Updated: Sunday, March 19, 2017, 11:52 AM
Jimmy Breslin — the cigar-chomping, hard-nosed newspaperman who won the Pulitzer Prize for his Daily News’ columns championing ordinary New Yorkers — died Sunday morning. He was 88.
The cause of death was complications from pneumonia, his personal physician said.
"Jimmy Breslin was a furious, funny, outrageous and caring voice of the people who made newspaper writing into literature," Daily News Editor-in-Chief Arthur Browne said.
Breslin's colleagues mourned the loss of a street-smart truth teller who scoured the streets of New York, pen and paper in hand, looking for stories no one else could capture
For more than 40 years, James Earl Breslin was the newspaper reporter New Yorkers trusted and clamored to read, and other journalists strived to emulate.
Even murderers sought to communicate with him.
In the summer of 1977, “Son of Sam” serial killer David Berkowitz began corresponding with Breslin, writing from the “gutters of N.Y.C., which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine, and blood.”
Breslin’s columns for The News on the Son of Sam’s chilling missives offered insight into the mind of a madman on the loose — and left the city gripped in fear..
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...icle-1.3002601