Official Who Killed Self Is Seen as Hero
State Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer was buried Monday after being eulogized as a hero who took “desperate action” to bring attention to the criminal justice system he believed had wronged him.
Dwyer shot himself to death at a news conference in his Harrisburg office last Thursday, a day before he was to be sentenced for fraud and bribery conspiracy in the awarding of a state contract.
About 700 mourners crowded into services at the First Baptist Church in a quiet square of Dwyer’s northwestern Pennsylvania hometown. Later, his coffin was taken to Blooming Valley Cemetery, about 10 miles away.
“Today I can say without equivocation, he did nothing wrong, and he died an innocent man,” said Roger Richards, an attorney and family friend who delivered the eulogy.
“Mr. Dwyer’s suicide was a desperate act of one who loved the system so much that he would even take desperate action to promote its healing. Those in power would listen to nothing else,” said the church’s pastor, the Rev. William J. Minser.
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