The following is a list of notable deaths in May 2002.

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.

May 2002

1

• Ade Bethune, 88, American Catholic liturgical artist.^[1]
• Aspy Engineer, 89, Indian Air Force officer.
• John Nathan-Turner, 54, British television producer (Doctor Who), infection.^[2]
• Tom Sutton, 65, American comic book artist (Vampirella, Doctor Strange, Ghost Rider), heart attack.
• Roger Teillet, 89, Canadian politician.

2

• Rosa García Ascot, 100, Spanish composer and pianist.
• Peter Thomas Bauer, 86, Hungarian-British economist.^[3]
• Olive Cook, 90, British writer and artist, cancer.^[4]
• Constanța Crăciun, 88, Romanian politician and educator.
• Devika, 59, Indian actress, heart attack.
• Carl Heger, 92, Danish actor.
• Sihung Lung, 72, Taiwanese movie and TV actor, liver failure.^[5]
• Izet Sarajlić, 72, Bosnian historian of philosophy, essayist, and poet.^[6]
• Ron Soble, 70, American actor in films and television.
• Richard Stücklen, 85, German politician, President of the Bundestag.
• Judy Toll, 44, American actress, writer and comedian, melanoma.
• W. T. Tutte, 84, British-Canadian cryptographer during World War II and mathematician.

3

• Livingston L. Biddle, Jr., 83, American author and promoter of funding for the arts.^[7]
• Malcolm Bosse, 75, American author, known for his historical novels set in Asia.^[8]
• Barbara Castle, 91, British Labour politician and female life peer.^[9]
• Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal, 73, president of Somaliland and former prime minister of the Somali Republic.^[10]
• Mohan Singh Oberoi, 103, Indian hotelier and retailer.^[11]
• Yevgeny Svetlanov, 73, Russian conductor, composer and pianist.^[12]
• Mariana Yampolsky, 76, Mexican photographer.^[13]

4

• Don Allard, 66, American football player (New York Titans, Boston Patriots) and coach.^[14]
• Clarence Boston, 85, American college football coach, head coach of New Hampshire Wildcats from 1949 to 1964.^[15]
• Ernesto Díaz, 49, Colombian football player.^[16]
• John Hasted, 81, British physicist and folk musician.^[17]
• John Kohn, 76, American writer and producer, cancer.^[18]
• Rolf Friedemann Pauls, 86, German diplomat.^[19]
• Elizabeth Russell, 85, American actress.
• Gerónimo Saccardi, 52, Argentine football player and manager, heart attack.
• Abu Turab al-Zahiri, 79, Saudi Arabian writer of Arab Indian descent.

5

• Randy Anderson, 42, American wrestling referee, testicular cancer.
• Hugo Banzer, 75, Bolivian politician, Bolivian dictator (1971 to 1978), President of Bolivia (1997 to 2001), lung cancer.^[20]
• Dick Farman, 85, American professional football player (Washington State, Washington Redskins).^[21]
• Andrei Rostotsky, 45, Soviet and Russian actor, film director, screenwriter, and TV host, fall.
• Clarence Seignoret, 83, president of Dominica (1983–1993).
• George Sidney, 85, American film director (Bye Bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas, Anchors Aweigh), lymphoma.^[22]
• Mike Todd, Jr., 72, American film producer, introduced short-lived movie format Smell-O-Vision (Scent of Mystery), lung cancer.^[23]
• Čestmír Vycpálek, 80, Czech football player and manager.
• Louis C. Wyman, 85, American politician (U.S. Representative for New Hampshire's 1st congressional district), cancer.^[24]

6

• Murray Adaskin, 96, Canadian violinist, composer, conductor and teacher.^[25]
• Heinz Arndt, 87, German-Australian economist, traffic collision.^[26]
• Otis Blackwell, 71, American songwriter, singer and pianist ("Great Balls of Fire", "Don't Be Cruel", "All Shook Up", "Return to Sender").^[27]
• James Lawton Collins Jr., 84, U.S. Army brigadier general and military historian.^[28]
• Harry George Drickamer, 83, American chemical engineer, a pioneer in high-pressure studies of condensed matter.^[29]
• Pim Fortuyn, 54, Dutch politician, assassinated.^[30]
• Shanta Gandhi, 84, Indian theatre director, dancer and playwright.
• Bjørn Johansen, 61, Norwegian jazz musician.^[31]
• Bronisław Pawlik, 76, Polish actor, stomach cancer.^[32]
• Saleh Selim, 71, Egyptian football player and actor, liver cancer.^[33]

