Dead Celebrity Alert

MELBOURNE, Aug. 12 (UPI) — An Australian man suspected of putting his wife in a vegetative state hanged himself the day of her funeral.

The Melbourne Herald Sun reported Joe Korp’s parents and brother found his body hanging in a shed outside his Melbourne home. …

Maria Korp disappeared in February. She was found a few days later unconscious in Melbourne’s Hall of Remembrance.

She died in August after her guardian ordered her feeding tube removed. … Read full story

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., the dynamic, eminently quotable attorney whose televised murder defense of O.J. Simpson made him a legal superstar died Tuesday. He was 67.

Cochran died of a brain tumor at his home in Los Angeles, his family said in a statement.

With his colorful suits and ties, his gift for courtroom oratory and a knack for coining memorable phrases, Cochran was a vivid addition to the pantheon of great American barristers.

His catch phrase in the Simpson trial, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” would be quoted and parodied for years afterward. It derived from a dramatic moment during which Simpson tried on a pair of bloodstained “murder gloves” to show jurors they did not fit. Some legal experts called it the turning point in the trial.

Soon after, jurors found the Hall of Fame football star not guilty of the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. …

For Cochran, Simpson’s acquittal was the crowning achievement in a career notable for victories, often in cases with racial themes. He was a black man known for championing the causes of black defendants. Some of them, like Simpson, were famous, but more often than not they were unknowns. … Read full obituary

MIAMI (AP) — Richard Hirschfeld, a colorful confidant of boxing champ Muhammad Ali who spent most of the last eight years as a fugitive from the federal government, killed himself Tuesday in jail.

Hirschfeld, 57, died the same day authorities told his attorney that final arrangements had been made to move him to Norfolk, Va., for trial. He had been on the lam for more than eight years until he was arrested in October in a closet at a lavish riverfront home in Fort Lauderdale. …

Hirschfeld accompanied Ali to the Middle East in 1985 in a highly publicized attempt to gain the release of American hostages in Iran. They later had a falling out…

Hirschfeld was convicted of tax evasion and securities fraud charges in 1991, and was wanted on federal conspiracy charges when he was captured last year. He faced up to 70 years in prison. … Read full story

MAITLAND, Fla. (AP) — A former Darmouth basketball player suspected of drowning his toddler daughter and attempting to drown his 4-year-old son killed himself Monday by swerving into the path of a tractor trailer, authorities said. His two other children were injured in the crash.

Police believe the drowning and crash that killed Bryan Christopher Randall are the result of a dispute with his estranged wife. In a suicide letter found in the wreckage, Randall wrote he wanted to kill himself and his children because he didn’t approve of how his ex-wife was caring for them, authorities said. …

The crash happened about eight miles north of the small lake where Randall’s 2-year-old daughter Yanna and 4-year-old son Regal were found Sunday morning by a fisherman. The boy was in serious condition Monday, and an autopsy was to be done on his sister. … Read full story

Mike Echols, author of the book chronicling the kidnapping of Steven Stayner, and a child crime victims’ advocate, died in the Monterey County jail early Saturday morning of an apparent heart attack.

He had been serving time since last month for violating his probation for two 1999 misdemeanor convictions of making criminal threats.

Echols, 58, made his name by writing the best-selling book “I Know My First Name Is Steven.” The story, which told of the 1972 abduction of 7-year-old Steven Stayner by Kenneth Parnell, was also made into a television movie. Parnell held Steven for seven years before the teenager escaped, only to be killed by a hit-and-run driver in 1989.

In an odd twist, Echols came back into the Stayner family’s life last fall to testify on behalf of Steven Stayner’s brother, Cary. Cary Stayner was on trial for the murders of three Yosemite tourists and sentenced to death last month. … Read full obituary

Moors murderer Myra Hindley has been cremated.

A private funeral service held for the child killer was attended by only a handful of mourners… Read full story

Related:
U.K. child killer Myra Hindley, 60

UK ‘Moors Murderer’ Myra Hindley dies

LONDON, Nov. 15 (UPI) — Serial killer Myra Hindley, one of Britain’s infamous “Moors Murderers” who with her lover Ian Brady tortured and killed at least four children in the 1960s, died Friday after 36 years in prison as one of the nation’s most hated criminals.

The 60-year-old Hindley was hospitalized at Bury St. Edmunds, England, after suffering a heart attack complicated by a severe chest infection. She died only hours after a Roman Catholic priest administered the last rites, without gaining the freedom she had fought for years to regain… Read full obituary

Aileen Carol Wuornos, called the “Damsel of Death,” was executed voluntarily and peacefully by lethal injection Wednesday morning, dying much more gently than any of the seven men she shot to death a dozen years ago. …

She was pronounced dead at 9:47 a.m. said Jill Bratina, a spokeswoman for Gov. Jeb Bush.

Wuornos, 46, hitchhiked the highways and interstates of North Central Florida, where she robbed and murdered her middle-age victims over 13 months in 1989-90.

