Deaths in May 1987

The following is a list of notable deaths in May 1987.

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

 * Paul Geidel, 93, American murderer, second longest serving U.S. prison inmate.
 * Bobo Holloman, 64, American Major League baseballer, heart attack.
 * Antonio Borja Won Pat, 78, Guam politician, Guam's Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, heart attack.
 * Dick Surhoff, 57, American NBA basketballer.
 * James W. Sutherland, 69, American Lieutenant General in the U.S. Army.
 * Fujio Yoshida, 99, Japanese artist.

2

 * Karl Davis, 25, African-American fashion designer, pneumonia and AIDS.
 * Michael Gover, 73, English actor known for his portrayal of Arthur Russell in the series Survivors.
 * John E. Kerrigan, 78, American politician, acting mayor of Boston, member of the Massachusetts Senate, cardiac arrest.
 * Harold K. Schneider, 61–62, American economic anthropologist.

3

 * Joyce Coad, 70, American child actress in motion pictures.
 * Roberto Concepcion, 83, Filipino lawyer, Chief Justice of the Philippines.
 * Dalida, 54, Egyptian-French singer and actress, suicide by overdose.
 * Viola Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, 74, British aristocrat, wife of Robert Grosvenor, 5th Duke of Westminster, car accident.
 * Dick Kelsey, 82, American animation art director, theme park designer and illustrator of children's books.

4

 * Paul Butterfield, 44, American blues harmonica player, singer and bandleader, overdose.
 * Cathryn Damon, 56, American actress, ovarian cancer.
 * Paul Groesse, 81, Hungarian-American Academy Award-winning art director, pneumonia.
 * Khalilullah Khalili, 79, Afghan poet, historian, and diplomat.
 * Konstanty Jeleński, 65, Polish essayist.
 * Tomohiro Kojiri, 29, Japanese journalist for Tokyo-based newspaper Asahi Shimbun, murdered.
 * Wilbur Little, 59, American jazz bassist.
 * Michael Minor, 46, American illustrator and art director on Star Trek movies.

5

 * Sir Hugh Fraser, 50, British chairman of the House of Fraser, Harrods, and Whyte & Mackay, cancer.
 * Herbert Hasler, 73, British lieutenant colonel in the Royal Marines.
 * Allen Jones, 46, American record producer and songwriter, heart attack.
 * Robert Stanford Tuck, 70, British fighter pilot and flying ace.
 * Phil Woolpert, 71, American college basketball coach, lung cancer.

6

 * William J. Casey, 74, American CIA director, brain tumour.
 * Muhammadullah Hafezzi, 91–92, Bangladeshi politician and Islamic leader.
 * Karel Plicka, 92, Czechoslovakian photographer, film director, cinematographer and folklorist.
 * David Weitzman, 88, British politician.

7

 * Boom-Boom Beck, 82, American Major League baseballer.
 * Colin Blakely, 56, Northern Irish actor, leukaemia.
 * Stewart McKinney, 56, American politician, member of U.S. House of Representatives, AIDS.
 * Paul Popham, 45, American gay rights activist, AIDS.
 * Dudley Ryder, 94, British hereditary peer, member of the House of Lords.
 * Karl Schuke, 80, German organ builder.

8

 * Marjorie Barnard, 89, Australian novelist, critic, historian and librarian.
 * Sidney Cohen, 76, American psychiatrist, professor of medicine and author.
 * Alberta Gay, 74, American mother of Marvin Gaye and Frankie Gaye, bone cancer.
 * Sir James Plimsoll, 70, Australian diplomat, Governor of Tasmania, ambassador to the U.S.A., heart attack.
 * Doris Stokes, 67, British "spiritualist", "medium" and author, brain cancer.
 * Carl Tchilinghiryan, 77, German businessman, co-founder of coffee house Tchibo.
 * Members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) killed during the Loughgall ambush:
 * Declan Arthurs, 21, Northern Irish IRA member, shot.
 * Patrick Joseph Kelly, 30, Northern Irish IRA commander, shot.
 * Jim Lynagh, 31, Northern Irish IRA member, shot.
 * Pádraig McKearney, 32, Northern Irish IRA member, shot.

9

 * Obafemi Awolowo, 78, Nigerian nationalist and statesman, Premier of Western Nigeria.
 * Jimmy Kruger, 69, South African lawyer and politician, President of the Senate.
 * Noel Murless, 77, English racehorse trainer.
 * John M. Schiff, 82, American investment banker and philanthropist.

10

 * Sadamichi Hirasawa, 95, Japanese tempera painter, convicted of mass poisoning, pneumonia.
 * Nicolette Macnamara, 76, British artist and author.
 * Wilhelm Strienz, 86, German bass operatic singer.

