DIED. CHERYL WILSON-MINELLI, 30, former champion of TV’s brutish American Gladiators; after her husband Juan Ernesto Minelli, 34, a former pro boxer, allegedly stabbed and bludgeoned her in a jealous rage; in Oakland Park, Florida. Minelli turned himself in and was arrested for homicide.
DIED. ROGER BROWN, 54, hoop star dubbed Man of a Thousand Moves who helped lead the Indiana Pacers to three American Basketball Association championships after he was barred from the N.B.A. for associating with a gambler; of liver cancer; in Indianapolis, Indiana.
DIED. STANISLAV SHATALIN, 62, witty economist who was a principal architect of “500 Days,” the bold 1990 plan to convert the Soviet Union to a market economy, drafted at Mikhail Gorbachev’s urging but dropped under pressure from Gorbachev’s more conservative advisers; in Moscow.
DIED. MICHAEL MANLEY, 72, charismatic former Prime Minister of Jamaica; after a long battle with cancer; in Kingston. A fiery leftist when he became Prime Minister in 1972, Manley nationalized farms and companies, railed against U.S. imperialism and flirted with Castro. Ousted in 1980 by conservative Edward Seaga, Manley recast himself as a capitalist and returned to office in 1989, only to step down in 1992, citing poor health.
DIED. CHEDDI JAGAN, 78, President of Guyana; in Washington, where he had been hospitalized after a heart attack. An avowed Marxist, Jagan was elected premier in 1953, and again in ’57 and ’61, while Guyana was still a British colony, but his grip on power was repeatedly sabotaged by British and U.S. machinations. Jagan later adopted free-market principles, and after nearly three decades in opposition, made a comeback in 1992 in what was hailed as the country’s first free election in 28 years.
DIED. ROBERT DICKE, 80, early proponent of the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe who mounted a persuasive but ultimately unsuccessful challenge to Einstein’s general theory of relativity; in Princeton, New Jersey.
DIED. CHARLES DEDERICH, 83, power-mad founder of the drug-rehabilitation program Synanon; in Visalia, California. Synanon, which combined spartan communal living and aggressive group therapy, was widely acclaimed in the 1960s but eventually disbanded in the wake of increasingly bizarre behavior by Dederich, who proclaimed his organization a religion and was convicted of conspiring to commit murder by placing a rattlesnake in an opponent’s mailbox.
DIED. KINGSLEY DAVIS, 88, sociologist and demographer who coined the terms population explosion and zero population growth; in Stanford, California.
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