Bataan Death March survivor John Love
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - John Love, a Bataan Death March survivor who led a campaign to change the caption on a historic photograph from The Associated Press, has died. He was 91.
Love died Monday after a long battle with cancer, said Gerry Lightwine, pastor at La Vida Llena, an Albuquerque retirement home where Love lived.
As a 19-year-old member of the New Mexico Guard, Love was one of 75,000 Filipino and American soldiers who were taken captive by the Japanese in World War II when the U.S. forces surrendered in the Philippine province of Bataan and Corregidor Island in April 1942.
In all, tens of thousands of troops were forced to march to Japanese prison camps in what became known as the BataanDeath March. Many were denied food, water and medical care, and those who collapsed during the scorching journey through Philippine jungles were shot or bayoneted.
For the remainder of the war, Love was forced to work in a Japanese copper mine until being liberated in 1945.
After the war, he enrolled at the University of New Mexico and graduated in 1950. He worked at Conoco Inc. for 35 years and lived in El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston and Arlington, Texas, with his wife, Laura Bernice Ellis, who died in 2000.
In 2009, Love joined a campaign with other Bataan Death March survivors to change the caption on one of the most famous photos in the AP’s library about the march. The photo, thought to be of the Bataan Death March, actually was an Allied prisoner-of-war burial detail.
Murder plotter inspired books, TV seriesTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CORCORAN, Calif. - A man who masterminded the 1985 murder of his wife in a plot that inspired two books and a TV miniseries has died in a central California prison hospital.
David Brown died of natural causes in a prison hospital Thursday. He was 61, said Anthony Bear, a prison spokesman.
He was accused of persuading two teenagers - one his daughter, the other his sisterin-law and secret lover - to kill his fifth wife, Linda Brown. The computer businessman went on to collect $835,000 from the Linda Brown’s insurance, including several policiesstarted just months before she was shot to death in her sleep.
Prosecutors said David Brown coerced his daughter, Cinnamon, to take the blame. Cinnamon was 14 when she confessed to shooting Linda Brown. She spent seven years in a California Youth Authority detention facility before being paroled.
In 1988, Cinnamon cooperated with investigators after she became fed up with her father’s luxurious lifestyle while she was imprisoned.
Brown was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 1990. His story inspired the Lifetime miniseries Love, Lies and Murder.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 16 on 03/23/2014