Gary Stollman: KNBC Hostage Incident, Plea Deal, and Toy Gun Laws

Gary Stollman is the former mental patient from Tallahassee, Florida, who on August 19, 1987, walked into the KNBC-TV studios in Burbank, California, pressed a toy pistol against consumer reporter David Horowitz during a live newscast, and forced him to read a handwritten statement about CIA clones and UFOs. He was 34 at the time. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment in June 1988 and received three years’ probation on the condition that he continue psychiatric treatment. The incident triggered California legislation on realistic-looking toy guns and a national argument about how TV stations should handle on-air hostage situations.¹

How Stollman Got Into the Studio

Stollman had a family connection to KNBC. His father, Max Stollman, was a pharmacist who had worked as an on-air pharmaceutical reporter for the station. The Thursday before the incident, Gary called co-anchor Kirstie Wilde and asked to see his father’s former workplace. Wilde later said he “seemed a little unstable, or maybe not very bright” during that first visit. When he called again on August 19, she cleared his return with news director Tom Capra. He entered with a visitor’s pass and was not searched.¹

Co-anchor John Beard said everyone in the studio noticed the visitor sitting at the back, but “nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary” because he had a pass.²

At 4:42 p.m., during the afternoon newscast, Stollman came up behind Horowitz and pressed what looked like a handgun against his back. He handed him a four-page handwritten statement and ordered him to read it on air. Horowitz, believing the weapon was real, did. The statement said the man who had appeared on KNBC for three years as Max Stollman was “a clone, a double created by the Central Intelligence Agency and alien forces.” It described a plot to overthrow the U.S. government, alleged mistreatment in “CIA-run mental hospitals,” and demanded the release of “secret Air Force files concerning UFOs.”¹

Twenty-eight seconds in, Capra ordered the live feed cut. The station went to black, then to the NBC logo and promos, for about seven to eight minutes. Horowitz was not wearing an earpiece and had no idea the broadcast had been interrupted, so he read the statement through to the end. When he finished, Stollman said, “Thank you, David. I couldn’t have harmed anyone with this unloaded BB gun,” and set the weapon on the desk. Beard grabbed it, police moved in, and Stollman was arrested. No one was hurt.²

The Weapon Was a Toy

The “gun” was a plastic replica of a .45-caliber pistol. Burbank Police Sergeant Joe Latta said, “You can’t call it a pellet gun, even. It’s just for children.” It used a spring mechanism to fire small plastic pellets with a range of about 10 feet. It looked realistic enough that Horowitz and the studio staff believed it was a firearm the entire time.¹

Felony Charges and the Competency Question

Stollman was initially booked on a felony charge of “threatening a crime with the intent of sowing terror and disrupting public activities” and held without bail at the Los Angeles County Jail.²

Prosecutors then formally charged him with two felonies: false imprisonment and commercial burglary. The burglary count rested on the theory that he had entered KNBC with premeditated intent to commit a felony and had “stolen air time from the station.” He pleaded not guilty before Municipal Court Judge Marion Gubler. Bail was set at $25,000. If convicted on both counts, he faced up to three years in state prison and a $10,000 fine.³

Mental competency dominated the case from the start. Deputy District Attorney John Bernardi told the court he had “a serious doubt as to his mental competency to understand the nature of the proceedings against him.” Deputy Public Defender Arthur Leone argued the opposite. Stollman’s father confirmed his son had “been hospitalized many times” for mental illness.³

Municipal Court Judge Alan Kalkin ordered him to stand trial on both felony counts after a September 4 preliminary hearing, during which he was under psychiatric observation at the jail ward of Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.⁴ In October 1987, the Mental Health Department of the Superior Court found him “gravely disabled as a result of a mental disorder.” His mother was appointed as his conservator, and he was ordered into psychiatric care.⁵

The Plea Deal

The case resolved in June 1988. Stollman pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor false imprisonment, and the two felony counts were dismissed. Pasadena Superior Court Judge Jack B. Tso sentenced him to three years’ probation with mandatory psychiatric treatment. Deputy District Attorney Barbara G. Murphy noted that stopping treatment would put him in violation of probation. Three psychiatrists had submitted letters saying he was “not a danger to society as long as he gets care.”⁵

Horowitz publicly supported the outcome and said he “played a major role in fashioning the agreement.” He told reporters: “Obviously, this person needs some help. Sending him to state prison, or to a mental hospital, is not going to solve the problems. What you want to do is try to turn things around.” At sentencing, Stollman was living in a mental health facility in the San Fernando Valley with permission to come and go.⁵

The Fight Over Cutting the Feed

Capra’s call to go to black split broadcast professionals. He defended it directly: “We can’t allow people with guns to take a TV station hostage. We went to black to make sure the message didn’t get out.” Airing the demands, he argued, would be “an open invitation to any terrorist in the country to give them their own TV station,” and he compared it to refusing to pay ransom.⁶

KTLA news director Jeff Wald said he “would put the human life first and the television station second.” USC broadcasting chairman Joe Saltzman said he would not have cut the feed, arguing viewers would understand the circumstances and that going dark created dangerous ambiguity about the hostage’s safety. LAPD psychologist Martin Reiser called it a “big gamble,” noting that negotiators generally prefer to let situations cool rather than provoke a gunman. NBC executive vice president M. S. Rukeyser Jr. backed Capra, calling the decision “good, sensible,” and conceded there was no rulebook for the scenario.⁶

The Toy Gun Laws That Followed

The incident became a lever for legislation. In October 1987, California State Senate President Pro Tem David Roberti proposed an outright ban on the manufacture and sale of realistic toy guns, saying he wanted to “send a message to the toy gun manufacturers that if they want to manufacture toys for people to play with, then make them look like toys.” His proposal would have made it a felony to brandish a fake gun threateningly or to distribute such weapons, superseding a law signed only weeks earlier that made brandishing a phony firearm a misdemeanor.⁷

The New York Times later cited the Stollman incident as a direct impetus for the California law, subsequently signed, requiring all toy firearms to be painted in bright colors or fitted with a brightly colored safety tip at the front of the barrel.⁸

Horowitz himself took up the cause, launching a campaign to ban toy guns that resemble real firearms. Colleagues later noted that the hostage incident “hardly defined his career.” He died in 2019.⁹

1
Los Angeles Times. Intruder Forces Newsman to Read Statement on Air
2
UPI. TV Consumer Reporter David Horowitz Wondered Who the Hell
3
UPI. Man Accused of Holding Consumer Reporter Hostage Pleads Innocent
4
UPI. Felony Trial Ordered in Newscast Takeover
5
Los Angeles Times. Intruder in Newscast Gets Probation
6
Los Angeles Times. NBC Defended for Cutting Hostage Broadcast
7
Los Angeles Times. Roberti Proposes Ban on Realistic Toy Guns
8
The New York Times. Off Target on Toy Gun Regulation
9
Deadline. David Horowitz Dead at 81