Accused abuser Conlin dead

BILL CONLIN, a Hall of Fame baseball writer for the Philadelphia Daily News whose legacy and reputation were severely damaged in 2011 after several people came forward with claims Conlin sexually abused them in the 1970s, died Thursday in Largo, Fla., according to CSNPhilly.com. He was 79.

Conlin won the J.G. Taylor Spink Award — given annually by the Baseball Writers Association of America, honoring the recipient “for meritorious contributions to baseball writing” — in 2011. But he abruptly resigned that December, on the same day that a Philadelphia Inquirer report said that three women and one man accused Conlin of molesting them when they were children. One of the alleged victims is Conlin’s niece, Kelley Blanchet, now a prosecutor in Atlantic City.

But prosecutors in Gloucester County, N.J., where the sex abuse crimes were alleged to have occurred, said at the time that they could not bring charges against Conlin since the statute of limitations had expired.

When the allegations appeared in the Inquirer report, Conlin’s attorney, George Bochetto, issued a statement that read: “Mr. Conlin is obviously floored by these accusations, which supposedly happened 40 years ago. He has engaged me to do everything possible to bring the facts forward to vindicate his name.”