Dan White biography

White approached Moscone and asked to be re-appointed to the Board and, although Moscone considered White's plea, he had already been strongly influenced by Milk and other board members to appoint another liberal, federal housing official Don Horanzy, instead.

On November 27, 1978, Dan White went to City Hall with a loaded .38 revolver. In order to avoid the metal detectors,

he entered through a basement window that had been negligently left open for ventilation. He proceeded to the Mayor's office, where the two men began arguing until Moscone suggested going to a more private room so that they could not be heard. Once there, Moscone refused to re-appoint him, and White shot the Mayor twice in the chest and twice in the head.

He then went down the corridor and shot Milk, twice in the chest, once in the back, and twice again in the head. Soon after, he turned himself in at the police station where he used to work. There are reports that his old colleagues cheered and applauded him when he arrived.

At his trial in 1979 it was revealed that White also planned to assassinate Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and fellow supervisor and attorney Carol Ruth Silver, but was unable to find them.

During a videotaped confession, White came across as a pathetic man who was barely able to explain why he had assassinated his colleagues. His defense lawyer, Douglas R. Schmidt, claimed White had acted in the heat of passion and not out of malice. He made a plea of "diminished capacity", due to extreme stress in White's home life and depression. Describing White's emotional state, psychiatrist Martin Blinder, one of five defense therapists, explained that in the days leading up to the shootings, White grew slovenly and abandoned his usual healthy diet and indulged in a diet of sugary junk food like Coke, doughnuts, and Twinkies instead.

Newspapers across the country picked up on a great headline, and today the term "Twinkie defense" is a derogatory label implying that a criminal defense is artificial or absurd.

The jury found White guilty of voluntary manslaughter instead of first-degree murder, despite his obvious pre-meditation. White was sentenced to a maximum of seven years and eight months in prison and never expressed public remorse for the murders.

Peaceful demonstrations by Castro's gay community outside City Hall turned violent. 5,000 policemen responded by entering nightclubs armed with truncheons and assaulting patrons. By the riots' end, 124 people were injured, including 59 policemen. The episode is known in history as "The White Night Riots".

White served five years at Soledad State Prison and was released on parole on 6th January 1984. He lived undercover away from his family in Los Angeles for a year and then asked to return to San Francisco. New Mayor Dianne Feinstein issued a public statement asking him not to.

Ignoring her wishes, he returned to a city where he wan not welcome. Dogged by fears of retaliation, his marriage fell apart and he became increasingly depressed, eventually committing suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of 39.

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