I never heard the name Ron Porambo until today. Porambo choked to death while eating an orange in New Jersey State Prison a couple of weeks ago. This guy had the most intriguing life.
- He was serving 30 years to life for the 1983 murder of a drug dealer during a robbery
- In Toronto in the '70s, he worked for the Star and the Globe and Mail, and as a Global TV producer
- "No Cause for Indictment: An Autopsy of Newark", his best-selling book on the 1967 race riots in Newark, N.J., came out in 1971 and the New Yorker called it "probably the most moving and instructive book yet written on any of the bloody civil disturbances of the '60s."
- There were at least three attempts on his life, once he was shot twice in the legs, another time he ended up with three bullets in his head
- In the 1950s he was a Golden Gloves champion boxer in New Jersey who fought at Madison Square Gardens
- While working as a reporter, he moonlighted as a thief to supplement his income
- His dad invented the "twister cruller"
I couldn't have made this up if I tried. Now Porambo had a life worth blogging about.
