Deaths in May 1988

The following is a list of notable deaths in May 1988.

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

 * Joseph F. Ambrose, 91, American World War I veteran
 * Claude Demetrius, 71, American songwriter (Hard Headed Woman).
 * Ben Lexcen, 52, Australian yachtsman and marine architect, designed winged keel which won America's Cup, heart attack.
 * Tom Pappas, 46, American aide to US Representative Roy Dyson, suicide after allegations of homosexuality with Dyson.
 * Paolo Stoppa, 81, Italian actor, leukemia.
 * Yan Wenliang, 94, Chinese painter.

2

 * John Weir Foote, 83, Canadian military chaplain and politician (Legislative Assembly of Ontario).
 * Pavel Kadochnikov, 72, Soviet actor, film director and screenwriter.
 * Henry Picker, 76, German lawyer and author, published transcripts of Adolf Hitler's informal talks (Table Talk).

3

 * Jackson Miles Abbott, 68, American officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, environmentalist, cancer.
 * Carl Erhardt, 91, English international ice hockey player and Olympic gold medalist.
 * Julia Butler Hansen, 80, American politician, member of U.S. House of Representatives.
 * Takeshi Kimura, 76, Japanese screenwriter, throat obstruction.
 * Lim Keng Peng, 35, Singaporean murderer, killed in police ambush.
 * Boy Louw, 82, South African rugby union player (Western Province, South Africa).
 * Premendra Mitra, 83, Indian poet, writer and film director.
 * Lev Pontryagin, 79, Soviet mathematician (Pontryagin duality, Pontryagin cohomology operation).
 * Abraham Seidenberg, 71, American mathematician.
 * Bill Speidel, 76, American newspaper columnist (The Seattle Times).
 * Paul Vario, 73, American mobster from the Lucchese crime family, respiratory arrest.

4

 * Ed Bakey, 62, American film and television actor.
 * Stanley William Hayter, 86, English painter (Atelier 17 studio), cardiac arrest.
 * Carl Jensen, 67, American politician, member of the Minnesota Senate and House of Representatives, cancer.
 * Jan Mazurkiewicz, 91, Polish army general and politician.
 * Oleg Zhakov, 83, Soviet film actor.

5

 * Billo Frómeta, 72, Dominican orchestra conductor and composer, stroke.
 * D.D. Kashyap, 77–78, Indian film director.
 * Katharine DuPre Lumpkin, 90, American writer.
 * Hamid Mirza, 70, Iranian heir presumptive of former ruling dynasty of Iran, son of last Qajar Crown Prince of Iran.
 * George Rose, 68, English actor and singer (My Fair Lady, The Mystery of Edwin Drood), murdered.
 * Michael Shaara, 59, American author (The Killer Angels), heart attack.
 * R. J. Unstead, 72, British historian and author, heart failure.

6

 * Richard Caliguiri, 56, American politician, mayor of Pittsburgh, amyloidosis.
 * Costantino Nivola, 76, Italian-American sculptor, heart attack.
 * Hans Popper, 84, Austrian-born American pathologist and hepatologist, pancreatic cancer.

7

 * Nara Nath Acharya, 82, Nepalese Pandit.

8

 * Robert A. Heinlein, 80, American science fiction author, emphysema and heart failure.
 * Nappy Lamare, 82, American jazz banjoist, guitarist and vocalist.
 * Domingo Ortega, 82, Spanish matador.
 * Charles Pollock, 85, American abstract painter, brother of artist Jackson Pollock, stroke.
 * Ruby M. Rouss, 66, American member of the US Army Women's Army Corps and politician, diabetes.

9

 * Willie Moir, 66, Scottish international footballer (Bolton Wanderers).

10

 * Ciarán Bourke, 53, Irish musician (The Dubliners).
 * Hugh Laing, 76, Barbados-born American ballet dancer, cancer.
 * Richard B. Ogilvie, 65, American attorney and law enforcement officer, Governor of Illinois, heart attack.
 * John Sterling Rockefeller, 83, American philanthropist, conservationist, and amateur ornithologist.
 * Shen Congwen, 85, Chinese writer, heart attack.

