When Jim Tyrer first appeared on a Pro Football Hall of Fame ballot in the early 1980s after completing an impressive 14-year career, the Kansas City Chiefs offensive lineman looked like a sure bet to land in Canton.
Tyrer, though, never made it into the Hall, and his name disappeared from the ballot for more than 40 years.
That's because, in the early morning hours of Sept. 15, 1980, in an upstairs bedroom of a two-story ranch house, while his children were fast asleep, Tyrer took a .38-caliber pistol and shot his wife to death, and then turned the gun on himself -- an act that orphaned four children, stunned the Kansas City and NFL communities, and abruptly ended any talk of Jim Tyrer's election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Until now.
On Tuesday, nearly a half-century after the murder-suicide, 49 voters will consider letting Tyrer into Canton's hallowed halls.
His revived candidacy underscores both heightened awareness and ongoing discomfort over what football can do to the brain. With recent evidence suggesting Tyrer might have suffered from football-related brain trauma long before the idea was introduced, the NFL's most cherished institution is being dragged into a debate over whether the brutality of the sport should be cause for forgiveness and compassion.
"I just felt this was an issue that the ... entire committee should have a chance to discuss," said Gary Myers, a veteran New York journalist who, as a member of the Senior Committee, was among those who voted to make Tyrer one of three senior player finalists to advance to a full vote.
Tyrer is one of five men vying for three spots. The others are Mike Holmgren, who led the Packers to a Super Bowl win and coached 17 seasons in the league; former Packers wide receiver Sterling Sharpe; Maxie Baughan, a nine-time Pro Bowl linebacker in the 1960s; and Ralph Hay, who has been called the founding father of the NFL.
Nominees must receive at least 40 of 49 votes -- a minimum of 80% -- to make the Hall.
Whether Tyrer can get to the threshold is far from certain, despite the support of several voters and Tyrer family members who say they long ago forgave him.
Longtime Hall voter Jason Cole told ESPN he has "incredible compassion for the family" but said that he won't vote for Tyrer.
"It's morally abhorrent and unacceptable to put a murderer in the Hall of Fame if you have the power to do otherwise," Cole said.
"It's opening up a giant can of worms if you start to consider that CTE is an excuse because, (A) we don't know if he actually had CTE; it's a guess, probably a fair guess, but we will never know. And (B) CTE does not allow you to get away with heinous crimes and then be celebrated separately."
Vahe Gregorian, a veteran journalist who has had a vote for several years, said that after speaking with Tyrer's family and a doctor who treated the player, he can accept the CTE argument.
"I think when you see that this is a man, who had for decades lived a life that was admired by many, that this change in him was caused by [CTE]," Gregorian said, "... I think to me, it says this was because of severe brain damage, not being of a willful act by this person. I don't know, that makes me look at it differently."
Regardless of where voters land, one longtime voter, who requested anonymity over concerns about how Hall of Fame officials might view his comments, said of Tyrer: "He's the most uncomfortable name on the ballot. It's the one thing they don't want to talk about."
If the Hall of Fame's bylaws are followed, the murder-suicide might never be mentioned. Unlike Major League Baseball, which has an oft-discussed character clause that has kept several players out of its Hall of Fame, the Pro Football Hall's bylaws are clear that only onfield performance should be considered. There's even a specific directive not to weigh anything else.
"Off the field or away from the game contributions and/or situations (positive or negative) are not to be considered, and selectors are prohibited from including them in presentations or discussion," the bylaws read. "If a selector violates the above rule, he/she would be warned, and if repeated would be prohibited from further comments during the meeting and a possible future removal from the Selection Committee."
Myers, who said he hasn't decided how he will vote, says of Tyrer's candidacy, "This to me is a true test of whether we adhere to the Hall's mandate to only consider what's on the field, because what happened off the field with Jim Tyrer was horrific."
Even with the Hall's directive to focus on the field, it's obvious that Tyrer's name disappeared from the ballot after just one year because of the murder-suicide. It's also clear that it wouldn't have made its way back without the mounting evidence of the connection between professional football and long-term brain damage.
