Leroy Keyes, 74, a two-time consensus All-American running back and one of the greatest football players in Purdue University history, died Thursday. Keyes had been in poor health recently. He died at his home in West Lafayette, Indiana, surrounded by his wife and children.
At Purdue, Keyes became the man all future Boilermakers stars would be measured against. In 1987, as the program celebrated its 100th season, Keyes was selected as the Boilermakers’ greatest player. Some of his records stood for decades. Others still do.
Bernard Madoff, 82, the architect of an epic securities swindle that burned thousands of investors, outfoxed regulators and earned him a 150-year prison term, died Wednesday in a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina.
Bobby “Slick” Leonard, 88, the former NBA player and Hall of Fame coach who won three ABA championships with the Indiana Pacers and spent more than a half century with the organization, died Tuesday. His death was announced by the Pacers, a team he coached in both the NBA and ABA.
Joseph Siravo, 66, best known for playing mobster Tony Soprano’s father in flashbacks on the hit HBO drama “The Sopranos,” and on stage in “The Jersey Boys,” died April 11 after a long battle with cancer.
Ramsey Clark, 93, who was U.S. attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson and then, after leaving government service, redefined himself as a relentless critic of U.S. foreign policy and as a courtroom defender of widely reviled figures such as Saddam Hussein, died April 9 at home in New York City.
June Newton, 97, the Australian photographer and actress, died April 9 in her home in Monaco.
In 1970, after moving to Paris with her husband, the German-Jewish photographer Helmut Newton, she started her own career as a photographer under the pseudonym Alice Springs, and soon became a well-regarded artist herself, focusing on portraits.
Conn Findlay, 90, a four-time Olympic medalist in the sports of rowing and sailing and a member of two winning America’s Cup crews, died April 8 at a care facility in San Mateo, California.
Findlay won gold medals in the coxed pair rowing event at the 1956 Melbourne and 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and a bronze in the event at the 1960 Rome Games. At Montreal in 1976, he competed in sailing and earned a bronze medal in the tempest two-man keelboat class event, crewing for Dennis Conner.
John Naisbitt, 92, a business analyst and prognosticator, whose book “Megatrends” projected trends in business and society and became a 1982 bestseller, died April 8, at his home in Veldon, Austria. On the strength of the book, he became an adviser to presidents, prime ministers and corporate titans.
Howard Weitzman, 81, an entertainment lawyer whose client list bristled with the names of some of the nation’s most famous, and infamous, celebrities — including Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber and, for two days, O.J. Simpson — died April 7 at his home in Pacific Palisades, California. The cause was cancer.
In a career spanning five decades, Weitzman was the lead attorney in more than 300 civil and criminal jury trials, representing more than 1,000 people. His clients included Marlon Brando, Magic Johnson, Sugar Ray Leonard, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Ozzy Osbourne, Morgan Freeman and Britney Spears.
Anne Beatts, 74, groundbreaking comedy writer with a taste for sweetness and the macabre who was on the original staff of “Saturday Night Live” and later created the cult sitcom “Square Pegs,” died April 7 at home in West Hollywood, California.
Starting in 1975 and running for five seasons, Beatts was among the gifted writers who helped make “Saturday Night Live” a cultural phenomenon.
With Rosie Shuster, she would invent the beloved young nerds — the nasally, Marvin Hamlisch-adoring Lisa Loopner (played by Gilda Radner) and high-pantsed goofball Todd DiLaMuca (Bill Murray), and help coin such catchphrases as Lisa’s, “That’s so funny I forgot to laugh.”
After “Square Pegs,” Beatts settled on the West Coast and wrote for other shows and occasionally produced, including episodes of “A Different World” in the 1980s. At her death she was a lecturer at Chapman University in Orange County, California.