The following is a list of notable deaths in December 2005.

Entries for each day are listed alphabetically by surname. A typical entry lists information in the following sequence:

• Name, age, country of citizenship at birth, subsequent country of citizenship (if applicable), reason for notability, cause of death (if known), and reference.

December 2005

1

• Gust Avrakotos, 67, American CIA agent who armed the mujaheddin of Afghanistan.^[1]
• Mary Hayley Bell, 94, British actress, Alzheimer's disease.^[2]
• Hermann Buchner, 86, German World War II flying ace.
• Jack Colvin, 73, American actor, (The Incredible Hulk), coronary thrombosis.
• Michael Evans, 61, American White House photographer, noted for capturing the trademark image of Ronald Reagan wearing a cowboy hat, cancer.^[3]
• Ray Hanna, 77, New Zealand-born warbird pilot and founder of The Old Flying Machine Company.^[4]
• Victor Premasagar, 78, Indian theologian and Bishop of Medak (1983–1992).

2

• Lillian Browse, 99, British art dealer.^[5]
• Shawn Paul Humphries, 34, American convicted murderer, executed in South Carolina.
• Malik Joyeux, 25, French professional surfer, killed at Hawaii's Banzai Pipeline.^[6]
• William P. Lawrence, 75, American retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral, first to fly at twice the speed of sound.^[7]
• Leonard Lewis, 78, British television director and producer.^[8]
• Peter Menegazzo, 61, Australian cattle baron, killed (along with his wife Angela) in a plane crash.^[9]
• Van Tuong Nguyen, 25, Australian convicted of drug trafficking, execution by hanging.^[10]
• V. Krishna Rao, 80, Indian politician.
• Mohammed Amza Zubeidi, 67, Iraqi politician, former prime minister under Saddam Hussein.

3

• Peter Aschwanden, 63, American illustrator, cancer.
• Frederick Ashworth, 93, American naval officer, weaponeer who dropped atomic bomb on Nagasaki.
• Peter Cook, 62, Australian politician, melanoma.
• Lance Dossor, 90, Australian pianist.
• John Ganzoni, 2nd Baron Belstead, 73, British aristocrat and politician.
• Kikka Sirén, 41, Finnish pop/schlager singer, heart attack.
• Kåre Kristiansen, 85, Norwegian politician, minister of Oil and Energy (1983–1986).
• Atsuko Tanaka, 74, Japanese avant-garde artist.^[11]
• Allan Waters, 84, Canadian broadcasting icon

4

• Débora Arango, 98, Colombian artist.^[12]
• Percy Brandt, 83, Swedish actor.
• Errol Brathwaite, 81, New Zealand writer.
• Gregg Hoffman, 42, American film producer (Saw).^[13]
• Gloria Lasso, 83, Spanish singer.

5

• John Alvheim, 75, Norwegian politician.
• Gerald Smedley Andrews, 101, Canadian civil servant.
• Wesley Baker, 47, American convicted murderer, executed in Maryland.
• Liu Binyan, 80, Chinese author and dissident, cancer.^[14]
• Gerard Bruggink, 88, Dutch World War II pilot.
• Ursula Buckel, 79, German soprano.
• Netai Bysack, 84, Indian Olympic cyclist.
• Milo Dor, 82, Serbian-born Austrian author, heart failure.
• Edward L. Masry, 73, American attorney and mentor to Erin Brockovich, complications of diabetes.^[15]
• Kevin "Big Kev" McQuay, 56, Australian businessman and media personality, heart attack.^[16]
• Frits Philips, 100, Dutch businessman, grandson of the founder of Philips, complications from a fall.
• Bob Richardson, 77, American fashion photographer.^[17]
• Bill Robinson, 71, British rugby league player.

