MELISSA BLOCK, host:
It’s not everyday that someone in the public eye admits on television to having killed someone. But that is exactly what happened earlier this week in Britain. The BBC aired a prerecorded show hosted by one of its veteran reporters in which he made startling admission.
NPR’s Rob Gifford reports from London.
ROB GIFFORD: Seventy-year-old Ray Gosling has been hosting programs on BBC television for decades. On Monday, in a documentary about death and dying, as he walked through a graveyard in his native city of Nottingham, he said it was time to share a secret that he had kept for a long time.
Mr. RAY GOSLING (Host, BBC Television): I killed someone once. He was a young chap. He had been my lover and he got AIDS. And in a hospital, one hot afternoon, doctors said there’s nothing we can do. And he was in terrible, terrible pain. I said to the doctor leave me just for a bit and he went away. And I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead. Doctor came back and I said he’s gone. Nothing more was ever said.
My reactions to reading this were shock and disgust. I thought Mr. Gosling was going to say something about increasing the dosage of painkillikng medicine given to an elderly parent, or something of that sort (not that that would necessarily have justified the action, it’s just that one would somehow have felt differently about it). It sounds like Mr. Gosling felt a need to confess what he had done; he ought to have gone to a priest.