In a meeting in his home on January 15, 1987, Dwyer discussed the idea of a
press conference with his
press secretary, James "Duke" Horshock, and Deputy Treasurer, Don Johnson. At the meeting, both Horshock and Johnson cautioned Dwyer not to use the conference to attack the governor, or other individuals involved with his criminal conviction, and both suggested to Dwyer that he should have the conference at a location other than his office. Dwyer angrily rejected their suggestion, but nevertheless assured both men that he would not attack anybody involved with his conviction. He said that he would not announce his resignation at the conference, but rather thank his staff and friends. Both men left assuming Dwyer would ultimately resign at the conference, although Horshock had fears that Dwyer would break his promise. On January 20, Dwyer wrote a letter to then-Senator and future
US president Joe Biden and Congressman
Peter W. Rodino, who were at the time the chairmen of the
Senate Judiciary Committee and the
House Judiciary Committee respectively, asking them to conduct an investigation into the CTA affair, to reform the justice system in the United States, and if this was not done, to completely remove the word "justice" from everything related to the
DOJ. He then wrote personally to President Ronald Reagan asking for a presidential pardon. In his letter, Dwyer once again professed his innocence and stated that the concept of immediate credit was not understood by the uneducated, unsophisticated "rural" jury at his trial. The senator responded that this request to President Reagan was "not realistic" because the judicial process, including appeals, had not yet finished. On the same day, Dwyer asked his press secretary Horshock and deputy press secretary Gregory Penny to schedule a news conference for the next day without telling them what he was to discuss. Horshock arranged the press conference for 10:30 a.m. EST the next day, January 22. The press secretary summoned dozens of reporters asking them to attend, and told them he did not know its subject. The night before the press conference, Dwyer wrote the following note: "I enjoy being with Jo so much, the next 20 years or so would have been wonderful. Tomorrow is going to be so difficult and I hope I can go through with it." he began reading from a 21-page prepared text, while aides handed a 20-page version to the media. The final page was expected to be his announcement that he would resign from office. Appearing agitated, Dwyer again professed his innocence and accused acting U.S. Attorney James West, FBI agents, U.S. District Court Judge
Malcolm Muir, the media and others for abusing the justice system and ruining him. Dwyer spoke out against the
death penalty and expressed regret for voting in favor of it while he was in the Pennsylvania assembly. This speech lasted nearly 30 minutes, and approximately halfway through it, some of the gathered press began to pack and leave. Dwyer spotted this and interrupted himself to say, "Those of you who are putting your cameras away, I think you ought to stay because we're not, we're not finished yet." Dwyer continued: At this time, Dwyer stopped reading from his prepared remarks, with the gathered press still waiting on his expected resignation. There was still a significant portion of the prepared text remaining, which detailed what he was actually planning to do, and it read as follows (he did not read these comments to the crowd): After deciding to break from his speech, Dwyer called to three of his staffers, giving each a sealed envelope with the insignia of the treasury department. and suggested funeral arrangements. Reporters David Morris of the
Associated Press, Thom Cole of
UPI and Gary Warner of afternoon newspaper
The Pittsburgh Press were at the rear of the room, waiting for Dwyer to say he had resigned so they could run down the hall to telephones to tell their editors they could publish pre-written stories and add Dwyer's direct quote. When Dwyer produced the revolver, the three ran into the hallway and shouted to a state police kiosk in the center of the long hallway that the treasurer had a gun. Dwyer then killed himself with a single shot through the roof of the mouth. His death was recorded by at least five running news cameras. Dwyer was pronounced dead at 11:31 a.m. By the time his body was recovered, it had been too long since his death for any other organs to be usable. Many television stations throughout Pennsylvania broadcast taped footage of Dwyer's suicide to a midday audience. Philadelphia station
WPVI-TV showed Dwyer pulling the trigger and falling backwards, but did not show the bullet path. During the next several hours, news editors had to decide how much of the explicit footage they wanted to broadcast. Many chose not to broadcast the final moments of the suicide and WPVI also chose not to show the gunshot a second time. Many stations, including
KYW-TV and
WCAU-TV in Philadelphia and
KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, stopped the action just before the gunshot. However, the last two allowed the audio of the shooting to continue with the stopped image.
Westinghouse Broadcasting (then-parent of KYW-TV and KDKA-TV) news cameraman William L. Martin and reporter David Sollenberger had a camera set up at the conference; they chose to broadcast the audio with a freeze-frame of the gun in Dwyer's mouth. Only a handful broadcast the unedited press conference. WPVI-TV rebroadcast the suicide footage in full on their 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
Action News broadcast without warning the viewers. That station's broadcast is a source for copies available on the Internet.
