Deaths in December 2000

The following is a list of notable deaths in December 2000.

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.

1

 * Moses Abramovitz, 88, American economist.
 * Robert V. Barron, 67, American TV and film director.
 * Neal Creque, 60, American organist and jazz composer.
 * Jack Hemingway, 77, Canadian-American fly fisherman, writer and son of novelist Ernest Hemingway.
 * Elmer E. Rasmuson, 91, American banker, philanthropist and politician, heart failure.
 * Terry Wilshusen, 51, American baseball player.

2

 * Chris Antley, 34, American jockey (Racing Hall of Fame) (winner of Kentucky Derby 1991, 1999), drug overdose.
 * Gail Fisher, 65, American actress (Mannix), renal failure.
 * Rosemarie Frankland, 57, Welsh actress, model and beauty queen, drug overdose.
 * Alfonso Barrantes Lingán, 73, Peruvian politician.
 * Pete "El Conde" Rodríguez, 67, American salsa singer, heart attack.
 * Theodore Ropp, 89, American historian.
 * Kurt Schmid, 68, Swiss rower and Olympic medalist.
 * Michael Schumann, 54, (East) German philosophy professor and politician, traffic accident.
 * Daniel Singer, 74, Polish-American socialist writer and journalist, lung cancer.
 * Emily Wilkens, 83, American fashion designer.
 * Ray Young, 62, Australian politician.
 * Bibiano Zapirain, 81, Uruguayan football player.
 * Bian Zhilin, 89, Chinese poet and literature researcher.

3

 * Gwendolyn Brooks, 83, American poet, cancer.
 * Hoyt Curtin, 78, American composer and music producer.
 * Peter Denton, 74, Australian pole vaulter and Olympian.
 * Cletus Fischer, 75, American gridiron football player.
 * Jun Fukuda, 77, Japanese film director, cancer.
 * Bobby Kottarakkara, 48, Indian actor, heart attack.
 * Red Nonnenkamp, 89, American baseball player.
 * Hugh Edward Richardson, 94, British diplomat and Tibetologist.
 * Miklós Szabó, 91, Hungarian middle-distance runner and Olympian.

4

 * Henck Arron, 64, Suriname politician and Prime Minister, cardiac arrest.
 * H. C. Artmann, 79, Austrian poet and writer, heart attack.
 * Tito Arévalo, 89, Filipino actor and musician.
 * Horia Bernea, 62, Romanian painter.
 * Ram Bahadur Chettri, 63, Indian football player.
 * Colin Cowdrey, 67, English cricket player.
 * Vincent M. Fennelly, 80, American film and television producer.
 * Gisela Kahn Gresser, 94, American chess player.
 * Manuel Licea, 79, Cuban singer, diabetes.
 * Joe Nanini, 45, American rock drummer, intracranial aneurysm.

5

 * Ahmad Zaidi Adruce, 74, Malaysian governor.
 * Ghulam Dastagir Alam, Pakistani theoretical physicist.
 * Rupert Charles Barneby, 89, American botanist.
 * Árpád Glatz, 61, Hungarian basketball player.
 * Matthew Lukwiya, 43, Ugandan physician, ebola virus disease.
 * O. W. Wolters, 85, British academic, historian and author.

6

 * Thomas Babe, 59, American playwright, lung cancer.
 * Daniel Hittle, 50, American serial killer and mass murderer, execution by lethal injection.
 * Enrique Anderson Imbert, 90, Argentine novelist and short-story writer.
 * Werner Klemperer, 80, German actor, singer and musician, cancer.
 * Chrystabel Leighton-Porter, 87, British model.
 * Aziz Mian, 58, Pakistani qawwali, complications of hepatitis.
 * Umasashi, 85, Indian Bengali film actress.
 * Svetozar Vukmanović, 88, Yugosla and Montenegrin communist politician.

7

 * Toby Low, 1st Baron Aldington, 86, British politician.
 * Edward Castro, 50, American convicted murderer, execution by lethal injection.
 * Vlado Gotovac, 70, Croatian poet and politician, liver cancer.
 * Levi Jackson, 74, American football player, first African-American to captain Yale University.
 * Leszek Podhorodecki, Polish historian.

8

 * Gary Bergman, 62, Canadian ice hockey player.
 * Ann T. Bowling, 57, American geneticist, stroke.
 * Julian C. Dixon, 66, American politician, heart attack.
 * Ionatana Ionatana, 62, Prime Minister of Tuvalu (1999 – 2000), heart attack.
 * Charles Issawi, 84, Egyptian-American economist and historian.
 * Marvin Leath, 69, American politician.
 * Milić od Mačve, 66, Serbian painter and artist.
 * Lionel Rogosin, 76, American filmmaker.
 * Neil Staebler, 95, American politician, Alzheimer's disease.

