Word: dotson
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...than when she began in January (she no longer flubs lines with abandon, like referring to Andrew Lloyd Webber as the composer of Jesus Christ Superstore), she is still capable of the silly gaffe. CBS executives stand strongly by her, even after her infamous invitation to Gary Dotson and Cathleen Crowell Webb, the main characters in the recent Chicago rape-testimony recantation, to hug on the air. "We needed a high-powered, experienced TV personality to draw people away from two established, successful competitors," says Executive Producer Jon Katz. "Phyllis George will bring a lot of people into our tent...
...much for NBC. Within minutes the odd couple was whisked off, in separate limousines, to say it all again on ABC's Good Morning America, and then again for the CBS Morning News. On CBS's show, effervescent Co-Anchor Phyllis George ended her interview by calling on Dotson and Webb to shake hands, and they did, limply. But then George added, "How about a hug?" The astonished Dotson and Webb declined. In light of the continuing assertion of Illinois officials that Dotson is guilty, George's hug suggestion was inappropriate, to say the least. George later explained to Washington...
Indeed, by the end of last week, the Gary and Cathy Show had turned into a traveling media circus. NBC picked up the steep tab for the pair's airfares -- in Dotson's case, a chartered jet -- and hotel rooms. The drama seemingly will not end until the final commercial is played on the TV movie that may result from last week's flood of offers for Dotson's life story...
...place against a grim background of continuing questions about what really happened on July 9, 1977, in a Chicago suburb. A dazed and injured Cathleen Crowell, then 16, told police she had just been raped and cut with a broken beer bottle by a young man in a car. Dotson was subsequently convicted of the rape and given a 25-to-50-year sentence. In March, Webb first told Illinois authorities that her accusation had been false, and then surfaced on Today, insisting that she had made up the story out of fear that she was pregnant by a boyfriend...
More than 70,000 Illinois citizens signed petitions urging Governor James Thompson to free Dotson, and he extended executive clemency early last week after a three-day hearing. But Thompson announced that he still believed Webb had been raped and Dotson properly convicted. He was commuting the sentence, said Thompson, because it left a "cloud over the Illinois justice system," and because Dotson had served enough time for the crime. The Governor's failure to give Dotson a pardon, which would have cleared his record of the charges, means that in the law's eyes he is still guilty. Dotson...