipping him out in this public space

in front of one of Mr. Kiritsis's friends

and family and then whoever else

happened to be there in that area.

He was brought in by two very big men hanging onto him.

He was very upset that people are so mean to him.

That they would arrest him, that they would

put him in prison and lock him up.

Why would they do that to him?

No, he knew what he was doing.

He was doing it on purpose, this man deserves it.

Where the kink in his thinking was that

he had been hurt and therefore, if he was hurt,

he was able to go out and do things to make it right.

He would have long times where he was

a good solid citizen and he would have other

times where he was basically a wild man.

There's three things going on in a case like this.

And that is first of all, the prosecutor is trying

to make their case, obviously,

beyond a reasonable doubt and not make mistakes

that are going to be grounds for appeal if

the case goes up, if the guy's found guilty.

The defense wants to make mistakes,

they want to make a shambles of the trial if they can,

so there's lots of things they can argue about.

And then the judge's role is to keep very tight control

of the courtroom, keep tight control of the jury

and not make any mistakes that are likely

to be used on appeal if he's found guilty.

The defense psychiatrist said yes,

he was insane at the time.

The prosecution psychiatrist said no, he wasn't.

And I think because the psychiatric testimony

was fairly strong on both sides,

I think the jury kind of just disregarded it.

We got tired of them.

They all talked in clinical terms.

Was Tony paranoid or was he schizophrenic,

or maybe he wasn't?

So we had to try to make sense of that and after a while,

in all honesty, it got very confusing and almost pointless.

This was not the first time that

Kiritsis had done something like this.

This was kind of a reenactment of an incident

that he had had with his own family.

Effie Kiritsis testified next.

Tony's older sister had to be lifted into

the witness chair as she is crippled with arthritis.

She had not seen her brother for eight years.

At that time he broke into her home with a gun

and held her for two and a half days

while demanding a financial settlement

for his work at the family trailer court.

It was brother Tom, however, who revealed

that the family agreed to give Tony

$55,000 dollars, to not send Tony

to a psychiatrist, to not press charges.

Ironically, the details of the agreement

for Effie's release were remarkably like those

demanded by Kiritsis when he held Dick Hall hostage.

Linda Lupear for the news, Channel 6.

He put Tony on the stand, which was surprising,

and I thought at that point, well we're really

going to hear what Meridian Mortgage did to him.

And it was the same old story.

Just when you thought you were going to find out

what it was that they had done that really set him off,

he would zing off, which made you think that well,

he just couldn't pay the mortgage and eventually

they were going to foreclose on the land.

I mean, that's basically where you ended up every time.

I mean, it happened several times during the testimony.

And I thought, well, is that it?

They had given Tony an extension of time

in which to pay his mortgage payments

on the land that he was buying.

And they'd done this repeatedly and then when

they finally didn't then he thought, well,

this meant they were trying to cheat him.

He thought that they had interfered with

his efforts to develop the land and hoping

that he would therefore fall behind on payments

so that they could get it for, the land for a low price.

And that's, there was just not evidence to back that up.

I did to Dick Hall was a terrible thing, a horrible thing.

I didn't want to do it and I tried not to do it.

At that point he burst into tears.

Defense attorney Niles Stanton then led him

through a narration about his early family life.

His voice quivering, Kiritsis said he loved

his father in spite of his strictness.

He began pushing an ice cream cart

12 hours a day at the age of nine.

At times he broke down completely

and needed time to compose himself.

Kiritsis told a different story

of the abduction of his sister saying

he was being pushed out by the family.

Things became very cool.

He was very hurt by what Effie and his brothers did.

The jury stared at the defendant

as he told of a vow he made over his mother's

casket promising to take care of the family.

He dropped a class ring in the coffin.

He said he made a cross on the wall

in his own blood the day he broke the oath.

That was the day the family

threw him out of the trailer park.

And we might add, Clyde,

that the courtroom was packed all day.

I'll bet.

What's it look like for the rest of the trial?

Well, it will probably go to the jury,

the judge says maybe by next Thursday.

Okay, thanks Linda.

We had lots and lots of jury instructions in this case.

Basic instruction was, was at the time of

the offense did he have a mental disease

or defect that prevented him from

understanding the consequences of his action?

Even if he knew right and wrong,

did he still have enough volition to be a sane person?

With that final instruction not guilty

by reason of insanity at the time of the act.

