Ruth Pearl — mother of slain reporter thrust into spotlight
Ruth Pearl, the mother of Daniel Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal who was brutally killed by Muslim extremists in Pakistan in 2002, thrusting her and her husband, Judea, into the global spotlight, died July 20 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 85.
Pearl's husband confirmed her death but did not specify the cause.
Ruth Pearl, born in Iraq, was a retired software developer living in Los Angeles when Daniel Pearl, 38, the Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, was kidnapped while reporting in Karachi, Pakistan. Despite pleas from his parents and desperate efforts to win his release by the U.S. government, his kidnappers beheaded him Feb. 1, 2002, recording a video of his last words: “My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish.”
Daniel Pearl’s killing came just months after 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and its allies. His killers singled him out because he was American and Jewish, a fact that many observers said underlined the particularly virulent threat posed by Islamic radicals.
At first, the Pearls tried to avoid the news media, releasing statements and speaking to a small number of reporters.
They opened up later in the year to promote a book of Daniel’s journalism and to announce a foundation they had established in his name. They appeared on talk shows such as “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Larry King Live,” but the experience was difficult: Although they wanted to talk about his legacy, many reporters and talkshow hosts wanted to dwell on his killing.
“We want to keep our privacy,” Ruth Pearl told the Los Angeles Times in 2002. “We don’t want our pictures in the paper. We want to deal with our grief in private. We don’t want to be talking about it.”
In 2003, the Pearls published a book of essays, “I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl.” Judea Pearl said his wife, who did most of the editing and contributed an essay, considered it her greatest accomplishment.