7

• Kevyn Aucoin, 40, American make-up artist and author (The Art of Makeup, Making Faces, Face Forward), multiple organ dysfunction syndrome.^[34]
• Durga Bhagwat, 92, Indian scholar, socialist and writer.
• Bernard Burrows, 91, British diplomat.^[35]
• Ewart Jones, 91, Welsh chemist.^[36]
• Robert Kanigher, 86, American comic book writer and editor (Wonder Woman, The Flash, Sgt. Rock).
• Masakatsu Miyamoto, 63, Japanese football player and manager, pneumonia.^[37]
• Xavier Montsalvatge, 90, Spanish composer and music critic.^[38]
• Seattle Slew, 28, American thoroughbred racehorse champion.
• Monica Sinclair, 77, British operatic contralto.^[39]

8

• Sylvester Barrett, 75, Irish politician (Minister for the Environment, Minister for Defence, Member of the European Parliament).^[40]
• Basil Chubb, 80, English-Irish political scientist and author (The Government and Politics of Ireland).^[41]
• Edward Jackson, 76, English diplomat, (Ambassador to Cuba, Ambassador to Belgium).^[42]
• Tilly Lauenstein, 85, German film and television actress.
• Lou Lombardo, 70, American film editor (The Wild Bunch, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Moonstruck), stroke.^[43]
• Ahmad Mazhar, 84, Egyptian actor, pneumonia.^[44]
• Boyce McDaniel, 84, American nuclear physicist, worked on the Manhattan Project, heart attack.^[45]

9

• Dan Devine, 77, American football player and coach (Arizona State, Missouri, Green Bay Packers, Notre Dame).^[46]
• Robert Layton, 76, Canadian politician and a member of Parliament (House of Commons representing Lachine and Lachine—Lac-Saint-Louis, Quebec).^[47]
• Leon Stein, 91, American composer and music analyst.^[48]
• Sam Walton, 59, American gridiron football player (East Texas State, New York Jets, Houston Oilers), heart attack.^[49]

10

• Philip Edward Archer, 77, Ghanese lawyer and Chief Justice (1991-1995).
• Kaifi Azmi, 83, Indian Urdu poet.^[50]
• Lynda Lyon Block, 54, American convicted murderer, executed by electric chair.
• George Cates, 90, American music arranger, conductor, songwriter and record producer.^[51]
• John Cunniff, 57, American hockey player and coach (Hartford Whalers, Boston Bruins, New Jersey Devils), esophageal cancer.^[52]
• Austen Kark, 75, British television executive, managing director of the BBC World Service.^[53]
• David Riesman, 92, American sociologist, educator, and commentator on American society.^[54]
• Yves Robert, 81, French actor, screenwriter, director, and producer, cerebral hemorrhage.^[55]

11

• Joseph Bonanno, 97, Italian-American mafia boss, heart attack.^[56]
• Renaude Lapointe, 90, Canadian journalist and a politician.
• Bill Peet, 87, American animator and screenwriter (Cinderella, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland).^[57]
• Steve Rachunok, 85, American baseball player (Brooklyn Dodgers).^[58]
• Abida Sultan, 88, Pakistani princess and daughter of Nawab Hamidullah Khan.
• Jerzy Tabeau, 83, Polish Holocaust survivor.
• Nika Turbina, 27, Soviet and Russian poet, suicide.^[59]

12

• Edward M. Carey, 85, American oil industry executive.^[60]
• Richard Chorley, 74, English geographer, heart attack.^[61]
• Luciano Galesi, 75, Italian Olympic sports shooter.^[62]
• Bruce Hansen, 74, New Zealand Olympic equestrian.^[63]

13

• Clinton Adams, 83, American artist, art historian and head of the Tamarind Institute, liver cancer.^[64]
• Alan P. Bell, 70, American psychologist (Kinsey Institute).^[65]
• Ruth Cracknell, 76, Australian actress (Mother and Son), pneumonia.^[66]
• George Gordienko, 74, Canadian professional wrestler and artist, melanoma.
• Valeriy Lobanovskyi, 63, Ukrainian football coach, stroke.
• Douglas Pike, 77, American historian and scholar on the Vietnam War.^[67]
• Morihiro Saito, 74, Japanese aikido teacher, cancer.

14

• Derek Birley, 75, British educationist, writer and sports historian.^[68]
• Rawshan Jamil, 71, Bangladeshi actress and dancer.
• José Lutzenberger, 75, Brazilian agronomist and environmentalist, heart attack.^[69]
• Gordon J. F. MacDonald, 72, American geophysicist.^[70]
• Dale Morey, 83, American basketball player.
• Ray Stricklyn, 73, American actor and publicist, emphysema.^[71]

15

• Kofoworola Ademola, 88, Nigerian educationist.
• Bernard Benjamin, 92, British statistician, a leading figure in the field of demography.^[72]
• Darwood Kaye, 72, American child actor (Our Gang), hit and run accident.^[73]
• Tatiana Okunevskaya, 88, Soviet and Russian actress.
• Bryan Pringle, 67, British actor.^[74]

16

• Shoichi Arai, 36, Japanese professional wrestling promoter, suicide.
• Alec Campbell, 103, Australia's last surviving ANZAC at the Gallipoli campaign during World War I.^[75]
• Jim Dewar, 59, Scottish musician, stroke.^[76]
• Big Dick Dudley, 34, American professional wrestler (ECW), kidney failure.
• Kenneth Fung, 90, Hong Kong politician and businessman.^[77]
• Salcia Landmann, 90, Jewish Ukrainian writer.^[78]
• José Reis, 94, Brazilian scientist, journalist, and science writer.
• José Riesgo, 82, Spanish actor.
• Gavril Serfőző, 75, Romanian football player.

