List of Famous people who died at 44

Zhang Zhixin was a dissident during the Cultural Revolution who became famous for criticizing the idolization of Mao Zedong and the ultra-left. She was imprisoned for six years and tortured, then executed, for having opposing views while being a member of the Communist Party of China. A second party member who had expressed agreement with Zhang was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Sergey Alexandrovich Maduev was one of the famous Soviet brigands, as well as a serial killer. He had the nickname "Chervonets", but he called himself "Thief-outside-the-law". Despite beginning his criminal activity in the 1970s, his most high-profile crimes occurred at the very end of the 1980s, which is why Maduev today is regarded as one of the last criminals of the Soviet era.

Paulo Leminski Filho was a Brazilian poet, translator, literary critic, biographer, teacher and judoka. He was noted for his avant-garde work, an experimental novel and poetry inspired in concrete poetry, as well as abundant short lyrics derived from haiku and related forms.

Hisashi Nozawa was a Japanese screenwriter and mystery novelist. He won the Kuniko Mukōda Prize in 1998 for his screenplay Nemureru Mori and Kekkon Zen'ya. He also won the Edogawa Rampo Prize in 1997 for Hasen no marisu and the Eiji Yoshikawa Prize for New Writers in 2001 for Shinku (Crimson). The South Korean TV Network SBS broadcast a 16 Episode Drama Alone in Love adapted from one of his novels in 2006. He also wrote Detective Conan - The Phantom of Baker Street.

José Antonio Rodríguez Vega, nicknamed El Mataviejas, was a Spanish serial killer who raped and killed at least 16 elderly women, ranging in age from 61 to 93 years old, in and around Santander, Cantabria, between August 1987 and April 1988.

Hiroaki Hidaka was a Japanese serial killer.

Leonid Stepanovych Stadnyk was a Ukrainian man who claimed to have stood at 2.57 m, but his claims have been questioned.

Nadezhda Pavlovna Kozhushanaya was a Soviet, Russian screenwriter and writer. Nadezhda said: "I live and write with love to my crazy time”. She was a philologist and a musician by education, a playwright by vocation. Although she died at the age of 44, she was referred to as “The most gifted screenwriter of the perestroika epoch”.

Donald Johnson Ellis was an American jazz trumpeter, drummer, composer, and bandleader. He is best known for his extensive musical experimentation, particularly in the area of time signatures. Later in his life he worked as a film composer, contributing a score to 1971's The French Connection and 1973's The Seven-Ups.

Philipp Brammer was a German actor and voice actor from Munich.