Results tagged “dead”

The original anarchic comedy hero for teenagers and college students, Soupy Sales, died Thursday in a hospice in New York City after suffering from multiple health problems. He was 83. Soupy, one of the only known men to have splattered a pie in Fank Sinatra's face and take more than 20,000 cream-fille tins to his own, won over TV audiences young and old, but mostly young, in the 1950s and '60s.

A 44-year-old mother of two died and three others were critically injured by a fire that tore through a Flushing apartment early Sunday morning. The deceased, Bianca Wisniewski, was due in federal court today for a hearing in her $20 million sexual-harassment lawsuit against Total Safety Consulting and JPMorgan Chase. Four of the 110 firefighters at the scene suffered minor injuries, and the fire was ultimately contained to the single apartment, because the cement and steel walls stopped it from spreading.

Back in 2003 Mayor Bloomberg declared: "Our administration has zero tolerance for rats. And I've got one message today, `City to rats: Drop Dead.'" But there are still rats running rampant, even in this city's pizza trucks... even at Peter Luger. So maybe the focus should be on dead rats — they're just easier to capture — especially if someone were to create a dead rat map.

Conservative columnist and former TV pundit Robert Novak died early this morning in his Washington home after a battle with brain cancer. The Joilet, Illinois native became a major journalistic player with the syndicated "Inside Report" column, which he started in 1963 with the late Rowland Evans Jr. He subsequently became a familiar television personality, appearing often on CNN. A registered Democrat despite his conservative views, Novak was heavily criticized by some Republicans for opposing America's 2003 invasion of Iraq. Neoconservative writer David Frum labeled him an "Unpatriotic Conservative," along with Pat Buchanan. Novak was also at the center of the great CIA leak scandal that dragged on for years after he identified Valerie Plame as a CIA "operative" in his column in 2003. Some referred to Novak as a "journalistic Prince of Darkness," but to his wife Geraldine he "was someone who loved being a journalist, loved journalism and loved his country and loved his family." Timothy Carney at Human Events has filed a remembrance of his collaboration with Novak.

Jack Shaw, the Jersey City political consultant who was arrested last week in the massive federal corruption probe of NJ elected officials and others, was found dead in his Jersey City apartment yesterday. The Star-Ledger reports an autopsy is pending but "Three officials with knowledge of the investigation said multiple bottles of pills were found near Shaw's body. One of the officials said that while investigators suspect suicide, they did not want to jump to conclusions because Shaw suffers from an unspecified medical condition." Shaw, 61, was accused of taking a $10,000 bribe from a government informant and apparently gave that money to Jersey City mayor Jeremiah Healey. The NY Times says Shaw "was a longtime Democratic operative who cut his teeth working for Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago and later was a campaign aide to Gov. Jim Florio...He also worked on Robert G. Torricelli’s 1996 Senate race, Robert E. Andrews’s 1997 bid for the Democratic nomination for governor, and Jon S. Corzine’s election to the Senate in 2000."

The shark stories are finally starting to show up this summer. Reports are that a not-quite-dead-yet 20-foot basking shark washed up at Long Island's Gilgo State Park this morning. By the time the state parks department was notified it was already dead, and from the looks of it beachgoers and reporters were getting their photo ops in. And yes, if we had the time, we'd Photoshop a shark asking a washed up 1010WINS reporter for a comment.

[UPDATE BELOW] A not totally unsurprising rumor is going around that downtown artist Dash Snow has died of a heroin overdose. Snow is the maternal grandson of Robert Thurman (and nephew of actress Uma Thurman), and his lifestyle was well-documented in a sprawling New York magazine piece two years ago. That lifestyle at one point included making what he called a Hamster’s Nest with friends, where they would "shred up 30 to 50 phone books, yank around all the blankets and drapes, turn on the taps, take off their clothes, and do drugs—mushrooms, coke, ecstasy—until they feel like hamsters."