9

 * Eugenio Galvalisi, 85, Uruguayan football player.
 * John Hock, 72, American football player, lung cancer.
 * Marina Koshetz, 88, American opera singer and actress.
 * Tyrone McGriff, 42, American football player, heart attack.
 * Sachindra Lal Singh, 93, Indian politician, Chief Minister of Tripura.
 * Billie Yorke, 89, British tennis player.

10

 * Paul Avery, 66, American journalist, pulmonary emphysema.
 * Jack Cowan, 73, Canadian football player.
 * Dick Healey, 77, Australian politician and sports broadcaster.
 * Marius B. Jansen, 78, American academic and historian.
 * James T. McHugh, 68, American Roman Catholic prelate.
 * Andreas Mouratis, 74, Greek football player.
 * Tony Mulvihill, 83, Australian politician.
 * Willard Nixon, 72, American baseball player.
 * Teresa Sterne, 73, American concert pianist and record producer, Lou Gehrig's disease.
 * Marie Windsor, 80, American actress.
 * José Águas, 70, Portuguese football player.

11

 * Pauline Curley, 96, American vaudeville and silent film actress, pneumonia.
 * Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah, 85, Pakistani politician, diplomat and author.
 * David Lewis, 84, American actor.
 * Jack Liebowitz, 100, American book publisher (DC Comics).
 * N. Richard Nash, 87, American dramatist.
 * Johannes Virolainen, 86, Finnish politician.
 * René Wheeler, 88, French screenwriter and film director.

12

 * Red Barkley, 88, American baseball player.
 * Götz Friedrich, 70, German opera and theatre director.
 * Knud W. Jensen, 84, Danish businessman and art collector.
 * Rosa King, 61, American jazz and blues musician.
 * Dorothy Kirby, 80, American golfer.
 * Libertad Lamarque, 92, Argentine-Mexican actress and singer, pneumonia.
 * George Montgomery, 84, American actor, heart attack.
 * J. H. Patel, 70, Indian politician and Chief Minister of Karnataka.
 * Jimmy Scarth, 74, English football player.
 * Ndabaningi Sithole, 80, Zimbabwean politician and rival of Robert Mugabe.

13

 * Pierre Demargne, 97, French historian and archaeologist.
 * Clarence Dybvig, 81, American politician.
 * Aharon Harel, 68, Israeli politician.
 * Jake Jones, 80, American baseball player.
 * Erhard Krack, 69, German politician and mayor of East Berlin.
 * Chen Zhen, 45, Chinese-French conceptual artist, cancer.

14

 * Enoch Dumbutshena, 80, Zimbabwean judge, liver cancer.
 * Allan Howe, 73, American politician.
 * Roger Judrin, 91, French writer and literary critic.
 * Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky, 82, Ukrainian Catholic bishop.
 * John Mahnken, 78, American basketball player.
 * Pavel Plotnikov, 80, Soviet air force general.
 * Uldis Pūcītis, 63, Latvian actor, scriptwriter and film director, pulmonary embolism.
 * Al Vincent, 93, American baseball player, manager, coach and scout.

15

 * George Alcock, 88, English astronomer.
 * Z. W. Birnbaum, 97, Polish-American mathematician and statistician.
 * Jozef Boons, 57, Belgian racing cyclist, traffic accident.
 * Haris Brkić, 26, Yugoslav basketball player, shot.
 * Bubba Floyd, 83, American baseball player.
 * Inigo Gallo, 68, Swiss comedian, radio personality, and actor, liver cancer.
 * Gour Kishore Ghosh, 77, Bengali writer and journalist.
 * Jacques Goddet, 95, French sports journalist and director of the Tour de France.
 * Chiang Peng-chien, 60, Taiwanese politician, pancreatic cancer.

16

 * Saad Dahlab, Algerian politician.
 * Blue Demon, 78, Mexican masked wrestler and actor, myocardial infarction.
 * Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, 89, German physicist.
 * Alain-Philippe Malagnac, 49, French actor, smoke inhalation.
 * Victor Owusu, 76, Ghanaian politician and lawyer.
 * Hugh W. Pinnock, 66, American Mormon leader, pulmonary fibrosis.
 * Chuck Pratt, 61, American rock climber, heart attack.
 * Theo Saevecke, 89, Nazi German SS officer and holocaust perpetrator.

17

 * Gerald Aylmer, 74, British historian.
 * Peter Barrett, 65, American sailor and Olympic champion.
 * Gérard Blain, 70, French actor and film director, cancer.
 * Harold Rhodes, 89, American music inventor, pneumonia.
 * Erich Schmid, 93, Swiss conductor.

