BREAKING NEWS: Larry Flynt dead at 78: Controversial publisher who founded Hustler and launched a porn empire has died in LA of heart failure
- Flynt died on Wednesday morning in Los Angeles, TMZ said
- He was best known for his pornography publishing empire and Hustler
- Flynt became a First Amendment crusader and fought multiple legal battles
- He ran for president in 1984 as a Republican but said he was a libertarian
- In October 2017 he offered a $10m reward for evidence to impeachment Trump
- Flynt was married five times, and married his current wife Elizabeth in 1998
Larry Flynt, the porn publisher behind Hustler magazine, has died at the age of 78, TMZ is reporting.
He died on Wednesday morning of heart failure, the site said.
Flynt, born in Kentucky, had been in a wheelchair since 1978, when white supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin attempted to kill him as he left court in Georgia.
Franklin shot him and left him paralyzed, in retaliation for Hustler publishing images of interracial sex.
A self-described ‘smut-peddler’ who transformed his Mid West strip clubs into the multi-million dollar Hustler empire, Flynt was passionate about personal freedoms.
His life was made into a 1996 film, The People vs Larry Flynt, starring Woody Harrelson, Edward Norton and Courtney Love, which chronicled his rise to fame and his clashes with religious institutions and the law.
Larry Flynt, pictured in March 2009, died on Wednesday morning of heart failure
Flynt is seen in November 2004, celebrating his 62nd birthday at The Hustler Club in Paris
Flynt was married five times, and had five children – his daughter Lisa Flynt-Fugate died in a car crash in Ohio in October 2014, at the age of 47.
He married Elizabeth Berrios, his former nurse, in 1998.