Screenwriter Robert Warnes Leach died 30 March 2008 from complications related to respiratory and kidney ailments. Born 16 December 1914 in Dupree, South Dakota, he became an advocate for victims’ rights after his stepdaughter, Marsalee Nicholas, was murdered in 1983.
In 1984, he co-founded Justice for Homicide Victims with Ellen Griffin Dunne (mother of murdered actress Dominique Dunne), and was the organization’s president. Leach’s wife, Marcella—who announced his death—is the organization’s executive director.
Leach earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1938 from the University of Missouri, and then became an editor for United Press in Los Angeles. During World War II, he served more than four years in the Navy, mainly on battleships in the Pacific. In San Francisco after the war, he met Navy seaman and future film producer Ray Stark, who asked Leach if he had any war stories that might make a good movie. Stark sold Leach’s screenplay treatment about a submarine in 1946, which helped Leach get a job at 20th Century Fox as a junior writer. For the next 17 years, he worked as a production assistant at MGM and a story editor and writer in television.
Among his credits are two episodes of Men Into Space (1960).
After the 1960s, he turned to teaching journalism and screenwriting at UCLA. In addition to his wife and stepson Henry T. Nicholas II (co-founder of Broadcom), Leach is survived by three grandchildren.
Memorial donations may be made to Justice for Homicide Victims, Box 2845, Malibu, CA 90265.