17

• Dave Berg, 81, American cartoonist (Mad, The Lighter Side of...), cancer.^[79]
• Joe Black, 78, American first Black baseball pitcher to win a World Series game (Brooklyn Dodgers, Cincinnati Redlegs, Washington Senators), prostate cancer.^[80]
• Edwin Alonzo Boyd, 88, Canadian bank robber and prison escapee of the 1950s (Citizen Gangster).^[81]
• James Chichester-Clark, 79, Northern Ireland politician, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1969 to 1971.^[82]
• John de Lancie, 80, American oboist, principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra and director of the Curtis Institute of Music.^[83]
• László Kubala, 74, Hungarian and Slovak football player.
• Sharon Sheeley, 62, American songwriter.
• Little Johnny Taylor, 59, American singer.^[84]
• Aşık Mahzuni Şerif, 61, Turkish folk musician, composer, poet, and author, heart failure.^[85]
• Norman Vaughan, 79, English comedian.

18

• Sergio Andreoli, 80, Italian football player.^[86]
• Song Hye-rim, 65, North Korean actress, best, breast cancer.
• Wolfgang Schneiderhan, 86, Austrian classical violinist.^[87]
• Davey Boy Smith, 39, British professional wrestler, myocardial infarction, heart attack.
• Zypora Spaisman, 86, Polish-American actress and Yiddish] theatre empresaria.^[88]
• Gordon Wharmby, 68, British actor (Last of the Summer Wine), cancer.^[89]

19

• René de Chambrun, 95, French-American aristocrat, lawyer, businessman and author.^[90]
• Raymond Durgnat, 69, British film critic (Films and Filming, Film Comment, Monthly Film Bulletin) and author.^[91]
• Herbert Familton, 74, New Zealand alpine skier (men's downhill, men's giant slalom at the 1952 Winter Olympics).^[92]
• John Gorton, 90, 19th Prime Minister of Australia.^[93]
• Earl Hammond, 80, American voice actor (Thundercats).
• Walter Lord, 84, American historian, Parkinson's disease.^[94]
• Otar Lordkipanidze, 72, Georgian archaeologist, heart attack.
• Giuseppe Maria Scotese, 86, Italian screenwriter and film director.
• Bryant Tuckerman, 86, American mathematician.

20

• David Abrahamsen, 98, Norwegian forensic psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author.^[95]
• Renzo Barbera, 82, Italian businessman and soccer executive.
• Jerry Dunphy, 80, American Los Angeles television news anchor, heart attack.^[96]
• Stephen Jay Gould, 60, American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science author, cancer.^[97]
• Sándor Kónya, 78, Hungarian tenor.^[98]
• Eberle Hynson Schultz, 84, American football player.^[99]

21

• Rogers Albritton, 78, American philosopher, pulmonary emphysema.^[100]
• Joe Cobb, 86, American child actor, appeared as the original "fat boy" in the Our Gang comedies.^[101]
• Michel Grosclaude, 75, French linguist, and author of works on grammar and lexicography.^[102]
• Andrzej Herder, 64, Polish film and theatre actor.
• Roy Paul, 82, Welsh footballer.
• Niki de Saint Phalle, 71, French artist, pulmonary emphysema.^[103]
• Bob Poser, 92, American baseball player (Chicago White Sox, St. Louis Browns).^[104]

22

• Fritz Ackley, 65, American baseball player (Chicago White Sox).^[105]
• Sultan Ahmed, 64, Indian film director and producer.
• Joe Cascarella, 94, American baseball player (Philadelphia Athletics, Boston Red Sox, Washington Senators, Cincinnati Reds).^[106]
• Paul Giel, 69, American baseball player (New York/San Francisco Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates, Minnesota Twins).^[107]
• Warren Hacker, 77, American baseball player (Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Redlegs, Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago White Sox).^[108]
• Dick Hern, 81, British racehorse trainer.
• Fritz Hippler, 92, German filmmaker.^[109]
• Creighton Miller, 79, American football player and attorney, heart attack.^[110]
• Alexandru Todea, 89, Romanian Greek-Catholic cardinal.
• Patrick Wolrige-Gordon, 66, British (Scottish) politician (Member of Parliament for East Aberdeenshire).^[111]