11

 * James Jesus Angleton, 69, American intelligence operative and C.I.A chief, cancer.

12

 * Victor Feldman, 53, English jazz musician, heart attack.
 * Chinn Ho, 83, Hawaiian entrepreneur, businessman and philanthropist, heart failure.
 * Ion Pistol, 40, Romanian convicted murderer, executed.
 * Nora Rubashova, 78, Belarusian Catholic nun.
 * Robert Trimbole, 56, Australian businessman, drug baron and organized crime figure.
 * Michel Van Wijnendaele, 27–28, Belgian mass murderer, suicide after the murders.

13

 * F. R. Crawley, 75, Canadian film producer, cinematographer and director.
 * Richard Ellmann, 69, American literary critic and biographer of Irish writers, motor neurone disease.
 * Phil Moore, 69, American jazz pianist, arranger, and bandleader.
 * Ismael Rivera, 55, Puerto Rican composer and salsa singer, heart attack.
 * Forbes Robinson, 60, British bass.
 * Elly Winter, 88, German communist and notable political activist.

14

 * Tsai Chen-chou, 40, Taiwanese politician and businessman, liver disease.
 * Kris Derrig, 33, American luthier and musician, cancer.
 * Rita Hayworth, 68, American actress and dancer, complications from Alzheimer's disease.
 * Jānis Lipke, 87, Latvian rescuer of Jews in World War II.
 * Luke Sewell, 86, American Major league baseballer.
 * Elizabeth Zarubina, 87, Soviet spy, traffic accident.
 * Vitomil Zupan, 73, Austro-Hungarian–born Slovene writer.

15

 * Wynne Gibson, 88, American actress, cerebral thrombosis.
 * Raynor Johnson, 86, English-Australian parapsychologist, physicist and author.
 * Kalyanakit Kitiyakara, 57, Thai cardiothoracic surgeon.
 * Máire MacNeill, 82, Irish journalist, folklorist and translator.
 * Barry Mannakee, 39, British police officer with Royal Protection Squad, bodyguard to Diana, Princess of Wales, traffic accident.
 * L. G. Pine, 79, British writer, lecturer and researcher of genealogy, nobility, history, heraldry and animal welfare.
 * Lionel Van Praag, 78, Australian motorcycle speedway champion.

16

 * Lionel Cooper, 65, Australian international rugby league footballer.
 * Frank Mayborn, 83, American philanthropist, soldier, newspapers editor, publisher and broadcaster.
 * Ronnie Shakes, 40, American stand up comedian, heart attack.
 * Michael Wood, 69, British medical doctor, cancer.

17

 * Wilbur J. Cohen, 73, American social scientist and civil servant, U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.
 * Gunnar Myrdal, 88, Swedish economist, Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences.
 * Dudley C. Sharp, 82, American Secretary of the Air Force.

18

 * Mahdi Amel, 51, Lebanese Marxist philosopher and militant, assassinated.
 * Heðin Brú, 86, Faroese novelist and translator.
 * Hossein Fardoust, 70, Iranian military officer, deputy head of SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence agency.
 * Robert A. Hefner Jr., 79, American politician and businessman.
 * Santo Mazzarino, 71, Italian historian.

19

 * James Everett Chase, 73, African American politician, Mayor of Spokane, cancer.
 * Hamid Reza Chitgar, 38, Iranian communist politician, exiled to France, assassinated.
 * Deepak Dhawan, 32, Indian political activist, member of the Communist Party of India, murdered.
 * Almerigo Grilz, 34, Italian politician and independent war correspondent, killed in war zone.
 * Huntington D. Sheldon, 84, American C.I.A. director of Current Intelligence, murdered.
 * Stanisław Szukalski, 93, Polish-American sculptor and painter.
 * James Tiptree, Jr., (Alice Bradley Sheldon), 71, American science fiction and fantasy author, suicide pact with husband.

20

 * William Creighton, 77, American Anglican bishop.
 * Harvey Goldberg, 65, American historian and political activist, liver cancer.
 * Herbert Jacobs, 84, American journalist for the Milwaukee Journal, professor of journalism, cancer.
 * Ganpatrao Jadhav, 79, Indian freedom activist, journalist and writer.
 * Edward Earl Johnson, 26, American convicted murderer, executed.
 * Elmer Ray, 76, American heavyweight boxer.
 * George Shibata, 60, American military officer, attorney, and film & television actor.
 * Ma Sicong, 75, Chinese violinist and composer.
 * Colston Warne, 86, American professor of economics.

