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Gunman that held Bill Close hostage on-air being released

K

KeithE

Guest
23 years after Close was held at gunpoint on the then-KOOL-TV news set, Joe Billie Gwin is getting out of prison. Channel 10 will be running a story and an interview with Close on their 9 PM news, but it hasn't aired yet as I write this.

For those who don't remember, here is a piece from a Google-cached New Times article:

<font color=red>Close Call

While local TV stations routinely promise to air opposing viewpoints, no viewer ever expected to hear the whacked-out manifesto that veteran KOOL newscaster BILL CLOSE delivered the night of May 28, 1982. Earlier that evening, a mentally disturbed cement finisher named Joe Billie Gwin forced his way into the downtown TV station at gunpoint, explaining that he wanted to deliver an urgent message on live TV. After Gwin held three employees hostage for nearly five hours, police finally agreed to Gwin's demands. At 9:30 that night, the station interrupted its regular programming for a TV first. As the gunman trained a pistol on Close, the newscaster calmly read Gwin's rambling treatise about racism, homosexuality and World War III. After Close finished reading the statement, Gwin relinquished his weapon and was immediately arrested.

Perhaps miffed because they missed the last half of Dallas, some viewers complained that the televised hostage situation was "boring." KOOL-TV studio (now KTSP-TV), 511 West Adams.
</font>
 
Send him to Channel 3, they will make him an anchor!

I can see him covering monsoons, standing in 3 inches of water in a drainage ditch and gleefully saying "We never got rain like this at the big house"

Or maybe a deathmatch with him, Close, Dave Nichols and Ray Thompson.

Tag team baby!

Linda Alverez can be the woman with the round cards!
 
I was working at KOOL-FM at the time, though I was not at the station that night. (Radio was on Washington street, across an alley from the tv studio where the incident happened. There also was an area that was used as a tv news studio located directly in front of the radio studios in the Washington street building.)

The incident began around the time of the 5 p.m. newscast. The newscast did go on the air, with no mention of what was happening to Bill Close. Mary Jo West was anchoring in the studio in the Washington street building.
I remember Dave Munsey telling me that he was doing his weather from a remote (I think it was Firebird Lake), and could hear the sound of Bill Close being held hostage in his IFB. He had to continue talking as though nothing unusual was going on.

I did have an airshift on the FM the next evening, and it was a pretty wild weekend. I even took a call from WHDH radio in Boston, which put me on the air on the spot asking about what happened.

About the comment from the article that people were upset about not seeing "Dallas:" ....the rest of that show DID air on Channel 10 that night sometime after the statement was read.

<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by BobinPhoenix on 09/09/05 12:15 AM.</FONT></P>
 
> Or maybe a deathmatch with him, Close, Dave Nichols and Ray
> Thompson.

Make it Ken Coy. Nichols passed away a few years ago. I think Coy's still with us.

> Tag team baby!
>
> Linda Alverez can be the woman with the round cards!

How about "Claudia Here" DiFolco. She's unemployed again.
 
Dave Nichols would come back from the grave to get 5 more minutes of airtime.

Buncha Kent Brockman wannabee's
 
Don't tell Joe Billie that Johnny Cash
is dead--it might set him off again!
 
>
> > Tag team baby!
> >
> > Linda Alverez can be the woman with the round cards!
>
I still see Linda on the air at KCBS when visiting LA. Every year she mysteriously looks younger. Now she looks about 18. Just kidding but there must be enormous pressure for women in front of the camera.
 
Well, that's how I know I'm getting old...all the violent criminals I saw captured in my youth and young adulthood are all finishing their prison sentences....Adamson got out in the early or mid '90's...Greenawalt got 'put down' like the dog he was...and now jerk Joe Billy Gwin is finishing his sentence.

Bill Close is a great guy and I hope he's doing OK with this nut job out of prison.

I wonder how different this situation would have been today.
 
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