In 1983, Mary tried to remove one of the road signs and was faced with a booby trap – a box that contained a gun, designed to shoot whoever opened it. His death was ruled an accident and the harassment continued, in the form of both letters and threatening road signs. The letters stopped for a while, until one day in 1977 when her husband was found dead in his truck, after taking a call from who he thought was the letter writer. Then her husband started receiving letters. The author warned Mary that he had been keeping an eye on her home and her actions.
One resident, Mary Gillispie, received a ton of letters, accusing her of having a nonexistent affair. Each letter included secret disturbing details about their personal lives. One of the strange side effects from this incident is that many people found themselves rooting for the gutsy guy who pulled it off.In 1976, residents of the small city near Columbus, Ohio began receiving handwritten sinister and graphic letters. The FCC never found out who did it or why. “People are fascinated by it only because it is a singular event and they never found out who did it,” Roan said. “You can do that? Someone pulled it off and didn’t get caught?” Podrazik said. Maybe it was just one of the greatest gags of all time that right at the old number 9.
Maybe it was nothing more than a crazy stunt that left FC investigators, engineers, and TV experts scratching their heads ever since. However, no one had a clue what truth Max Headroom was telling. Podrazik, Museum of Broadcast Communications, said. “He would pop in, often the most inappropriate time, make a wry comment or be spying on somebody or what have you,” Walter J. So why Max Headroom-an oddball character fading in popularity? “Somebody could essentially see both of our transmit facilities at Sears and Hancock from the same location.” “If you were to draw a line in between both of our studio facilities, that line would end up somewhere between the Sears Tower and John Hancock downtown,” Skierkiewicz said. WGN could and did it in a short amont of time.Īl Skierkiewicz has been a broadcast maintenance engineer at WTTW since 1973. Over at WTTW, the old timers explained how Channel 11’s lack of a backup plan left the fraudulent Max Headroom on for too long. Why me? Why insert ‘Chuck Swirsky’ into this thing? I still don’t understand.” It was a Sunday night and I had no clue what was going on so it was a shock,” Swirsky said. And with great difficulty, under all the noise, you could hear the Max Headroom imposter mention the name of Chuck Swirsky- a WGN Radio guy who filled in for Roan on the sports desk from time to time. The incident lasted closer to two minutes. Who” fans sat and watched late night or slept and taped their favorite sci-fi show, the same masked man blurted a bunch of inaudible gibberish and got smacked with a flyswatter on his bare behind. WTTW’s incident took place two hours later on the very same night. Even the Washington Post, USA Today and other national media was puzzled by the pirating that kicked not only WGN off the air, but WTTW as well. The hijack was on every local newscast and in every area newspaper. We went home and woke up to the newspapers and it was a pretty big deal,” Roan said. “I looked over at the monitor and this image, I could tell it wasn’t a sports highlight,” Jon Walgren, former WGN floor director, said. It went on for 25 long and painful seconds until the engineers could switch the microwave path back to local programming. He was wearing the face of a fictitious 80s failing sitcom character named Max Headroom Then a masked man appeared on the screen making no noise and moving back and forth. WGN sports anchor Dan Roan was getting into Bears highlights when all of a sudden, at 9:14 p.m., his studio monitor went black and so did televisions at home. But one Sunday newscast was very different. Thirty years ago, Chicago’s Very Own had a slower pace and had a mom and pop appeal. Who and why they did it is still a great unknown. While quirky and even amusing to some the broadcast interruption was a very big deal. And it was an even bigger deal that the guilty party was never caught. In broadcast history, it’s believe it has only happened one other time in the United States-that person prosecuted for pirating HBO’s signal in 1986. Hours later, it happened again at another Chicago station.
On Novemsomeone-maybe a group of people-hijacked WGN’s signal and interrupted the 9 p.m.
Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.ĬHICAGO - One of the greatest mysteries in broadcast history remains unsolved. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.