21

 * Archie Carr, 77, American herpetologist, ecologist and conservationist, professor of zoology.
 * Finis Alonzo Crutchfield Jr., 70, American clergyman and bishop, AIDS.
 * Alejandro Rey, 57, Argentine-American actor and television director, lung cancer.

22

 * Paddy Belton, 60, Irish politician, company director and publican, Lord Mayor of Dublin.
 * Thornton Freeland, 89, American film director.
 * Heinrich Mückter, 72, German medical doctor, pharmacologist and chemist.
 * Keidrych Rhys, 71, Welsh literary journalist, editor and poet.

24

 * Alan Samuel Butler, 88, British aviator, chairman of De Havilland Aircraft Company.
 * James J. Delaney, 86, American politician, chair of the House Rules Committee.
 * Hermione Gingold, 89, English actress, heart problems and pneumonia.
 * Siegmund Klein, 85, German-American strongman, bodybuilder, and magazine publisher, cancer.
 * Lajos Ligeti, 64, Hungarian orientalist and philologist.
 * Thomas Burdett Money-Coutts, 85, English peer.
 * Eugen Relgis, 92, Romanian writer, pacifist philosopher and anarchist militant.

25

 * Charley Brock, 71, American NFL footballer.
 * Winthrop G. Brown, 79, American lawyer and diplomat, U.S. Ambassador to Korea and Laos.
 * Hugh Lester Campbell, 78, Canadian air marshal in the Royal Canadian Air Force and politician.
 * Peter Coe, 58, English film and theatre director and actor.
 * Peter Gerald Charles Dickens, 70, English Royal Navy officer during World War II.
 * Hermann Glöckner, 98, German painter and sculptor.
 * William Kelly Harrison Jr., 91, American officer in the U.S. Army.
 * Don Sidle, 40, American ABA basketballer.
 * Paweł Tuchlin, 41, Polish serial killer, hanged.

26

 * Rose Chan, 62, Chinese-Malaysian cabaret dancer.
 * Alvin Duke Chandler, 84, American Navy officer, president of the College of William & Mary.
 * Paul Rimstead, 51–52, Canadian journalist.
 * Arthur M. Sackler, 73, American psychiatrist and marketer of pharmaceuticals.
 * Robert Wilkins, 91, American country blues guitarist and vocalist.
 * Ajita Wilson, 37, American transgender actress, brain hemorrhage.

27

 * Alvin C. Eurich, 84, American educator, president of the State University of New York.
 * Colin McCahon, 67, New Zealand artist.
 * John Howard Northrop, 95, American biochemist, Nobel laureate in Chemistry, suicide.
 * Richard Bruce Nugent, 80, American writer and painter.
 * Fatemeh Pahlavi, 58, Iranian royal, cancer.

28

 * Léon Lambert, 58, Belgian banker and art collector.
 * Charles Ludlam, 44, American actor, director and playwright, pneumonia as a complication of AIDS.

29

 * Jean Delay, 79, French psychiatrist, neurologist and writer.
 * Vettam Mani, 65, Indian scholar and writer.
 * Charan Singh, 84, Prime Minister of India, cardiovascular collapse.
 * Phyllis Tate, 76, English composer.

30

 * Frank Carlson, 94, American politician, member of U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate.
 * Eliot Hodgkin, 81, English painter.
 * Miyuki Ishikawa, 90, Japanese midwife, real estate agent and serial killer.
 * Honorino Landa, 44, Chilean international footballer, cancer.
 * Frank Licht, 71, American politician, Governor of Rhode Island, cancer.
 * Hallam L. Movius, 79, American archaeologist.
 * Turk Murphy, 71, American trombonist and bandleader.
 * Norman Nicholson, 73, English poet.
 * Hilde Weissner, 77, German actress.

31

 * John Abraham, 49, Indian filmmaker, short story writer and screenwriter, complications from a fall.
 * Jerry Adair, 50, American Major League baseballer, liver cancer.
 * Hubert Raymond Allen, 68, British Royal Air Force officer.
 * Charles Drew, 70, British cardiothoracic surgeon, throat cancer.
 * Wilbur Evans, 81, American actor and singer.
 * Gertrude Jones Hawk, 83–84, American candy maker and entrepreneur.
 * Kolbein Lauring, 72, Norwegian resistance member during World War II.
 * Dorothy Patrick, 65, Canadian-American film actress, heart attack.
 * Roy Winsor, 75, American soap opera writer, creator, producer and mystery novelist, heart attack.

Unknown date

 * Sunny Harnett, 63, American model and actress, injuries sustained in a fire.
 * Arthur Matsu, 83, American NFL footballer and coach.
 * Dev Raj Singh Thakur, Indian Air Force warrant officer, killed the killer of Mohandas Gandhi.