23

• Umberto Bindi, 70, Italian singer-songwriter, heart disease.^[112]
• Wally Fromhart, 89, American football player and coach.
• Timur Novikov, 43, Russian visual artist, designer, art theorist, philosopher, and musician, pneumonia.^[113]
• Sam Snead, 89, American golfer, complications from a stroke.^[114]
• Dorothy Spencer, 93, American film editor (Stagecoach, Cleopatra, Earthquake).^[115]

24

• Joseph Bau, 81, Polish-Israeli artist, philosopher, animator, comedian, and poet, pneumonia.^[116]
• Susie Garrett, 72, American actress (Punky Brewster) and jazz vocalist, cancer.^[117]
• Antonia Pantoja, 79, Puerto Rican educator, feminist, and civil rights leader, cancer.^[118]
• Itō Toshihito, 40, Japanese actor, subarachnoid hemorrhage.
• Xi Zhongxun, 88, Chinese communist revolutionary.

25

• Pat Coombs, 75, English actress (Till Death Us Do Part, EastEnders, Ooh... You Are Awful), pulmonary emphysema.^[119]
• Bart de Graaff, 35, Dutch television presenter/producer and founder of broadcasting network BNN, kidney failure.^[120]
• Ștefan Augustin Doinaș, 80, Romanian neoclassical poet, heart failure.^[121]
• Zoran Janković, 62, Yugoslavian Olympic water polo player (1964 silver medal, 1968 gold medal, 1972), liver cancer.^[122]
• Michel Jobert, 80, French politician, cerebral hemorrhage.
• Pål-Nils Nilsson, 72, Swedish photographer and filmmaker.
• Nathan Mantel, 83, American biostatistician, heart attack.^[123]
• Jack Pollard, 75, Australian sports journalist, stroke.^[124]

26

• Jon Bannenberg, English-Australian yacht designer, brain cancer.
• Flora Lewis, 84, American journalist (The Washington Post, The New York Times), cancer.^[125]
• Ivo Maček, 88, Croatian pianist, composer and academian.
• John Alexander Moore, 86, American biologist.^[126]
• Vicente Nebrada, 72, Venezuelan dancer and choreographer, cancer.^[127]
• Jean-Jacques Petter, 74, French primatologist.
• Mamo Wolde, 69, Ethiopian Olympic long-distance runner (1968 gold medal, 1968 silver medal, 1972 bronze medal), liver cancer.^[128]

27

• Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson, 93, Scottish historian and paleographer.^[129]
• Barbara Hamilton, 14th Baroness Dudley, 95, British noblewoman, member of the House of Lords.^[130]
• Ray Mathew, 73, Australian author.^[131]
• Vitaly Solomin, 60, Soviet and Russian actor, director and screenwriter, stroke.^[132]

28

• Ibrahim al-Urayyid, 94, Bahraini writer and poet.^[133]
• Napoleon Beazley, 25, American juvenile offender, executed by lethal injection.
• Mildred Benson, 96, American journalist and author of children's books (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories), lung cancer.^[134]
• Jean Berger, 92, German-American composer and conductor.^[135]
• Ruby Bradley, 94, US Army colonel and one of the most decorated women in its military history.^[136]
• Norman King, 87, New Zealand politician and cabinet minister.
• David Parker Ray, 62, American serial killer, heart attack.
• Wes Westrum, 79, American baseball player (New York Giants) and manager (New York Mets, San Francisco Giants), cancer.^[137]
• Rostislav Yurenev, 90, Soviet and Russian film critic and teacher.

29

• Stan Bentham, 87, English footballer, Alzheimer's disease.^[138]
• Gunnar Jarring, 94, Swedish diplomat and Turkologist.^[139]
• Sándor Mátrai, 69, Hungarian football player.^[140]
• Sher Ali Khan Pataudi, 89, Pakistani politician and diplomat.
• Elémire Zolla, 75, Italian essayist, philosopher and historian.^[141]

30

• Kees Boertien, 74, Dutch politician (Christian Democratic Appeal) and jurist.^[142]
• Kenny Craddock, 52, British instrumentalist (Ringo Starr, Ginger Baker, Gerry Rafferty), composer and producer, car crash.^[143]
• John B. Keane, 73, Irish playwright, novelist and essayist, prostate cancer.^[144]
• Mario Lago, 90, Brazilian lawyer, poet, composer and actor, pneumonia.^[145]
• Walter Laird, 81, British ballroom dancer.

31

• Jeremy Bray, 71, British politician (member of Parliament representing Middlesbrough West, Motherwell and Wishaw and Motherwell South).^[146]
• Subhash Gupte, 72, Indian cricket player.^[147]
• Eleanor D. Wilson, 93, American actress (Weekend, Alice's Restaurant, Reds) and artist.^[148]