Dorothy Sucher, R.I.P.

Dorothy Sucher, 77, a retired psychotherapist, mystery writer and journalist whose 1965 news story about a Greenbelt City Council meeting became a test case for freedom of the press that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, died Aug. 22 at her home in Silver Spring. She had thyroid cancer.

As a psychotherapist, she practiced in Washington with the Group Health Association from 1975 to 1980 and subsequently operated a private practice in Greenbelt for seven years.

Later she turned to full-time fiction writing. She wrote three books: two mysteries, Dead Men Don't Give Seminars (1988) and Dead Men Don't Marry (1989), and a collection of personal essays, The Invisible Garden (1999).

Her short stories and articles were published in periodicals such as The Washington Post Magazine, Vermont Life and Mystery Readers Journal. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mrs. Sucher taught mystery and fiction writing at Duke University, Georgetown University and the Writer's Center in Bethesda.

In the late 1980s, Mrs. Sucher served four years as treasurer of Sisters in Crimes. She founded the group's Chesapeake chapter.

Read her obituary in the Washington Post.