Dead Celebrity Alert

Richard Jewell, the Centennial Olympic Park security guard once suspected — but later cleared — in the bombing of the park during the 1996 Summer Games, was found dead Wednesday in his home in Meriwether County. He was 44.

County coroner Johnny Worley said Jewell’s wife discovered him dead in their Woodbury home at about 10:30 a.m., and he was pronounced dead by Worley about 45 minutes later. …

He said Jewell had been diagnosed with diabetes in February and had a couple of toes amputated. …

Jewell was initially lauded as a hero after a bomb went off at the July 27, 1996, Olympic celebration. He called attention to the suspicious knapsack that held a bomb and helped evacuate the area.

But days later he became the FBI’s chief suspect, as The AJC and other media outlets reported.

The FBI later cleared Jewell of any wrongdoing. He was never charged with a crime.

Eric Robert Rudolph pleaded guilty to the bombing in 2005 and is serving life in prison for it and other attacks.

After he was cleared, Jewell sued the Journal-Constitution and other media outlets for libel, arguing that their reports defamed him. Several news organizations settled, including NBC and CNN. … Read full obituary

Hilly Kristal, whose dank Bowery rock club CBGB served as the birthplace of the punk rock movement and a launching pad for bands like the Ramones, Blondie and the Talking Heads, has died. He was 75.

Kristal, who lost a bitter fight last year to stop the club’s eviction from its home of 33 years, died Tuesday at Cabrini Hospital after a battle with lung cancer, his son Mark Dana Kristal said Wednesday. …

While the club’s glory days were long past when it shut down, its name transcended the venue and become synonymous with the three-chord trash of punk and its influence on generations of musicians worldwide. …

Besides the Ramones and the Talking Heads, many of the other sonically defiant bands that found frenzied crowds at CBGB during those years became legendary — including Smith, Blondie and Television.

Smith said at the venue’s last show that Kristal “was our champion and in those days, there were very few.” … Read full obituary

HINSDALE, Ill., Aug. 27 (AP) — Charles Albert Comiskey II, grandson and namesake of the Chicago White Sox founder and a former front-office executive and co-owner during the Go Go Sox years in the 1950s, died in his sleep at his home here on Sunday. He was 81. …

His family name is one of the best known in Chicago sports, and Comiskey left his own mark in helping to remake the White Sox and send them to their first American League pennant in 40 years in 1959.

The White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf credited Comiskey, known as Chuck, with playing an important role in developing the resurgent Sox teams of the 1950s during his stint in the front office. … Read full obituary

NEW YORK — Leona Helmsley, the cutthroat hotel magnate whose title as the “queen of mean” was sealed during a tax evasion case in which she was quoted as snarling “only little people pay taxes,” died Monday at age 87.

Helmsley died of heart failure at her summer home in Greenwich, Conn., said her publicist, Howard Rubenstein.

Already experienced in real estate before her marriage, Helmsley helped her husband Harry run a $5 billion empire that included managing the Empire State Building. She became a household name in 1989 when she was tried for tax evasion. The sensational trial included testimony from disgruntled employees who said she terrorized both the menial and the executive help at her homes and hotels.

That image of Helmsley as the “queen of mean” was sealed when a former housekeeper testified that she heard Helmsley say: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” …

Helmsley clearly enjoyed the luxury of the couple’s private fortune… Their money supported charities, including NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and its affiliated Weill Cornell Medical College, which received tens of millions of dollars, including a $25 million gift in 2006 to improve its treatment of digestive diseases.

Yet Helmsley nickel-and-dimed merchants on her personal purchases, stiffed contractors who worked on her Connecticut home and terrorized both menial and executive help at her homes and hotels, detractors say. … Read full obituary

The thing about Phil Rizzuto was he made people smile. No, that’s wrong. He made people laugh — at his jokes, but mostly at him.

Take his induction into baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1994. The “Scooter,” as he was known, walked to the podium and the thousands in the Cooperstown, N. Y., audience had to bring out their hankies to wipe away the tears. Not because they were sad. Rizzuto made them laugh that hard.

Rizzuto, who would have been 90 in September, died Tuesday from pneumonia after living his last several years in declining health at a West Orange, N.J., nursing home.

This is a sad time for everyone who knew Rizzuto, the diminutive kid from Brooklyn who made it as a slick fielding shortstop for the Yankees and later became their beloved broadcaster. … Read full obituary

Brooke Astor, who by night reigned over New York society with a decided disdain for pretension and by day devoted her time and considerable resources to New York’s unfortunate, died Monday afternoon at her weekend estate, Holly Hill, in Briarcliff Manor, New York. She was 105. …

The attending physician listed the cause of death as pneumonia, Warner said.

Astor’s image as a benevolent society matron was overshadowed last year by that of a victimized dowager at the center of a very public family battle over her care and fortune. Yet for decades she had been known as the city’s unofficial first lady, one who moved effortlessly from the sumptuous apartments of Fifth Avenue to the ragged barrios of East Harlem, deploying her inherited millions to help the poor help themselves.

Among the rich of New York, she was perhaps the last bridge to the Gilded Age, when “society” was a closed world of old-money families, the so-called Four Hundred.

But it was a changing social order that Brooke Astor oversaw. Hers was a society defined more by balance sheets than bloodline. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES — Merv Griffin, the entertainer turned impresario who parlayed his “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune” game shows into a multimillion-dollar empire, has died. He was 82.

Griffin died of prostate cancer…

Griffin, who began his career as a $100-a-week radio singer in San Francisco, created the “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” game shows, soon moved on to become the featured vocalist in Freddy Martin’s band.

That led to a brief film career, in which he appeared opposite Doris Day and Kathryn Grayson, and later to a successful TV career as host of “The Merv Griffin Show,” which aired for more than 20 years.

His biggest financial break, however, came from inventing and producing “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune.” … Read full obituary

Wolfgang Sievers, one of Australia’s most accomplished photographers whose work captured the relationship between man and machine, has died aged 93.

Fleeing Nazi persecution, German-born Sievers arrived in Australia at the outbreak of World War II and quickly found his niche in documenting the country’s post-war manufacturing boom. …

His specialty and skill was in recognising the beauty in industrial forms and documenting the working lives of ordinary men and women, typified in what is possibly his most recognised work, Gears for Mining Industry 1967. … Read full obituary

The man who gave us the song “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” has died.

Singer-songwriter Lee Hazlewood died of kidney cancer at his home outside Las Vegas on Saturday evening, according to the Clark County coroner’s office. He was 78.

Hazelwood wrote and produced “Boots” for Nancy Sinatra. He also wrote “Sugartown” and “Some Velvet Morning” for Sinatra, and he produced the song ”Something Stupid” for Sinatra and her father, Frank, in 1967. … Read full obituary

Jerry Ringlien, best known as creator of the “My bologna has a first name” campaign, died of a heart attack Monday in Wilkesboro, N.C. He was 77.

Mr. Ringlien worked at Oscar Mayer for 23 years, rising to VP-marketing. During that time he worked on the “I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener” campaign and later revived the popular “wienermobile.” … Read full obituary