6

• Charly Gaul, 72, Luxembourgian cyclist, winner of the 1958 Tour de France.^[18]
• Richard Grimsdale, 76, British electrical engineer, built the world's first transistorised computer and was at the forefront of work on Read Only Memory.^[19]
• Paul Halla, 74, Austrian footballer.
• Hanns Dieter Hüsch, 80, German political satirist.
• Devan Nair, 82, President of Singapore (1981–1985).^[20]
• Jerzy Pajaczkowski-Dydynski, 111, Polish-born oldest man in the UK at the time of his death.^[21]
• Danny Williams, 63, South African popular singer, lung cancer.

7

• Lucy d'Abreu, 113, Indian-born oldest person in the UK at the time of her death.^[22]
• Rigoberto Alpizar, 44, American airplane passenger fatally shot by U.S. Air Marshals after allegedly claiming he had placed a bomb aboard.
• Martine Bercher, 61, American football player.
• Adrian Biddle, 53, British cinematographer (Aliens, The Princess Bride, Thelma & Louise), heart attack.
• Marvin Braude, 85, American member of Los Angeles City Council.^[23]
• Carroll A. Campbell, Jr., 65, American politician, former South Carolina governor (1987–1995), and member of U.S. House of Representatives (1979–1987).
• Bud Carson, 75, American football player, former NFL head coach, emphysema.^[24]
• Loomis Dean, 88, American photographer, notably for Life magazine.

8

• R. W. Bradford, 58, American writer, publisher of Liberty magazine, kidney cancer.
• Dame Rose Heilbron, 91, British judge.^[25]
• Donald Martino, 74, American composer.^[26]
• George D. Painter, 91, British biographer.^[27]
• Leo Scheffczyk, 85, German Roman Cardinal Deacon of San Francesco Saverio alla Garbatella, Germany.^[28]
• Roger Shattuck, 82, American writer and critic, prostate cancer.^[29]
• J.N. Williamson, 73, American horror writer, author and publisher.
• Georgiy Zhzhonov, 90, Russian actor and writer.

9

• Alan John Beale, 72, British virologist.
• Norman Blundell, 88, Australian cricketer.
• Mike Botts, 61, American drummer with 1970s soft rock band Bread, toured and recorded with Linda Ronstadt, Dan Fogelberg, Tina Turner and others, cancer.
• Homer Mensch, 91, American internationally known bass player, Juilliard teacher.
• Eunice Norton, 97, American classical pianist and music promoter.
• György Sándor, 93, Hungarian internationally famous pianist, Juilliard teacher, heart failure.^[30]
• Robert Sheckley, 77, American science fiction author, brain aneurysm.^[31]

10

• Frank Cooke, 92, American entrepreneur.
• Mary Jackson, 95, American schoolteacher and actress (The Waltons, Parenthood).
• Eugene McCarthy, 89, American politician, former Democratic United States Senator from Minnesota (1959–1971), and United States Representative (1949–1959) and presidential primary candidate.^[32]
• Jim McIntyre, 78, American basketball player.
• Richard Pryor, 65, American comedian and actor (Stir Crazy, Harlem Nights), heart attack and complications of multiple sclerosis.^[33]
• Clark G. Reynolds, 65, American naval historian.^[34]

11

• Walter Cudzik, 73, American NFL and American Football League center for the Boston Patriots.
• Del Philpott, 82, American soldier and scientist.
• Richard Sandbrook, 59, British environmentalist.
• Hayim Tadmor, 82, Israeli Assyriologist and professor.^[35]

12

• Eric D'Arcy, 81, Australia Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Hobart, Tasmania.
• Max Mariu, 53, First Maori Catholic bishop.
• Robert Newmyer, 49, American film producer (The Santa Clause, Training Day, Sex, Lies, and Videotape), heart attack triggered by asthma.^[36]
• David Pritchard, 86, British chess player and chess writer.
• Gebran Tueni, 48, Lebanese journalist and politician, assassinated by a car bomb.

13

• John Barraclough, 79, Australian politician.
• Sir Roland Guy, 77, British army general.
• John Langstaff, 84, American singer and music educator.^[37]
• Dick Nolan, 66, Canadian musician.
• Stanley "Tookie" Williams, 51, American convicted murderer and co-founder of the Crips turned anti-gang activist, execution by lethal injection.

