AP trial author was 80

Linda Deutsch, a special correspondent for the Associated Press who for nearly 50 years wrote brilliant first drafts of the story for many of the country's most significant criminal and civil trials — including Charles Manson, OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson and many others — died Sunday. She was 80.

Deutsch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2022 and underwent successful treatment, but this summer the cancer returned. She died at her home in Los Angeles surrounded by family and friends, said nurse Narek Petrosian of Olympia Hospice Care.

When she retired in 2015, she was one of America's best-known trial reporters. Her career in the courtroom began with the trial and conviction of Senator Robert F. Kennedy's killer, Sirhan Sirhan, in 1969. She then covered a who's who of defendants – Manson, Simpson, Jackson, Patty Hearst, Phil Spector, the Menendez brothers, “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez, “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski and the police officers charged in the beating of motorist Rodney King.

She was in a Los Angeles courtroom in 1995 to conclude the “trial of the century” in which Simpson, an NFL Hall of Fame member, was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife and her friend. Thirteen years later, Deutsch was in a Las Vegas courtroom when Simpson was sentenced to prison for kidnapping and robbery.

“When a major trial came up, AP editors didn't have to ask who should get the assignment. No, the immediate question was, 'Is Linda available?'” recalls Louis D. Boccardi, who served as AP's managing editor for 10 years and president and CEO for 18 years. “She mastered the art of covering celebrity trials and became something of a media celebrity in the process.”

For decades, Deutsch covered every appeal and parole hearing of every convicted member of the Manson Family. Other historic moments included the conviction of Hearst, the newspaper heiress who was found guilty of bank robbery and other charges in 1976, the acquittal of Jackson on child molestation charges in 2005, and the conviction of famed music producer Spector for murder in 2009.

“Linda was a fearless reporter who loved to get on the big stories – and she did indeed report on some of the biggest,” said Julie Pace, AP's editor in chief and senior vice president. “She was a true trailblazer whose mastery of her subject and tireless work ethic made her an inspiration to so many journalists at AP and in our industry.”

Her work, always written with verve, was not limited to celebrities—other cases also involved fraud, conspiracy, environmental disasters and immigration—and eventually earned her the title of special correspondent, the most prestigious name for an AP reporter.

Defense attorney Thomas Mesereau, who represented Jackson, called Deutsch the “epitome of ethics and professionalism in journalism.”

“I can’t imagine anyone reaching her level,” he said of Deutsch when she retired.

Deutsch was only 25 when she covered Sirhan's conviction. She then turned her attention to the bizarre case of Charles Manson, a career criminal who had reinvented himself as a hippie guru, proselytizing and supplying psychedelic drugs to a group of disillusioned youths.

The Manson Family, as they later became known, terrorized Los Angeles over several summer nights in 1969, breaking into homes in two affluent neighborhoods and killing seven people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Most of the victims were stabbed multiple times and their blood was used to scrawl “pig” and other words on the walls of the homes.

When Manson and three of his young female followers went on trial for murder in 1970, they turned the months-long proceedings into a “surreal spectacle,” as Deutsch wrote after Manson’s death in 2017.

“People in the courtroom were having LSD flashbacks, and at one point Charlie is jumping across the lawyer's table toward the judge with a pencil in his hand and the girls are jumping up and down singing,” Deutsch recalled in a 2014 interview.

Because Deutsch had only covered one major trial, the AP initially sent a more experienced reporter from New York to lead coverage of the Manson trial. After a month of witnessing such antics, he returned home disgusted and left Deutsch in charge.

“I thought, 'Oh, this is really something,'” Deutsch recalls, laughing. “I didn't know that court proceedings could be like this.”

Nevertheless, she was enthusiastic and formed close contacts with the journalists who came every day for nine months.

But an even bigger trial that began in the modern television age would eclipse Manson more than two decades later. When Simpson, one of America's most popular celebrities and sports stars, was charged with stabbing Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman to death in a fit of rage, news agencies from around the world sent reporters to cover the case.

The judge made Deutsch, now a familiar face in the courthouse, the only reporter covering jury selection. She was an omnipresent presence on television, reporting what was happening in the courtroom to a worldwide audience.

After Simpson was acquitted 11 months later, he called her to thank her for what he considered fair and objective reporting. The conversation led to the first of a series of exclusive interviews he gave her over the years.

Not all of her trials involved celebrities. Deutsch spent five months in Alaska covering the trial of Joseph Hazelwood, the captain of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez, which caused one of the worst environmental disasters in the United States in 1989 when it spilled 10 million gallons of crude oil.

She was also present at the 1973 espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, which revealed unsavory details about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The Times published a series of articles about the contents that helped turn the public against the Vietnam War.

Deutsch covered the trial of Ramirez, the “Night Stalker” serial killer, and heard testimony so gruesome it brought tears to reporters' eyes. But what most shocked Deutsch was the 1992 trial of four Los Angeles police officers who were caught on video beating King. Their acquittals sparked riots in Los Angeles that left 55 people dead and caused $1 billion in property damage.

“It almost destroyed my faith in the legal system,” she said in 2014. “I believe a jury usually gets it right, but in this case it didn't. It was the wrong conclusion. It was the wrong verdict and it almost destroyed my city.”

Like so many others, Deutsch fell in love with Los Angeles after moving from elsewhere. Born and raised in New Jersey, she became interested in journalism at age 12 when she started an international newsletter for Elvis Presley fan clubs in her hometown of Perth Amboy. The lifelong Presley fan traveled to the musician's Graceland home in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2002 to cover the 25th anniversary of the musician's death.

During her sophomore year at Monmouth College in New Jersey – now Monmouth University – she landed a part-time job at her hometown newspaper, where she convinced the editor to allow her to travel to Washington, D.C. in 1963 to cover the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

After graduating, she came to Southern California and worked briefly for the San Bernardino Sun before joining AP in 1967. Deutsch originally wanted to be an entertainment reporter and took years off from her court reporting to help cover the Academy Awards.

In 1975, after the fall of Saigon ended U.S. involvement in Vietnam, she was sent to the Pacific island of Guam to interview evacuees and help bring locally hired AP staffers safely to the United States.

But it was always the drama of the courtroom that made her feel at home.

“It's as old as Shakespeare and as old as Socrates,” she said in an interview in 2007. “It's an extremely powerful theater that tells us something about ourselves and about the people on trial. And I always find it fascinating.”