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F. Lee Bailey
Bailey, who was 87, had a law career that spanned more than six decades, but more recently maintained F. Lee Bailey Consulting at 325 Main St. in Yarmouth. His office was above his girlfriend’s hair salon, although the “shingle” no longer hangs outside the building. He also had a home in Yarmouth.
Bailey died Thursday in Atlanta, where he’d been in hospice care and moved to be near a son, according to various news accounts.
The Washington Post called him “the defense lawyer for the famous and the infamous.”
“Mr. Bailey flew warplanes, sailed yachts, dropped out of Harvard, wrote books, touted himself on television, was profiled in countless newspapers, ran a detective agency, married four times, carried a gun, took on seemingly hopeless cases and courted trouble, once going to jail for six weeks and finally being disbarred,” Robert D. McFadden wrote in Bailey’s obituary in Friday s New York Times. “To a generation of Americans who grew
F. Lee Bailey, Lawyer for Patty Hearst and O.J. Simpson, Dies at 87
With theatrical courtroom flair, he was involved in a host of notorious criminal cases, including those of the Boston Strangler and a Vietnam War massacre.
F. Lee Bailey during the murder trial of O.J. Simpson in 1995. His withering cross-examination of a Los Angeles police detective was considered a key to Mr. Simpson’s acquittal.Credit.Ted Soqui/Sygma, via Getty Images
June 3, 2021Updated 5:55 p.m. ET
F. Lee Bailey, the theatrical criminal lawyer who invited juries into the twilight zone of reasonable doubt in defense of Patricia Hearst, O.J. Simpson, the Boston Strangler, the army commander at the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam and other notorious cases, died on Thursday in Atlanta. He was 87.