Former Newscaster a Suicide

July 4, 1965 - Lisa Howard (left with Fidel Castro), 35, the T.V. newscaster who was booted off of her ABC program last September because the network disapproved of her political activities, died today in an East Hampton, L.I., hospital, apparently of a deliberate overdose of sleeping pills.

Members of the attractive newscaster’s family said she had been despondent since suffering a miscarriage a few weeks ago. She was the mother of two daughters and was married to Walter Lowendahl, a documentary film producer. Miss Howard was pronounced dead at the East Hampton Medical Center at 12:15 p.m.

Miss Howard scored her most famous newsbeats with her T.V. interviews of Fidel Castro. After she was fired from her program, “Lisa Howard and News with the Woman’s Touch,” she filed a $2-million-plus suit against ABC-Paramount Theaters, Inc. She claimed her dismissal involved a question of civil liberties.

This morning, she went to the Bradley Marmon Pharmacy in East Hampton to fill a prescription for sleeping pills. Police said the prescription she obtained yesterday for 10 tablets had been altered to 100 before it was filled. She apparently swallowed an undetermined number of the pills as she was leaving the pharmacy. Dazed, she stumbled around the pharmacy’s parking lot and staggered up to two women who had just pulled up in a car.

“Take me home, take me home,” she moaned. She then collapsed across the doorsill of the car. Police were called. Patrolman William Brockman escorted the car to the hospital.

“She kept mumbling something about a miscarriage,” he said. 

Lisa’s troubles with ABC stemmed from her championing of Republican Senator Kenneth Keating in his unsuccessful race against Robert F. Kennedy. The network claimed that her identification with the Keating cause had compromised her position as a T.V. reporter. 

She joined the ABC news staff in 1961 after a long career as an author, actress, and songwriter.

She had played dramatic roles in the TV serials, “Edge of Night,” and “As the World Turns,” before becoming a news reporter.

Working as a free-lance reporter in 1960, she interviewed Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and covered the Democratic and Republican national conventions for the Mutual Network.

She was with Castro on five occasions.

“We talked and talked and talked,” she said. “He’s read Shakespeare, Camus, Thomas Paine. He is an intellectual who also has a sense of humor.”

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