Name Bill Hunter | Role Reporter | |
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Died April 23, 1964, Long Beach, California, United States | ||
William Bradley "Bill" Hunter (November 2, 1928 - April 23, 1964) was an American crime reporter for the Long Beach, California Independent Press-Telegram. Hunter's 16-page special on the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, "Three Days in Dallas", was awarded the 1964 "spot news reporting" award of the California Newspaper Publishers Association's "Better Newspaper Contest". A native of Wichita Falls, Texas, Hunter had previously worked as a court reporter there for five years before becoming a crime reporter. On March 22, 1964, Hunter wrote a story for the Press-Telegram saying that Oswald had "assuredly" killed Kennedy.
On April 23, 1964, Hunter was killed in a Long Beach police station by a police officer, Creighton Wiggins. Wiggins initially claimed that the shot was fired when he dropped his weapon; when the trajectory of the bullet showed this was impossible, Wiggins admitted he had been playing "quick draw" with a fellow officer, Errol Greenleaf, and had fired accidentally. Wiggins and Greenleaf, who said his back was turned at the time, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and received three-year probation sentences. In 1991, a fellow Press-Telegram columnist said in that he had often experienced gun-play in his friendships with Long Beach policemen declaring, "It was childish and terribly dangerous fun, and finally fatal. The only surprise is that it hadn’t happened before." Hunter's death nonetheless remains one of many considered suspicious by some researchers pursuing John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.