Walter F. Roche Jr., former Inquirer investigative reporter, actor, and blogger, has died at 75

Walter F. Roche Jr., 75, of Lafayette Hill, a former investigative reporter for The Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Times, Tennessean, and other media outlets as well as an actor and prolific blogger, died Friday, Nov. 25, of heart failure at Chestnut Hill Hospital.

Mr. Roche broke news and wrote compelling stories for The Inquirer from 1982 to 1996, working first as the Harrisburg bureau chief and later as one of the paper’s top investigative reporters. He composed countless stories about Pennsylvania and Philadelphia politics, and was perhaps best known for a 1988 series of articles he and colleague Gary Cohn wrote that resulted in the 1990 conviction of union leader Earl Stout for stealing more than $700,000 from the city’s largest municipal workers’ union.

He opened a 1990 story about Stout’s trial by writing: “Testifying in his own defense, former city union leader Earl Stout said yesterday that his union was getting a bargain when he hired a former Commonwealth Court judge as a $100,000-a-year legal consultant.”

As a reporter for the Sun from 1996 to 2004, Mr. Roche and colleague Scott Higham investigated Maryland State Sen. Larry Young, and their 1997 stories revealing financial and ethical misconduct resulted in Young’s 1998 expulsion from the state Senate. Baltimore City Paper named Mr. Roche that city’s best reporter in 2003.

“He was in a league of his own when it came to investigative reporting,” said William K. Marimow, former editor of The Inquirer and a colleague of Mr. Roche at both The Inquirer and Sun.

From 2004 until he retired in 2014, Mr. Roche wrote for the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and the Tennessean in Nashville. Earlier in his career, he was a reporter in Fitchburg, Mass., for the Telegraph and Gazette, and in Boston for United Press International and WBZ-TV.

Colleagues called him “indefatigable,” “dogged,” and “relentless” in his pursuit of a story, and labeled his investigations as “assiduous,” “meticulous,” and “classic.” They said he was a master of disguise, observation, surveillance, and in analyzing public records, and a “giant in our profession.”

Mr. Roche was known for questioning everything he was told and rummaging through trash bins for information, a process colleagues called his Document Recovery Program. He was especially proud of his coverage for the Tennessean of a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak in 2012.

He could be cantankerous, friends said, but his willingness to mentor young reporters was constant. “He loved good journalism and admired young journalists who aspired to excellence,” Marimow said.

His wife, Mary, a former reporter who met Mr. Roche when they worked together in Fitchburg, said: “He loved his job. He was very concerned with people, how they felt, and how they were being treated.” His daughter, Maura, said: “My dad taught me the importance of diligently looking for the facts, questioning authority, and speaking up for those not in a position to be widely heard.”

Quiet and unassuming as a rule, Mr. Roche became animated on stage, and he performed in plays and productions throughout his young life, and earned a bachelor’s degree in theater arts from Brandeis University in Massachusetts in 1969. Colleagues said his ability to mute his own personality, blend in with crowds, and make others feel comfortable around him was a key to his reporting success.

Since 2014, Mr. Roche was a prolific blogger, and his posts detail topics ranging from veterans affairs to health care to politics and other issues. “He was interested in mostly everything,” his wife said. “I couldn’t keep up with him. He was always looking into something.”

Born Oct. 12, 1947, in Fitchburg, Walter Francis Roche Jr. graduated from Cranwell Preparatory School in Lenox, Mass., and later earned a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He married Mary D’Amore in 1970, and they had daughter Maura and son Curtis, and lived in Lafayette Hill since 1990.

Mr. Roche had an amazing memory and was an avid reader, often poring over half a dozen newspapers a day. He enjoyed the theater, shared an endearing sense of humor, and spent hours on his computer doing research and writing.

“He was quietly kind and fiercely loyal,” his daughter said. His wife said: “He was a great guy, a kind person who wanted to give back.”

In addition to his wife and children, Mr. Roche is survived by one grandson, two brothers, two sisters, and other relatives.

Services were private.