'An American tragedy'
Even those who oppose inducting Tyrer don't question his Hall of Fame credentials. He was a dominant force for the Chiefs in the American Football League in the '60s and after the merger with the NFL in 1970. As a left tackle protecting future Hall of Famer Len Dawson, Tyrer played in 180 consecutive games and started every game of his 11 seasons in Kansas City. He made nine Pro Bowls, was named to the AFL's All-Time Team and is in the Chiefs' Hall of Fame.
At 6-6 and 300 pounds, Tyrer was huge, particularly by NFL standards at the time. His head was so big it required a custom-made helmet. This, at a time when players were encouraged to use their heads as battering rams.
The story of Tyrer's name returning to the ballot traces in large part to a documentary filmmaker whose project about the player and his family included interviews with Hall of Fame voters. Kevin Patrick Allen -- who produced a short film about Tyrer called "A Good Man" and is now working on a longer documentary, "Beneath the Shadow" -- also interviewed a doctor who said he treated Tyrer just days before the murder-suicide.
In a recent interview with ESPN, Dr. Douglas Paone repeated what he first told Allen: Tyrer came to him complaining of headaches and abdominal pain. Paone met twice with Tyrer, first to examine him and later to go over test results. Tyrer's wife, Martha, was at both appointments. By the end of the second visit, Paone said, he sensed Tyrer was experiencing depression over the end of his football career and money troubles, and he referred Tyrer to a psychiatrist. That was on a Friday.
"As we were walking out, his wife grabbed me by the arm and said, 'Something is wrong with him, he's not himself,'" Paone said. "I looked at her -- I know exactly where I was standing when it happened, you know, like you kind of remember where you were when Kennedy was shot? She looked up at my eyes and said, 'There's something wrong with him, he's not the same.'"
Two days later, before dawn on Monday morning, Tyrer shot Martha to death and then turned the gun on himself.
Later that week, The Washington Post published a story that now rings hauntingly familiar: of a former NFL player who was "crumbling within," battling depression, paranoia, money problems and a body breaking down -- of a man increasingly unrecognizable to his family.
Dawson was quoted at the time saying, "He was always such a strong, stable guy. Something had to snap. He was a great family man. Doing something like this is completely contrary to his character."
Research and awareness about the connection between football and brain disease have exploded over the past decade. Boston University, the leader in this research, has posthumously diagnosed more than 300 ex-NFL players and found that more than 90 percent had Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease with symptoms that include memory loss, confusion, impulse control problems, depression and aggression.
"When the early 2000s came around, they started talking about CTE, and, in retrospect, [Tyrer] fit that to a T," Paone said. "... My gosh, this is a guy who gave his whole life to football and ended it because of football. It's an American tragedy is what it is."
Therein lies the case for Tyrer's renewed Hall of Fame candidacy: If you believe that football played a part in him shooting his wife and then committing suicide, if you believe he was no longer himself when he shot that gun, if you believe enough time has passed, then voting for a man who murdered his wife takes on a different context.
'A bridge too far'
Tyrer was among 182 former players nominated for senior consideration, and he made it through a series of cutdowns before the Senior Committee selected him as one of three finalists. The case for Tyrer was made last month to the nine-member Senior Committee by Ron Borges, a longtime NFL writer and Hall voter.
Like several other Hall of Fame voters, Borges declined to speak with ESPN, but as far back as 2016, he was making the case to bring Tyrer back for consideration. In a piece for the website Talk of Fame Two, Borges quoted Hall of Fame defensive end Elvin Bethea calling Tyrer, "The best blocker I ever faced. ... All other blockers I faced in the NFL were mediocre compared to him."
And last week, perhaps anticipating he won't be able to talk about the cloud hanging over Tyrer's candidacy, Borges sent an email to every voter. In it, he wrote about CTE and how no one had "connected it to the concussive and destructive game of football" in Tyrer's era. He named a number of high-profile players who have died and were later shown to have had the disease, including Junior Seau and Mike Webster, adding, "It is clear Tyrer was another of its victims."
