Text size: increase text sizedecrease text size

Obituaries in the news

By The Associated Press
9:02 PM EDT, July 23, 2008

Paul Bentley

DALLAS (AP) — Paul Bentley, a Dallas police veteran who helped arrest presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald at the Texas Theater, had died. He was 87.

Bentley died Monday of natural causes in his Dallas home, said his grandson, David Ottinger.

Bentley worked for the police department for 21 years, starting as a patrol officer and retiring as a detective five years after the assassination of President Kennedy.

He played a supporting role on Nov. 22, 1963, originally responding to Oswald's fatal shooting of police Officer J.D. Tippit. Bentley and other officers tracked Oswald to the Texas Theater, arresting the assassin after a brief scuffle.

In a well-known photograph taken just after the arrest, Bentley is wearing a suit with his hair slicked back and a cigar in his mouth, escorting Oswald out of the theater. Oswald appears to have a cut on his forehead, which Bentley said came from his Masonic ring.

Bentley had another connection to Oswald. His brother-in-law, L.C. Graves, was one of the officers escorting Oswald when the killer was shot to death by Jack Ruby. Graves, who died in 1995, can be seen to Oswald's left in a famous photograph of the shooting.

___

Larry Haines

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Larry Haines, who won two Daytime Emmys for his 35-year role on the soap opera "Search for Tomorrow," died July 17. He was 89.

Haines, who also had a successful career on Broadway generally billed as A. Larry Haines, died at a hospital where he had been admitted a week earlier, his attorney and friend, Tom Dachelet, said Wednesday.

The actor played Stu Bergman on "Search for Tomorrow" from 1951 to 1986, missing only the first two months of the show's run.

Stu was the neighbor and best friend of Joanne Gardner Barron, later Joanne Tourneur, the character at the center of most of the show's plot lines. The soap opera, which was first on CBS, later on NBC, was the longest-running daytime TV drama when its last episode aired in December 1986.

He won his Daytime Emmys in 1976 and 1981. In 1985, he was presented with a special recognition award for his longevity on the series.

Haines was twice nominated for Tonys, for "Promises, Promises," the 1968 musical version of the film "The Apartment," and "Generation," a 1965 play starring Henry Fonda.

Early in his career, he was an actor on radio series, including the popular horror series "Inner Sanctum," which famously opened with the sound of a creaking door.

Get home delivery of The Sun and save over 50% off the newsstand price

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.