American Idol music supervisor and husband both found dead at LA home
Officers were conducting a welfare check at a home in the Encino neighborhood when they found the bodies of a man and woman with gunshot wounds.
An American Idol spokesperson confirmed the deaths of Robin Kaye and her husband, Thomas Deluca, both 70. The couple owned their home, according to public records.
Los Angeles police say they are investigating their deaths as homicides but have not identified any suspects.
'Robin has been a cornerstone of the Idol family since 2009 and was truly loved and respected by all who came in contact with her,' an American Idol spokesperson said in a statement. 'Robin will remain in our hearts forever and we share our deepest sympathy with her family and friends during this difficult time.'
Kaye, an industry veteran, has also worked in the music departments of several other productions such as 'The Singing Bee,' "Hollywood Game Night," 'Lip Sync Battle,' and several Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘I knew it would happen for Bruce': David Sancious on walking away from Springsteen's E Street Band
It was a late spring night in 1971 and David Sancious had walked from his home on E Street in Belmar, New Jersey to the Upstage club in Asbury Park. He was 17 and he had been playing piano and guitar with local bands for four years. 'I had walked to the Upstage because I wanted to play,' he says, 'and as I'm coming in I see Garry Tallent, a bass player who I already knew from other gigs.' Tallent was with a fellow New Jersey musician, a 21-year-old guitarist called Bruce Springsteen, 'the local guitar hero', says Sancious, 'very famous locally.' Springsteen told Sancious he was having a jam session and invited him to play. 'I said: 'Absolutely.'' The band played until 5am. As they were walking out of the club, Springsteen told Sancious he was breaking up his current band Steel Mill to form a new one: would he be interested in joining? Sancious said yes. He went on to record with Springsteen on his first three albums, but left the group before Born to Run transformed Springsteen and his bandmates into superstars. As that album approaches its 50th anniversary next month, I have wondered whether Sancious regrets walking away. He was five years old when his family moved into 1105 E Street in Belmar. The previous owners had left their piano in the house. 'The day we moved in, my mum sat down and started playing Chopin and Beethoven,' he says. 'It blew my mind.' Sancious started playing piano and later guitar and was in local bands in his early teens, giving illegal underage performances at local bars. 'The police used to raid these places and card everyone,' he says. 'One night I'm on stage with Bruce and the cops are hanging out at the front door.' The band hatched a plan to get Sancious off stage, sandwiched between Springsteen, saxophonist Clarence Clemons and two others. 'I was in the middle moving slowly, trying not to draw any attention.' Sancious and his bandmates sometimes rehearsed in his mother's garage, but mostly in a surfboard factory owned by an early manager of Springsteen's. 'You don't know enough to be self-conscious because you haven't had that much experience yet,' he says about those early days. Sancious contributed keyboards, piano and delicate jazz textures that enriched the early E Street sound on songs such as New York City Serenade and Incident on 57th Street. 'The thing about Bruce is that musically he was always open to a good idea. If I came up with a certain chord or inversion, he was very open to that.' Around 1974, Sancious and Springsteen were back in Belmar, by Sancious's childhood home. 'We were coming home from somewhere,' he says, 'turning on to E Street from 12th Avenue. There were these white obelisks with the street names painted on them. Bruce saw it and just said, 'E Street … E Street Band.'' How did it feel to have his address inspire this iconic band name? 'Pretty cool – quite an honour.' Sancious worked on Springsteen's debut Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ and its followup The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, and also toured with the band. 'We didn't have private planes back then,' he says. 'We had a station wagon, three of the guys in the front and three in the back. You're doing everything with these people. Eating, laughing, crying with them if something really bad happens. It's a great life.' He was the first Black member of what became the E Street Band – Clemons joined shortly after. 'You are constantly, completely, 100% aware of being Black – full stop – in any situation,' he says. He recalls one incident. 'I was at the beach and there were two guys making threatening gestures and saying inappropriate racial stuff. Clarence comes along and sees what's going on. He sat down right next to me and then Bruce comes walking by. Bruce found a piece of driftwood and he kept hitting it in his hand like he was saying: 'I'm not going to let you hurt our friend.'' Sancious continued playing with Springsteen but during breaks from touring he was working on his own music. When CBS heard his demo they offered him a three-year contract that would launch his solo career. It was an offer he couldn't refuse, and shortly after playing on a song for Springsteen's third album – a little number called Born to Run – Sancious left the E Street Band. How did it feel, I ask, to see Born to Run become a massive hit album, and Springsteen on the covers of Time and Newsweek simultaneously? 'I felt very happy for him, honestly,' he says. 'I knew it was going to happen for him.' How did he know? 