Headline writer dies, but his ‘headless body in topless bar’ will live forever

It was a grisly crime in a sleazy place - the stuff New York tabloid headline writers feast on, too good an opportunity to miss: “Headless body in topless bar.”

The author of that dark zinger, former New York Post sub-editor and film critic Vincent Musetto, died Tuesday at the age of 74, the paper said.

He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer three weeks ago.

Musetto earned a niche in the New York City journalism hall of fame when he came up with that now iconic headline that ran on the front page of the Post on April 15, 1983.

The crime that inspired him went like this: a man named Charles Dingle fatally shot a topless bar owner named Herbert Cummings in the Bronx.

Dingle then took four women hostage and forced one of them to cut off Cummings’ head.