You are currently viewing Linda Deutsch, The A.P.’s Dean of Courtroom Reporting, Dies at 80

Covering notorious trials, she offered readers an unvarnished view of the sordid side of celebrity, told through many of the country’s most riveting legal dramas.

Linda Deutsch, who covered high-profile trials in nearly 50 years as a reporter with The Associated Press, starting with the one surrounding the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and including the defendants O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson and Charles Manson, died on Sunday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 80.

Her death followed a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2022, which was successfully treated but returned this summer, The A.P. reported.

Ms. Deutsch’s decades of clips offer a counternarrative of celebrity in America, a view of its underbelly told through many of the country’s most notorious trials.

Based in Los Angeles, she was also a front-row witness to societal breakdown. Besides the 1969 cult murders ordered by Mr. Manson, she covered the 1976 trial of the kidnapped-heiress-turned-bank-robber Patty

Keep reading this article on The New York Times Media & Advertising.

Leave a Reply