Dead Celebrity Alert

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, convicted last month of running a high-end prostitution service in Washington, hanged herself today in a shed outside her mother’s mobile home in Florida, officials said.

Authorities were called to the Sun Valley Estates Mobile Home Park in Tarpon Springs, Fla., by 76-year-old Blanche Palfrey, who found her daughter’s body hanging by a nylon rope shortly before 11 a.m., Tarpon Springs police Capt. Jeffrey P. Young said at a news conference. He said Deborah Palfrey left at least two suicide notes, but he declined to discuss their contents. …

Palfrey, 52, was free while awaiting sentencing June 25 on federal racketeering charges. A federal jury convicted her April 15 of running a Washington area call-girl ring in the guise of “a high-end erotic fantasy service,” rejecting her argument that she was unaware for 13 years that female escorts she employed were performing sex acts with clients for money. …Read full story

See also:

D.C. Madam Update: Vitter, Tobias, Ullman spared long-anticipated (and well-deserved) humiliation
Conservative Babylon, April 15, 2008

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

John E. List, who escaped his drab existence as a failed New Jersey accountant by killing his family in 1971, disappearing and building a new life far away until a true-crime show on television led to his capture almost 18 years later, died on Friday. He was 82.

Mr. List died at St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton four days after being taken there from the New Jersey State Prison, officials told The Associated Press. The cause was complications of pneumonia.

The larger world had never heard of John Emil List until his neighbors began to wonder why the lights in his family’s house in Westfield, N.J., were going out one by one in the fall of 1971…

When police officers entered the home on Dec. 7, 1971, they heard organ music on an intercom system and found the bodies of Mr. List’s wife, Helen, 46; his daughter, Patricia, 16; his sons John, 15, and Frederick, 13, and his mother, Alma, 85. All had been shot to death. …

In 1989, Union County prosecutors asked the producers of the Fox program “America’s Most Wanted” to look at the case. To help, the producers brought in Frank Bender, a forensic sculptor, and Richard Walter, a criminal psychologist. …

Mr. List was convicted of murder and sentenced to five life terms in prison. He appealed, unsuccessfully, on grounds that his judgment had been impaired by post-traumatic stress disorder from military service in World War II and Korea and that his letter to the pastor should have been kept confidential.

In a 2002 television interview on ABC with Connie Chung, Mr. List was asked why he did not take his own life if he felt so overwhelmed. Mr. List said that he thought suicide would have barred him from heaven and that he had hoped to be reunited there with his family. … Read full obituary

Also:
John List at Conservative Babylon

America’s Most Wanted on John List

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

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

SANTA ROSA — Jim Mitchell, the porn czar who co-founded the Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre and who later shot his brother to death, died Thursday night at his Sonoma County home. He was 63. …

The cause of death was not immediately known, but foul play was not suspected. An autopsy was conducted today, Mana said.

Mitchell grew up in Antioch. He and his brother, Artie Mitchell, opened their adult theater in San Francisco on July 4, 1969. The two also produced a string of pornographic movies, including “Behind the Green Door” with Marilyn Chambers in 1972.

In 1992, Jim Mitchell was convicted of kicking in the door of his brother’s Corte Madera home and shooting him to death. …

Mitchell served five years in San Quentin State Prison before being paroled in 1997. … Read full obituary

DENVER — Actor Woody Harrelson’s father, Charles Harrelson, died of a heart attack in the Supermax federal prison where he was serving two life sentences for the murder of a federal judge, officials said Wednesday.

Charles Harrelson, 69, was found unresponsive in his cell on the morning of March 15, said Felicia Ponce, a Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman in Washington. …

Charles Harrelson was convicted of murder in the May 29, 1979, slaying of U.S. District Judge John Wood Jr. outside his San Antonio, Texas, home. …

Charles Harrelson denied the killing, saying he was in Dallas, 270 miles away, at the time. …

Charles Harrelson was transferred to Supermax, the highest-security federal prison, after attempting to break out of an Atlanta federal prison in 1995. …

The actor was just 7 when his father was first sent to prison, for murdering a Texas businessman. He was in college when his father was convicted of the judge’s assassination. … Read full obituary

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Stan Duke, who became one of the first black sportscasters in Southern California nearly 40 years ago and later served prison time for shooting to death his wife’s lover, has died. He was 70. …

In 1968, he became a sportscaster for the CBS TV station in Los Angeles.

He covered the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, where he interviewed sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos after they raised clenched-fist black power salutes on the winners’ podium.

In 1971, he was convicted of second-degree murder for shooting to death radio commentator and minority rights activist Averill Berman, who was sleeping with Duke’s estranged wife. … Read full obituary

BELGRADE, Serbia: A former government official who was charged this week with syphoning millions of dollars (euros) of state money to foreign accounts, has died, an official said Friday.

