Vetreran broadcast journalist John Slattery, who started his storied career at Illinois radio stations including WTAX, has died at the age of 63. He died of a heart attack hours after filing his last report with WCBS.
“We are saddened by the unexpected passing of our friend and colleague John Slattery,” said WCBS-TV President and General Manager Peter Dunn. “During his nearly 30-year career at WCBS, he was great at reporting the news and was someone we counted on to cover big stories for us, both here in New York and around the world. Our thoughts and prayers are with John’s wife, Suzie, and their children and grandchildren.”
John Slattery was a four-time Emmy Award-winning general assignment reporter for WCBS-TV. In more than 30 years of reporting, he has won wide recognition for his work.
Slattery has covered a wide range of award-winning stories, including the attack on the World Trade Center, the “miracle on the Hudson” US Airways flight 1549 water landing, the crash of US Air Flight 5050, the December 1994 subway explosion, the blizzard of February 11, 1994, and Hurricane Sandy.
On 9-11, he was one of the first reporters to arrive on the chaotic and terrifying scene, having witnessed the second plane strike the Trade Center while emergency vehicles were still trying to make their way to the disaster. Once the Towers fell, Slattery was one of the few reporters still able to broadcast because unlike other stations that had transmitters only on the Trade Center, WCBS-TV had a tower atop the Empire State Building.
In January, 1981 Slattery was the first, post-Watergate, local reporter to have a one-on-one interview with former President Richard Nixon.
Slattery’s stories ranged from the alleged police abuse case of Abner Louima to the World Trade Center bombings in 1993. In the courtroom, he has covered cases involving Bernard Madoff, John Gotti, Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel, the “Mayflower Madam” Sydney Biddle Barrows, the “murder at the Met” defendant Craig Crimmins, sportscaster Marv Albert, the Delaware infant death involving Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson, Woody Allen, Mike Tyson, Bess Myerson, Bernie Goetz, Robert Chambers, Jean Harris, Paul Simon and a civil suit against Paul Newman. He has also covered New York’s world-famous ticker-tape parade tributes to Nelson Mandela, Gulf War veterans, Vietnam veterans and the World Series-winning N.Y. Mets in 1986. In 2001, Slattery covered the execution in Terre Haute, Ind. of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
On the sports front, Slattery competed against sportscasters and sports writers to cover the 1996 World Series when the Yankees beat the Atlanta Braves. Overseas, Slattery has journeyed to Saudi Arabia to report on the Gulf War and traveled to Ireland with Archbishop John Cardinal O’Connor and former Mayor Ed Koch. Other foreign assignments include a trip to the Vatican for the consistory that elevated New York Archbishop Edward Egan and Fordham University Theologian Avery Dulles, S.J. to cardinal.
Slattery joined the CBS 2 news team in October 1984. Prior to his work at WCBS-TV, he spent five years as general assignment correspondent for WABC-TV in New York where he worked with Roger Grimsby, Bill Beutel and Tom Snyder. In 1980, Slattery took part in the Emmy-award winning coverage of the death of John Lennon. Before moving to New York, Slattery served as reporter/weekend anchor for WCAU-TV in Philadelphia where he also won numerous awards for his coverage of a shootout between police and the radical group “MOVE.” Slattery also covered the radiation leak at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. Prior to WCAU, Slattery was a TV-reporter in Champaign-Urbana, Ill.
Before his stint in TV, he worked for radio stations in Peoria and Springfield, including WTAX.
Slattery was a past president of The Inner Circle, a City Hall reporters’ organization dating to 1923 that annually hosts a black tie, fundraising, political lampoon to which the mayor of New York stages a response, often with a Broadway cast.
Slattery had an A.B. in economics from Xavier University in Cincinnati and a master’s degree in religious studies from St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, NY.