Philip Carlo Dead at 61

Philip Carlo, who produced novels and nonfiction accounts of serial killers and hit men before writing about his own struggles with disease, died on Nov. 8 in Manhattan. He was 61.

The cause was a combination of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and cancer, said his wife, Laura Garofalo-Carlo.

A stay at Bellevue Hospital in the late 1970s inspired his first book, an unpublished novel about a murder on the wards. His second novel, “Stolen Flower,” about an American girl kidnapped by a child pornography ring in Pompeii, was published by Dutton in 1986.

Mr. Carlo soon branched into nonfiction, publishing four books based on interviews with mass murderers. Titles include “The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez,” about the serial killer who terrorized Los Angeles in 1984 and 1985 (Kensington, 1996); and “The Iceman: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer,” about Richard Kuklinski, a mob hit man who claimed to have fed some of his victims to giant rats (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). A film adaptation of the book, starring Mickey Rourke, is planned for next year.

Philip John Carlo was born in Brooklyn on April 18, 1949. He struggled with dyslexia in school before graduating from Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in Brooklyn. Mr. Carlo told The New York Times last year that his youth in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, a Mafia enclave at the time, gave him “a personal innate understanding” of crime and the mettle to confront it in his writing.

Mr. Carlo spent 60 days in Rikers Island himself for misdemeanor assault after a fistfight with a deliveryman who left menus in his building despite a no-menus sign. “It was a crazy, ridiculous incident,” he said.

Mr. Carlo learned he had A.L.S., an incurable illness that causes paralysis, in 2005. After the diagnosis, he completed four books with the help of an assistant, including “The Killer Within,” a memoir about his struggle against A.L.S. “I have a deadline,” he said. “My own death.”

A malignant brain tumor was discovered in October.

Mr. Carlo, whose first marriage, to Maria Cecilia Medeiros Lima, ended in divorce, married Ms. Garofalo-Carlo in 2007. Besides his wife, he is survived by his mother, Nina; his father, Dante; and a sister, Doreen Mannanice, all of Freeport, N.Y.

SOURCE