On page 220, Harris writes that the video of the murder of Rinaldo Pazzi (the Italian police detective) ‘took its place among the classic horrific spectacles – Zapruder, the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, and the suicide of Edgar Bolger’.
Who was Edgar Bolger? A google search turned up nothing but a single reference to the mention in ‘Hannibal’.
I decided to post here in CS – moderators, feel free to move it to GQ if you wish.
Was he the politician who shot himself on camera? If so, that was very bloody.
I believe you’re thinking of Bud Dwyer. And perhaps, so was Harris?
Perhaps the man who committed suicide while blocking a California freeway a few years back - some stations news cameras kept running throughout?
You’re right. I am.
If we’re thinking of the same one, MMI, his name was Daniel V. Jones
My guess is that Harris had Bud Dwyer in the first draft and someone decided the event was too recent and sensitive (family and all) and changed it
Hannibal was published in 1999, twelve years after the Bud Dwyer incident.
ETA: OTOH I recall hearing Harris say on his website when Hannibal came out that it had taken roughly 3,000 days to write. So an early draft would have been much closer to the incident.