Linda Deutsch, a special correspondent for The Associated Press who for nearly 50 years wrote the glittering first drafts of history for many of the nation’s most significant criminal and civil trials — Charles Manson, O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, among many others — died Sunday. She was 80.
Deutsch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2022 and underwent successful treatment, but the cancer returned this summer. She died at her home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, said nurse Narek Petrosian of Olympia Hospice Care.
One of America’s best-known trial reporters when she retired in 2015, Deutsch’s legal career began with the 1969 trial and conviction of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan. She went on to cover a who’s who of criminal 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.
He was in a Los Angeles courtroom in 1995 for the conclusion of the “Trial of the Century” that saw Simpson, an NFL Hall of Famer, acquitted of killing his ex-wife and her friend. Thirteen years later, Deutsch was in a Las Vegas courtroom when Simpson was convicted of kidnapping and robbery and sentenced to prison.
“When a big trial loomed, AP assignment writers didn’t have to ask who should get the assignment. No, the immediate question was, ‘Is Linda available?’” recalled Louis D. Boccardi, who served as AP executive editor for a decade and as president and CEO for 18 years. “She mastered the art of celebrity trial coverage and, in the process, became something of a media celebrity.”
For decades, Deutsch has covered every parole and appeal hearing of every convicted Manson Family member. Other historic moments include testimony at the 1976 sentencing of Hearst, the newspaper heiress who pleaded guilty to bank robbery and other charges; Jackson’s 2005 acquittal on child molestation charges; and the 2009 murder conviction of Spector, the famed music producer.
“Linda was a fearless reporter who loved covering big stories, and indeed covered some of the biggest,” said Julie Pace, AP editor and senior vice president. “She was a true trailblazer whose command of her beat and tireless work ethic made her an inspiration to so many journalists at AP and across our industry.”
Her work, always written with verve, was not limited to celebrities: other cases involved fraud, conspiracies, environmental disasters and immigration, and eventually earned her the title of special correspondent, the most prestigious byline for an AP reporter.
Defense attorney Thomas Mesereau, who represented Jackson, called Deutsch “the embodiment of ethics and professionalism in journalism.”
“I can’t think of anyone who can match her,” he said of Deutsch when she retired.
Deutsch was just 25 when he prosecuted Sirhan. He then turned 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 disaffected youths.
The Manson Family, as they became known, terrorized Los Angeles on successive 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 followers were tried for murder in 1970, they turned the months-long legal proceedings into a “surreal spectacle,” as Deutsch would write when Manson died 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 during a 2014 interview.
With only one significant trial under Deutsch's belt, the AP initially sent a more experienced reporter from New York to lead the Manson trial coverage. After a month of testimony about such antics, he returned home in disgust, leaving Deutsch in charge.
“I thought, ‘Oh, this is really a thing,’” Deutsch recalled with a laugh. “I didn’t know trials could be like this.”
Despite this, she was fascinated by it and formed strong bonds 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 fatally stabbing Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in a fit of rage, news outlets around the world sent reporters to cover the case.
The judge made Deutsch, now a familiar face in the courtroom, the sole reporter covering jury selection. She became ubiquitous on television, telling a global audience what was happening in the courtroom.
After Simpson was acquitted 11 months later, he called her to thank her for what he considered fair and objective coverage. The conversation led to what would be the first of a series of exclusive interviews he would give her over the years.
Not all of his trials have involved celebrities. Deutsch spent five months in Alaska covering the trial of Joseph Hazelwood, the captain of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker that caused one of America’s worst environmental disasters when it spilled 11 million gallons (41 million liters) of crude oil in 1989.
He was also at the 1973 espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked to the New York Times the top-secret Pentagon Papers that revealed nasty details about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The Times published a series of articles about the contents that helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War.
Deutsch covered the trial of Ramirez, the “Night Stalker” serial killer, hearing testimony so horrifying it brought tears to the eyes of reporters. But it was the 1992 trial of four Los Angeles police officers who were caught on tape beating King that shook Deutsch the most. Their acquittals sparked riots in Los Angeles that killed 55 people and caused $1 billion in property damage.
“That almost destroyed my faith in the justice system,” he said in 2014. “I think a jury usually gets things right, but in that case, they 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 there from elsewhere. Born and raised in New Jersey, she became interested in journalism at age 12, when she founded an international Elvis Presley fan club newsletter in her hometown of Perth Amboy. The longtime Presley fan traveled to the musician’s Graceland home 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 found a part-time job at her hometown newspaper, where she convinced 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, would take time off from court work 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 locally hired AP staff reach the United States safely.
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,” he said in a 2007 interview. “It’s extremely powerful theater that tells us about ourselves and about people on trial. And I think that’s always fascinating.”