'We did shows in Texas in 1974 and the crowd went nuts. We finished the show and the audience wouldn't leave. Bruce used to end the set with a song called For You that he would play by himself on piano and we would go off stage and watch. I remember standing there looking at him and thinking as soon as everybody finds out about this guy he's going to blow up. It's going to go crazy.' In 1975 came the release not only of Born to Run but also Sancious's first solo album Forest of Feelings – a fusion of jazz, rock, funk and classical that suggested he had travelled far from E Street. Of the numerous albums that followed, both solo and with his band Tone, the most successful 'got to No 78 in the Top 100 for one week. But my sense of self as an artist isn't diminished because I didn't sell a million records. That's a narrow definition of success and I don't resonate with that.' In the early 80s, Sancious paused making his own music. 'The phone kept ringing with artists asking me to go on tour,' he says. 'I toured with Peter Gabriel and then Sting and later Eric Clapton and Santana. They have more in common than you might think: none of them had a plan B, they all did it out of a love for music.' Sancious got to play the lead guitar riff to Clapton's Layla as well as the song's final piano coda when he toured with him – 'such a thrill because I love that song and I love his playing'. Sancious didn't return to the studio until 2000; he continues to record and tour today. He always remained in contact with Springsteen – he joined him on stage during the Human Rights Now! tour in 1988, and played on 1992's Human Touch album and 2019's Western Stars. He was part of the live band that backed Springsteen when he performed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in November 2022. 'We love each other,' he says. 'We love working together and whenever the situation allows we do it and we get fantastic results to this day.' On the night I speak to Sancious, Springsteen and the E Street Band are on stage in front of 60,000 people in Berlin. It feels appropriate to ask: with hindsight, would he have still walked away? 'There is a whole life I would have missed out on,' he says. 'Working with all these other artists and making my own music. If I had to do it again would I do the same thing? Absolutely. Because I didn't walk away from anything – I walked towards something.'
The Independent
4 hours ago
- The Independent
Julia Garner confirms long-awaited Madonna biopic is still going ahead
Actor Julia Garner has spoken about how she secured the role of Madonna in the forthcoming biopic about the pop icon. Garner competed against other notable actors, including Florence Pugh, and underwent a 'bootcamp' overseen by Madonna herself. She revealed that her audition required her to learn to dance and sing in front of Madonna. Despite previous rumours of its cancellation, Garner confirmed the film is 'supposed to still happen'. The biopic was put on hold for Madonna's Celebration Tour, but work on the script has since resumed.
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
US lawmakers balance security and openness as threats of political violence rise
'Tell Eric Swalwell that we are coming and that we are going to handle everyone. We are going to hurt everyone. We are coming to hurt them.' The staff at representative Swalwell's California district office had heard the man's voice before. He had called twice in previous weeks to leave revolting, racist threats against the Democratic congressman and his wife in voicemails, according to an FBI criminal complaint released on Monday. 'So, I'm fine with anything at this point. I'm tired of it. I'll just set up behind my .308 and I'll do my job,' he said in one voice recording. The .308 is a reference to a rifle, according to the criminal complaint. 'You want a war? Get your war started.' Swalwell's staff reported the latest threat. This time, the FBI charged the caller with a crime. As threats of political violence escalate – and the impact of the political assassination in Minnesota reverberates across the country – lawmakers like Swalwell are re-evaluating how to manage the balance between openness and security. The instinct of security professionals may be to increase physical security and limit the availability of elected officials to the public. But that approach runs headlong into a conflict with the imperative for politicians to connect with their constituents. 'I'm not going be intimidated. I know the aim of this threat is to have me shrink or hide under the bed and not speak out,' Swalwell told the Guardian. 'This guy's terrorizing the members of Congress, law enforcement and staff, and it just has no place in our civil discourse.' Swalwell has had to spend nearly $1m on security over the last two years, he said. That money comes out of his campaign accounts. 'When they threaten you and you protect yourself, your family and your staff, you're dipping into your campaign resources,' Swalwell said. 'You have this decision calculus where you can protect your family or you can protect your re-election, but it's been costly to do both.' The caller, Geoffrey Chad Giglio, was no stranger to the FBI or to the public. Reuters interviewed him in October while looking at violent political rhetoric after the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life, presenting him as a provocateur and an example of the new viciousness. 'I push the envelope,' Giglio told Reuters, adding that he would never hurt anyone. 'If I have to go to jail because somebody thinks I'm really a threat, oh well, so be it.' Giglio's made his last call to Swalwell's office on 13 June according to the complaint, apparently undaunted after being interviewed by the FBI about previous threats only a few days earlier. Researchers have been tracking an increase in threats made against lawmakers for years, with the January 6 attack on the Capitol a way station on a dark road. 'We see an increase starting around 2017, 2018,' said Pete Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University, who in 2024 published a review of a decade of federal data on intimidation charges against federal elected officials. From 2013 to 2016, Capitol police charged an average of 38 people a year for making threats to lawmakers. By 2017 to 2022, the average had grown to 62 charges a year. 