Private eye Jack Palladino dies at 70 after San Francisco attack
The famous San Francisco private eye Jack Palladino died on Monday after suffering a head injury during an attempted robbery last week.
Palladino hit his head while tussling with would-be robbers in his Haight-Ashbury neighborhood on Thursday and never regained consciousness.
His attorney, Mel Honowitz, confirmed that Palladino was taken off life support Sunday and died around noon Monday.
“Jack was a pillar of the legal and professional community. He was a firm believer in due process, first amendment rights, particularly freedom of speech and freedom of the press,” said Honowitz. “We’ve lost a giant.”
Palladino started his career in the 1970s, at a time when private detectives were portrayed on television as glamorous and cool. As a student at the University of California, Berkeley’s law school, the family of Patty Hearst hired him to assist in investigating her 1974 kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation party.
He would go on to work on highprofile cases ranging from the Jonestown massacre to celebrity and political scandals, including the former President Bill Clinton and musician Courtney Love.
Palladino, 70, had just stepped outside his San Francisco home on Thursday to try out his new camera when a car pulled up and a man jumped out to grab it from him, police and the detective’s stepson Nick Chapman told the San Francisco Chronicle.
As the suspect grabbed the camera, Palladino fell and hit his head on the pavement, causing a traumatic head injury.
Palladino’s camera held images of the suspects, who have been arrested.
“He helped solve his own murder,” said Honowitz.