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Dave Smith, one of the most elegant journalists, dead at 64
LOS ANGELES — Dave Smith, whose elegant prose helped usher in an era of literary journalism at the Los Angeles Times in the 1960s, died of a heart attack at his Tucson, Ariz., home. He was 64.
Smith, who was found dead Feb. 20, covered some of California’s most high-profile crime cases for the Times, including the trial of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin.
He was perhaps best known at the paper, however, for pieces like one on Benny Smith, who killed several women and girls at a Mesa, Ariz., beauty parlor in 1966. The story, nearly 8,000 words long, examined in meticulous detail the killer’s psychological profile, tracing a descent into crime that began with a troubled, lonely childhood.
He was one of several people the Times recruited in those days “because they could write,” recalled former Editor William F. Thomas.
Smith, who grew up in Arizona, worked for the Tucson Daily Star while attending the University of Arizona. He went on to work for The Associated Press in Los Angeles and New York before joining the Times in 1968. He retired in the 1980s, returning to Arizona..