14

• Erhard Ahmann, 64, German football manager.
• Stew Bowers, 90, American baseball player.
• Gordon Duncan, 41, Scottish musician and bagpiper, suicide.^[38]
• Rokuro Ishikawa, 80, Japanese businessman (Kajima Corporation).
• Sudhir Joshi, 57, Indian actor, heart attack.
• John B. Nixon, 77, American convicted murderer, executed in Mississippi.
• William "Duke" Procter, 106, Canadian World War I veteran.^[39]
• Rodney William Whitaker, 74, British author, wrote under pseudonyms such as "Trevanian."
• C. I. Paul, 61, Indian (Malayalam) actor, heart attack.

15

• Maurice Beresford, 85, British economic historian and archaeologist.
• James Ingo Freed, 75, American architect.^[40]
• Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, 84, Italian writer and director of movies and theatre.
• Heinrich Gross, 90, Austrian alleged Nazi doctor and war criminal.^[41]
• Walter Haut, 83, American retired U.S. Army lieutenant, central figure in the Roswell UFO incident in 1947.^[42]
• Stan Leonard, 90, Canadian golfer, heart failure.^[43]
• Julian Marías, 91, Spanish philosopher and father of author Javier Marías.
• John McIntyre, 89, Scottish theologian.^[44]
• Akira Ohgi, 70, Japanese baseball player and manager.
• Jim Ostendarp, 82, American football coach at Amherst College for 33 years.^[45]
• William Proxmire, 90, American politician, Democratic Senator from Wisconsin (1957–1989), complications of Alzheimer's disease.^[46]
• Darrell Russell, 29, American former NFL player for the Oakland Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, car accident.

16

• Anthony Barber, 85, British politician and former Conservative Party Chancellor of the Exchequer, complications of Parkinson's disease.
• Boyi Bhimanna, 94, Indian Telugu poet.
• Kenneth Bulmer, 84, English writer (pseudonyms included Alan Burt Akers and Dray Prescot).^[47]
• Joseph Owades, 86, American biochemist, inventor of light beer.^[48]
• John Spencer, 58, American actor (The West Wing, L.A. Law, The Rock), Emmy winner (2002), heart attack.
• Enzo Stuarti, 86, Italian tenor, was in many Broadway musicals, heart failure.^[49]

17

• Jack Anderson, 83, American Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, complications of Parkinson's disease.^[50]
• Mustafa Ertan, 79, Turkish footballer.
• Marc Favreau, 76, French Canadian television and film actor, best known for his creation of the clown Sol.
• Jacques Fouroux, 58, French rugby union captain and coach, heart attack.^[51]
• Sverre Stenersen, 79, Norwegian Gold medal winner in the 1956 Winter Olympics.
• Haljand Udam, 69, Estonian translator and encyclopedist.

18

• Keith Duckworth, 72, British automotive designer.^[52]
• Doug Dye, 84, New Zealand microbiologist.
• Howie Ferguson, 75, American former NFL player.
• Doris Fisher, Baroness Fisher of Rednal, 86, British politician and peer.^[53]
• Barry Halper, 66, American baseball memorabilia collector and limited partner for the New York Yankees.^[54]
• Belita Jepson-Turner, 82, British Olympic skater and film actress.^[55]
• P.M. Sayeed, 64, Indian Minister of Power, heart attack.^[56]
• Alan M. Voorhees, 83, American transportation engineer and city planner ^[57]

19

• Billy Amstell, 94, British jazz musician.
• Sir Charles Brett, 77, Northern Irish architectural historian.
• George Bromilow, 74, British footballer at the 1956 Summer Olympics.
• Vincent Gigante, 77, American Genovese family crime boss, heart disease.^[58]
• Phyllis Gretzky, 64, Canadian mother of NHL legend Wayne Gretzky, lung cancer.
• Julio Iglesias, Sr., 90, Spanish gynaecologist who is among the oldest men to have fathered a child (also Julio Iglesias's father and Enrique Iglesias's grandfather), heart attack.
• Marjorie Kellogg, 83, American author and playwright (Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon).^[59]

