Dead Celebrity Alert

Paul Winchell, the voice of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh features for more than three decades and a versatile ventriloquist who became a fixture in early children’s television along with his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff, has died. He was 82. … Read full obituary

John K. Vance, 89, a member of the Central Intelligence Agency inspector general’s staff in the early 1960s who discovered that the agency was running a research project that included administering LSD and other drugs to unwitting human subjects, died May 27 of respiratory arrest. … Read full obituary

Richard Eberhart, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet considered one of the foremost writers of lyric verse in the 20th century, died on Thursday at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was 101. … Read full obituary

Anne Bancroft, enshrined in film history as the iconic Mrs. Robinson, the seductress who devours her daughter’s nerdy boyfriend-to-be (Dustin Hoffman) in the 1967 film “The Graduate,” and also remembered for her sensitive portrayal on both stage and screen of Annie Sullivan, the teacher who leads the blind and deaf Helen Keller out of darkness into light in “The Miracle Worker,” died Monday at Mount Sinai Medical Center. She was 73. … Read full obituary

VIENNA, Austria (AP) — Leon Askin, the actor who played Gen. Albert Burkhalter in the 1960s television comedy “Hogan’s Heroes,” has died, Austrian officials said Friday. …

Askin was best known for his role as the Nazi general who constantly threatened to send the prisoner of war camp’s inept commander, Col. Wilhelm Klink, to the Russian front because of his stupidity. … Read full obituary

FONTANA, Calif. — Two San Diego County men were killed when their Porsche crashed and burned at the California Speedway, authorities said. …

The passenger, Corey Nicholas Rudl, 34, died at the scene. The driver, Benjamin Miles Keaton, 39, was airlifted to Loma Linda University Hospital, where he died about an hour later, according to the county coroner’s office. … Read full story

George Mikan, the “gentle giant” who a half-century ago brought fame and stability to the fledgling world of professional basketball and literally transformed the game, has died 18 days shy of his 81st birthday. … Read full obituary