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WFLA-AM Newsman Succumbs To Cancer
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Published: June 7, 2008
TAMPA - Don Richards spent more than 40 years in radio, but became best known for his controversial on-air interview with police killer Hank Earl Carr, who was holding a hostage at gunpoint.
News critics lambasted Richards, saying he had crossed the line of journalistic ethics. But his supervisor said Richards simply got caught in a situation he couldn't get out of when he unknowingly dialed the very business where Carr was holed up almost exactly 10 years ago.
Richards, news director of WFLA-AM radio, died of cancer Friday afternoon in hospice care. He was 65.
"He was one of the best news writers I've ever worked with," said Gabe Hobbs, senior vice president and operations manager of the station. "He always delivered."
His biggest story broke in May 1998. Carr had shot and killed his girlfriend's child, then killed two Tampa police officers and a Florida Highway Patrol trooper while making his escape. He had taken a convenience store clerk hostage and police surrounded the shop.
Hobbs said Richards started calling businesses in the area, looking for witnesses to comment on the standoff.
When he dialed the convenience store, he didn't realize it was the one at the epicenter of the action. Carr answered the phone and identified himself, but Richards didn't believe him and hung up, Hobbs said. Carr called him back, though, and demanded he be allowed to tell his side of the story on the air.
Carr eventually released the hostage and killed himself. "We were very lucky," Richards told a Tampa Tribune reporter later.
"I would have done the same thing under that same kind of pressure," Hobbs said.
Richards started his radio career in the Army.
The Valparaiso University graduate served in Korea from 1964 to 1967 as a television and radio anchor for Armed Forces Korean Network.
He took a job at WPLP-AM in Pinellas Park in 1980 after moving from a station in Worcester, Mass. He later went to WFLA, where he was named news director in 1991.
"He was just a big, warm, fuzzy kind of guy who would do anything for you. He was always in a good mood," said Hobbs.
Calling Richards a "consummate professional," Hobbs remembers how Richards managed to keep his composure and deliver the news even as a co-worker's curses could be heard over the air. The worker in the control room thought that the station had lost sound and was cursing and pushing buttons trying to fix it.
"Don was on the air doing news. He never flinched, laughed or moved."
Reporter Philip Morgan can be reached at (813) 259-7609 or pmorgan@tampatrib.com.
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