What Really Happened to Diane Linkletter?

The beautiful young woman who jumped out of her sixth-floor apartment window at 9 am on October 4, 1969 had no way of knowing that her death was destined to become a focal point of the anti-drug movement in America.

Diane Linkletter was the 20-year-old daughter of Art Linkletter, the prominent radio and TV personality. Before an autopsy had even been performed, her famous father claimed to the media that she had taken LSD the night before her death. (Linkletter had not talked to his daughter before her death, but maintains that she had told her brother Robert that she had taken the acid.) He was quoted as saying, "It isn't suicide because she wasn't herself. She was murdered. She was murdered by the people who manufacture and sell LSD."

When the autopsy showed no signs of drugs in her system, he changed his story to claim that she was suffering an LSD flashback from months earlier and that had caused her to jump out the window.

The media, of course, ran with the story, and used Art Linkletter's claims to create the narrative, without doing much investigating of their own. By the time the dust had settled, the story had been transformed in most people's minds to reflect an old urban legend about a girl, high on LSD, who jumped out her window because she thought she could fly.

A much more accurate picture of what happened can be gleaned by examining the testimony of Diane's boyfriend, Edward Durston, who was present when she died. Diane had summoned him to her apartment at 3am and had spent the final six hours of her life with him. He told investigators that she was a desperately unhappy and despondent young woman who was determined to end her life. He had no reason to believe, and she had not indicated, that drugs were a factor in her death.

Art Linkletter, understandably devastated, became one of the most vocal critics of the counterculture, speaking out against drugs at every opportunity, while telling the tale of his daughter's LSD death. Dr. Timothy Leary, the LSD guru who had urged young people to "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out," became his archenemy.

In this fascinating video from 1980, Leary is surprised on an interview show with a call from Linkletter. Listening to him scream at Leary that "he hoped he had died, he hoped he had been hung" was a little disconcerting coming from someone whose public persona was that of the kindly father.

Did Art Linkletter truly believe that his daughter's death was caused by LSD or was it easier for him to view it through that prism? Did it make his burden easier to bear, believing that an outside force of some kind was responsible, and not any negligence on his part?

One thing is for certain. The story lodged itself in the public's consciousness and helped to fuel the anti-drug sentiments that led Richard Nixon to declare a "War on Drugs" in 1971, a seemingly unending battle that has strained our prison system and drained the nation of valuable resources.

Where Were You When the President Was Shot?

"From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official...President Kennedy died at 1pm, Central Standard Time."

It happened 45 years ago today. If you're above a certain age, you almost certainly remember that dark day in Dallas, Texas, when President John F. Kennedy was killed. It all began when a soap opera was interrupted with a news bulletin that he had been shot.

I was playing soccer with my 8th-grade classmates when someone came running out of the school with the news. We all went back into the school and listened as the radio reports were broadcast over the intercom system and our teacher wiped away her tears.

After his death was confirmed, we were all sent home a couple of hours early. Later, I had to fold 80 newspapers with each one blaring ASSASSIN KILLS KENNEDY, a headline that was printed, for the first time in the paper's history, in bright red type.

As I made my rounds on my bicycle, delivering the devastating news to my neighbors, I felt dazed by the day's events, like I was in some kind of surreal dream. It was a day much like 9/11, in the sense that you knew the world would never be the same again.

Where were you when the president was shot?

Pat Paulsen for President

As the American presidential campaign finally comes to a close on election day next week, we would be wise to remember a candidate who may never have actually won, but was very good at running. In fact, in ran in 1968, 1972, 1980, 1988, 1992, and 1996. As those campaigns ground on, Pat Paulsen became the comic relief, when a good laugh was sorely needed. His deadpan comic delivery allowed him to be funny and to also make the occasional serious point.

Paulsen began his quest for the presidency on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968, where his weekly editorials had become very popular. He actually managed to get on the ballot several times, and garnered more than his share of protest votes. His humble opinion of himself was that he "just a common, ordinary, simple savior of America's destiny," and he would silence any criticism from his opponents with a simple, "picky, picky, picky."

The video above is Paulsen announcing his bid for the Presidency (or begging to be drafted) in 1988. It's from the Smothers Brothers 20th Anniversary Reunion Show.

Paulsen died of cancer in 1997 at the age of 69.

Nixon Plays Checkers

The American election is now just days away, and all the brouhaha about Sarah Palin's $150,000 shopping spree for clothes and accessories has stirred echoes of Richard Nixon's 1952 "Checkers" speech. That was the famous speech where Nixon, the Vice-Presidential nominee with Dwight Eisenhower, attempted to show that he and his wife Pat lived a modest lifestyle by insisting that Pat didn't wear a mink coat, she wore a "respectable Republican cloth coat." Apparently life has gotten better for Republicans since 1952.

Nixon had been accused of accepting some illegal campaign contributions, and when it appeared that Eisenhower might be prepared to drop him from the ticket, Nixon went on TV and appealed directly to the public. He would let the public decide if he should remain on the Republican ticket. It was one of the first times that the young medium of television had been used in such a way.

And damned if it didn't work. Pulling on the nation's heartstrings by talking about Checkers, the cocker spaniel that he had been given as a present and was loved by his kids, he declared that "regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep him." He then looked directly into the camera and asked Americans to "wire and write the Republican National Committee whether you think I should stay on, or whether I should get off." Faced with the support of the people, Eisenhower had little choice but to let him stay on the ticket.

Opie and Richie Live Again!

Election day is coming soon, and emotions are running high. But no matter who you support, if you're a nostalgia buff, I think you'll enjoy this remarkable video.

Ron Howard is a big-time Hollywood director, but in our hearts he'll always be little Opie Taylor from Mayberry, USA or maybe Richie Cunningham from Happy Days. In Scene One of this video, the 54-year-old Howard once more plays the part of Opie, meeting the 82-year-old Andy Griffith down at the fishing hole to talk politics. In Scene Two, he puts on his Richie sweater and talks up Obama with The Fonz himself, 62-year-old Henry Winkler. It's all a little weird but very moving at the same time.

The Mysterious Death of Dorothy Kilgallen

Dorothy Kilgallen was well-known to Americans in the 50's and early 60's from her weekly Sunday night appearances on the popular What's My Line? game show panel. In this video, her colleagues on the panel say good-bye to her just days after her death on November 8, 1965.

Officially, her death was listed as "undetermined." However, New York City police were on record as saying that she died from an "ingestion of a lethal combination of alchohol and barbituates."

But Dorothy Kilgallen was more than just a panelist on a TV game show. She was also a respected New York journalist who had been investigating the JFK assassination and had written articles questioning the official accounts of the killing of the president.

Shortly before her death, she had interviewed Jack Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald and had come back home telling friends that she "had discovered something that was going to break the whole JFK assassination mystery wide open." When she was found dead in her bed, the notes she had made on the JFK case were nowhere to be found.

Her death bore an eerie similarity to Marilyn Monroe's death 3 years earlier, and raised just as many questions. Whether she really did have some earth-shattering new evidence about the assassination, or was just engaging in a journalist's braggadocio, I guess we'll never know. But she was a fascinating figure.

Lee Israel wrote a 1980 book about her mysterious death called Kilgallen.