David Chandler; Pulitzer Prize-Winning Reporter

David Leon Chandler, successful author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has died at his home in Denver. He was 56.

Chandler died Sunday of complications from diabetes.

A native of Covington, Ky., Chandler attended Boston College and served in the Navy and the merchant marine before going to work for the News-Herald in Panama City, Fla., in 1959.

He headed a News-Herald team that won the 1962 Pulitzer for public service for a series of stories exposing corruption in the local sheriff’s office.

Chandler later worked for the New Orleans States-Item and then became a free-lance writer, working for Life, Time, People, Rolling Stone and the Associated Press. He had most recently worked for Westword, a weekly newspaper in Denver.

He wrote seven books, mostly historical and biographical. Among them were “Henry Flagler: The Astonishing Life and Times of the Visionary Robber Baron Who Founded Florida” in 1986 and his controversial “The Binghams of Louisville” in 1988.

The Bingham family, which owned the prestigious Louisville Courier-Journal for several generations, was so upset with Chandler’s book that it briefly blocked publication with a copyright challenge to the use of historical material. Chandler’s book theorized about the murder of Henry Flagler’s daughter, Mary Bingham, whose fortune was used to buy the paper.

Chandler’s book “The Jefferson Conspiracies: A President’s Role in the Assassination of Meriwether Lewis” is scheduled to be published in June.

The author’s colorful career included running unsuccessfully for governor of Louisiana in an attempt to prove a candidate could win without accepting contributions.

Chandler is survived by his third wife, Mary, and four children, Bayou of New Orleans, David of Wollaston, Mass., Clayton of Boston, and John Henry of Costa Mesa.