Not a minute before or not a minute after,

at the time of the act.

I thought, wow, I'm surrounded by a bunch of adults here.

There ain't no way they're going to see it different,

pssh, but they did.

We had a tough time of it.

And we came at it from everybody's

own opinions and experience and also,

in some cases, correct and in some cases,

faulty remembrances of what we heard over the last 14 days.

We were all so emotionally drained and tired.

We knew he did it.

It was very evident he did it from the footage that we saw.

But the problem was the way the law was written.

We all went back into the courtroom because

we didn't think we could come to a verdict.

Judge Dugan told us that, yes, I think

you can come to a verdict and he

sent us back in for more deliberations.

I was prepared to tell the judge we were going

to be a hung jury if that's what it took.

All 12 of us had doubts.

The question is is whether or not

they were reasonable doubt.

I don't think there was a single juror

that was happy with the verdict.

We found out the votes.

The first vote was six to six.

The next vote we learned was eight to four.

We didn't know which way eight to four.

The next vote was 10 to two.

The next vote was 11 to one and then it seemed

to have been 11 to one forever

and then finally they had a verdict.

But neither side knew which way the jury was leaning.

Be seated.

For the record this is CR77-44A.

The time is 10:04 on October 21st, 1977.

I'll ask the jury and I'll ask the foreman of the jury,

duly elected, do you have verdicts?

I do, Your Honor.

If you'll pass those verdicts to the bailiff, please.

Okay, will the defendant, Mr. Kiritsis,

please rise and face the bench, sir.

Foreman, the verdict is, we the jury find the defendant

Anthony J. Kiritsis, not guilty by reason of--

I've got to tell you one thing.

Just a minute, Mr. Kiritsis.

Just a minute, please.

We further find that the defendant,

Anthony J. Kiritsis committed the act charged

in count three of the information

and that at the time the defendant was insane and is,

therefore, not guilty by reason of insanity.

Please be seated.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Your Honor.

Does the state wish to poll the jury?

No, Your Honor.

The court now sets at nine o'clock, a.m.,

November the 9th, 1977, as that date for a hearing

pursuant to statute on the question of competency

as to further action by the court in this case.

With that, the court is adjourned.

I knew how difficult it was for

the prosecutor to prove that he was sane.

I think both sides did an extremely good job.

Based on the testimony I was surprised

that the jury would think he was, in fact,

insane when the offense was committed.

Yeah, I was in a way because

that's a very difficult defense.

You've gotta have overwhelming evidence that

a guy is wacko and I didn't think it was there.

I mean, he was up and down,

yo-yo like and everything like that.

I had to think the jury may have felt a

little bit sorry for Tony on his getting screwed

out of that land or something like that.

Something to give them an idea to give him a break.

I found him to be very honest and forthright.

I could identify with the abuse he went through.

To this day I resent anybody telling me I had better.

It wasn't nothing for his dad to get him up

and tell him he had better get out

and start humping them ice creams.

He was thrust into a manhood as a child

and I can identify with that more than you know.

What did he have to gain by not

showing anything less than the truth?

Okay?

You're not going to make that stuff up.

When they took the insanity defense

the state took the other side.

He was just a mad, mean man.

They would tell you there wasn't nothing insane about him.

Nothing.

But the minute they found him not guilty

they switched and said he's crazy,

he needs more tests and he should be locked up.

At that point Tony refused to take any more tests.

He said, you guys said there was nothing wrong with me.

Now you're saying you want all kinds of,

and he wasn't, and they held him for almost 10 years

in contempt of court for that reason.

And that tells you what kind of guy Dugan was.

He's very inadequate, in my opinion.

Because that could not have been the law, in my opinion.

And I don't who manipulated him, someone did, though.

I'll always believe that.

I've got my suspicions but I can't prove them.

You're not in a world here where

you can say things are black or white.

And you have to say they're somewhere in between.

Certainly, Tony did not meet the criteria for being insane.

On the other hand, his behavior was insane.

So, what are you going to do with that?

You have to work on that and chew it a bit.

Let me say something.

We all live in the greatest country on earth.

But this is the type of thing that

undermines the liberties that my father

and my mother came here from Greece for.

And probably all of your ancestors

and I'm not trying to be corny.

I may be a flag waver, but I wave it a hell of

a lot better than John Wayne, I'll tell you that.

