Associated Press court reporter Linda Deutsch dies at 80

John Rogers | The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — Linda Deutsch, the Associated Press correspondent who for nearly five decades wrote the first drafts of illuminating histories of many of America's most significant criminal and civil trials, including those of Charles Manson, O. J. Simpson and Michael Jackson, died Sunday at the age of 80.

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

Edith Lederer, the AP's chief United Nations correspondent, was among those who shared Deutsch's life at the end. The two had been friends for more than 50 years and were pioneering women reporters when they joined the AP in the late 1960s.

“She was a special friend to hundreds of people and will be missed for her wit, wisdom, charm and relentless inquisitiveness,” Lederer said.

One of America's best-known court reporters at the time of her retirement in 2015, Deutsch began her court reporting career with the 1969 trial and conviction of Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. She went on to cover such high-profile defendants as Manson, Simpson, Jackson, Patty Hearst, Phil Spector, the Menendez brothers, “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez, “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, and the police officer charged with beating motorist Rodney King.

She was in a Los Angeles courtroom in 1995 at the conclusion of the “trial of the century,” when NFL Hall of Famer Simpson was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife and her friend. Thirteen years later, Deutsch was in the Las Vegas courtroom when Simpson was found guilty of kidnapping and robbery and sentenced to life in prison.

“Whenever a major trial loomed, AP editors didn't have to ask who to assign to cover the case. Instead, the immediate question was, 'Is Linda available?'” recalled Louis D. Boccardi, who served as AP's editor in chief for 10 years and as its president and CEO for 18. “She mastered the art of celebrity trial reporting and, in the process, became a media celebrity in her own right.”

Over the decades, Deutsch has covered every appeals and parole hearing for every convicted Manson Family member. Other historic moments include witnessing the 1976 conviction of newspaper heir Hearst on bank robbery and other charges, Jackson's 2005 acquittal on child sexual abuse charges, and famed music producer Spector's 2009 murder conviction.

“Linda was a fearless reporter who loved to cover big stories — in fact, she broke some of the biggest stories,” said Julie Pace, Associated Press managing editor and senior vice president. “She was a true trailblazer, whose mastery of her field and her tireless work ethic inspired so many journalists at the AP and across the industry.”

Her tireless writing style covered not only celebrities but also cases of fraud, conspiracy, environmental disasters and immigration issues, eventually earning her the title of correspondent, the highest honor an Associated Press reporter can receive.

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

“I can't think of anyone at a higher level than her,” he said when Deutsch retired.

Deutsch was just 25 when he covered Sirhan's conviction, and later went on to cover the bizarre case of Charles Manson, a serial criminal who reincarnated as a hippie guru, proselytizing and supplying hallucinogens to groups of disaffected youth.

The Manson Family, as they came to be known, terrorized Los Angeles on a series of summer nights in 1969, breaking into two homes in 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 words like “pig” on the walls of their homes.

When Manson and three young female followers were put on trial for murder in 1970, they turned the months-long legal process into a “surreal spectacle,” Deutsch wrote at the time of Manson's death in 2017.

“People were having LSD flashbacks in the courtroom, and at one point Charlie jumped over the lawyers' table with a pencil in his hand toward the judge, and women were singing and jumping up and down,” Deutsch recalled in a 2014 interview.

The AP initially sent a more experienced reporter from New York to cover the Manson trial because Deutsch had only been involved in one major trial, but after a month of covering the Manson trial, the reporter grew tired of it and returned home, leaving Deutsch in charge.

“I thought, 'Oh my God, this is amazing,'” Deutsch recalled with a laugh. “I had no idea the trial would turn out like this.”

But she was hooked, and built strong bonds with the journalists who showed up to work there every day for nine months.

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

The judge appointed Deutsch, already a familiar face in the courtroom, as the sole reporter to cover jury selection, and she appeared frequently on television, reporting on what was happening in the courtroom to a worldwide audience.

Eleven months later, after Simpson was acquitted, he called her to thank her for her fair and objective reporting, and the conversation marked the first of many exclusive interviews he would grant her over the years.

Not all of her cases involved famous people: Deutsch spent five months in Alaska covering the trial of Joseph Hazelwood, captain of the Exxon Valdez, which in 1989 spilled 11 million gallons (41 million liters) of oil, causing one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

She also attended the 1973 espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked top-secret Pentagon documents that revealed unsavory details about America's involvement in the Vietnam War to The New York Times. The Times ran a series of articles on the documents' contents that helped intensify public resentment against the Vietnam War.

Deutsch covered the trial of “Night Stalker” serial killer Ramirez and heard brutal testimony that brought tears to reporters' eyes, but what shocked him most was the 1992 trial of four LAPD officers who were videotaped beating King. Their acquittal sparked riots in Los Angeles that left 55 people dead and $1 billion in property damage.

“It pretty much destroyed my faith in the justice system,” she said in 2014. “I feel that juries usually get it right, but not in that case. That verdict was wrong. That verdict was wrong and it pretty much destroyed my city.”

Like many others, Deutsch fell in love with the city after moving there from Los Angeles. Born and raised in New Jersey, Deutsch became interested in journalism at age 12 when he started the International Elvis Presley Fan Club newsletter in his hometown of Perth Amboy. A lifelong Presley fan, he visited Presley's Graceland estate in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2002 to cover the 25th anniversary of his death.

As a sophomore at Monmouth College (now Monmouth University) in New Jersey, she took a part-time job at a local newspaper and persuaded her editor to go to Washington, D.C., in 1963 to cover the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

After graduating, Deutsch moved to Southern California and worked briefly for the San Bernardino Sun before joining The Associated Press in 1967. He initially aspired to be a entertainment reporter, taking a number of years off from courtroom work to help cover the Academy Awards.

In 1975, after the fall of Saigon ended U.S. involvement in Vietnam, she was deployed to the Pacific island of Guam to interview displaced people and help locally hired Associated Press staffers travel safely to the United States.