It’s one of those things you hear about in a basement or on a late-night Discord thread. Someone mentions Budd Dwyer Faces of Death, and suddenly everyone has a "friend of a friend" who saw the unedited tape on an old VHS.
But honestly? Most of what people think they know about this connection is a mix of urban legend and 1980s shock-video marketing.
If you’ve ever fallen down the rabbit hole of "shockumentaries," you’ve likely seen the grainy footage of a man in a suit, holding a manila envelope, standing behind a podium in a cramped room. That man was R. Budd Dwyer, the Treasurer of Pennsylvania. What happened next on January 22, 1987, changed the way newsrooms handle live broadcasts forever.
It also cemented his place in the morbid history of the Faces of Death franchise, even though the reality of that inclusion is weirder than you’d think.
The Myth of Budd Dwyer in Faces of Death
Let’s get the big question out of the way first. Was Budd Dwyer actually in the original Faces of Death?
Technically, no.
The first Faces of Death movie came out in 1978. Budd Dwyer’s public suicide didn't happen until 1987. You don't need a calculator to see the math doesn't work there. However, the franchise was famous for its sequels and "best of" compilations.
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By the time Faces of Death IV (1990) rolled around, the producers were hungry for real footage. The original 1978 film was actually mostly faked—the "monkey brains" scene and the "electric chair" sequence were staged with actors and special effects. But the Dwyer footage was undeniably, tragically real.
Because the footage was so widely discussed, it eventually found its way into the later installments and various knock-off "mondo" films like Traces of Death. This is where the confusion starts. People remember seeing the clip on a tape with a skull on the cover and just assume it was the original Faces of Death.
Why the Footage Went Viral Before the Internet
It’s hard to imagine now, but in 1987, there was no YouTube. There was no X (formerly Twitter). If you wanted to see something "forbidden," you had to catch it on the news or find a bootleg tape.
Dwyer had called a press conference the day before his sentencing for a bribery conviction. Everyone thought he was going to resign. Instead, he pulled a .357 Magnum out of an envelope.
The Media’s Dilemma
Most stations across Pennsylvania saw what was happening and cut away. They stopped the feed. But a few stations—notably in Harrisburg and Philadelphia—aired the footage in its entirety during the midday broadcast.
Because it was a snowy day in parts of the state, plenty of kids were home from school. They saw it live.
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That trauma created a generation of people who couldn't stop talking about it. The "Budd Dwyer Faces of Death" connection became a sort of shorthand for the first time "real death" was broadcast into living rooms without a filter.
The Conviction: Was He Actually Guilty?
You can't talk about the video without talking about the man. Dwyer maintained his innocence until the very last second. He claimed he was being framed in a kickback scheme involving Computer Technology Associates (CTA).
Basically, the state had overpaid FICA taxes, and a contract was needed to calculate the refunds. Dwyer was accused of taking a $300,000 bribe to give that contract to CTA.
- The Evidence: A man named William Trickett Smith testified against Dwyer to get a lighter sentence for himself.
- The Controversy: Years later, in the 2010 documentary Honest Man: The Life of R. Budd Dwyer, Smith admitted that he might have lied about the bribe to save his own skin.
- The Reality: Despite the documentary's revelations, Dwyer's legal conviction still stands. The courts never overturned it.
Dwyer’s suicide was timed specifically so he would die in office. By doing so, his family was able to collect over $1.2 million in survivor benefits, which would have been forfeited if he had been sentenced and removed from office.
The Lasting Legacy of the Tape
The reason "Budd Dwyer Faces of Death" remains a high-volume search term decades later isn't just about morbid curiosity. It's about the shift in our culture's relationship with graphic content.
Before Dwyer, the most famous "real" deaths on camera were the Zapruder film or the Hindenburg. But those felt like history. The Dwyer tape felt like television. It was sterile, well-lit, and happened in a mundane office.
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It stripped away the "movie magic" of the Faces of Death series. When you watch the Dwyer footage, there is no dramatic music. There are no jump cuts. Just the frantic shouts of "Budd, don't do this!" and the heavy silence of a room in shock.
What We Get Wrong About the Footage
A lot of people think the video was "banned" by the government. It wasn't. The FCC doesn't actually have a rule that says you can't show a suicide; they have "decency" standards, but news is often exempt if it's considered in the public interest.
The "ban" was self-imposed by news directors who realized, perhaps for the first time, that just because you can show something doesn't mean you should.
If you're looking into the history of this case, you should focus on the ethics of the media rather than the gore. The real "faces of death" weren't the people on the screen—they were the journalists in the room who had to decide whether to keep their cameras rolling while a man lost his life.
Moving Forward: How to Contextualize This
If you’re researching this for historical or media studies purposes, here is how you should actually approach it:
- Watch the Documentary First: Instead of hunting for the raw clip, watch Honest Man (2010). It gives you the full political context of the Pennsylvania state government in the 80s.
- Study the Legal Case: Look up United States v. Dwyer. The legal nuances of the CTA scandal are far more interesting than the shock value of the video.
- Check Your Sources: Most "shock" sites that host the video are riddled with malware. It’s better to stick to archival news reports that discuss the event without exploiting it.
The story of Budd Dwyer is a tragedy of a man who felt backed into a corner by a legal system he no longer trusted. Whether he was a corrupt politician or a victim of a frame-up, his final act remains one of the most significant moments in the history of American media.
To understand the Dwyer case fully, you have to look past the "Faces of Death" label. The footage is a piece of political history, not just a horror movie highlight. If you want to dive deeper into how this changed TV news, look into the specific newsroom guidelines that were drafted in the weeks following January 1987. Those protocols are still what keep similar tragedies from airing live on your local news today.