The trial resumes Monday in federal court in Manhattan.
“Marvin’s passing is a huge loss for me and our industry writ large. There are many talented PR executives, but Marvin was one of a kind,” Spielberg said in a statement. “I am grateful for all our years together. Marvin never failed to make me laugh, he never stopped smiling. We will miss you Marvin. You will always be in our hearts and your memory will always make us smile.”Levy’s long-standing partnership with
made him one of the most renowned and respected publicists in Hollywood. Over his 70-year career, he worked on campaigns for film classics like “Taxi Driver,” “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Back to the Future,” “Schindler’s List,” “Jurassic Park” and “Gladiator.”In 2018, Levy, a long-standing member of the film academy’s public relations branch, became the first and only publicist to receive an honoraryfrom the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. No publicist’s name had even been put forth for the award before Levy’s.
“It was way out of left field for me. I couldn’t have imagined it,” Levy told The Associated Press in 2018. “It’s not like I could say ‘Gee, I’d love to get that one day.’ It was not on my to-do list.”Born in Manhattan on Nov. 16, 1928, Levy was raised on the east side and attended New York University. Though he never set out to be a publicist specifically, he knew he had a way with words. One of his first jobs was writing questions for a TV quiz show. But he was fired when his “big ticket” question was answered too early in the season.
His first publicity job was at MGM in New York, where he was so far down on the ladder that he never got to travel to Los Angeles, but where he worked on campaigns for films like “Gigi” and “Ben-Hur.” By the time the company was remaking “Mutiny on the Bounty,” he knew it was time to move on.
Levy soon found his way to legendary publicists Arthur Canton and Bill Blowitz, and then Columbia Pictures which took him to California. It was during that time that he first started working with Spielberg who was fresh off “Jaws.” He was told he was only to concentrate on “Close Encounters.” By 1982, he went full time with Spielberg and wouldn’t look back.Several escapees, including Massey, relied on internet phone services to communicate with accomplices and “avoid detection” by not leaving a trail of cellular signals, police reports say.
Escapee Corey Boyd used an internet phone service to message several contacts seeking money and access to their iCloud accounts, threatening to kill one person if they did not comply, court records show.The FBI reviewed months of calls from Boyd’s “top caller” while incarcerated. They then found a brief call from a new phone number the night after the escape and used that to help track down Boyd. They discovered that Boyd’s aunt was messaging him on Instagram to help him get food as hid in the apartment where a SWAT team captured him May 20.
One of the women accused of helping Massey and described by police as his “paramour” also suffered from years of physical abuse from him, court records show.The woman, who had previously filed a protective order against Massey after he attempted to strangle her, was aware of his planned escape and later misled authorities, police say.