John Ball, 77; Writer Noted for Virgil Tibbs

John Ball, the one-time commercial airline pilot who created Virgil Tibbs, the knowledgeable, slightly arrogant and terribly proficient black detective of mystery novel fame, died Saturday.

Patricia, his wife of 46 years, said he died in Encino Hospital after battling cancer. The author of “In the Heat of the Night” and many other crime thrillers was 77.

Ball, whose latest work, “The Kiwi Target,” is being published this month, flew for Pan American World Airways as a young man and then with the Army Air Transport Command during World War II.

After a stint as a journalist in New York and as a public relations director in Los Angeles, he began to devote nearly all his time to writing, which he had begun in 1947 as a sideline while working as an annotator for Columbia Records.

The character who was to keep him permanently at his typewriter was Tibbs, whose early adventures were captured on film in 1967 when “In the Heat of the Night” was produced with Sidney Poitier as the detective at odds with a bigoted sheriff, played by Rod Steiger. The Tibbs character was featured in two others United Artists pictures, “They Call Me Mister Tibbs” and “The Organization.” Both starred Poitier.

Genesis Recalled

Ball’s wife said the Tibbs character was inspired by a story a friend had told her husband years earlier about a black man who had witnessed a traffic accident in the Carolinas but because of his color was not called to court to testify. Instead a white man who had heard of but not seen the accident was summoned.

Ball extrapolated the incident into Tibbs, who became an example of how prejudice frequently blinds competence.

Among Ball’s other works were “Singapore,” the last Tibbs mystery in 1986; “Dragon Hotel,” “Johnny Get Your Gun,” “Last Plane Out,” “Five Pieces of Jade,” “The Murder Children” and “Then Came Violence.”

Among Ball’s many honors were the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the Crime Writers Assn. Award of England.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, sister and granddaughter.

Services are scheduled at 1 p.m. Wednesday at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills.