Legendary American journalist Steve Dunleavy

Legendary American journalist, Steve Dunleavy, who helped define The New York Post as a crime reporter, editor and columnist has died aged 81.

“Steve Dunleavy was one of the greatest reporters of all time,” said Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Post.

“Whether competing with his own father in the famous Sydney, Australia, tabloid wars, or over the last 40 years in New York, Steve’s life story is littered with great scoops. His passing is the end of a great era,” Murdoch added.

Over the course of his epic career, Dunleavy scored countless exclusives, including interviews with the mother of Sirhan Sirhan, Robert F Kennedy’s assassin, and confessed “Boston Strangler” Albert DeSalvo.

Dunleavy also flew to California to entice three members of Elvis Presley’s “Memphis Mafia” bodyguards to reveal the singer’s drug addiction.

The ensuing series of stories boosted the circulation of the Star tabloid, where Dunleavy was then working, from two million to three million.

Fans of the King responded with death threats to Dunleavy – someone even sent a hearse with instructions to pick up his body.

A second-generation journalist and native of Australia, Dunleavy quit school at 14 and began working as a copy boy at The Sun, a Sydney tabloid that employed his dad as a photographer.

He left for the rival Daily Mirror as a cub reporter, proving the extent of his competitiveness by slashing the tyres on his father’s car when they were both covering a story about lost hikers.

Murdoch hired Dunleavy in 1967 to write stories for his papers in Australia and Britain, then tapped him as news editor of the National Star tabloid, in 1974.

He became The Post’s top crime reporter when Murdoch bought the paper in 1976.

His failing health led him to retire from The Post in 2008. Dunleavy told The New York Times, “I always had dreams of dying at the desk.”

“It’s frustrating not doing what I love best, and serving – I know it sounds corny – the one who I admire the most. Murdoch. The Boss,” he said.

Dunleavy is survived by his wife, Gloria, and their sons, Peter and Sean.

Journalist Steve Dunleavy.