You already know some of Thomas Prusik-Parkin's reasoning for dressing up like his dead mother, Irene Prusik, for six years to cash her Social Security checks and collect other benefits. During his arrest, he reportedly told authorities, "I held my mother when she was dying and breathed in her last breath, so I am my mother." Then yesterday we learned that this man, now being held in lieu of $1 million bail, kept a casket in his home for undisclosed reasons—though it's safe to assume that's where he'd sleep, all snug and cozy in Irene's nightgown. And now it gets creepier, if that's even possible: According to court papers obtained by the Post, Prusik-Parkin says he was just following Mommy's orders. "She said, 'I will guide you,' he told cops after his arrest Tuesday. "I therefore have had to put on her things and represent the part of me that is her in order to fight for our rights and our home." Aw, a nice young man standing up for his mother's rights; maybe this story isn't so twisted after all!

For six years, 49-year-old Thomas Prusik-Parkin of Brooklyn disguised himself as his deceased mother so he could collect some $115,000 in Social Security and rent subsidies, police sources tell the Daily News. After being busted for the elaborate scam on Monday, Prusik-Parkin reportedly told detectives, "I held my mother when she was dying and breathed in her last breath, so I am my mother." And if you think that's creepy, take a look at his mug shot!

A minivan covered with parking tickets and debris had been sitting on 34th Avenue under the BQE overpass for long enough that a city marshal was finally dispatched to have the 2000 Chevrolet Ventura towed on Wednesday morning. But a grisly surprise was waiting inside: The badly decomposed corpse of a 59-year-old man, who apparently died from a heart attack, at least according to his daughter. Sources tell the Daily News that the deceased driver, a diabetic handyman named George Morales, was homeless, but his 29-year-old daughter Jennifer insists he lived with her and her two kids in Washington Heights. She says she called police after he went missing last month, but the NYPD claims they have no record of a missing person report. There's probably more to this story, but for now all we know are the disturbing details Morales shares with the News: "The window was cracked open. I don't understand how no one noticed him. They just gave him tickets. In the autopsy, they said they just found skeletal remains, no organs, only his heart." She believes he had a heart attack.

An eleven-week-old boy in the Bronx has become the fifth swine flu fatality in NYC, according to his family. Steven Montanez's mother, 28-year-old Gissele Montañez, says her baby seemed fine when she left him in the care of her sister Thursday afternoon. But he was found dead about an hour after he fell asleep at 3 p.m. Montanez's sister tells the Daily News, "I went in to check up on him, I turned him around and he was purple. He was a completely healthy baby. The Health Department told us he died because of swine flu." (Officials at the Health Department have not yet officially confirmed that the H1N1 virus caused Steven's death.) His father, Louis Montanez, is devastated, telling the News, "I have nothing to live for anymore. You don't know how painful this is. We're going through such a bad situation right now."

Horton Foote, the author of over sixty plays and considered by many to be "the American Chekhov," died yesterday in Hartford, CT. He was 92. The courteous, industrious playwright was living in Hartford while adapting his nine-play Orphans’ Home Cycle for a forthcoming production at the Signature Theater here in New York, according to the Times obit. In addition to his plays, many of which chronicled the lives of residents in a small, fictitious Texas town, Foote also wrote the screenplays for To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies. Nine of his plays were produced on Broadway, most recently the mordant comedy Dividing the Estate. Speaking to the Times in 1986, Foote shared his personal philosophy: "I believe very deeply in the human spirit and I have a sense of awe about it because I don’t know how people carry on. I’ve known people that the world has thrown everything at to discourage them, to kill them, to break their spirit. And yet something about them retains a dignity. They face life and they don’t ask quarters." Foote's lifelong friend Harper Lee once said the playwright "looked like God, only cleanshaven."

       

As a coda to our report on the recent death of beloved vegetable peeler salesman Joe Ades, we've put together a photo tribute to this unforgettable New York character. The city is a little less distinct with his passing. For more, peruse this Flickr group dedicated to Joe.

W. Mark Felt, Sr., the number 2 man at the FBI during the Watergate scandal, died yesterday from Alzheimer's disease at a hospice near his home in Santa Rosa, California, the Washington Post reports. Felt was an instrumental player in the stunning downfall of President Nixon, but his identity as "Deep Throat"—reporter Bob Woodard's anonymous source for the Post's bombshell series of scoops on the Watergate affair in 1972—was unknown until three years ago, when Felt's family unmasked him in the pages of Vanity Fair. According to the Times, even Woodward was shocked at this; he had gaurded the secret so zealously that even his partner Carl Bernstein did not meet Felt until earlier this year. Felt never revealed why he leaked details on the Watergate break-in and cover up to Woodward, but the Times obituary points out that in May 1972 Feld had been passed over by Nixon as Edgar Hoover's successor to run the bureau.

