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Pablo Escobar, 44, billionaire Colombian drug king…

Pablo Escobar, 44, billionaire Colombian drug king who was wanted for scores of murders, bombings and assassinations, as well as for shipping tons of cocaine to the U.S. and Europe; he had been on the run since escaping from a jail near Medellin, Colombia, in July 1992 along with nine of his men; the government offered a reward of more than $6 million for information leading to his capture, but police sources said he finally fell because of a fatal mistake, tapped phone calls to his family; Dec. 2, in Medellin, following a shootout.

Garry Moore, 78, television pioneer whose folksy charm anchored several long-running programs, hosted “The Garry Moore Show,” a CBS variety show broadcast off and on from 1950 until 1967; “I’ve Got A Secret,” the CBS quiz show in which celebrities tried to guess a guest’s secret (1952-66) and “To Tell the Truth,” a syndicated show (1969-76); he used his variety show to help launch the careers of comedians Carol Burnett, Don Knotts and Jonathan Winters; Nov. 28, in his home on Hilton Head Island, S.C., of emphysema.

Francis L. Dale, 72, Champaign, Ill., native who was a former publisher of The Cincinnati Enquirer (1965-72) and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner (1977-85), U.S. representative to the United Nations in Geneva and professional sports executive; he was president of the Cincinnati Reds (1967-73) and helped push through the construction of the team’s Riverfront Stadium; he also was instrumental in forming the group that brought pro football to Cincinnati; Nov. 28, in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, while touring Africa.

David Houston, 57, a star of Nashville’s Grand Old Opry who won a Grammy for the 1966 million-seller country music classic “Almost Persuaded” which chronicled a honky-tonk flirtation in which a married man considered cheating on his wife; he was one of the most successful country singers in the mid-1960s and had performed with the Grand Ole Opry since 1972; among his other hits were “Already It’s Heaven,” “You Mean the World to Me,” “Can’t You Feel It?” “The Twelfth of Never” and “With One Exception”; he and Barbara Mandrell were duet partners in the early 1970s; Nov. 30, in Bossier City, La., of a ruptured brain aneurism.

Bob Woolf, 65, lawyer who helped define the role of the sports agent with clients ranging from Boston Celtics basketball star Larry Bird to CNN talk show host Larry King; his clients also included Baseball Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski, quarterback Jim Plunkett, Celtics great John Havlicek, basketball star Julius Erving and former baseball stars Ken Harrelson, Thurman Munson and Mark Fidrych; he also handled entertainment figures such as New Kids On The Block and such media personalities as Gene Shalit of the “Today” Show; Nov. 30, in Miami Beach, of a heart attack.

Joyce Ann Radtke, 56, mayor of West Allis, Wis., and the first woman to hold that post; a lifelong resident of the Milwaukee suburb, she served on the Common Council for eight years before being elected to a four-year term as mayor in April 1992; Nov. 27, in a West Allis hospital, of cancer.

Dr. Flora Brown Wurtz, 71, retired radiologist who was one of the first women in the Chicago area trained in the specialty; in 1956, she opened an office in Arlington Heights and became the first radiologist in the northwest suburbs; Nov. 28, in her Arlington Heights home.

Franklin B. Bowes, 85, former owner of Chicago’s Bowes Realty Company; he was respected as a land economist and as historian of North Michigan Avenue and the Near North Side, both of which he helped develop; Dec. 1, in Glenbrook Hospital, Glenview.

Leo Paquin, 83, one of the nine players who made up the famed Seven Blocks of Granite who formed Fordham University’s front line and turned it into a formidable football force in 1936 and 1937; he played left end and, like his roommate, Vince Lombardi, he played only the first of the two Granite seasons, as a senior in 1936 when Fordham had a 5-1-2 record, including a famous scoreless tie with Pittsburgh, and outscored its opponents 128-33; he was invited to join the New York Giants, but accepted a position at Xavier High School in Manhattan, where he spent more than 40 years as football coach, athletic director and teacher of Latin and English; Dec. 2, in Rutherford, N.J.

