Robert Burdick: Difference between revisions
No edit summary |
The Admins (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
[[File:NAMBLAMurder1985.png|thumb|NAMBLA Bulletin 1985]] | |||
'''Robert Burdick''', or Rob / Bob Burdick, was a retired schoolteacher, a long-time gay activist, and a founding member of [[NAMBLA]]. He was the first editor of the ''Bulletin'', and many steering committee meetings took place in his Manhattan apartment. Burdick worked with [[LGBT-MAP_alliances_in_history|many other organizations in the gay community]], including ''SAGE'', the ''Gay Teachers association'', Senior Action in the ''Gay Academic Union'', and the ''Gay Activists Alliance'', for whom he helped organize a conference on man/boy love. | '''Robert Burdick''', or Rob / Bob Burdick, was a retired schoolteacher, a long-time gay activist, and a founding member of [[NAMBLA]]. He was the first editor of the ''Bulletin'', and many steering committee meetings took place in his Manhattan apartment. Burdick worked with [[LGBT-MAP_alliances_in_history|many other organizations in the gay community]], including ''SAGE'', the ''Gay Teachers association'', Senior Action in the ''Gay Academic Union'', and the ''Gay Activists Alliance'', for whom he helped organize a conference on man/boy love. | ||
Latest revision as of 10:05, 31 May 2024
Robert Burdick, or Rob / Bob Burdick, was a retired schoolteacher, a long-time gay activist, and a founding member of NAMBLA. He was the first editor of the Bulletin, and many steering committee meetings took place in his Manhattan apartment. Burdick worked with many other organizations in the gay community, including SAGE, the Gay Teachers association, Senior Action in the Gay Academic Union, and the Gay Activists Alliance, for whom he helped organize a conference on man/boy love.
Burdick was murdered in his New York apartment July 24, 1985. A drifter named Edward Joseph Patterson, 37, has admitted committing the crime. Burdick's body was found, stabbed at least ten times in the chest, that afternoon following phone calls by Patterson to reporters in Philadelphia and Baltimore, in which he described the crime. He was arrested that evening in Baltimore.
He had met Patterson through his voluminous correspondence with prisoners, and had allowed him to stay with him after Patterson's release in early July from Ray Book, N.Y., Federal prison, where he had served time for a 1982 threat to kill President Ronald Reagan. Patterson, who has a record of 50 arrests and is listed in police records under some 23 aliases, is apparently a deranged antihomosexual psychopath and has reportedly threatened to kill all American presidents from Richard Nixon on. He told reporters after killing Burdick that he planned to kill eight members of his own family in Camden, New Jersey, "in a more terrible and violent way." He asserted that someone in his family had "molested" him when he was nine years old, and sought to justify his murder of Burdick by alleging that Burdick had had sex with children. Burdick had never been arrested or charged with any crime of any kind.
Burdick was a committed fighter for sexual freedom and gay liberation. His last appearance at a NAMBLA function was on November 9, 1985, as a panelist on the topic of children's rights and youth autonomy at NAMBLA's ninth conference in New York City. As he did whenever he spoke about man/boy love, Burdick stressed the importance of selfless love, not sex, in relationships between older and younger men.
His killer, Edward Patterson, 39, was sentenced in December 1988, to serve 10-32 years in prison. Prosecutor Joel Seideman said the killing was sparked by a money dispute...