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Joe Healy was appointed chaplain at Duquesne in 1965. During the next decade, he became something of a legend
Joe Healy had simple tastes. He liked to eat lunch at a Burger King in his hometown of Wilkinsburg, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh. He always sat at the same table, surrounded by friends. Healy knew everyone at Burger King and probably at the nearby McDonald's as well. Chances are, just about everyone in the faded, integrated, working class suburb of 25,000 knew Joe Healy.
But Joe Healy didn't know 39-year-old Ronald Taylor, an unemployed black man with a history of mental problems. Taylor knew only that Healy was white. For complicated and dark reasons, Taylor hated whites, the media, and, curiously, Italians.
Earlier, Taylor had set his own fifth floor apartment on fire because the broken door to his unit had not been fixed promptly. "You're all white trash, racist pigs," he shouted at John DeWitt, the white worker in the apartment complex.
Sometime after 11:19 a.m., Ronald Taylor entered the Burger King, pointed his 22-caliber handgun, and shot 71 year-old Joe Healy in the head. Joe was virtually brain dead but remained on life support long enough for his family to donate his organs for transplant something Joe would have wanted.
As events later emerged, Joe Healy and a man named John Kroll were killed; and a third man, wounded while sitting in his van at the nearby McDonald's, would die later. All told, Taylor shot five people, three of whom died. He terrorized a senior citizen center and came dangerously close to a day care center filled with kids.
Taylor, who had no police record, managed to keep the police away for over two hours while his mood floated from anger to confusion, from fear to remorse. He talked of suicide and of revenge. He eventually surrendered but, through it all, he had no idea that he had just killed a priest.
Joe Healy was one of 14 children with roots in...