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In 1969 and 1970, Guilford County was captivated by a high-profile murder case involving two business associates, Gloyd Vestal and Angelo Pinnisi. Vestal owned Vestal's Florists and had a stake in the King's Inn. He also owned several motels in Myrtle Beach with Pinnisi, a partner in an insurance company. After a nine-day, standing-room-only trial, Vestal was convicted of murdering Pinnisi. He ended up serving five and a half years in prison.

Vestal passed away last week. In an article about his death, our local history writer, Jim Schlosser, noted the murder trial in some detail. As a result, he has heard from a number of people questioning why we included the information about the murder. The story was in the distant past and bringing it back up hurt the feelings of the family, many people told him.

Like many other newspapers, we charge for obituaries that are written by family members or funeral homes. This practice allows survivors to say what they'd like about the deceased. His family submitted a paid obit. On occasion, when someone of note dies, we publish what we call a news obit. Jim used the death of Mr. Vestal to revisit the crime.

Chip Scanlan of The Poynter Institute wrote a column about obituaries. Here is an excerpt that applies here: "A definition: An obituary (the root of the word is 'obit,' the Latin word for 'death')is a news report of someone's death, often with a biographical sketch of the deceased. Think of an obituary as a capsule biography published after a person dies.

"'That's what an obit is supposed to be -- a picture, a snapshot. It's not a full-length biography, it's not a portrait. It's a quick picture," observed Alden Whitman, who specialized in obituaries at The New York Times and was famously profiled by Gay Talese in "Mr. Bad News," a 1966 Esquire profile. In a rich report from last summer's Fourth Great Obituary Writers' Conference, New Yorker writer Mark Singer offered this elegant definition of the form: a "completed cycle of accomplishment or notoriety, concisely wrought."

A good news obituary identifies a "defining line, an insight into the heart and soul of the life," one obit writer told Singer. I don't know that the murder conviction was the defining line in Mr. Vestal's life. But to the community, it is certainly a part of how he is remembered. To exclude it from a news obituary would have been as inappropriate as omitting what he did for a living.

What we do causes us to hurt people's feelings. It is not something we take lightly; we have numerous discussions every day on a variety of stories about sensitivity, compassion and tone. Yet our core purpose of seeking and telling the truth demands that we tell the story as completely and honestly as we know it.