Famous US private eye Jack Palladino dies after robbery attack
- Jack Palladino succumbed to brain injury after attempted robbery outside San Francisco home
- His career spanned decades, with clients ranging from presidents to scandal-plagued celebrities
Jack Palladino, the flamboyant private investigator whose clients ranged from presidents and corporate whistle-blowers to scandal-plagued celebrities, Hollywood moguls and sometimes suspected drug traffickers, died on Monday at age 76.
Palladino suffered a devastating brain injury Thursday after a pair of would-be robbers tried to grab his camera outside his home in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district.
He held on to the camera but fell and struck his head, and the photos he took before his attackers fled were used by police to track down two suspects. They were charged with assault with a deadly weapon and other crimes.
“He would have loved knowing that,” his wife, Sandra Sutherland, said. She added that she had told her husband while he lay unconscious in hospital: “Guess what, Jack, they got the bastards, and it was all your doing.”
In a career spanning more than 40 years, Palladino worked for a who’s who of the famous and the sometimes infamous, alternately hailed as a hero or denounced as a villain, depending on who his client was at the time.
He was hired by Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign to put a lid on women who were coming forward to claim they had sex with the future president.