G. Kreisberg, 62; Covered Celebrity Court Cases for Decades

George Kreisberg, who for almost 30 years covered celebrity court stories in the main civil courthouse at 1st and Hill streets in downtown Los Angeles, has died. Kreisberg, 62, who had diabetes and heart problems, was found dead in his home Friday.

“Everybody knew George, he had an enormous range of contacts,” said Linda Deutsch, an Associated Press special correspondent who met Kreisberg in the 1970s covering celebrity cases. “In a way, George was born too late. He should have been part of the rough and tumble newspaper worlds of the 1930s and ‘40s.... He loved covering the story. He was very good at getting information, and he just knew everybody.”

“George is what we used to call in the old days a hell of a leg man,” said Sandi Gibbons, now a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, who hired Kreisberg as an overnight writer for City News Service in the mid-1970s.

Another friend and fellow courts writer, Sherry Overend, said, “He did not get the glory, he did not get the bylines, but he got the stories.”

Kreisberg covered many of the cases that attorney Marvin Mitchelson handled, including those of Richard Harris, Tony Curtis, Joan Collins, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Mel Torme.

“He’d go after a story and stay with it and follow up on it,” Mitchelson said Wednesday of Kreisberg, whom he called a kind man.

Kreisberg, who attended Emerson College in Boston and did graduate studies at Hofstra University on Long Island, N.Y., worked at NBC-TV before being hired at City News Service in Los Angeles.

In recent years, he provided information on celebrity court cases to Entertainment Weekly and the Star and Globe tabloids as well as AP.

He is survived by two daughters, Jodi Sears of Albuquerque and Randi Freedman of Tulsa, Okla. A memorial is planned for Saturday at noon at Taix restaurant, 1911 Sunset Blvd.