NEW YORK – Richard Threlkeld, a far-ranging and award-winning correspondent who worked for both CBS and ABC News during a long career, has been killed in a car accident, CBS said.

The 74-year-old Threlkeld died Friday morning in Amagansett, N.Y., and was pronounced dead at Southampton Hospital. He lived in nearby East Hampton.

Threlkeld spent more than 25 years at CBS News, retiring in 1998. He was a reporter, anchor and bureau chief.

He covered the Persian Gulf War and the Vietnam War, the Patty Hearst kidnapping and trial, and the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

He worked alongside Lesley Stahl as co-anchor of “The CBS Morning News” from 1977-79, and reported for “CBS Sunday Morning” from its inception in 1979, as well as for “The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.”

In 1981, Threlkeld decided to go to up-and-coming ABC News without fanfare and without telling CBS.

“I don’t like to horse trade. I’m not a horse,” Threlkeld told The Associated Press at the time. “After I decided ABC was the best place for me to go, it would have been wrong to make a verbal agreement and take it back to CBS to see what they could do.”

At ABC News, he served as a national correspondent for “World News Tonight.”

On Friday, ABC News president Ben Sherwood called Threlkeld a “terrific writer and master storyteller always full of ideas.”

Threlkeld returned to CBS News in 1989. His final assignment at CBS was as Moscow correspondent.

He originally joined CBS News in 1966 as a producer-editor based in New York.

Born on Nov. 30, 1937, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he was raised in Barrington, Ill. He graduated from Ripon (Wis.) College and earned a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

He won several Emmy and Overseas Press Club awards and an Alfred I. du Pont-Columbia University Award.

He is survived by his wife, Betsy Aaron, a former CBS and CNN correspondent, and two children.

 

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