American politician and murderer Dan White was BOTD in 1946. Born in San Francisco, California, he grew up in a conservative Irish-American family. He joined the US Army after high school, seeing active service in the Vietnam War. After the war, he returned to San Francisco, working as a policeman and fireman, marrying in 1976 and having two children. In 1977, he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, alongside openly gay candidate Harvey Milk. White’s position as the defender of religion and family values often placed him in conflict with Milk, who campaigned for statutory protections for gay people. After a disagreement over a proposed drug rehabilitation centre, White distanced himself from Milk and other supervisors. He resigned in 1978, but changed his mind four days later and asked Mayor George Moscone to reinstate him. Moscone, backed by Milk and others, refused to reinstate him. A fortnight later, White broke into City Hall with a shotgun, killing Moscone and Milk. Charged with murder, he pleaded diminished capacity on the grounds of depression and excessive consumption of junk food (referred to by the media as “the Twinkie defence”). He was convicted of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, provoking outrage and rioting in San Francisco’s gay community. White served five years of his sentence and was paroled in 1984. He returned to San Francisco and attempted unsuccessfully to reconcile with his family, but his marriage ended soon after. Isolated and unable to find work, White committed suicide in 1985, aged 39. The Oscar-winning 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk identified White as a pre-meditated killer, whose sentence and early release was a miscarriage of justice. He was played by Josh Brolin in Gus Van Sant‘s 2008 biopic Milk. Dustin Lance Black‘s screenplay, based on interviews with White’s acquaintances, dropped several broad hints that White was secretly gay and may have committed the killings to cover up his guilty secret.