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Talked to Death: The Life and Murder of Alan Berg
Talked to Death The Life and Murder of Alan Berg Author:Stephen Singular On the evening of June 18, 1984, Alan Berg, an outspoken Denver talk-show host, was murdered in front of his home, shot in the face as he emerged from his Volkswagen. The crime received a great deal of coverage, and although it was surprising that the murder of a local radio personality would command network TV airtime and headlines across... more » the United States, the national media's intuition about the murder was right. The slaying had political, racial, religious, and historical overtones.
Alan Berg was an irrepressible loudmouth who would argue with anyone about anything at any time. A rude socio-political comic genius operating in a new medium--talk radio--he was the West's Last Angry Man, with the highest ratings ever given to a talk-show host in his market.
Berg's humor was always political, and he was never interested in being polite. He was merciless with the right-wing Christians or Ku Klux Klan members who called his show, but he could be just as merciless with knee-jerk liberals of self-righteous members of minority groups.
Four months after his death, the murder weapon was found in the home of Gary Lee Yarbrough of Sandpoint, Idaho, following the largest manhunt against domestic terrorism in the FBI's history.
Yarbrough was a member of various white supremacist organizations, particularly the Order, a heavily armed neo-Nazi faction of angry young white working-class males who preached a radical right-wing philosophy.« less