11

 * Isabella Gordon, 86, Scottish marine biologist (crabs, sea spiders).
 * George Gordon-Lennox, 79, British army general in World War II.
 * Hans Peter Keller, 73, German poet.
 * Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann, 83, German ethnologist.
 * Kim Philby, 76, British intelligence officer and spy (Cambridge Five), heart failure.

12

 * Paul Osborn, 86, American playwright and screenwriter (On Borrowed Time, Morning's at Seven).
 * Chick Parsons, 86, American diplomat and decorated World War II veteran.

13

 * Chet Baker, 58, American jazz trumpeter and vocalist (It Could Happen to You), fall from building.
 * Paul Genge, 74, American actor (Bullitt).
 * Sergey Gorshkov, 78, Soviet Admiral of the Fleet.
 * Friedrich Guggenberger, 73, German admiral and Nazi U-boat commander.
 * Caecilia Loots, 84, Dutch resistance member known for saving Jewish children during World War II.
 * Nikolay Makarov, 73, Soviet firearms designer (Makarov pistol).
 * Irene Manton, 84, British botanist (ferns and algae), Professor of Botany at University of Leeds.
 * Rebecca Wight, 28, American murder victim.
 * Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 83, Welsh soldier and landowner.

14

 * Prince Aschwin of Lippe-Biesterfeld, 73, German-born curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
 * Fred Atkins, 77–78, New Zealand-born Canadian professional wrestler (Maple Leaf Wrestling).
 * Willem Drees, 101, Dutch politician and historian, Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
 * Ernesto Giménez Caballero, 88, Spanish writer, diplomat and pioneer of Fascism.
 * Wayne Jarratt, 31, Australian actor (Prisoner), brain tumour.

15

 * Andrew Duggan, 64, American actor (Seven Days in May), throat cancer.
 * Fulvia Franco, 56, Italian actress and model.
 * Greta Nissen, 82, Norwegian-American film and stage actress, Parkinson's disease.
 * Sol Polk, 71, American businessman, co-founder of Polk Brothers.
 * Thomas E. Stephens, 84, Irish-American politician.

16

 * Kay Baxter, 42, American bodybuilder, car crash.
 * Chan Htoon, 82, Attorney General and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Burma.
 * Charles Keeping, 63, English illustrator (The Highwayman) and children's book author, brain tumour.
 * Jules Levin, 66, American politician.
 * Anatoli Maslyonkin, 57, Soviet international footballer (Spartak Moscow, USSR) and Olympic gold medalist.
 * Peter J. Ortiz, 74, United States Marine Corps colonel, cancer.
 * Bruce Watson, 78, Scottish organic chemist and politician.

17

 * Frank Gallop, 87, American radio and television personality.
 * Guy Glover, 77, Canadian producer (National Film Board of Canada).

18

 * Daws Butler, 71, American voice actor (Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss), heart attack.
 * Anthony Forwood, 72, English actor (Knights of the Round Table), liver cancer and Parkinson's disease.
 * Christopher Gore, 43, American screenwriter and playwright (Fame), AIDS.
 * Daniel Lewis James, 77, American writer (Famous All Over Town), heart attack.
 * Brandon Rhys-Williams, 60, British politician, Member of Parliament, pneumonia.
 * Michiko Tanaka, 78, Japanese singer and actress.
 * Enzo Tortora, 59, Italian television presenter, cancer.

19

 * Kurt-Caesar Hoffmann, 92 Nazi German navy admiral (Scharnhorst).
 * Lloyd Vaughan, 79, American animator.

20

 * Ana Aslan, 91, Romanian biologist and physician, specialist in gerontology.
 * Nick Corwin, 8, American murder victim.
 * Dick Jacobs, 70, American musician, arranger and orchestrator.
 * Anthony C. Perera, 66, Sri Lankan actor.
 * Mike Reinbach, 39, American Major League baseballer, car accident.
 * Marion G. Romney, 90, American Mormon leader.
 * Victorio Unamuno, 78, Spanish footballer (Real Betis).

