Caitlyn Jenner biographer and Hollywood screenwriter found dead on hiking trail

Key Points

• William Hasley, a screenwriter and author who wrote about Caitlyn Jenner, has died.

• The writer’s credits include films sold to Warner Bros. and Universal Studios, along with television shows Murder, She Wrote and Highway to Heaven.

• Hasley worked as an instructor at UCLA, teaching how to write screenplays.

William Hasley, a screenwriter and biographer who wrote about Caitlyn Jenner, has died.

The writer was found on Saturday evening around 7 p.m. near Runyon Canyon, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department, per New York Post. He was 78. Air rescuers attempted to revive Hasley but were unsuccessful, pronouncing him dead at the scene.

Entertainment Weekly contacted the Los Angeles Fire Department. Other details surrounding his death are unknown, according to Los Angeles County Medical Examiner records reviewed by Entertainment Weekly.

Hasley was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., After graduating Marshall University in West Virginia, where he played football and ran cross country, he moved to Hollywood. Some of his earliest gigs were writing for Hanna-Barbera and Filmation Studio cartoons The Smurfs and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.

While working at NBC-TV on their “Star Salute to the U.S. Olympic Team” special, he met Jenner. The Olympian asked Hasley to help write the 1996 motivational book Finding the Champion Within. Hasley went on to ghostwrite books Passion, Profit, & Power for motivational speaker Marshall Sylver, and The Slight Edge for two-time Olympian Jeff Olson.

Hasley’s screenwriting credits for television include Swift Justice, Ghost Stories, Murder, She Wrote, Kung Fu, Young Riders, and Highway to Heaven. His screenplays have been sold to 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios, Warner Bros., and Laurence Marks Productions. Collaborating with Gerald Green and Oliver Stone on the screenplay Defiance was a highlight of Hasley’s career, though the film was never made.

He also worked as an instructor at UCLA. According to his instructor statement, his goal for his students was to help them develop their own “distinct style into a concise and creative screenplay for today’s ever-changing marketplace,” and turn their “dreams into reality.”

The writer was married previously married to Robin Riker in the 1980s. Her most notable acting role was on The Bold and the Beautiful.

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