Widely-respected critic Clive Barnes lost his battle with cancer yesterday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. He was 81.

There was a fatal bicycle accident last night on the Williamsburg Bridge bike and pedestrian path; an initial report tells us that the accident involved "a cyclist vs. a guardrail" and that the cyclist was DOA at the hospital. [Update below.]

Tenants of 64 Troutman Street in Bushwick were joined by City Council members at City Hall Friday to announce a lawsuit against their landlord under the Tenant Protection Act. Passed last March, the law is intended to protect tenants whose landlords are trying to drive them out of the building using such tactics as turning off the hot water or ripping out the toilet.

Former TV producer Julie Horner Lankamp was found dead in her Gold Street apartment Tuesday with "her crying young daughter clutching her legs," as the Daily News sensationally puts it. Relatives say they hadn't spoken with Lankamp since Sunday and police don't know how long the two-year-old had been stranded with her mother's body, which had begun to decompose. Lankamp had a broken jaw, bruises, and dried blood pooled near her nose and mouth, but the city medical examiner doesn't believe Lankamp's injuries were caused by a beating. An empty glassine envelope with cocaine residue was found near her corpse, and investigators say her injuries may have been caused by a fall after a drug overdose. Results of a toxicology report are pending, but in the meantime police are looking to interview her ex-husband, who was arrested at the end of last year "for attacking her with a chair while using their child as a human shield," a source tells the News.

Looks like trouble is following Lil' Kim into her 33rd year, or at least the headlines are: A 24-year-old woman, Ingrid Rivera, was found dead last night in a rooftop utility closet of midtown club Spotlight Live, where she attended the rapper's birthday party on Sunday.

While you were sleeping, the Montauk Monster story kept spinning, this time landing on PlumTV, Newsday and...CNN. In an attempt to reassure a jittery public, the CNN quotes "experts" who say it's either a dog or raccoon; some think it may have washed up from the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.

The media is observing the recent death of influential New York Magazine founder Clay Felker with a predictable avalanche of eulogies. New York has an elegant essay from Tom Wolfe (who also double-dipped his B material for Time), rounded out with a big collective tribute from colleagues and friends ranging from Gore Vidal to Tim Zagat. Elsewhere, Jon Carroll recalls Felker comparing feet with Milton Glaser, Voice theater critic Michael Feingold recounts his discourteous first encounter with Felker, and the Observer has anecdotes from other notables who knew him.

Clay Felker, founder of New York magazine – a publication he once described as a guide to “how the power game is played, and who are the winners” – died this morning at his home in Manhattan. He was 82 and had been battling cancer of the throat and mouth.

George Carlin, a native of Morningside Heights, died of heart failure yesterday in California. He was 71. The iconoclastic comedian was famously arrested (pictured) after doing his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine during a 1972 performance in Milwaukee (you can see video of a 1978 performance after the jump). When the words were later aired on WBAI, the ensuing lawsuit went all the way to the Supreme Court, who ruled in 1978 that the government could sanction broadcasters for offensive language. The counterculture comedian told the AP earlier this year: “So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of.”

A former city employee could face seven years in jail and a lifetime of ghoulish haunting if convicted of stealing $3,300 from a dead person’s safety deposit box. Arthur Orikher pulled the scam while working as an accountant for a Kings County office that administers the estates of those who die without a will or families. Assuming it’s the same Arthur Orikher who owns this gorgeous Siberian cat, can you really blame him for wanting to pamper his precious Pusik?

Groundbreaking postwar artist Robert Rauschenberg died last night at the age of 82. The adventurous painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, set designer and composer was born Milton Ernest Rauschenberg on Oct. 22, 1925, in Port Arthur, Texas, a small refinery town with little cultural stimuli. (In his adult life he took the name Robert.)

The Justice Department is denying federal benefits to the families of the two auxiliary police officers who were brutally killed by a marauding gunman in the West Village last year.

Okay people, time for your morning update on The Ledge – come on, you know you want it. Even Daniel Day Lewis says there’s nothing else to talk about. (Scroll down.)