21

 * Harry Babasin, 67, American jazz bassist, emphysema.
 * Richard J. Daronco, 56, American lawyer and judge, assassinated.
 * Sammy Davis Sr., 87, American dancer (Will Mastin Trio), father of Sammy Davis Jr.
 * John D. Fitzgerald, 82, American author (The Great Brain).
 * Bruno Frei, 90, Austrian political writer and journalist.
 * Dino Grandi, 92, Italian Fascist politician, Ambassador of Italy to the U.K.
 * Barbara Laage, 67, French film actress.
 * Pino Romualdi, 74, Italian right-wing politician, cancer.

22

 * Giorgio Almirante, 73, Italian politician, founder and leader of neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, stroke.
 * Lionel Edirisinghe, 75, Sri Lankan musicologist, principal at the University of the Visual and Performing Arts.

23

 * Aya Kitō, 25, Japanese diarist, spinocerebellar ataxia.
 * David Schoenbrun, 73, American broadcast journalist (CBS), heart attack.
 * Roberto Succo, 26, Italian serial killer, suicide.
 * Tony Viramontes, 31, American artist, AIDS.

24

 * Tom Adair, 74, American songwriter and composer (Let's Get Away from It All, There's No You).
 * Freddie Frith, 79, British Grand Prix motorcycle road racing world champion.
 * Jamie Hamilton, 87, British rower and Olympic medalist, publisher (Hamish Hamilton).
 * Ernest Labrousse, 93, French historian.
 * Aleksei Losev, 94, Soviet philosopher.
 * Leo Schamroth, 63, South African cardiologist.

25

 * Monte Kay, 63, American record producer, heart failure.
 * Ruth Malcomson, 82, Miss America 1924.
 * Leon Shimkin, 81, American businessman (Simon & Schuster).
 * Martin Slavin, 66, British composer for movies and television (Information Received, The Cool Mikado), road accident.
 * Karl August Wittfogel, 91, German-American playwright and historian, pneumonia.

26

 * Antonio Bardellino, 43, Italian mobster, boss of the Casalesi clan, assassinated.
 * Juan Orol, 90, Spanish-Mexican actor and director (Gangsters Versus Cowboys, Sandra, la mujer de fuego), liver disease.

27

 * Bill Bollinger, 48, American artist.
 * John DiGilio, 55, American mobster with the Genovese crime family, murdered.
 * Florida Friebus, 78, American writer and actress (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Bob Newhart Show).
 * Hjördis Petterson, 79, Swedish actress.
 * Ernst Ruska, 81, German physicist, Nobel laureate in Physics (electron optics).

28

 * Felix Morrow, 81, American communist political activist and newspaper editor.
 * Sy Oliver, 77, American jazz trumpeter, singer and bandleader.
 * Evelyn Page, 89, New Zealand artist.
 * Norman Skelhorn, 78, English barrister, Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales.
 * Alfredo Volpi, 92, Brazilian painter.

29

 * Charla Doherty, 41, American actress (Days of Our Lives).
 * Sheridan Dufferin, 49, British patron of the arts, AIDS.
 * Henry Johansen, 83, Norwegian international footballer (Vålerenga, Norway).
 * Salem bin Laden, 42, Saudi Arabian investor and businessman, half brother of Osama bin Laden, plane crash.
 * Vladimír Menšík, 59, Czechoslovakian actor and entertainer, asthma.
 * Siaka Stevens, 82, Sierra Leone politician, Prime Minister and President of Sierra Leone.
 * Elaine Black Yoneda, 81, American labour and civil rights activist, member of Communist Party, heart attack.

30

 * Ella Raines, 67, American actress (Phantom Lady, Brute Force), throat cancer.

31

 * June Buchanan, 100, American founder of Alice Lloyd College.
 * Dwarka Prasad Mishra, 86, Indian politician, writer and journalist (Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh).
 * Tursun Uljabayev, 72, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan.

Unknown date

 * Rosa Collazo, 83–84, Puerto Rican political activist (Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico), plotted to kill U.S. president Harry Truman.