She was executed for the shooting death of Richard Mallory, 51, an appliance store owner from Clearwater whose body was found near Daytona Beach in 1991. Wuornos confessed to killing six other men, including one whose body has never been found.

Wuornos, one of the nation’s rare female serial killers, was only the second woman to be executed in Florida and the second inmate to be put to death in a week. … Read full obituary

Angelo Buono Jr., whose gruesome killing of young Los Angeles women in the 1970s earned him the nickname “Hillside Strangler,” died Saturday in his prison cell, corrections officials said.

Buono, 67, was found dead in his cell at Calipatria State Prison in Imperial County, said Bob Martinez, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections.

The cause of death was not immediately known but Martinez said Buono suffered from heart problems. There were no signs of trauma, and Buono alone in his own cell when he died.

In November 1983, Buono was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after being convicted of killing nine young women and dumping their nude bodies on Los Angeles-area hillsides, earning him the nickname “Hillside Strangler.”

His adoptive cousin, Kenneth Bianchi, pleaded guilty to five of the murders and testified against Buono. Bianchi is serving his prison sentence in Washington state, where he killed two other women. … Read full obituary

A suspect in the kidnapping of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart died Friday at a hospital three days after suffering from a brain hemorrhage and collapsing in his jail cell, doctors said. …

Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse this week reaffirmed that Ricci remained at the top of the list of potential suspects in Elizabeth’s abduction. However, investigators were no closer to finding the missing 14-year-old than they were June 5, when a gunman took her from the bedroom she was sharing with her younger sister. … Read full obituary

HILLSBORO, W.Va. — White supremacist William Pierce came to this isolated town nearly 20 years ago for the cheap land and its live-and-let-live attitude. He left behind an international organization based on hate.

Pierce, the author of “The Turner Diaries” and founder of the right-wing National Alliance, died Tuesday of cancer at his 400-acre compound. He was 68. …

Pierce’s novel, written under the pen name Andrew Macdonald and published in 1978, depicts a violent overthrow of the government by a small band of white supremacists who finance themselves through counterfeiting and bank robbery.

It has long been standard reading among supremacist groups and gained notoriety as a book favored by Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh.

Set at the end of the 20th century, it describes a fictional truck bombing of FBI headquarters in Washington — a scene that roughly prefigures the Oklahoma City bombing. … Read full obituary

John Gotti, who swaggered, schemed and murdered his way to the pinnacle of organized crime in America only to be toppled by secret FBI tapes and a turncoat mobster’s testimony, died at a prison hospital Monday. He was 61.

The U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo., announced the death of the former Mafia boss. Gotti had suffered from throat cancer and had been moved to the prison hospital from the maximum-security federal prison in Marion, Ill. …

Once known as the “Dapper Don” for his fine double-breasted suits and confident bearing, and as the “Teflon Don” after a series of acquittals, Gotti was sentenced to life in 1992 for racketeering and six killings. … Read full obituary

Frederick [Maryland] author Harold Weisberg, considered one of the country’s leading experts on the John F. Kennedy assassination, died Thursday afternoon at his home on Old Receiver Road.

Mr. Weisberg, 88, had been in ill health for a number of years, but still managed to continue his research into the JFK assassination. He published seven books on the subject as well as a book on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

. . .

Mr. Weisberg’s work on the JFK assassination wasn’t a “who done it,” he often said, rather he wrote about how he believed the country’s institutions broke down during a crisis.

“The executive agencies, the press, the courts and Congress failed to meet an obligation,” he once said in a newspaper interview. “Finding out who did it would be wonderful, but the important thing today is to do whatever we can to see that it doesn’t happen again.” … Read full obituary

Another one from the TV news (no Web links yet):

Nikolay Soltys, the 27-year-old Ukrainian immigrant who in August, 2001, stabbed six members of his family to death in Sacramento, CA (and whose high-profile case was knocked off the front pages by the 9-11 attacks), was found hanged to death in his prison cell. There’s some talk about this apparent suicide being “suspicious” — but no details yet.

Read background info

Lawrence Singleton, who chopped off a teen-age hitchhiker’s forearms in California and was later sent to death row in Florida for killing a prostitute, has died of cancer behind bars. He was 74.

Singleton died Friday at the North Florida Reception Center in Starke. He had been on death row since 1997, but no execution date had been set.

In 1978, Singleton raped 15-year-old Mary Vincent, cut off her forearms with an ax and left her to die. In a decision that caused a furor in California, the retired merchant marine seaman was paroled in 1987 after serving eight years.

. . .

Singleton eventually came to Tampa, where he had spent his childhood. Residents protested and a car dealer offered him $5,000 to leave the state. A homemade bomb went off near his home, but nobody was injured.

A jury in Florida convicted him of murder for stabbing to death 31-year-old Roxanne Hayes at his Tampa home in 1997. …

. . .

Days before the slaying, Singleton tried to kill himself by hooking a hose to an exhaust pipe. Neighbors stopped him.

. . .

Singleton denied raping and mutilating Vincent but admitted stabbing Hayes. … Read full obituary