New York Post news legend Steve Dunleavy died of unknown causes at his Long Island home Monday at the age of 81.
Dunleavy brought a take-no-prisoners reporting style to the Post, spending 40 years as a reporter, metropolitan editor and columnist, the Post reported.
“Steve Dunleavy was one of the greatest reporters of all time,” said Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Post.
“Whether competing with his own father in the famous Sydney, Australia, tabloid wars, or over the last 40 years in New York, Steve’s life story is littered with great scoops. He was much loved by both his colleagues and editors.”
Legendary Post columnist Steve Dunleavy dead at 81 https://t.co/ClyBbJJr9E pic.twitter.com/lh9pyOjR2g
— New York Post (@nypost) June 25, 2019
“He was a great man, he lived an amazing life. It’s not a time to mourn. It’s definitely a time to celebrate,” his son Sean Dunleavy, told the New York Daily News.
“It just was very sudden. But he was home, it was peaceful.” (RELATED: Reporter For The Federalist Dies From Sudden, Severe Illness)
As well-known for his hard-drinking as his writing, stories about Dunleavy’s alcohol-fueled exploits in establishments across New York City are legendary, including an amorous snowstorm incident that left him with a broken foot, as told by former Daily Mail correspondent George Gordon.
Dunleavy left the Post in 1986 for another Murdock enterprise, the TV show “A Current Affair,” but he returned to the Post a decade later. Murdock retired in 2008.
His exclusive interviews were numerous and included the “Boston Strangler” Albert DeSalvo and Robert F. Kennedy assassin, Sirhan Sirhan. He also got Elvis Presley’s bodyguards to reveal the singer’s secretly raging drug addition.
Dunleavy was known to fight for his stories, once saying “all’s fair in love, war and news-gathering. And if I push the envelope a bit to get a story, I don’t have to go to confession afterward.”
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