David Eisenstadt; reporter won awards for Willie Horton stories

LOS ANGELES - David A. Eisenstadt, a former Washington correspondent for Hearst Newspapers, died in a car accident Aug. 26 in Lancaster, Calif. He was 46.

Mr. Eisenstadt had reported on national security issues for the Hearst Washington bureau in 1993-1994. He worked previously as a journalist at the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, Defense Daily, and Phillips Publishing, and later reported for the Washington bureau of the New York Daily News.

He won awards for his reporting at the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune for participating in its coverage of Willie Horton, who was convicted of murder in Massachusetts and sentenced to life without parole. On a furlough, Horton committed robbery and a rape, an episode that was used against Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988, when he was the Democratic presidential nominee, because he had supported the furlough program.

At Defense Daily, Mr. Eisenstadt broke the story that the father of US Army General John Shalikashvili, President Bill Clinton's nominee to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had served in the German Army in World War II and participated in the Nazi defense of France against the allied invasion in 1944.

At Hearst, he broke stories about the loopholes that exempted government aircraft from many safety regulations governing civil aircraft.

A native of Manhattan Beach, Calif., Mr. Eisenstadt graduated from Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1985. He earned a master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1987.

He also worked for the Burson-Marsteller public relations company, lived in Poland for three years as a freelancer, and taught journalism at Antelope Valley College in Lancaster, Calif. He was an avid surfer, and an expert on the culture of the beach towns south of Los Angeles.

He leaves his mother, Rosalee.

Services will be tomorrow at Green Hills Memorial Park, Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.