‘No Survivors’ in Fiery Small-Plane Crash in Mass

The Philadelphia Inquirer co-owner Lewis Katz was among seven people killed on board an Atlantic City-bound private jet when the plane crashed and caught fire shortly after takeoff from a Massachusetts airfield late Saturday.

Anne Leeds, the wife of 74-year-old James P. Leeds Sr., a New Jersey borough commissioner, also died in the crash. Leeds serves on the board of commissioners in Longport, a resort town in southern New Jersey.

Katz was returning to New Jersey from a gathering at the home of Pulitzer Prize winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Also killed was a next-door neighbor of Katz’s, Anne Leeds, a 74-year-old retired preschool teacher he had invited along.

The identities of the other victims weren’t immediately released. Nancy Phillips, Katz’s longtime partner and city editor at the Inquirer, was not aboard.

Investigators said it was too soon to say what caused the crash.

Katz made his fortune investing in parking lots and the New York Yankees’ cable network. He once owned the NBA’s New Jersey Nets and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils and in 2012 became a minority investor in the Inquirer.

Last Tuesday, Katz and former cable magnate Harold H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest struck a deal to gain full control of the Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com by buying out their fellow owners for $88 million – an agreement that ended a very public feud over the Inquirer’s business and journalism direction.

Lenfest said yesterday that the deal will be delayed but will still go through.

“We’ll lose his expertise, but the paper will continue because we both intended to put a new CEO in charge of the day-to-day operations,” Lenfest said. Katz’s son, Drew, will take his father’s seat on the board of directors, Lenfest said.

When bidding on the company, Katz and Lenfest vowed to fund in-depth journalism and retain the Inquirer’s Pulitzer winning editor, Bill Marimow.

“It’s going to be a lot of hard work. We’re not kidding ourselves. It’s going to be an enormous undertaking,” Katz said then, noting that advertising and circulation revenue had fallen for years. “Hopefully, (the Inquirer) will get fatter.”

The fight over the city’s two major newspapers broke out last year when one of the co-owners, Democratic powerbroker George Norcross, moved to fire Marimow. Katz and Lenfest went to court to keep Marimow, then bought out Norcross and his allies.

The Inquirer has changed hands five times in eight years, and like many other newspapers, it has seen a downturn in business that has forced it to cut staff, close bureaus and scale back its ambitions.

Three previous owners, including Norcross, said in a statement that they were deeply saddened by Katz’s death.

“Lew’s long-standing commitment to the community and record of strong philanthropy across the region, particularly Camden where he was born and raised, will ensure that his legacy will live on,” they said.

The event at Goodwin’s home in Concord, Mass., was held to support an education initiative by Goodwin’s son. Afterward, Katz, Goodwin’s friend of nearly 20 years, joined the author and others at dinner, where they talked about their shared interests, including journalism, Goodwin said.

“The last thing he said to me upon leaving for the plane was that most of all what we shared was our love and pride for our children,” she said in a statement.

Leeds’s husband, James Leeds Sr., town commissioner of Longport, N.J., said he received a text message from his wife four minutes before the crash saying they were about to take off. The plane was carrying four passengers, two pilots and a cabin attendant, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. NTSB investigator Luke Schiada said a witness reported the plane never got off the ground.

Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell said Katz had invited him on the flight, but Rendell had another commitment. Rendell said Katz had been thrilled by the Inquirer deal and died at “maybe the high point of his life.”

Agencies/Canadajournal