List of Famous people who died in 1972

Lee Roy Martin,, also known as The Gaffney Strangler, was an American serial killer from Gaffney, South Carolina. He murdered 4 people, 2 women and 2 girls between 1967 and 1968.

Thomas Carroll Neal Jr. was an American actor and successful amateur boxer best known for his costarring role in the critically lauded film Detour, for having a widely publicized affair with actress Barbara Payton, and for later being convicted and imprisoned for manslaughter.

Joe McCann was an Irish republican volunteer. A member of the Irish Republican Army and later the Official Irish Republican Army, he was active in politics from the early 1960s and participated in the early years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. He was shot dead, after being confronted by RUC Special Branch and British paratroopers in 1972.

He Xiangning was a Chinese revolutionary, feminist, politician, painter, and poet. Together with her husband Liao Zhongkai, she was one of the earliest members of Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary movement Tongmenghui. As Minister for Women's Affairs in Sun's Nationalist government in Guangzhou (Canton), she advocated equal rights for women and organized China's first rally for International Women's Day in 1924. After her husband's assassination in 1925 and Chiang Kai-shek's persecution of the Communists in 1927, she stayed away from party politics for two decades, but actively worked to organize resistance against the Japanese invasion of China.

Gia Scala was an English born Italian-American actress and model.

Joi Lansing was an American model, film and television actress, and nightclub singer. She was noted for her pin-up photos and roles in B-movies, as well as a prominent role in the famous opening "tracking shot" in Orson Welles' 1958 crime drama Touch of Evil.

Torquato Pereira de Araújo Neto was a Brazilian journalist, poet and songwriter. He is perhaps best known as a lyricist for the Tropicália counterculture movement, which later expanded its influence to Música popular brasileira. He worked with Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Edu Lobo and Waly Salomão. He committed suicide at the age of 28.

Josefine Lauterbach was an Austrian middle-distance runner. She competed in the women's 800 metres at the 1928 Summer Olympics.

William Lawrence Boyd was an American film actor who is best known for portraying the cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy.

Lale Andersen was a German chanson singer-songwriter and actress born in Lehe. She is best known for her interpretation of the song Lili Marleen in 1939, which by 1941 transcended the conflict to become World War II's biggest international hit. Popular with both the Axis and the Allies, Andersen's original recording spawned versions, by the end of the War, in most of the major languages of Europe, and by some of the most popular artists in their respective countries.