http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcas...mostemailedlink

 

 

Bloodied body of Curious George co-writer found near his Boynton home

By Jerome Burdi

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Published February 8, 2006

 

 

Boynton Beach -- The body of a former producer and co-writer of the popular Curious George books and cartoons lay under garbage bags for more than 24 hours until it was found early Tuesday morning in the driveway of his home, police and witnesses said.

 

Alan Shalleck, 76, was the writer and director of 104, five-minute episodes of Curious George, which aired on the Disney Channel. The episodes were adapted into 28 books. Shalleck co-wrote a series of books with Margret Rey, who created Curious George along with her husband more than 60 years ago.

 

Shalleck worked at Borders Books & Music on Congress Avenue and Old Boynton West Road, but had not shown up for work in two days.

 

Shalleck's body was found in his driveway at 4295 King Theodore Drive in Royal Manor Estates, a senior citizen retirement village just east of Military Trail and north of Gateway Boulevard. Police are treating the case as a possible homicide, a spokeswoman said, but have not released a cause of death.

 

Neighbors said they had seen the garbage bag in the driveway Monday morning but thought it was trash. Police responded to an 8:30 a.m. call of maintenance supervisor Burt Venturelli, 62, who was going about his normal routine of taking out bags of trash from residents' front lawns.

 

"I went to drag it this morning and said `this is a body, this isn't garbage,'" Venturelli said. He said the body was naked from the waist up. "I could see blood all over the place."

 

There was a black plastic garbage bag covering his lower half and another his top, Venturelli said. The body was on a rug, he said.

 

Neighbors described Shalleck, a Westchester County, N.Y., native as a quiet, friendly man who had a lot of company who would come and go. Shalleck gained local recognition as Gramps, the name he used while reading books to children in schools.

 

"That was very important to him," said Shalleck's ex-wife, Joan Shalleck, 75, of Sun City Center. "Educators in the local schools encouraged that whole effort because they thought he was doing a very good thing, and he was."

 

In 2001, Shalleck told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, "Gramps is a persona that transcends everything else ... I'm a communicator, not an educator. My main goal is to get them to love to read."

The movie is just a couple months away too....

Man in yellow seen fleeing the scene.

Man in yellow seen fleeing the scene.

 

george got a little too curious...