WPXI in Pittsburgh is reported by the Associated Press to have broadcast the footage uncensored on an early newscast. In explaining the decision to broadcast, WPXI operations manager By Williams said, "It's an important event [about] an important man." Williams avoided broadcasting the footage in the evening newscasts, explaining, "Everyone knows by then that [Dwyer] did it. There are children out of school." However, in central Pennsylvania, many children were home from school during the day of Dwyer's suicide due to a snowstorm. The letter Dwyer sent Casey stated, "By the time you receive this letter ... the office of State Treasurer of Pennsylvania will be vacant. I stress to you that I did not resign but was State Treasurer of Pennsylvania to the end." It also stated that Casey "will be the great Governor that Pennsylvania needs at this time in our history." He suggested his wife Joanne as his successor, describing her as "very talented, personable, organized and hard-working." Governor Casey did not accept Dwyer's suggestion. Regardless of the events of January 22, the governor and legislature of Pennsylvania already expected Dwyer to either resign or be dismissed from office. As such, a deal had already been brokered wherein the next treasurer, a Democrat, would serve the remnant of Dwyer's term and resign at its end. This was
G. Davis Greene Jr., who was appointed as the 71st Treasurer of Pennsylvania on January 23, 1987, the day after Dwyer's suicide. Prior to Dwyer's suicide, Associated Press photographers would choose between color or black-and-white film to use on assignments, usually reserving color film for important assignments and using black-and-white film on regular assignments.
Paul Vathis, an
Associated Press photographer who took four photographs of Dwyer's suicide, had believed he was covering a routine assignment and only had black-and-white film. After Dwyer's suicide, the Associated Press switched to using color film on all assignments.
State officials' responses to Dwyer's allegations Dwyer's mistrust of the Republican former Governor
Dick Thornburgh, who had left office two days prior to Dwyer's suicide, was expressed in detail in his press conference statement. In his final press statement, Dwyer alleged that Governor Thornburgh along with prosecutor James West, engaged in a political vendetta against him, and that FBI agents had acted improperly in their investigation. After Dwyer's public suicide, the National Association of State Treasurers requested that Dwyer's allegations be reviewed by the
Department of Justice. After a thorough investigation, the Justice Department's
Office of Professional Responsibility exonerated attorney James West and everyone else involved in Dwyer's investigation and prosecution of any wrongdoing. The FBI also investigated Dwyer's claims regarding impropriety on behalf of FBI personnel. They ultimately found Dwyer's claims to be "lacking in substance and specificity" and warranting no further action. In 2010, former U.S. attorney James West, who prosecuted Dwyer, affirmed Dwyer's guilt, stating that "the evidence against Dwyer was overwhelming and indisputable". Dwyer claimed that Governor Thornburgh sought revenge against him due to his prior criticism of Thornburgh's perceived mishandling of state resources. In response, Thornburgh pointed out that prior to their European visit, the Thornburgh family had issued a press release specifically stating that Ginny Thornburgh would pay her own expenses. Upon their return to Pennsylvania, Mrs. Thornburgh "repeatedly requested" the Thornburgh staff to "advise her of the amount" to be reimbursed; however, Dwyer leaked this matter to
The Philadelphia Inquirer in an attempt to "enhance his own image by embarrassing" Thornburgh and his family. Regarding the use of the state police, Thornburgh stated that "the security detail provided its services to all members of our household as the officers deemed necessary for our protection. We neither asked for nor questioned these services, which were no different than those provided to our predecessors." Thornburgh spokesman David Runkel dismissed Dwyer's allegations as being "paranoic", as did John Taylor, the former spokesman for Governor
Bob Casey. Pennsylvanian journalist and author
Brad Bumsted suggested that Dwyer's allegations against Thornburgh may have been an attempt to divert attention from his own criminal activity with CTA. Bumsted also stated that, in Dwyer's final press statement, Dwyer "offered no real evidence" that there was any conspiracy against him. Dwyer's deputy press secretary Gregory Penny, who was handed an envelope by Dwyer at Dwyer's final press conference, stated that he was convinced that Dwyer, whom he had once defended, had been guilty all along, stating:
Death benefits Since Dwyer died in office, his widow Joanne collected full survivor benefits totaling more than (equivalent to about $ million in ), which at the time was the largest death benefit payment ever made by the
Pennsylvania Municipal Retirement System. If Dwyer had been sentenced, state law would have prohibited the payment of his state-provided pension benefits. A spokesman for Dwyer suggested that he may have killed himself to preserve the pension benefits for his family, whose finances had been ruined by legal defense costs. Other statements made by some friends and family also suggest that this was Dwyer's motivation. ==Aftermath of the case==