Remembering AP Trial Writer Linda Deutsch

Why would you know the name of a courtroom reporter like Linda Deutsch?

Maybe you did. I didn’t. The obituary though, to think we didn’t know her by name—she worked for 50 years capturing what happened in the trials of Charles Manson, O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, Phil Spector, The Menendez Brothers, the Unabomber, the cops who beat Rodney King, and more.

Her career started in 1969, and let me emphasize her. She was an entry-level female assignment writer for the Associated Press, and just happened to get put on the court beat.

At the Manson trial, the one where the followers, the ones with swastikas carved into their foreheads, where they were chanting and singing to disrupt the procedure, the one where Manson climbed over the defense table and attempted to stab the judge with a pencil, she covered it.

By the time Manson was convicted, Deutsch had been promoted to the AP’s trials expert. At the AP’s Los Angeles bureau, she was the ONLY woman. She’d go on to become a “special correspondent,” being called in to cover big cases across the country. She was an inspiration and role model to an entire industry.

Thomas Mesereau, the high-profile attorney who defended Michael Jackson on the child molestation charge, had this to say about her in the AP’s retirement piece on Deutsch from a few years ago, “She’s just extremely ethical, extremely professional and very, very honest. “If she tells you something is off the record you can bet your life that it is. She also has a great belief in the importance of her profession as an honorable, valuable institution in society.”

People who capture the details in delicate stories for us to understand and unpack as a culture provide a tremendously important service. When I read Deutsch’s AP Obituary and 2014 Retirement Announcement I can’t help but think about how we need institutions to provide these services.

Learn her name, read the pieces, Linda Deutsch lived a remarkable life.