The Man Who Killed Himself On Live TV
The life, crimes, and televised suicide of R. Budd Dwyer
Who was R. Budd Dwyer?
Before he went down in infamy, R. Budd Dwyer, also known as Robert Budd Dwyer, was a politician from the United States. Born to middle-class parents in 1939, Dwyer excelled in school, with accounting being one of his favorite subjects. At first, Dwyer planned on pursuing a career in accountancy but eventually changed course and become a politician.
Ironically, Dwyer was drawn to politics as he was fed up with the corrupt system and firmly thought that an ordinary man could make a massive difference in the country’s corrupt political climate.
During his political lifetime, Dwyer would go from being a Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate before ending his career as the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s 30th State Treasurer.
His crimes
Pennsylvania discovered in the early 1980s that its school districts and their staff had overpaid up to $40 million in Social Security taxes due to errors in state withholding before Dwyer’s administration. As a result, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania began soliciting bids to calculate refunds for individual employees.
