American writer, editor and criminal Lucien Carr was BOTD in 1925. Born in New York City to a prominent industrialist family, his parents separated when he was a child, and he was raised by his mother in Missouri. At the age of 12, he became the object of obsession of David Kammerer, a 26 year-old English teacher who led Carr’s Boy Scout troop. Kammerer pursued Carr over the next five years as he moved from high schools in Massachusetts and Maine to the University of Chicago. In later life, Carr insisted that he was never attracted to Kammerer, a claim disputed by many of their mutual friends. After attempting suicide, Carr was briefly institutionalised, before moving to New York City to be closer to his mother. Undeterred, Kammerer quit his job and followed Carr to New York, living close to his friend William S. Burroughs. Carr enrolled at Columbia University, where he quickly became a star student, befriending the future Beat Generation writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Together with Burroughs, they became an unlikely quartet, partying together in New York and plotting a literary revolution. Carr is credited with introducing Ginsberg to the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, and wrote a creative manifesto “The New Vision” which became the unofficial bible of the Beat Poets. Kammerer continued to stalk Carr, becoming increasingly paranoid at the possibility of his leaving the country with Kerouac. In 1944, Carr stabbed and killed Kammerer in a struggle, then weighted his body with rocks and dumped it in the Hudson River. He confessed to the police the following day, and was charged with second-degree murder, claiming that he acted in self-defence after Kammerer had attempted to sexually assault him. The resulting trial became a media sensation, with newspapers accepting Carr’s account of the predatory homosexual Kammerer preying on a respectable (i.e., heterosexual) younger man. Carr pled guilty to the lesser charge of first-degree manslaughter and was imprisoned for two years. Kerouac later fictionalised the case in his novels The Town and the City and Vanity of Dulouz. (Ginsberg also started his own book, but was persuaded to abandon it to protect Carr from further publicity). On his release from prison, Carr became a news editor with United Press, marrying twice and having three children. He remained friends with the Beat poets, supporting the publication of Kerouac’s novel On the Road and Ginsberg’s poem Howl, though asked Ginsberg to remove his name from Howl’s dedication page. In 1976, New York magazine published a letter by Patricia Healy (a friend of the Beat poets), who claimed that Kammerer was heterosexual and had been the victim of Carr’s stalking and manipulation. Carr continued working for United Press until his death in 2005, aged 78. He appears as a minor character in the 2000 film Beat, played by Norman Reedus. The 2013 film Kill Your Darlings, starring Dane DeHaan as Carr, presents a more ambiguous account of his relationship with and motives for killing Kammerer.