Local News in Brief : Judge Sees No Intrigue

A federal judge in Los Angeles has dismissed a lawsuit by a woman who claimed East German agents killed her father, a popular singer in the Soviet bloc, to keep him from returning to the United States, court officials said Monday.

U.S. District Judge Irving Hill threw out Ramona Reed’s lawsuit against the German Democratic Republic last week because she failed to pursue the action in court and failed to serve the complaint on the defendant, the judge’s clerk said.

Reed, 19, of Hollywood, filed the wrongful death suit July 2, alleging that East German agents killed Dean Reed because he became disenchanted with life in East Germany and publicized his desire to return to the United States.

Dean Reed, bitter and cynical about U.S. politics during the Vietnam War, moved to East Germany in 1965. Reed, 47, who became famous in the Soviet bloc as the “Johnny Cash of Communism,” was found dead in a lake near his home in East Berlin on June 17, 1986, about six weeks after he discussed his desire to return to the United States on television’s “60 Minutes.”