Former Mirror man and National Enquirer scoop-getter David Wright has died from cancer in Florida aged 82.
David joined the Daily Mirror from the Daily Express in Manchester, where he had been a very successful district reporter.
In the 60s he joined the Daily Mirror’s New York bureau, alongside Ralph Champion, John Smith, Syd Young, Gordon Gregor, Brian Hitchen and Malcolm Keogh.
When he returned to London he became a sports feature writer for the Daily Mirror, but he enjoyed his time in America so much that he returned there to work as a reporter on the National Enquirer in Florida, where he became their top globe-trotting correspondent and produced a string of exclusives.
For almost two years he covered the baffling twists and turns of the police and FBI investigation into the death of six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, found strangled at her home in Boulder, Colorado on Christmas Day in 1996.
He also broke the story that Liberace was dying from AIDS and later that the death certificate was faked to conceal his disease, and got the exclusive on Hollywood star Liz Taylor’s relationship with a fairly low-profile Mexican attorney, Victor Gonzalez Luna.
In 2001 David himself became front-page news when he was exposed to the same deadly Anthrax bacteria that had killed photo editor Bob Stevens when some of it was posted to the National Enquirer headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida.
After receiving an antidote, he quarantined at home with the world’s press and television crews camped out on his front lawn in the Florida city of Atlantis.
A keen long distance runner who ran alongside Oprah on her first marathon, David wrote for sports magazines after retiring from the Enquirer.
A devoted family man, he leaves wife Carole, daughters Kirsty and Katya and four grandchildren.
Picture: Family of David Wright
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