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From: slb@drutx.UUCP (Sue Brezden)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: 60 Minutes--an update
Message-ID: <546@drutx.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Sep-85 22:44:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: drutx.546
Posted: Thu Sep 19 22:44:55 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Sep-85 03:26:25 EDT
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver
Lines: 152


>	Over the past few days there have been a number of articles saying that
>	certain portions of the D&D "article" on 60 Minutes were completely
>	untrue.  If you can substantiate those statements, please do so!  Send
>	letters to Ed Bradley (the reporter on this item) care of 60 Minutes at
>	CBS (address below) quoting the articles and specifying the issue of
>	the publication, send them to TSR (address below), or send them to *me*
>	and *I* will collect them and mail them in!


Yes!  I already sent a copy of the article from the Rocky Mountain News
to Bob.  I know this will make it a long posting, but after typing it in,
I decided to post the entire article to the net.

This is so that you can quote directly if you feel like it when you write 
Ed Bradley.


                    GAME CLEARED IN BOYS' DEATHS

(Rocky Mountain News, Wed., Sept. 18, 1985, Denver, Colo.)
By Charlie Brennan
Rocky Mountain News Boulder Bureau

Lafayette--Daniel Erwin, 16, and his brother Steven, 12, carried out
a suicide pact last fall because Daniel feared his sentencing in an 
auto theft case, not because of the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy game,
their mother said Tuesday.

Betty Erwin's first interview since the brothers' deaths Nov. 2 came in
the wake of a Sunday broadcast by CBS-TV's "60 Minutes."  The segment
focused on Dungeons and Dragons and the game's possible role in suicides
by several young people, including the Erwin brothers.

Steven Erwin shot his older brother with their father's .22-caliber
pistol about 7:30 a.m. as they sat under a Lafayette railroad trestle, and
then he turned the gun on himself.

The family Tuesday discounted any connection between the boys' deaths
and their interest in the popular Dungeons and Dragons game.

Daniel had pleaded guilty to auto theft and was scheduled to face sentencing
Nov. 30--four weeks after his death.  The charge stemmed from Daniel's
joyride in a car belonging to a friend's mother that ended several days
later with his arrest in Colby, Kan., Betty Erwin said Tuesday.

Although Daniel was likely to receive only a 6-month deferred sentence,
Betty Erwin said, he was extremely afraid of the criminal justice system.

"I know he was pretty scared," she said, sitting on a sofa in the living
room of her trailer home.  "It was the first time he had been in trouble
with the police.

"I mean, I was scared, and I wasn't even the one that was in trouble."

The family had not publicly discussed Daniel's arrest before Tuesday.
The Boulder district attorney's office confirmed the car-theft incident.

"I don't think it (Dungeons and Dragons) had anything to do with it,"
Brian Erwin, 14, said of media reports that his brothers were obsessed
with the game.  "It's only a game.  They weren't even really into it."

Brian Erwin, who has been left an only child, said Daniel also was upset
that a likely condition of probation was that he would return to Centaurus
High School, where he had dropped out shortly after his sophomore year
began.

"He just didn't want to go back," Brian said.  "He wasn't going to go."

Betty Erwin, 43, released Tuesday for the first time the full contents
of Daniel's suicide note.  She said it supported her belief that the boy
crumbled under the pressure of his legal troubles.

"Dear Mom and Dad," the note said.  "I am sorry that it had to end this
way, but things just came to a close.  A man without his freedom is not
a man at all.  Therefore, this man is now targeted for termination and 
my goodbyes are now, so shall it be.  Love, Dan."

Betty Erwin said police scoured her boys' rooms but never found concrete
evidence linking their deaths to a fantasy game.

"I'd heard that in (suicide) cases where there's a connection, kids
sometimes keep a diary," she said.  "Danny didn't keep a diary or log
or his characters.  He just wasn't obsessed with it."

During the "60 Minutes" show Sunday, Lafayette Police Chief Larry Stallcup
admitted that he said Dungeons & Dragons played no part in the Erwins'
suicides after he received a letter from the game's manufacturer implying
a threat of legal action.

Stallcup's final remarks on the case came after a police detective had said
he believed the boys' involvement in the game led to their suicides.  
Critics have contended that the game encourages suicide by impressionable
young people as the only way to ultimately win the game.

In a letter Nov. 20 to an outspoken opponent of Dungeons & Dragons, 
Stallcup apologized for his remarks on the case.

Stallcup said in the letter, "I sincerely hope you will understand what
has happened and forgive me...My obligationto this city as a whole to 
protect them from serious financial litigation was predominant."

Just 12 days earlier, Stallcup had received a letter from the vice
president of TSR, Inc., the Dungeons & Dragons maufacturer, asking
Stallcup to closely "monitor" police department comments linking the
game to the Erwins.

"We are always concerned about the negative impact inaccuracies, speculation,
and unsubstantiated guesses can have on our company's and product's
images and consequently on our business results," the TSR letter said.

The apology mentioned in his letter to Pat Pulling, president of Virginia-
based B.A.D. (Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons) was simply an explanation
that his personal feelings about the case were not relevant, Stallcup
said.

"Being a public official, I do not have the pleasure of a personal opinion.
Therefore, I appologized to her for not being able to give my personal
opinion," Stallcup said.

Pulling, who lost a child in a suicide for which she blames Dungeons &
Dragons, traveled to Lafayette late last year to discuss the Erwin case
with the boys' parents and Stallcup.

Stallcup's letter became public when Pulling turned it over to "60 Minutes."

Thoughts of their departed children are never far away.

"Sometimes at night, I'm washing dishes or lying in bed, and I think that
out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of Steve's white T-shirt
going by,"  Betty Erwin said.  "But there's nothing there. It's just my
imagination."

Why did Steven pull the trigger on his father's gun, killing Daniel, then
turn it on himself?

"The only people who know the answer to that are the boys," Betty Erwin
said softly.  "And they can't answer."

-- 

                                     Sue Brezden
                                     
Real World: Room 1B17                Net World: ihnp4!drutx!slb
            AT&T Information Systems
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        Your god may be dead, but mine aren't.
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