Deaths in December 2005

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.

1

 * Gust Avrakotos, 67, American CIA agent who armed the mujaheddin of Afghanistan.
 * Mary Hayley Bell, 94, British actress, Alzheimer's disease.
 * 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.
 * Ray Hanna, 77, New Zealand-born warbird pilot and founder of The Old Flying Machine Company.
 * Victor Premasagar, 78, Indian theologian and Bishop of Medak (1983–1992).

2

 * Lillian Browse, 99, British art dealer.
 * Shawn Paul Humphries, 34, American convicted murderer, executed in South Carolina.
 * Malik Joyeux, 25, French professional surfer, killed at Hawaii's Banzai Pipeline.
 * William P. Lawrence, 75, American retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral, first to fly at twice the speed of sound.
 * Leonard Lewis, 78, British television director and producer.
 * Peter Menegazzo, 61, Australian cattle baron, killed (along with his wife Angela) in a plane crash.
 * Van Tuong Nguyen, 25, Australian convicted of drug trafficking, execution by hanging.
 * 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.
 * Allan Waters, 84, Canadian broadcasting icon

4

 * Débora Arango, 98, Colombian artist.
 * Percy Brandt, 83, Swedish actor.
 * Errol Brathwaite, 81, New Zealand writer.
 * Gregg Hoffman, 42, American film producer (Saw).
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * Kevin "Big Kev" McQuay, 56, Australian businessman and media personality, heart attack.
 * Frits Philips, 100, Dutch businessman, grandson of the founder of Philips, complications from a fall.
 * Bob Richardson, 77, American fashion photographer.
 * Bill Robinson, 71, British rugby league player.

6

 * Charly Gaul, 72, Luxembourgian cyclist, winner of the 1958 Tour de France.
 * Richard Grimsdale, 76, British electrical engineer, built the world's first transistorised computer and was at the forefront of work on Read Only Memory.
 * Paul Halla, 74, Austrian footballer.
 * Hanns Dieter Hüsch, 80, German political satirist.
 * Devan Nair, 82, President of Singapore (1981–1985).
 * Jerzy Pajaczkowski-Dydynski, 111, Polish-born oldest man in the UK at the time of his death.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * Donald Martino, 74, American composer.
 * George D. Painter, 91, British biographer.
 * Leo Scheffczyk, 85, German Roman Cardinal Deacon of San Francesco Saverio alla Garbatella, Germany.
 * Roger Shattuck, 82, American writer and critic, prostate cancer.
 * 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.
 * Robert Sheckley, 77, American science fiction author, brain aneurysm.

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.
 * Jim McIntyre, 78, American basketball player.
 * Richard Pryor, 65, American comedian and actor (Stir Crazy, Harlem Nights), heart attack and complications of multiple sclerosis.
 * Clark G. Reynolds, 65, American naval historian.

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.

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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, 84, Italian writer and director of movies and theatre.
 * Heinrich Gross, 90, Austrian alleged Nazi doctor and war criminal.
 * Walter Haut, 83, American retired U.S. Army lieutenant, central figure in the Roswell UFO incident in 1947.
 * Stan Leonard, 90, Canadian golfer, heart failure.
 * Julian Marías, 91, Spanish philosopher and father of author Javier Marías.
 * John McIntyre, 89, Scottish theologian.
 * Akira Ohgi, 70, Japanese baseball player and manager.
 * Jim Ostendarp, 82, American football coach at Amherst College for 33 years.
 * William Proxmire, 90, American politician, Democratic Senator from Wisconsin (1957–1989), complications of Alzheimer's disease.
 * 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).
 * Joseph Owades, 86, American biochemist, inventor of light beer.
 * 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.

17

 * Jack Anderson, 83, American Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, complications of Parkinson's disease.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * Doug Dye, 84, New Zealand microbiologist.
 * Howie Ferguson, 75, American former NFL player.
 * Doris Fisher, Baroness Fisher of Rednal, 86, British politician and peer.
 * Barry Halper, 66, American baseball memorabilia collector and limited partner for the New York Yankees.
 * Belita Jepson-Turner, 82, British Olympic skater and film actress.
 * P.M. Sayeed, 64, Indian Minister of Power, heart attack.
 * Alan M. Voorhees, 83, American transportation engineer and city planner

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.
 * 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).

20

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

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.
 * Elrod Hendricks, 64, U.S. Virgin Islander Baltimore Orioles coach, former MLB catcher, heart attack.
 * Hallam Tennyson, 85, British radio producer and great-grandson of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, suspected victim of murder.

22

 * Richard Bellucci, 91, American ear surgeon and inventor.
 * 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.
 * Selma Jeanne Cohen, 85, American dance historian, editor of The International Encyclopedia of Dance.
 * G. Blakemore Evans, 93, American Shakespeare scholar, author of The Riverside Shakespeare, stroke.
 * Truman Gibson, 93, American anti-segregation lawyer and boxing promoter.
 * Harold Hallman, 43, Canadian football player.
 * Emmett Leith, 78, American electrical engineer.
 * Kay Stammers, 91, British tennis player.
 * Norman D. Vaughan, 100, American explorer and sportsman, part of Richard Byrd's 1928 South Pole expedition.
 * Yao Wenyuan, 74, Chinese Communist political leader, member of the Gang of Four.

24

 * Bhanumathi, 80, Indian film actress, director, singer/songwriter.
 * Georg Johannesen, 74, Norwegian author and professor of rhetoric.
 * Constance Keene, 84, American classical pianist known for playing the romantic repertoire
 * Harold Lawton, 106, British academic and veteran of the First World War
 * Michael Vale, 83, American actor who appeared in over 1,300 commercials as the sleepy doughnut maker for Dunkin' Donuts from 1982–1997, diabetes.
 * 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.

25

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

26

 * Mikuláš Athanasov, 75, Czechoslovak wrestler.
 * Julian "Bud" Blake, 87, American cartoonist (Tiger).
 * Muriel Costa-Greenspon, 68, American mezzo-soprano at the New York City Opera for 30 years.
 * Guy Delorme, 76, French actor (The Three Musketeers, Moonraker).
 * Bill DeArango, 84, American jazz guitarist.
 * John Diebold, 79, American businessman, pioneering American computer engineer.
 * Ted Ditchburn, 84, English football goalkeeper (Tottenham Hotspur, England national football team).
 * Ernesto Leal, 60, Nicaraguan politician, presidential chief of staff and former foreign minister of Nicaragua, pneumonia.
 * Kerry Packer, 68, Australian businessman, publishing, media and gaming tycoon, Australia's richest individual amassing a fortune of over $6 billion.
 * Vincent Schiavelli, 57, American actor (Ghost, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), lung cancer.
 * John Taylor, 80, Canadian football player (St. Hyacinthe-Donnacona Navy and Montreal Alouettes).
 * Erich Topp, 91, German U-boat commander in World War II.
 * Linda Leighton, 88, American actress  (Impact, Brick Bradford).

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.
 * 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.
 * Tage Ekfeldt, 79, Swedish Olympic sprinter.
 * Stevo Žigon, 79, Serbian actor and theatre director.

29

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

30

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

31

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