Dead Celebrity Alert

DALLAS, Ga. — Police are investigating the apparent suicide of a former drummer for Michigan rocker Ted Nugent.

Corporal Brandon Gurley with the Paulding County Sheriff’s department says 59-year-old Clifford Davies was found dead from a gunshot wound in his suburban Atlanta home Sunday. …

Reed Beaver, who owns Equametric Studio in Marietta where Davies was a chief engineer, confirmed Davies was a drummer for Nugent and played on his trademark recording “Cat Scratch Fever.”

Beaver says Davies called him Saturday “extremely distraught” over medical bills. … Read full story

English-born Northern Ireland minister whose political career was cut short by the outbreak of the Troubles

Captain William Long had the bad luck to be Home Affairs Minister of Northern Ireland when the Troubles exploded there in the late 1960s. His tenure was brief, from December 1968 until March 1969.

Part of his job was responsibility for keeping order during the many sectarian parades held annually in the Province, which tended to inflame the passions of the participants and those excluded. …

Captain William Long, OBE, politician and fisherman, was born on April 23, 1922. He died on February 10, 2008, aged 85 … Read full obituary

John Wheeler, the scientist who gave the phenomenon of ‘black holes’ its name, has died at the age of 96.

The eminent physician died of pneumonia at his home in New Jersey on Sunday April 13th.

During his career Professor Wheeler made numerous scientific contributions to many of the research advances of the 20th century.

He worked with scientists including Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr and was instrumental in the development of both the atomic and hydrogen bombs. … Read full obituary

Found dead in an Atlanta hotel room today, April 15, 2008. No obituary links so far but you can read his bio here:

“I love playing the guitar,” Sean Costello is prone to say. “As a kid I was definitely obsessive over the instrument,” the twenty-five year-old explains, “and for years I felt I could express myself better through the guitar with my own voice. But right now I’m equally driven towards writing songs and expanding my vocal direction,” he adds.

Costello was born in Philadelphia in 1979 and moved with his family to Atlanta at the age of 9. Soon after, he picked up the guitar. By 14 he had won the Memphis Blues Society’s talent award and was already on the road with his own band. In 1996, the 17 year-old released his first album, Call The Cops. Real Blues Magazine called it “an explosive debut.” Around this time Costello joined up with fellow blues guitarist Susan Tedeschi, touring with her and laying down some exuberant lead guitar work on her Gold-certified Tone-Cool debut Just Won’t Burn. … Read full bio

Ollie Johnston, the last of the “Nine Old Men” who animated “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Fantasia,” “Bambi” and other classic Walt Disney films, died Monday. He was 95.

Johnston died of natural causes at a long-term care facility in Sequim, Washington, Walt Disney Studios Vice President Howard Green said Tuesday. …

Walt Disney lightheartedly dubbed his team of crack animators his “Nine Old Men,” borrowing the phrase from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s description of the U.S. Supreme Court’s members…

Perhaps the two most accomplished of the nine were Johnston and his close friend Frank Thomas, who died in 2004 at age 92. … Read full obituary

Jerry Zucker, a Charleston billionaire, a prolific inventor and a noted philanthropist, died Saturday at his home after a battle with cancer.

Forbes magazine often listed Zucker, 58, among the wealthiest Americans and the magazine placed his company, InterTech Group, on its list of the country’s largest private firms. …

In October, Forbes reported Zucker’s net worth exceeded $1 billion, but it wasn’t enough to land him on the magazine’s 2007 list of America’s richest people. He had made the list in past years. …

Zucker’s first major invention came as a high school science project: A Revolutionary Phase Factor for Colinear Electromagnetic Waves. The technology was used as part of the first lunar landing module. He went on to create more than 350 inventions that led to patents and commercially successful products. … Read full obituary

Lawrence Lloyd Brown Sr., an original member of the legendary Blue Notes, the Philly-based R&B group orignally known as Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, died Sunday of a respiratory condition. He was 63 and lived in North Philadelphia.

Lawrence was still performing with the group until January, when he became ill while singing at the Harrah’s casino, in Chester. …

Probably its most famous member was Teddy Pendergrass, who was brought on in 1970 as a drummer in the group’s backup band. He soon graduated to lead singer and performed through most of the ’70s on some of the Blue Notes’ most popular hits.

Some of their songs were “I Miss You,” “If You Don’t Know Me by Now,” “The Love I Lost,” “Bad Luck” and “Wake up Eveybody.” … Read full obituary

There is heartache and pain for Sumter and the South Carolina athletic community. Both are in mourning tonight after the sudden, and, to this point, unexplainable death of football player Jamacia Jackson.

Jackson first grabbed the spotlight at Sumter High School when he was one of the top players in the state, playing in the 1999 Shrine Bowl. Jackson would move on to USC, playing safety and special teams for coach Lou Holtz from 2001-2204. Jamacia Jackson was about to enter his second season in the Canadian Football League where he continued to pursue his pro football dreams.

Monday morning the 26 year-old was found dead at his girlfriend’s home, he had presumably died in his sleep. How he died remains a mystery. …

This past January Jamacia Jackson signed on with the CFL’s Hamilton Tiger Cats. …

Jamacia Jackson is the second Palmetto State football player to pass away in the last few weeks. Newberry College offensive lineman Heath Benedict died last month. He was found dead on a couch in his Florida home. … Read full obituary

GREEN ISLAND — Francis “Len” Real, a public servant in the community throughout the 1980s and `90s, died Sunday. He was 86. …

Real was a lifelong resident of Green Island. …

In his free time, besides entering politics, he worked as a technical advisor for the 1984 Olympics in Lake Placid. He convinced the organizers to include Green Island on the route when the Olympic torch passed through the area. … Read full obituary

Where is Green Island?