Borges wrote that Tyrer earned the right to be in the Hall of Fame but was "denied it because the game he played destroyed his brain and led to a family tragedy. We can never repair that tragedy but we can at least give the man and his family the honor his play on the field earned him long ago."
On Tuesday, Borges will advocate on Tyrer's behalf to the full committee. He'll have five minutes to persuade voters, then the floor will open to any other voter who wants to speak.
"I think it's really important to have this discussion, and I hope that we're able to have it in that room," said Cole, a voter since 2013 who has covered the league for more than 30 years.
But if history is an indication of what might happen during the meeting, the second that somebody tries to broach the murder-suicide, the conversation will be halted.
Although voters aren't allowed to discuss publicly what goes on in the room, several cited the case of Lawrence Taylor as an example. When a voter tried to bring up Taylor's drug problems, including a 30-day suspension in 1988, the Hall of Fame member moderating the session cut him off.
Of course, that doesn't mean voters will have to explain themselves if they choose not to select Tyrer. Nor does it mean there hasn't been behind-the-scenes lobbying in the lead-up to the vote. Several voters were contacted by Bill Polian, a former NFL executive-turned-analyst who has had a vote for several years. Polian, one voter said, urged him and others not to select Tyrer because of the murder-suicide.
Lobbying for a particular candidate is nothing new, but the voter told ESPN that until Polian's plea, "I'd never gotten a call telling me NOT to vote for somebody."
Polian told ESPN he made calls to a few people and "talked, in general, about the class and things of that nature, not specifically about (Tyrer's) candidacy. ... I talk to a few people that I respect, every year. And I talk to quite a few people who are not selectors every year, but they're people who I respect, whose opinions I solicit."
Asked how he would vote, Polian said, "I won't reveal who I vote for under any circumstances. ... It's nobody's business but mine."
Cole said he understands the argument for Tyrer, but it's a "bridge too far" to "reward" him with entry into the Hall. Cole and some other voters said they worry Tyrer opens the door for citing CTE in cases of other players who have committed crimes, such as former safety Darren Sharper. Sharper, a five-time Pro Bowler over a 14-year career, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2016 for drugging and raping more than a dozen women. His name was on the ballot in 2015 and 2016, but it has disappeared since he went to prison.
Family was quick to forgive
When he first heard the gunshots, 17-year-old Brad Tyrer briefly hid under his bed, fearful there was an intruder in the house. Soon, he and his siblings discovered something far worse. But even in the haze that ensued after both his parents were abruptly taken from him, one thing remained clear, he said.
"We knew that the guy that did what he did to our mom that night wasn't our dad," Brad Tyrer, now 61, told ESPN. "Our dad was a model dad. He was a model husband. He was a model citizen. He was captain of the team, right?"
Brad said he forgave his father within days. And when his mom's parents came to take care of the children, they, too, seemed to find a way to forgive the man who had taken their daughter. In fact, when Brad's grandfather passed away years later, his grandmother insisted that both Martha's and Jim's ashes be buried in the coffin with her husband.
"I guess I find it interesting that there are guys out there that aren't going to vote for my dad because of what he did, but everybody that knew my dad was very quick to forgive him," Brad said.
Brad's younger brother Jason said he hopes voters will follow the Hall's bylaws.
"He deserves it and earned it," Jason said. "... And whatever happens, good or bad, I'm glad that the attempt was made, positive or not. On paper, if you look at the facts and the stats, he should be there."
Several voters told ESPN they hoped Tyrer's complicated candidacy would lead the Hall to reconsider its only-on-the-field edict.
"If his play on the field made him worthy of being in the Hall of Fame, then theoretically there's nothing a person can do off the field that can take away from that," Matt Maiocco, a reporter with NBC Sports Bay Area who has covered the 49ers for 30 seasons and is in his eighth year as a Hall voter.
"I think the Hall should revisit that because part of the description of being a Hall of Famer is the term 'heroes of the game.' To me, a hero is someone who does a lot more than just plays a mean game of football. A hero is somebody who lives life to a certain standard off the field as well."
Maiocco said he wasn't speaking specifically about Tyrer and is undecided about how he plans to vote.
ESPN researcher John Mastroberardino contributed to this report.