18

 * Paddy Barry, 72, Irish hurler.
 * Hal Call, 83, American LGBT rights activist, and U.S. Army veteran, congestive heart failure.
 * Harry DeWolf, 97, Canadian naval officer during World War II.
 * Lajos Dunai, 58, Hungarian football player.
 * Stan Fox, 48, American race car driver, traffic collision.
 * Randolph Apperson Hearst, 85, American newspaper publisher (Hearst Corporation).
 * Norman Humphries, 83, English cricket player.
 * Kirsty MacColl, 41, British singer-songwriter, boating accident.
 * Madhavapeddi Satyam, 78, Indian actor and singer.
 * Giorgio Saviane, 84, Italian author.
 * Nick Stewart, 90, American television and film actor.

19

 * Pierre Allain, 96, French alpinist.
 * Mahmud Baksi, 56, Kurdish writer and journalist, kidney failure.
 * Reginald Bennett, 89, English politician, psychiatrist and painter.
 * Rob Buck, 42, American musician (10,000 Maniacs), liver disease.
 * Michel Dens, 89, French baritone.
 * György Györffy, 83, Hungarian historian.
 * Milt Hinton, 90, American double bassist and photographer.
 * John Lindsay, 79, 103rd Mayor of New York City, Parkinson's disease.
 * William L. Moran, 79, American assyriologist.
 * Lou Polli, 99, Italian-American baseball player.
 * Son Sann, 89, Cambodian politician and resistance leader.
 * Pops Staples, 85, patriarch of The Staple Singers, fall.
 * Laurence Whistler, 88, British poet and artist.

20

 * Bill Clarke, 68, Canadian football player, Parkinson's disease.
 * Mirza Ghulam Hafiz, 80, Bangladeshi statesman, politician, and philanthropist.
 * Richard Hazard, 79, American television composer, conductor and songwriter, cancer.
 * Adrian Henri, 68, British poet and painter (Liverpool Poets).
 * Patriarch Diodoros of Jerusalem, 77, Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem (1980-2000), diabetes.
 * Syed Abdul Malik, 81, Indian Assamese writer.
 * Alexander Ramsay of Mar, 80, British aristocrat.

21

 * Rober Eryol, 70, Turkish football player.
 * Alfred J. Gross, 82, American inventor and a pioneer in mobile wireless communication.
 * Florynce Kennedy, 84, American lawyer, feminist, civil rights advocate, and activist.
 * John Lee, 72, Australian actor.
 * Edward Miller, 85, British historian (Master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge).
 * Stephen A. Mitchell, 54, American clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst.
 * Gord Reay, 57, Canadian Army officer, road accident.
 * Derek Trevis, 58, English football player.
 * Renaat Van Elslande, 84, Belgian politician.

22

 * Lianella Carell, 73, Italian film actress and screenwriter.
 * Giuseppe Colnago, 77, Italian Grand Prix motorcycle road racer.
 * Herman Feshbach, 83, American physicist.
 * Vytautas Kulakauskas, 80, Lithuanian basketball player, and coach.
 * Stuart Lancaster, 80, American actor.
 * Connie McCready, 79, American journalist and politician, complications from a stroke.
 * Allan Smethurst, 73, English folk singer, heart attack.

23

 * Wilfred Arthur, 81, Australian fighter ace of the RAAF during World War II.
 * Larry Baker, 63, American gridiron football player.
 * Billy Barty, 76, American actor (Willow, Legend, Masters of the Universe), heart failure.
 * Susan Berman, 55, American journalist and author, homicide.
 * Victor Borge, 91, Danish-American comedian and pianist.
 * Vinal G. Good, 94, American politician and lawyer from Maine.
 * Aage Haugland, 56, Danish operatic bass, cancer.
 * Noor Jehan, 74, Pakistani actress and singer, heart failure.
 * Louis Leprince-Ringuet, 99, French physicist, essayist and historian of science.
 * Jimmy Shand, 92, Scottish musician.

24

 * Horace Barker, 93, American biochemist and microbiologist.
 * John Cooper, 77, British automobile designer (Cooper Car Company).
 * Sadek Hilal, 70, Egyptian-American radiologist.
 * Seo Jeong-ju, 85, Korean poet and academic.
 * Sadik Kaceli, 86, Albanian artist.
 * Nick Massi, 73, bass singer and bass guitarist for The Four Seasons, cancer.
 * Helena Pajović, 21, Serb figure skater, traffic collision.
 * Dan Turk, 38, American football player (Pittsburgh Steelers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Oakland Raiders), testicular cancer.
 * Howard Yerges, 75, American gridiron football player.
 * Laurence Chisholm Young, 95, American mathematician.