William J. Trent Jr., 83, executive director of the United Negro College Fund for 20 years after its inception in 1944; he oversaw the raising of about $78 million, which he said in 1964 had helped to make “strong citadels of learning, carriers of the American dream, seedbeds of social evolution and revolution”; at that time, 32 colleges in 11 Southern states were sharing the fund’s income; Nov. 26, in Greensboro, N.C.

Dr. Clement R. Brown Jr., 65, associate chief medical director for the Social Security Administration’s disability program; he had taken part in and completed many marathons since undergoing triple-bypass cardiac surgery in 1981; he had formerly practiced in the Chicago area and served as director of medical education at South Chicago Community Hospital and Mercy Hospital and Medical Center; Nov. 28, near his Baltimore home, of cardiac arrest while running near his home.

Claudia McNeil, 77, actress known for her performances in stage and screen productions of “A Raisin in the Sun”; at the New York opening of the play in 1959 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, she won praise for her heroic performance as the matriarch in a black family on Chicago’s South Side; she went on to be a member of what has been lauded by critics as the outstanding cast of the 1961 film of “A Raisin in the Sun”; Nov. 25, in the Actors Fund Nursing Home in Englewood, N.J.

E. Rex Hamilton, 68, retired bulk chemical transportation executive who started Hamilton Truck Leasing Co. and later served as Chicago terminal manager for Leaseway Corp.; he served with U.S. Marine Corps Squadron VMF 223 in the South Pacific in World War II and compiled a three-volume history of his Marine Corps unit, Squadron VMF 223; Nov. 29, in Glenbrook Hospital, Glenview.

Isabel Henderson Van Vechten, singer and Broadway actress who was a featured performer in the Ziegfeld Follies in the 1920s; always concerned about her image, she never disclosed her age; she made her Broadway debut at age 5 as Kitty in “Alias Jimmy Valentine” and began her singing career at 16; in 1980, she co-founded the Ziegfeld Girls of Florida Inc., a 100-member group made up of former Broadway performers; Nov. 28, in a hospice in Boca Raton, Fla.

John Smart, 88, former chairman of Esquire Inc.; he and his two older brothers, David and Alfred, founded the trade publication Apparel Arts in 1931; two years later, they founded Esquire magazine; he took over the organization after his brothers died in the 1950s; he also converted Apparel Arts into Gentlemen’s Quarterly; Nov. 29, in Greenwich, Conn.

Dr. Rita Goldman Jacobs, 66, who founded one of the nation’s first pain clinics, the Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, Mass., in the 1970s; she focused much of her career on the treatment of pain, including ground-breaking work toward killing nerves to treat cancer pain instead of using drugs; she had been in private practice since 1992; Nov. 30, in Pittsfield, of lung cancer.

Frank S. Benson Jr., 68, developer who was instrumental in building the nation’s first regional shopping center; as president of the Don M. Casto Organization, he oversaw development of the Town and Country mall in the Columbus, Ohio, suburb of Whitehall, the first shopping center to attract national retailers when it opened in 1947; Nov. 29, in Bexley, Ohio.

Edward Babst, 67, former executive director of the Ohio State Racing Commission; he was sales director of the Beulah Park Sales Co. and a consultant to the Grove City thoroughbred race track near Columbus when he died; Nov. 30, in Cincinnati, of cancer.

Johnny L. Jones, 60, who headed Dade County (Miami) schools before running into scandal; he rose to become the first black superintendent of the county’s schools, then the nation’s fifth-largest district (now the fourth); his education career collapsed when he was implicated for misusing school funds in what was dubbed “the Gold Plumbing Caper”; he lost his job in 1980 after being charged with spending $9,000 of school funds for luxury plumbing fixtures, some 24-carat gold-plated, for a vacation home in Naples, Fla.; Nov. 30, in Miami, of a heart attack.