Linda Deutsch, AP trial reporter at the forefront of courtroom history, dies at 80

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Linda Deutsch, a special correspondent for The Associated Press who for nearly 50 years wrote brilliant first drafts of history for many of the nation’s most important criminal and civil cases — Charles Manson, O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson and 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 Los Angeles home 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 courtroom career began with the 1969 trial and conviction of Senator 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.

She was in a Los Angeles courtroom in 1995 for the conclusion of “The Trial of the Century,” in which Simpson, an NFL Hall of Famer, was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife and her girlfriend. Thirteen years later, Deutsch was in a Las Vegas courtroom when Simpson was convicted of kidnapping and robbery and sentenced to prison.

“When a major lawsuit loomed, AP editors didn’t have to wonder who would get the assignment. No, the immediate question was, ‘Is Linda available?'” recalled Louis D. Boccardi, AP’s managing editor for 10 years and president and CEO for 18. “She mastered the art of covering celebrity trials and became something of a media celebrity in the process.”

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

“Linda was a fearless reporter who loved being on the big story — and she did cover some of the biggest,” said Julie Pace, AP’s executive editor and senior vice president. “She was a true trailblazer whose mastery of her craft 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 title for an AP reporter.

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

“I can’t think of anyone who can match 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, converting a group of disaffected youth and supplying them with psychedelic drugs.

The Manson Family, as they became known, terrorized Los Angeles on consecutive summer nights in 1969, breaking into homes in two wealthy neighborhoods and killing seven people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Most of the victims were stabbed multiple times, and their blood was used to scribble “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 trial into a “surreal spectacle,” as Deutsch would write when Manson died in 2017.

“People were having LSD flashbacks in the courtroom and at one point Charlie jumps across the lawyer’s table to 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 coverage of the Manson trial. After a month of witnessing such antics, he returned home in horror, 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.”

Still, she was captivated and built a close bond with the journalists who came every day for nine months.

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

The judge made Deutsch, by now a familiar face in the courtroom, the sole reporter to cover the jury selection. She became a ubiquitous presence on television, telling a worldwide audience what happened in the courtroom.

After Simpson was acquitted 11 months later, he called her to thank her for what he saw as fair and objective reporting. The conversation led to what would become the first of a number 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 Exxon Valdez oil tanker that caused one of the worst environmental disasters in the U.S. when it spilled 11 million gallons (41 million liters) of crude oil in 1989.

She also attended the 1973 espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, which revealed unpalatable details about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The Times published a series of articles about the papers 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 it was the 1992 trial of four Los Angeles police officers who were videotaped beating King that shocked Deutsch the most. Their acquittals sparked riots in Los Angeles that left 55 people dead and caused $1 billion in property damage.

“It nearly destroyed my faith in the justice system,” she said in 2014. “I think a jury usually gets it right, but not in this case. It was the wrong conclusion. It was the wrong verdict, and it nearly destroyed my city.”

Like many others, Deutsch fell in love with Los Angeles after moving there from elsewhere. Born and raised in New Jersey, her interest in journalism began at age 12, when she started an international Elvis Presley fan club newsletter 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.

In her sophomore year at Monmouth College in New Jersey—now Monmouth University—she took a part-time job at her hometown newspaper, where she convinced her editor to let her travel to Washington, D.C., in 1963 to cover the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

After graduating, she arrived in Southern California and worked briefly for the San Bernardino Sun before joining AP in 1967. Deutsch initially wanted to be an entertainment reporter and took a break from the courtroom for several years to cover the Academy Awards.

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

But it was always the drama of the courtroom that called her home.

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

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John Rogers, the lead writer of this obituary, retired from The Associated Press in 2021.