page_title: List of premature obituaries
section_title: L
hierarchical_section_title: List of premature obituaries / L
caption_attribution_description: English: Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, being escorted by United States Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld through an honour cordon and into the Pentagon. They met to discuss bilateral security issues including the war on terrorism: see DefenseLINK news photos.&#32;US Department of Defense&#32;(2002-05-02). Retrieved on 2009-05-05.
context_page_description: A premature obituary is an obituary of someone who was still alive at the time of publication. Examples include that of inventor, businessman, and chemist Alfred Nobel, whose premature obituary condemning him as a "merchant of death" may have prompted him to create the Nobel Prize; black nationalist Marcus Garvey, whose actual death may have been precipitated by reading his own obituary; and actor Abe Vigoda, who was the subject of so many premature obituaries that a website was created to state whether he was alive or dead.
  People who were presumed to be dead, and joke death reports that were widely believed, are also included.
context_section_description: Xavier LaBelle was wrongly reported as one of the fatalities in the Humboldt Broncos bus crash. While he was unconscious, he was wrongly identified as Parker Tobin, and Tobin's body was identified as his, a situation similar to that of Whitney Cerak.
  Bobby Labonte, a NASCAR driver, was reported dead in 2001 and in 2002 in traffic accidents. This was a mix-up after Bobby's father-in-law had died.
  W. S. Lach-Szyrma, a curate and pioneering writer of science fiction, became ill during a visit to Paris and on his return to Cornwall found that his obituary had been published in several papers. He is credited as the first writer to use the word Martian as a noun. Lach-Szyrma died in 1915.
  Artie Lange, comedian from The Howard Stern Show, was reported dead in May 2004 by KLAS-TV in Las Vegas. The show was being broadcast from Las Vegas, and Stern show prank caller Captain Janks capitalized on Artie's debauched reputation by telling the news station that he was a representative from the Hard Rock Hotel, and that Artie had been found dead in his hotel room.
  Betsy Langjahr: In January 2016, Pennsylvania police reported that an unidentified dead body found in 1973 may have been that of Betsy Langjahr, who was a missing teenage runaway at the time. However, police soon received a number of tips alerting them to the fact that Langjahr was still alive.
  Ryan Lanza was initially reported as the perpetrator of a mass murder-suicide in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012. It was in fact Ryan's younger brother, Adam Lanza, who had stolen his brother's identification and committed the murder-suicide.
  Martin Lawrence: in March 2015, a fake news website reported that the comedian had been found dead in a hotel room.
  Guillaume Le Gentil left Paris to head towards Pondicherry in 1760. He faced numerous delays and troubles and was unable to return until 1771, when he found that he had been declared legally dead. Le Gentil died in 1792.
  Lee Kuan Yew, first Prime Minister of Singapore. On March 18, 2015, a death hoax website reported false news of Lee's death. He died five days later.
  Spike Lee – following the death of Stan Lee, the Gisborne Herald newspaper accompanied a front-page picture of Stan Lee with the caption "Spike Lee dead at 95". Spike Lee and others responded to this blunder via Twitter.
  Titan Leeds, publisher of an almanac competing with Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac. Franklin had repeatedly predicted that Leeds would die in 1733 in his almanac, and when the date of Leeds' supposed death had come and gone, published Leeds' obituary anyway. When Leeds actually died in 1738 Benjamin Franklin publicly commended the impostors for ending their charade. (See the somewhat similar case of John Partridge.)
  Kimo Leopoldo, mixed martial arts fighter, was the subject of numerous premature obituaries on July 21, 2009. Internet reports that Leopoldo had died after complications from a heart attack late in the evening on July 20 were picked up and republished by a large number of mainstream media outlets, including The Huffington Post, TMZ, the New York Daily News, The Orange County Register, and USA Today.
  Jerry Lee Lewis, the rock-and-roll and country musician, was confused with the similarly named comedian, actor, filmmaker and humanitarian Jerry Lewis, who died on August 20, 2017. An early CNN.com obituary of the comedian mistakenly used the musician's name in the headline, and Google searches for "Jerry Lee Lewis death" incorrectly indicated that he had died.
  Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian folk musician, was mistakenly reported dead by CBC Radio 3, Canwest and the Calgary Herald on February 18, 2010. The source of the rumour was a prank phone call to Ronnie Hawkins, a long time friend of Lightfoot's, by a man claiming to be the singer's grandson. Media outlets ran the story having confirmed with Hawkins. Lightfoot was in fact at the dentist at the time the story broke.
  Arthur Livingston, a then-36-year-old resident of Prosperity, South Carolina, was erroneously reported dead by his bank, Bank of America, when he sold his house 
caption: A death hoax website reported false news of Lee Kuan Yew's death.
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