Linda Deutsch, AP Reporter Who Had Front Row on Tribunal History, Dies at 80

LOS ANGELES – Linda Deutsch, an Associated Press special correspondent who for nearly 50 years wrote the early drafts of the histories of many of the nation’s most important criminal and civil trials — Charles Manson, OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson, among others — died Sunday at age 80.

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

Among those leaving Deutsch was Edith Lederer, AP’s chief United Nations correspondent. They had been friends for more than 50 years and pioneers of women’s journalism when they joined AP in the late 1960s.

“She was an incomparable friend to hundreds of people who will miss her wit, wisdom, charm and constant curiosity,” Lederer said.

One of America’s best-known crime reporters when she retired in 2015, Deutsch’s legal career began with the trial and conviction of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, in 1969. She went on to cover a slew of convicted criminals: Manson, Simpson, Jackson, Patty Hearst, Phil Spector, the Menendez brothers, “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez, “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski and the police officers accused of beating motorist Rodney King.

In 1995, she was in court in Los Angeles for the conclusion of the “Trial of the Century” that saw NFL Hall of Famer Simpson acquitted of murdering his ex-wife and her girlfriend. Thirteen years later, Deutsch was in court in Las Vegas when Simpson was convicted of kidnapping and robbery and sentenced to prison.

“When a major trial was coming up, AP editors didn’t have to worry about who to assign the assignment to. No, the immediate question was, ‘Is Linda available?’” recalled Louis D. Boccardi, who was AP editor for a decade and chairman and CEO for 18 years. “She became a master at covering celebrity trials and, in the process, became something of a media celebrity herself.”

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

“Linda was a courageous journalist who loved to cover big stories — and she covered some of the biggest,” said Julie Pace, AP executive editor and senior vice president. “She was a true trailblazer whose mastery of her field and tireless work ethic made her an inspiration to many journalists at the AP and across our industry.”

Her work, always written with verve, was not limited to celebrity — other trials involved fraud, conspiracies, environmental disasters and immigration — and eventually earned her the title of special correspondent, the highest title for an AP journalist.

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

“I don’t see anyone who can reach her level,” he said of Deutsch when she retired.

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

The Manson Family, as they 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 write “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 legal proceedings into a “surreal spectacle,” as Deutsch would write after Manson’s death in 2017.

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

With only one major trial under its belt, the AP initially sent a more experienced reporter from New York to cover the Manson trial. After a month of witnessing such antics, he returned home in disgust, leaving Deutsch in charge.

“I thought, ‘Oh, this is really something,’” Deutsch recalls with a laugh. “I didn’t know trials could be like this.”

She was nonetheless won over and formed close ties with the journalists who showed up every day for nine months.

But an even bigger trial, born in the age of modern television, would eclipse Manson more than two decades later. When Simpson, one of America’s most beloved celebrities and sports figures, was accused of stabbing Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman to death in a fit of rage, media outlets around the world sent reporters to cover the case.

The judge made Deutsch, a familiar face in the courthouse, the only reporter covering jury selection. She became a ubiquitous presence on television, telling a global audience what was happening in the courtroom.

After her acquittal eleven months later, Simpson called her to thank her for what he considered her fair and objective coverage of the case. That conversation led to what would be the first in a series of exclusive interviews he gave her over the years.

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

She was also present in 1973 at the espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked to the New York Times the secret Pentagon Papers that revealed unsavory details about American involvement in Vietnam. The Times published a series of articles on the contents of these documents that helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War.

Deutsch covered the trial of Ramirez, the “Night Stalker” serial killer, and listened to testimony so horrific it brought tears to reporters’ eyes. But it was the 1992 trial of four Los Angeles police officers caught on video beating King that shook Deutsch the most. Their acquittal sparked riots in Los Angeles that left 55 people dead and $1 billion in property damage.

“It almost destroyed my faith in the justice system,” she said in 2014. “I feel like a jury is usually right, but in this case, no. 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 there. Born and raised in New Jersey, she became interested in journalism at age 12, when she founded an international newsletter for Elvis Presley fans in her hometown of Perth Amboy. The longtime Presley fan traveled to the musician’s home at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2002 to cover the 25th anniversary of his 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 persuaded its editor to allow her to travel to Washington, D.C., in 1963 to cover the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Arriving in Southern California after graduation, she worked briefly for the San Bernardino Sun before joining the AP in 1967. Deutsch initially aspired to be an entertainment reporter, and for years she took time away from the field to help cover the Oscars.

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 local AP staffers reach the United States safely.

But it was always the drama of the courtroom that drew her in.

“It’s as old as Shakespeare and as old as Socrates,” she said in a 2007 interview. “It’s an extremely powerful theater that tells us about ourselves and the people being judged. And I think that’s always fascinating.”

Deutsch’s survivors include Marvin Sosna, an uncle of Deutsch’s credited with influencing her to become a journalist; her cousins ​​Elaine Deutsch, Lisa Deutsch and Lana Sternberg; and her godson Luke Rattray.

Funeral arrangements were pending.

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John Rogers, the principal author of this obituary, retired from The Associated Press in 2021.