Jovan Zebic, who held top government posts during the rule of Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s, died late Thursday, said Ivica Dacic, the leader of the late president’s Socialist Party.

The cause of death was not revealed. … Read full story

Related:
Slobodan Milosevic found dead in prison cell

JACKSON, Miss. — Ellie Dahmer found little comfort in the death of the Ku Klux Klan leader who ordered the assassination of her husband, saying Samuel H. Bowers lived a much longer life than the man she married.

Bowers, who was serving a life sentence for the 1966 bombing death of Vernon Dahmer Sr., died Sunday in a state penitentiary, officials said. He was 82. …

Bowers died of cardio pulmonary arrest, said Mississippi Department of Corrections spokeswoman Tara Booth.

Bowers was convicted in August of 1998 of ordering the hit on Dahmer, a civil rights activist in Mississippi’s turbulent struggle over racial equality.

Dahmer’s widow said the death brings little closure to a wound she has nursed for decades. … Read full obituary

David P. Conn, known as an aggressive but fair deputy district attorney who won the high-profile Menendez brothers’ case in 1996, has died. He was 56.

Conn died Tuesday, about five months after he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, said his wife Rosemary.

Conn was best known as the prosecutor who salvaged the Menendez case after a first trial ended in a hung jury. He won first-degree murder convictions and life sentences for Erik and Lyle Menendez, accused of murdering their millionaire parents in August 1989. Conn also helped police during the grand jury phase of the O.J. Simpson trial. … Read full obituary

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Kenneth Lay, the former chairman of Enron as well as a founder of the company, is dead, according to a report on CNBC. Lay was convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges by a federal jury in Houston on May 25 for his part in the high-profile collapse of Enron. CNBC said Lay died at his home in Aspen, Colo., of a heart attack. Jeffery Skilling, the ex-CEO of Enron, was also convicted in late May. The pair had yet to be sentenced for the charges, and each man was facing at least 20 years in prison. … Read full obituary

Related:

Ex-Enron exec J. Clifford Baxter suicides out

El Paso Corp. exec Charles Dana Rice, apparent suicide

DENVER — Patsy Ramsey, the mother of slain 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, died Saturday morning after a recurrence of ovarian cancer, her lawyer L. Lin Wood told MSNBC. She was 49.

Ramsey had been battling ovarian cancer since 1993 and suffered a recurrence three years ago, Wood said. Ramsey died around 3:30 a.m. at her father’s home in the Atlanta area. Her husband, John, was with her at the time of her death. …

JonBenet was found beaten and strangled in her parents’ Boulder, Colo., basement on Dec. 26, 1996. A grand jury investigation ended with no indictments, and no arrests have been made.

The Ramseys said an intruder killed their daughter but a cloud of suspicion hung over the couple. The district attorney and a federal judge in Colorado have said it is likelier that an intruder was responsible. … Read full obituary

John M. Falotico, the detective who arrested David R. Berkowitz, the notorious “Son of Sam” killer, died on Saturday at his home in North Brunswick, N.J. He was 82. …

Mr. Falotico’s date with destiny came around 10 p.m. on Aug. 10, 1977. … With summer heat still hanging in the evening air, Detective Falotico approached the driver’s side of a car parked in front of 35 Pine Street in Yonkers.

He thrust his pistol inches from the temple of a young man who had just gotten into the car, a cream-colored Ford Galaxie, while Detective Sgt. William Gardella pointed his gun from the passenger’s side.

Next to the man in the car was a paper bag later found to contain a .44-caliber revolver of the type used in the shootings. As described in “Son of Sam” (1981), by Lawrence D. Klausner, what Detective Falotico (pronounced fa-LAH-tik-o) could never forget was the big, inexplicable smile on the man’s face.

“Now that I’ve got you,” Detective Falotico said to the suspect, “who have I got?” … Read full obituary

Vincent Gigante, who died yesterday in federal prison at 77, was the Genovese crime family boss who for three decades feigned lunacy to evade prosecution for crimes ranging from loan sharking to murder to bribing the entire police force of Old Tappan, N.J.

He was known as “Chin,” and his moniker was often invoked by denizens of the Mafia underworld with a hand-to-chin gesture rather than a word, the better to foil police bugs. To the writers of headlines he was sometimes “Daffy Don” or “the Oddfather” for his habit of walking the streets of the West Village clad in a bathrobe, striped pyjamas, and slippers, while muttering incoherently. Federal prosecutors claimed it was an act, but it was not until 2003, after more than three decades of faking mental illness, that Gigante admitted in court that he did it to avoid prosecution. … Read full obituary