Former U.S. representative Bill Dickinson, who came to office in the election in which Barry Goldwater helped turn Alabama into a two-party state, died March 31. He was 82. … He had colon cancer.

Mr. Dickinson, a former judge in city, juvenile and circuit courts in Opelika, Ala., was one of several Democrats recruited to change parties in 1964 and run as Republicans for Congress in a state that had been solidly Democratic for a century.

In an election set against a Deep South backlash to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential nominee, carried Alabama and helped Republicans claim five of Alabama’s eight seats in the U.S. House. …

Mr. Dickinson was reelected every two years until he decided to retire in 1992 and settle in Montgomery. …

Mr. Dickinson served on the House Armed Services Committee, where he became the ranking Republican member. He was an ardent defender of military spending during the Vietnam War and protected military bases that were an important part of Alabama’s economy. … Read full obituary

1:15 p.m. April 11, 2008 BAKERSFIELD — Joe Shell, a former Assemblyman who mounted a colorful campaign challenging Richard Nixon for the 1962 Republican gubernatorial nomination, has died. He was 89.

Shell, a conservative who served for five years as the GOP minority leader in the California Assembly, had been in declining health since breaking several ribs in January…

During his unsuccessful campaign for governor, Shell piloted his own Beechcraft Bonanza from one campaign stop to the next with a pet poodle at his side in the cockpit, emphasizing an ultraconservative platform that ultimately split loyalties in the GOP. …

Shell accused his primary opponent, former Vice President Nixon, of trying to use Sacramento as a way to get back to Washington. Shell won 35 percent of the vote and Nixon lost to Democratic incumbent Pat Brown in the general election. … Read full obituary

Former state judge Stewart Hanson Jr., 69, died March 30, 2008.

Mr. Hanson was perhaps best known for presiding over the 1976 Utah aggravated kidnapping trial of Ted Bundy and sentencing Bundy to up to 15 years in prison. Serial killer Bundy later was extradited to Colorado, where he escaped from jail, went on a crime spree and was eventually executed for murder in Florida.

Mr. Hanson was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1992. … Read full obituary

Ameriquest Mortgage founder Roland E. Arnall, 68, a billionaire who became a symbol of the subprime lending industry he helped create, died March 17 at the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center. Esophageal cancer was diagnosed…

Mr. Arnall, a Holocaust survivor who co-founded the Simon Wiesenthal Center, had resigned as President Bush’s ambassador to the Netherlands on March 7, returning to Los Angeles to be with a seriously ill son who had Hodgkin’s disease.

Intensely private about his business and charitable affairs, Mr. Arnall built a real estate and financial services empire that transformed him into one of the nation’s wealthiest people, with his fortune estimated last year at $1.5 billion by Forbes magazine.

Once the nation’s largest subprime mortgage lender, Ameriquest was shadowed by accusations that it engaged in improper practices that included lying about borrowers’ income to qualify them for loans they couldn’t afford. Ameriquest advertised heavily on television, sent blimps soaring above stadiums bearing the company’s name and Liberty Bell logo and sponsored a Super Bowl halftime show and a Rolling Stones tour. …

A major supporter of Bush and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. Arnall and his second wife, Dawn, gave more than $12 million to GOP causes and candidates, becoming the heaviest donors to the 2004 election cycle, according to campaign finance records.

Mr. Arnall said he backed Bush because of his support for Israel. … Read full obituary

Widely remembered for his excessive corpulence on stage and television, Willoughby Goddard spent over 40 years never trying to disguise it. It brought him authority, variety, monotony and joy. Whether he was genial or aggressive, alarming or soothing, he could be cast in all sorts of moods. Sometimes he played up self-consciously to his weightiness; sometimes it hardly mattered. He could play judges, professors, mayors, landlords, managing directors and chairmen; he could also play sundry characters of no importance whatever. …

He was the the bulky Mr Holmes in Jack Roffey’s whodunnit, No Other Verdict (Duchess, 1954), and as the “massive vulgarian” Gowing in The Diary of a Nobody (Arts), six chapters of the book by George and Weedon Grossmith, Goddard was able to “talk to his hosts with conviction” in a show adapted by Basil Dean and Richard Blake.

On television he created first a fine impression as Professor Mark Harrison in The Voices; and in the Adventures of William Tell he put the shivers up watchers as the hero’s splendidly weighty main protagonist. … Read full obituary

Convicted sex offender, and accused cannibal, Nathaniel Bar Jonah, was sentenced 130 years after he was convicted of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and choking a teenage boy. He was also charge din 200 for the 1996 disappearance of 10 year old Zach Ramsey. Authorities believed that Bar Jonah had killed the boy and served his body in meals served to neighbors. Authorities later dismissed the charger after the young boy’s mother agreed to testify that she believed her son was still living. …

Bar Jonah was charged with kidnapping, attempted murder and impersonation of a police officer in 1997. He allegedly posed as an officer and kidnapped two boys in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. He tried to strangle the boys when they resisted his attempt to assault them. One of the boys escaped from Bar Jonah and found help. … Read full story