25

 * Truus Baumeister, 93, Dutch freestyle swimmer and Olympian.
 * Décio Esteves, 73, Brazilian football player and coach.
 * George Feigenbaum, 71, American basketball player.
 * Robert Francis Garner, 80, American Roman Catholic prelate.
 * Joe Gilliam, 49, American gridiron football player (Pittsburgh Steelers), cocaine overdose.
 * Dheerendra Gopal, 60, Indian film and stage actor, jaundice attack.
 * Neil Hawke, 61, Australian cricket player.
 * Willard Van Orman Quine, 92, American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition.
 * Sam Savitt, 83, American equine artist, author, and book illustrator.
 * Vibhuti Narayan Singh, 73, Indian sanskrit scholar and maharaja of Benares.
 * Peter W. Staub, 90, Swish actor and singer.
 * Ignacy Tłoczyński, 89, Polish tennis player and coach.

26

 * John Coatta, 71, American football player and coach.
 * José Hernández Delgadillo, 73, Mexican painter and muralist.
 * Mirra Ginsburg, 91, Russian-American translator of Russian literature and children's writer.
 * Leo Gordon, 78, American character actor, cardiac failure.
 * Alan Harris, 84, British engineer.
 * Walter Hayes, British journalist and business executive, lung cancer.
 * Magik, 22, Polish rapper, suicide by jumping.
 * John McLeay, Jr., 78, Australian politician.
 * Herman Nickerson Jr., 87, United States Marine Corps lieutenant general.
 * Jason Robards, 78, American actor (All the President's Men, Julia, Once Upon a Time in the West), Oscar winner (1977, 1978), lung cancer.
 * Gust Zarnas, 87, American gridiron football player.

27

 * William Hanes Ayres, 84, American politician, heart and kidney ailments.
 * Marc Boileau, 68, Canadian ice hockey coach and player.
 * Walter Stanley Keane, 85, American plagiarist.
 * Jack McVea, 86, American woodwind player and bandleader.
 * Francis Sumner Merritt, 87, American painter, and art teacher.
 * Roy Partee, 83, American baseball player.

28

 * Eduard Adorno, 80, German politician and member of the Bundestag.
 * Aminuddin Dagar, 77, Indian Dhrupad singer.
 * Sergey Grishchenko, 53, Soviet alpine skier and Olympian.
 * Arnold Hutschnecker, 102, Austrian-American medical doctor.
 * William X. Kienzle, 72, American priest and author (The Rosary Murders, Death Wears a Red Hat), heart attack.

29

 * Renata Carraretto, 77, Italian alpine skier and Olympian.
 * Herbert Halpert, 89, American anthropologist and folklorist.
 * Jacques Laurent, 81, French writer and journalist, suicide.
 * Woodley Lewis, 75, American football player, heart and kidney problems.

30

 * Tom Blohm, 80, Norwegian football player.
 * James C. Corman, 80, American politician (U.S. Representative for California's 21st and 22nd congressional districts).
 * Julius J. Epstein, 91, American screenwriter (Casablanca, Arsenic and Old Lace, Reuben, Reuben), Oscar winner (1944).
 * John Hardon, 86, American Jesuit priest, writer, and theologian.
 * Lionel Hebert, 72, American professional golfer.
 * Rudolf Schnyder, 71, Swiss sport shooter and Olympic silver medalist.
 * Walter Tomsen, 88, American sport shooter and Olympic silver medalist.
 * Isakas Vistaneckis, 90, Lithuanian chess player.
 * Bohdan Warchal, 70, Slovak violinist.

31

 * Alan Cranston, 86, American politician, U.S. Senator from California (1969-1993).
 * Sebastian de Grazia, 83, American philosopher.
 * Louis-René des Forêts, 82, French writer.
 * Harry Dorish, 79, American baseball player (Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Browns, Chicago White Sox, Baltimore Orioles).
 * Wayne Glasgow, 74, American basketball player.
 * José Greco, 82, Italian-American flamenco dancer and choreographer.
 * Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane, 34, Israeli rabbi and settler, shot.
 * Anne Macnaghten, 92, British violinist.
 * Tanaquil Le Clercq, 71, French ballet dancer (New York City Ballet), pneumonia.
 * Kenneth Lee Pike, 88, American linguist and anthropologist.
 * Bekzat Sattarkhanov, 20, Kazakh boxer and Olympian, traffic collision.
 * Edna Savage, 64, British pop singer.
 * Eddy Shaver, 38, American country-rock musician, heroin overdose.
 * V. V. K. Valath, 82, Indian writer, poet, and historian of Malayalam language.