Dead Celebrity Alert

The death of former Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Doug Ault was ruled a suicide, a Florida medical examiner said Tuesday.

Ault died Dec. 22 at 54 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at his Tarpon Springs, Fla., home. … Read full obituary

Among them:

- Aussie footballer Troy Broadbridge;

- Poom Jensen, 21, grandson of Thai King Bhumipol Adulyadej;

- Lucy Attenborough, 14, granddaughter of director-actor Richard Attenborough (whose “daughter, Jane, and her mother-in-law are missing in Phuket”)

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — A German statesman, a Czech supermodel and a Swedish Olympic ski champion were among the vacationers whose search for peace and sun in tropical southern Asia was shattered by the tsunamis that spared neither rich nor poor…. Read full story

Story to come.

Eddie Layton, a sports institution in New York as the organist at Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden, died Sunday at his home in Forest Hills, Queens. … Read full obituary

Author Susan Sontag, widely regarded as one of America’s leading intellectuals, has died aged 71.

The writer, who had suffered from leukaemia, died at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. … Read full obituary

Former NFL star Reggie White died Sunday morning at his home near Huntersville, N.C., his wife said. White turned 43 on Dec. 19. …

Reggie White, nicknamed the “Minister of Defense” (a dual reference to his football prowess and to his Evangelical Christian ordination) was one of the American football’s most prolific sackers in college, the USFL and the NFL. …

He raised controversy in 1998 when he publicly condemned homosexuality. … Read full obituary

Larry Buchanan, 81, a film director who went from making inspirational films for Oral Roberts to turning out a spate of lurid, awful B movies, among them “Zontar, the Thing From Venus,” “The Eye Creatures” and, most famously, “Mars Needs Women,” died Dec. 2 in Tucson, Ariz. The cause was complications of a collapsed lung, his wife, Jane, said. … Read full obituary

(CBS/AP) Pauline Gore, whose son Al became vice president and nearly captured the presidency and whose husband served a lengthy and distinguished career in Congress, died Wednesday.

She died in her sleep last night at the family home at the age of 92. … Read full obituary

Side note: Anyone out there running a “Suspicious Circumstances” Dead Pool? If you know anything about Gary Webb and his work, this is not a guy you’d expect to off himself. And while it could be a typo, note the mention of “gunshot wounds” (plural). Very strange indeed…

Gary Webb, a prize-winning investigative journalist whose star-crossed career was capped with a controversial newspaper series linking the CIA to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles, died Friday of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, officials said. … Read full story

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Police released the name of the gunman who allegedly went on a shooting rampage at a Columbus nightclub Wednesday night, killing four people before a police officer shot him dead.

Nathan Gale, 25, of Marysville, reportedly jumped onto a concert stage and open fire, NBC 4 reported. …

Darrell Abbott, who was known as “Dimebag Darrell,” was pronounced dead at the scene… Read full story

WORTHINGTON, Ohio — America’s oldest person (search), a 114-year-old woman who voted in every election since women earned the right in 1920 and had the thinnest file in her doctor’s office, has died.

Verona Johnston died Wednesday at home in Worthington, said her daughter, Julie Johnson.

“She just wore out,” Johnson said. … Read full obituary