20

• Raoul Bott, 82, Hungarian-born American Harvard mathematician, cancer.^[60]
• Argentina Brunetti, 98, Argentine actress. (It's a Wonderful Life, The Caddy), writer, journalist.
• Theodore Holmes Bullock, 90, American neuroscientist.^[61]
• Bradford Cannon, 98, American plastic surgeon, pneumonia.^[62]
• Genrikh Fedosov, 73, Soviet football player.
• William W. Howells, 97, American anthropologist.^[63]
• Billy Hughes, 57, American former child/film actor during the 1960s.^[64]
• Graham Wilson, 66, Australian rugby league player.

21

• Vicente de Cadenas y Vicent, 90, Spanish officer of arms.
• Horace Ellis Crouch, 87, American military aviator, member of the Doolittle Raid.
• Myron Healey, 82, American film actor who normally played Western villains.^[65]
• Elrod Hendricks, 64, U.S. Virgin Islander Baltimore Orioles coach, former MLB catcher, heart attack.^[66]
• Hallam Tennyson, 85, British radio producer and great-grandson of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, suspected victim of murder.^[67]

22

• Richard Bellucci, 91, American ear surgeon and inventor.^[68]
• Cooper Evans, 81, American politician, former Republican US Representative from Iowa from 1981–1987.
• Aurora Miranda, 90, Brazilian entertainer, sister of Carmen Miranda; she appeared in The Three Caballeros (1945) in which she danced with Donald Duck.
• Bill Scott, 82, Australian author.

23

• Lajos Baróti, 91, Hungarian football coach.^[69]
• Selma Jeanne Cohen, 85, American dance historian, editor of The International Encyclopedia of Dance.^[70]
• G. Blakemore Evans, 93, American Shakespeare scholar, author of The Riverside Shakespeare, stroke.^[71]
• Truman Gibson, 93, American anti-segregation lawyer and boxing promoter.^[72]
• Harold Hallman, 43, Canadian football player.^[73]
• Emmett Leith, 78, American electrical engineer.^[74]
• Kay Stammers, 91, British tennis player.^[75]
• Norman D. Vaughan, 100, American explorer and sportsman, part of Richard Byrd's 1928 South Pole expedition.^[76][77]
• Yao Wenyuan, 74, Chinese Communist political leader, member of the Gang of Four.^[78]

24

• Bhanumathi, 80, Indian film actress, director, singer/songwriter.^[79]
• Georg Johannesen, 74, Norwegian author and professor of rhetoric.^[80]
• Constance Keene, 84, American classical pianist known for playing the romantic repertoire^[81]
• Harold Lawton, 106, British academic and veteran of the First World War^[82]
• Michael Vale, 83, American actor who appeared in over 1,300 commercials as the sleepy doughnut maker for Dunkin' Donuts from 1982–1997, diabetes.^[83]
• Wang Daohan, 90, Chinese negotiator for People's Republic of China in cross-straits talks, who contributed to the formation of the 1992 Consensus with Koo Chen-fu from the Republic of China on Taiwan.^[84]

25

• Felice Andreasi, 77, Italian actor.
• Derek Bailey, 75, English free improvising avant-garde guitarist, motor neuron disease.^[85]
• Robert Barbers, 61, Filipino politician, former Philippines senator, heart attack.^[86]
• Donald Dawson, 97, American lawyer, executive assistant to Harry S. Truman.^[87]
• Robert Duthie, 80, American-born British orthopaedic surgeon.
• John Hayes, 76, British art historian and museum curator.^[88]
• Henry Kock, 53, Canadian horticulturist and eco-activist, brain cancer.^[89]
• Birgit Nilsson, 87, Swedish soprano.^[90]
• Joseph Pararajasingham, 71, Sri Lankan politician and supporter of the Tamil Tiger rebels, shot and killed at a midnight Christmas Mass.^[91]
• Sarat Chandra Sinha, 92, Indian politician, Chief Minister of Assam.^[92]
• Clint Sampson, 44, American football player, car accident.^[93]
• Roy Stuart, 70, American actor.^[94]