I did not.

Okay.

I lost credibility with Kiritsis.

I lost credibility in the community

and I don't appreciate it.

I didn't care for it one way or the other

but I had that credibility in this hand

and I had Hall's life and, you know,

his wife and children, his little girls,

on this hand, in my mind.

And I weighed the two and I, to myself,

said, I felt that his life was,

and if I could help save it,

his life was more important over here than

the credibility that I'd have to work to get back.

This is an interesting point you bring up

because these young people here at Ball State,

in journalism, in radio and television

are going to be faced with it more and more

in the immediate years to come.

Terrorism, with all the technological advances

that are coming, coming down now,

and the sophisticated forms of terrorism

that are being developed in Europe are coming

across here as surely as we're sitting here today.

The question now is what are these

young men and women, as journalists,

going to be doing when they have a terrorist

on one hand who says, "I'm going to poison

"the water supply of New York City?"

Hey, it is very easy.

I'm going to blow up all the transmission lines

in the state of Indiana, the electrical power lines.

And that's not that far fetched.

Technologically, it's available and it is possible.

Now, if this young journalist knows this

information does he broadcast it, does he not?

You know, where do we go?

Prior restraint, I totally disagree with, prior restraint.

I don't want anybody telling me that you can

or cannot broadcast this at any given time.

I don't, my First Amendment rights, I think,

would be jeoparidized and violated there.

But we are going to have to think

about restraints and I, and here I am waffling.

I'm going from one side of this fence to the other.

I don't know the answer.

I don't know that anybody does.

The Kiritsis thing opened our eyes to a lot of things.

First of all, we have these insta-cams,

mini-cams, action cams, they're all the same thing.

They're portable, instant television cameras

which our promotion departments and our news departments

thought were great promotional gimmicks.

You take these out and you give

the impression of being everywhere live.

We didn't think through the

philosophical questions involved.

Kiritsis finally brought it all home to us.

Once you arrive at the scene of a story

like a Kiritsis hostage incident,

when you turn that camera on you are

setting up a life or death situation

in living rooms all across the city.

I don't think the question is,

and I'm a little tired of some of these people

who say they are, the self-righteous atmosphere,

the attitude of, of we upheld the

public morality by pulling the plug on it.

That's nonsense, that's not the question.

The question is should we have gone in to begin with?

Should we have set up that circus atmosphere?

Hour by hour reports saying this man may have

his head blown off in your living room at any moment now.

Whether we should, in effect what we were saying,

we set it up for people and then to pull the plug

at the moment of truth is too late.

And I think the questions that need to be asked

about violence and these live cameras is

when do you go in and when do you hold back?

When do you stay back from the scene?

Because we don't, when do you inform

and when do you incite, in other words.

I think this is probably the first case,

maybe in judicial history, where the jury

was also the eyewitness to the crime.

Where everyone in the jury box had,

not newspaper clippings or hearsay evidence to go by,

they saw it happen, either live or in replays.

So when all of those sober arguments were made

by a criminologist and psychiatrist about

this man's mental condition, I'm convinced that,

and I have no evidence other than my own thoughts on this,

that going through the minds of the jury were not

all of those arguments they were hearing,

but what they saw that night when John Wayne,

who was receiving an award, suddenly turned into

Tony Kiritsis with a, holding a gun

to this man's head in their living room.

I mean, my first reaction was this is crazy, he's crazy.

And the jury ruled he's crazy and therefore, innocent.

Tony became kind of an annoyance

to people after a period of time.

I'm not going to mention any names,

but I got a call from a television news anchor

who is a friend of mine and I was working

at another television station at this time and said,

"Are you getting calls from Tony?"

And I said yes and he said so am I.

He said, what are you saying?

I said, Tony, I tell him, I'm sorry,

you know, you had some bad breaks.

You know, I, there's nothing I can do for you at this point.

I can't help you.

And sadly, and I think this is

a moment of honesty in journalism,

is that Tony was an old story by that time.

And maybe he should not have been,

but we were all in a very competitive business

and we just didn't see a lot of value

in spending a lot of time in pursuing

the Tony Kiritsis story ad nauseum.

But maybe it should have been pursued.

In retrospect maybe it should have been,

but none of us made that call.

Most of us made the call to, to just let it go,

until somebody sort of examines

the significance and the legacy.

So, good for you.