Kurtis was studying to become a lawyer in the 1960s, when he was asked to fill in on a temporary news assignment at WIBW-TV in Topeka, Kansas.
[1][2] In the early 1980s, he anchored The CBS Morning News in New York City and became especially interested in investigative in-depth reports and documentaries.
[3] Kurtis hosted or produced a number of crime and news documentary shows, including Investigative Reports, American Justice, and Cold Case Files.
William Horton Kuretich was born on September 21, 1940, in Pensacola, Florida, to Wilma Mary Horton (1911–2002) and William A. Kuretich (Croatian: Kuretić), of Croatian origin (1914–2001), a United States Marine Corps brigadier general and decorated veteran of World War II.
[6] On the evening of June 8, 1966, Kurtis left a bar review class at Washburn to fill in for a friend at WIBW-TV to anchor the 6 o'clock news.
Kurtis's warning – "For God's sake, take cover" – became synonymous with the Tornado outbreak sequence of June 1966 that left 18 dead and injured hundreds more.
[7] Kurtis and the WIBW broadcast team remained on the air for 24 straight hours to cover the initial tornado and its aftermath.
[4] Within three months, after seeing his work covering the tornado[citation needed], WBBM-TV in Chicago hired Kurtis and set the stage for a 30-year career with CBS.
[9] His legal education came into play when he covered the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial in 1969, which led to a job with CBS News in Los Angeles as correspondent.
A story Kurtis wrote for The New York Times Magazine was instrumental in obtaining special status for the children to enter the United States, where they live today.
In 1994, Kurtis obtained a videotape showing Richard Speck, convicted of murdering eight student nurses in Chicago in 1966, having jailhouse sex and using drugs within the maximum security facility known as Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois.
He aired a report on WBBM-TV and produced a documentary for A&E Network, resulting in the most sweeping changes to the Illinois penal system in its history.
He is the narrator of a multimedia book by Joe Garner, We Interrupt This Broadcast, with a foreword by Walter Cronkite and an epilogue by Brian Williams, which was a sequel to the Edward R. Murrow record album I Can Hear It Now.
In June 2015, Kurtis commenced lead hosting duties of Through the Decades, a daily news magazine that covers historical events from that particular day since the advent of television.
Author Randy Shilts decided to write his seminal 1987 book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and The AIDS Epidemic after attending an awards ceremony in 1983.
The Shrine of Christ's Passion, an interactive half-mile winding pathway of 40 life-size bronze statues depicting the Stations of the Cross that opened in June 2008, features a description of each scene and a short meditation recorded by Kurtis.
[19] Kurtis and his sister, Jean Schodorf, inherited the historic site of the Little House on the Prairie as designated by the State of Kansas.
It is now a not-for-profit museum with their grandmother's one-room schoolhouse, a tiny post office from Wayside, Kansas, a homesteader's farmhouse, and attendant farm buildings.