Rosalie Ritz, 84, artist at high-drama trials

Rosalie Ritz drew the images of such defendants as Charles Manson, Patty Hearst, and O.J. Simpson. (Sandy Ritz via ap)

LOS ANGELES - Rosalie Ritz, a premier courtroom artist who for four decades chronicled dozens of high-drama trials, including those of Charles Manson, Patty Hearst, and O.J. Simpson, has died. She was 84.

She died at her home in Walnut Creek in Northern California on Friday night after a two-year battle with lung cancer, said her daughter Sandy. .

Rosalie Ritz's work was seen on network television and on AP wires beginning with the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings in the 1950s. Soon after, she began drawing in courtrooms. Her trial illustrations are in a special collection at the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley.

With her background in the fine arts, Ms. Ritz drew with a flourish that set her apart from her colleagues. Her work was never photographic but sought to capture the action and drama of trials.

Before color TV, she sketched in black and white but later used color profusely.

Sometimes she went beyond the courtroom. In 1967, she sketched Black Panther Huey Newton in his jail cell while he was facing trial for murder. She worked at several Black Panther trials and a Hells Angels trial.

"I was scared a lot of the time," she would say later. She was once pepper-sprayed while drawing a Vietnam War protest outside a courthouse.

An accomplished artist in her teens, Ms. Ritz began sketching live events when she lived in Washington, D.C., and got into a closed session of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. A CBS-TV producer offered to buy her sketches, and they were shown on the Edward R. Murrow news show.

Soon her services were in demand. When she moved with her family to California in 1966, settling in the San Francisco Bay Area, she became a freelance sketch artist with KPIX, a San Francisco CBS affiliate, and the Associated Press, among others.

Ms. Ritz produced as many as 18 to 21 drawings a day on high-profile trials.

"I could draw a whole jury in a few minutes," she once said in a speech.

The AP brought her to Los Angeles for the trial of Robert F. Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, in 1968, and she returned to the city for other trials. In 1996, the wire service coaxed her out of retirement to draw the civil trial of O.J. Simpson, her last assignment.

In 1972, the AP Managing Editors association presented her with a special award for excellence for her drawings of the trial of Angela Davis, a San Francisco college professor ultimately acquitted of murder charges in connection with a Black Panther shoot-out.

Ms. Ritz was also a wife and mother of four daughters, a tournament-winning golfer, and a social activist who took a slum building in Oakland, Calif., and turned it into studios and galleries for struggling artists.

She was born Rosalie Jane Mislove in Milwaukee, the seventh of 10 children. Young Rosalie's talent was evident early, and at age 14 she attended the Layton School of Art College. She later studied at Marquette University and the Milwaukee and Chicago art institutes. By 16 she was earning money doing portraits at circuses and fairs.

In 1946 she married Erwin Ritz, an accountant and athlete, and they moved to Washington. He died last year.

She leaves her daughters, Sandy Ritz of Honolulu, Barbara Bray of Oakland, Terry Leach of Orinda, and Janet Ritz of Studio City; five grandchildren; and one great-granddaughter.