Television: Copy-Cat Crimes of the Heart

Television movies rarely win both high ratings and critical acclaim, but NBC's The Burning Bed managed to do so last week. Starring Farrah Fawcett, the gritty film was based on a 1977 case in which a battered Michigan housewife set her sleeping husband on fire but was acquitted of murder by a jury. During the program, some stations flashed telephone numbers of local shelters and hot lines for battered women. Thousands of viewers called in: abused wives seeking relief and, in some cases, battering husbands seeking counseling.

Unfortunately, a few reactions were horrifyingly different. Less than an hour after watching the show in Milwaukee, Joseph Brandt doused his estranged wife with gasoline as she returned home from work and set her aflame. Their two sons and neighbors got there too late to rescue her; at week's end she was in critical condition and not expected to live. In Columbus, Alondra Thompson, recently released from a private psychiatric hospital, fired three bullets into her sleeping boyfriend, critically wounding him. She too told the police that The Burning Bed had inspired her act. Nevertheless, most experts absolved the show, arguing that Brandt and Thompson might have attacked their mates anyway. Said UCLA Psychiatrist Louis J. West: "Millions of people saw it, and they didn't burn their spouses. "