Famed Investigative Reporter Wayne Barrett Dies at 71

It was June 1990 at the Crystal Ballroom at Trump Castle, one of Donald Trump's three casinos in Atlantic City. The developer was celebrating his birthday with a huge celebration.

Lots of press was allowed in to cover the festivities. Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice, however, was not.

Barrett was writing a book about Trump and had been hoping to get his cooperation. As Barrett wrote in his 1992 book about him (which was republished last year with new material), it was not to be.

"I planted myself among the gawkers waiting in the lobby along the path he would take to the party, determined to appeal to him directly, but Trump's burly bodyguard surrounded me and, when he approached, shoved me aside," Barrett wrote.

He then "ducked into an empty stairwell, sidestepped Trump security, and slipped into the ballroom, where I was promptly arrested for 'defiant trespass.'"

Barrett was taken to jail.

"When I was chained to the wall in an Atlantic City holding pen for hours that night - also by cops who were moonlighting for Donald - I finally began to get the point: Trump had decided not to cooperate with this book."

Trump was a frequent target of Barrett's reporting over the years. In a moment of cosmic irony, one day before Trump was to be sworn in as president of the United States, Barrett died Thursday. He was 71 years old.

Tom Robbins, a longtime friend and associate of Barrett, tweeted that Wayne had Trump in his sights to the very end.

"On the drive to the hospital where he breathed his last, Wayne Barrett was still doing interviews for a big tough story on Donald Trump," he wrote.

Barrett, whose reporting dug deep into targets ranging from Trump to Ed Koch to Rudolph Giuliani, spent 37 years at the Village Voice.

His reporting on Koch — much of it with his Voice colleague and mentor, Jack Newfield — helped expose an administration drowning in a sea of corruption.

His reporting on Rudolph Giuliani exposed the never-before disclosed fact that the crime-crusading mayor's father had served time in Sing Sing for the armed robbery of a milkman.

He also broke the story that Giuliani owned two World Series rings that he had purchased from the New York Yankees at a price below market value.

In all, he wrote four books based on his reporting at the Voice: "City for Sale" (1988) - with Newfield about the Koch Administration; "Trump: The Deals and the Downfall" (1992); "Rudy! An Investigative Biography" (2001); and "Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudolph Giuliani and 9/11" (2006).

He was let go by the Voice in 2010 in what the paper called a cost-cutting measure.

"Ed Koch and I were inaugurated on the same day in 1978," Barrett wrote in his final column for the paper. "He became mayor and I became his weekly tormentor."

One year later, Barrett wrote his first pieces on Trump — a two-part series looking at some of the developer's projects at a time when few knew who he was.

"I have written, by my own inexact calculation, more column inches than anyone in the history of the Voice," he later wrote. "These will be my last. I am 65 and a half now, and it is time for something new."

His forced departure from the paper led to his friend Robbins resigning. In a story in The New York Times, legendary editor Don Forst said, "With the loss of Wayne and Tom, they lost Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle."

Barrett, who often talked about how he had benefited from older reporters such as Newfield guiding him as he was starting out, always made time to help others. From taking assistants and helping them grow into acclaimed reporters to making his own files available, Barrett was generous with advice, support and information.

"Fierce, fearless & gracious with his time and advice," NY1 Managing Editor and former Daily News City Hall Bureau Chief Joel Siegel tweeted Thursday.

That generosity was on display throughout the 2016 campaign season as reporter after reporter visited his home in Windsor Terrace to take a dip into his Trump files, which were voluminous.

"I save everything," he said. "I never throw anything out."

On Thursday, even some of his targets were remembering him fondly.

"Wayne Barrett’s passing is a tremendous loss for the people of the great state of New York," said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. "Wayne was a lion in the field of journalism. For decades, Wayne was the conscience of New York."

New York's senior senator, Chuck Schumer, called Barrett "a brilliant beacon for New York."

"If heaven has a flaw, we are going to find out soon. Because Wayne will have a long, detailed and impactful story up on it in a week," Schumer said.

Barrett was born in New Britain, Connecticut, but grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia. His father was a nuclear physicist and his mother a librarian. He graduated from St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia in 1967 and the Columbia University School of Journalism the following year.

To avoid the draft, he took a job teaching in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. While in Brooklyn, he started a weekly newspaper and joined the Village Voice in 1973.

He is survived by his wife, Fran — she once referred to herself as his "liaison to the planet Earth" — and their son, Mac.

Barrett had a simple explanation for what the role of the reporter is: "We are detectives for the people."

Photo David Shankbone via Wikimedia Commons