What Really Happened to Jessica Savitch?

In the 40 years since her death, the pioneering newscaster has become an Icarus-like parable, a woman who was punished for her outsize ambition. She was one of the most powerful names in news, until one disastrous broadcast tarnished her golden image. In an exclusive report, her friends and family speak out about what everyone got wrong about her life.

- JUSTINE HARMAN

The romantic stone tavern perched on a quiet canal in New Hope, Pennsylvania, seemed like the perfect getaway. Located just under two hours from Manhattan, Chez Odette, a Parisian-style cabaret where Nina Simone once performed, still lured those looking to replace New York’s hard edges with dulcet tones, three-finger pours, and competent escargots de Bourgogne. On a rainy Sunday, October 23, 1983, 36-year-old Jessica Savitch, perhaps the most recognizable woman on prime-time TV, and her new love, shaggy-haired New York Post executive Martin Fischbein, 34, arrived for dinner around 5:30 p.m. The smartly dressed pair—she wore a jacket and slacks; he was in a suit and topcoat—requested a seat by the fire and ordered a bottle of white wine to share over dinner. They had spent the day antiquing and gallery hopping. They’d even brought along with them a copy of The Great Weekend Escape Book.

The typically commanding anchorwoman was low. It had been less than three weeks since she’d garbled a prime-time NBC news digest—her speech halting, her jaw awkwardly slung open—in the middle of a Johnny Carson special. The event, beamed into millions of homes, got media tongues wagging. “[Savitch] slurred her way through the mini newscast—and sounded like a 45 r.p.m being played at 33 ⅓,” Gary Deeb swiped in his nationally syndicated TV column.