'It's hard to know whether there's an increase in threats to public officials or there's an increase in the level of enforcement that's producing more criminal investigations and ultimately more charges filed in prosecution,' Simi said. But surveys of public officials at both the state and federal level also indicate an increase in threats. In a survey of local lawmakers published last year by the Brennan Center for Justice, 'substantial numbers' said they thought the severity of the threats was increasing, said Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center's elections and government program. 'Lawmakers are reporting that it's kind of getting worse, the severity of what's being said in these voicemails, these emails, whatever messages people are getting,' Ramachandran said. Best security practices have begun to emerge, but the implementation is inconsistent across states, she said. One recommendation is for a specific law enforcement agency to take charge of monitoring and tracking threats against lawmakers, Ramachandran said. The US Capitol police are tasked with responding to threats to federal lawmakers, who may then refer cases to the FBI and the Department of Justice for prosecution. The responding agency at the state level is often less obvious to elected officials. 'A lot of lawmakers we spoke with didn't even know who they're supposed to report these things to,' she said. Many elected officials said they wanted to balance security with accessibility, Ramachandran said, citing interviews with dozens of local lawmakers in 2023 about security and threats. 'The vast majority of the lawmakers we talked to were really concerned about their constituents not feeling welcome, in terms of coming to visit their offices or going to the state capitol to be heard,' she said. 'There was a repeated concern, of course, for safety of their staff and their families and all of that, and the constituents themselves, but also with not wanting things to be on lockdown and wanting to be accessible to constituents.' But the assassination of state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their Minneapolis-area home last month, has provoked a reassessment of that balance. At the federal level, the committee on House administration doubled spending on personal security measures for House members last week, allowing congressional representatives to spend $20,000 to increase home security, up from $10,000, and up to $5,000 a month on personal security, up from $150 a month. The committee's chair, Bryan Steil, a Republican from Wisconsin, and ranking member Joseph Morelle, a Democrat from New York, also asked the Department of Justice to give the US Capitol police additional federal prosecutors to help investigate and prosecute threats against legislators. Federal campaign finance law, as revised in January, provides a mechanism for federal officeholders to spend campaign money for locks, alarm systems, motion detectors and security camera systems, as well as some structural security devices, such as wiring, lighting, gates, doors and fencing, 'so long as such devices are intended solely to provide security and not to improve the property or increase its value'. It also provides for campaign funds to pay for cybersecurity measures and for professional security personnel. Both Democratic and Republican legislators in Oklahoma sent a letter earlier this month to the Oklahoma ethics commission, asking if state law could be similarly interpreted, citing the assassinations in Minnesota. Lawmakers in California are also looking for ways to loosen campaign finance restrictions for candidate spending on security. California has a $10,000 lifetime cap for candidates on personal security spending from election funds – a cap that legislation doubled last year. A proposal by assemblymember Mia Bonta would suspend the cap through 2028, with a $10,000 annual cap after that. Enhanced home security for Minnesota legislators will be covered by a state budget appropriation for any member asking for it, lawmakers decided last week. This is in addition to state rules enacted in 2021 allowing $3,000 in campaign spending toward personal security. Minnesota and several other states – including Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico and North Dakota – almost immediately removed home address data from state government websites after the Minnesota assassinations. New Mexico had already largely restricted this data after a series of drive-by shootings at lawmakers' homes by a failed Republican candidate in 2022 and 2023. Restricting public information about lawmaker's residency can be a political headache in some states. Generally, an elected official must live in the district he or she represents. Residency challenges are a common campaign issue, but a challenge cannot be raised if the address of a lawmaker is unknown to the public. 'It is something that I think we as a society are going to have to grapple with,' said Ramachandran. 'It may not be the best idea to enforce those rules about residency requirements by just having the whole general public know where people live and to be able to go up to their house and see if they really live there, right?' Some states like Nevada are exploring long-term solutions. Nevada's secretary of state, Francisco Aguilar, is forming a taskforce to look at ways to restrict access to lawmakers' residential information without interfering in election challenges. 'Political violence has no place in our country,' he said in a statement. 'People, including elected officials, should be able to have differing opinions and go to work without fear of violence or threats.' The challenge for lawmakers and investigators is crafting a policy to deal with people who because of their behavior are unusual outliers. As angry as people can be about politics, only a tiny few will make a phone call to a legislator to make a threat, and even fewer will carry out that threat. 'The vast, vast majority of Americans are reporting on these surveys that they don't support political violence,' Simi said. 'So those that do are an outlier. But there's some question about whether that outlier is increasing over time. We don't have great data over time, so that's a hard question to answer.'