26

• Mikuláš Athanasov, 75, Czechoslovak wrestler.
• Julian "Bud" Blake, 87, American cartoonist (Tiger).^[95]
• Muriel Costa-Greenspon, 68, American mezzo-soprano at the New York City Opera for 30 years.^[96]
• Guy Delorme, 76, French actor.
• Bill DeArango, 84, American jazz guitarist.
• John Diebold, 79, American businessman, pioneering American computer engineer.^[97]
• Ted Ditchburn, 84, English football goalkeeper (Tottenham Hotspur, England national football team).^[98]
• Ernesto Leal, 60, Nicaraguan politician, presidential chief of staff and former foreign minister of Nicaragua, pneumonia.^[99]
• Kerry Packer, 68, Australian businessman, publishing, media and gaming tycoon, Australia's richest individual amassing a fortune of over $6 billion.^[100]
• Vincent Schiavelli, 57, American actor (Ghost, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), lung cancer.^[101]
• John Taylor, 80, Canadian football player (St. Hyacinthe-Donnacona Navy and Montreal Alouettes).^[102]
• Erich Topp, 91, German U-boat commander in World War II.^[103]

27

• Stuart Alexander, 44, American businessman and murderer.
• Philip N. Carney, 86, American politician, member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
• Xavier Connor, 88, Australian jurist, foundation judge of the Federal Court of Australia, President of the Australian Law Reform Commission 1985–1987.
• Dee Pollock, 68, American film and television actor.
• Giancarlo Primo, 81, Italian basketball coach, the first to defeat National Teams USA and USSR in 1970s.^[104]
• Tokuji Wakasa, 91, Japanese businessman, former president of All Nippon Airways.

28

• Bruce Carver, 57, American video game developer.
• Patrick Cranshaw, 86, American actor (Old School, Best in Show, Herbie: Fully Loaded), pneumonia.^[105]
• Tage Ekfeldt, 79, Swedish Olympic sprinter.
• Stevo Žigon, 79, Serbian actor and theatre director.

29

• Armand Phillip Bartos, 95, American architect.^[106]
• Gerda Boyesen, 83, Norwegian psychologist.
• Dan Carnevale, 87, American baseball player.
• Abuna Yesehaq Mandefro, 72, Ethiopian Orthodox Archbishop.^[107]
• Ray Mattox, 78, American politician.^[108]
• Eileen Nolan, 85, British Director of the Women's Royal Army Corps.^[109]
• Elizabeth Parcells, 54, American operatic coloratura soprano.^[110]
• Sir Cyril Philips, 93, British historian and academic administrator.^[111]
• Sir Eric Stroud, 81, British paediatrician.^[112]

30

• Eddie Barlow, 65, South African cricketer.^[113]
• Candy Barr, 70, American exotic dancer, pneumonia.^[114]
• Charles J. Bowles, 83, American physical education expert.
• Pasquale Carpino, 69, Italian-born Canadian television chef and operatic singer.^[115]
• Tory Dent, 47, American poet, essayist and art critic.^[116]
• Rona Jaffe, 74, American novelist (The Best of Everything, Mazes and Monsters), cancer.^[117]
• Fred "Jock" Smith, 79, Scottish footballer (Hull City, Sheffield United and Millwall).
• Bobby Stevens, 98, American baseball player.^[118]

31

• Sanora Babb, 98, American writer.^[119]
• Enrico Di Giuseppe, 73, American operatic tenor, cancer.^[120]
• Maurice Dodd, 83, British cartoonist (The Perishers), brain haemorrhage.^[121]
• Sir John Peel, 101, British gynaecologist.^[122]
• Maclovia Ruiz, 95, American dancer, pneumonia.^[123]
• Xolilizwe Mzikayise Sigcawu, 79, South African King of the Gcaleka.
• David Trustram Eve, 2nd Baron Silsoe, 75, British lawyer.^[124]
• Phillip Whitehead, 68, British politician and television presenter, MP for Derby North, heart attack.^[125]