Milestones Aug. 7, 2006

CONFESSED. Robert Charles Browne, 53, who had already been convicted of the 1991 slaying of a Colorado teen, to killing 48 other people over a 25-year period, which if true would make him one of the most prolific murderers in U.S. history; in Colorado Springs, Colo. Browne used a variety of methods to subdue and kill–ant killer then screwdriver, ether then ice pick. He met most victims by chance–the first in 1970 while in South Korea with the U.S. Army, the others in nine states. He confessed after years of what authorities called “cryptic and poetic” letter writing and talks with retired law-enforcement officials investigating cold cases.

DIED. Mako, 72, Oscar-nominated actor who, as co-founder of East West Players–the first Asian-American drama troupe–was hailed as “the godfather of Asian-American theater”; of esophageal cancer; in Somis, Calif. Born Makoto Iwamatsu in Kobe, Japan, he came to the U.S. as a teen and discovered acting. Roles for Asians then were demeaningly comic, written almost exclusively in pidgin English. But Mako’s portrayal of Chinese coolie Po-han in 1966’s The Sand Pebbles, although in broken English, rose above stereotype and won him an Oscar nomination.

DIED. Carl Brashear, 75, first black master deep-sea diver for the U.S. Navy, whose triumph over Kentucky poverty, racism and leg amputation inspired the 2000 movie Men of Honor, starring Cuba Gooding Jr.; in Portsmouth, Va. Brashear, a sharecropper’s son who finished only the seventh grade, joined the Navy in 1950 and, after four years of pleas, was admitted to diving school–unofficially, it was for whites only–where classmates taunted him with racial slurs and death threats. In 1966, while Brashear was serving on the U.S.S. Hoist, a loose steel pipe careered across the deck and crushed his lower left leg. Intensive rehab after the leg was amputated helped persuade Navy doctors to clear him for diving–although he had to prove he could climb with 300 lbs. on his back to simulate diving tanks. After Men of Honor premiered, Brashear was deluged with letters from amputees. He answered every one, sharing his message of relentless optimism. “It’s not a sin to be knocked down,” he liked to say. “It’s a sin to stay down.”

DIED. Frederick Mosteller, 89, pre-eminent statistician and founding chairman of Harvard University’s statistics department who popularized the application of statistical data to fields from politics to sports; in Falls Church, Va. Mosteller first showed his knack for laws of probability as a teenager, while working on a road crew that played poker during rain delays. In 1952, after mulling over the St. Louis Cardinals’ 1946 World Series win over the Boston Red Sox, he published the first known academic paper on baseball statistics. A stronger team on paper would often lose to a weaker team, he proved, simply because of chance. Other problems he tackled: in warfare, how strings of bombs would fall; why pollsters erred in calling the 1948 election for Dewey over Truman; and the authorship of the Federalist papers, by analyzing word frequency. A droll defender of his field, he once wrote, “It is easy to lie with statistics, but easier to lie without them.”

FOUND NOT GUILTY. Andrea Yates, 42, Texas mother, in the 2001 bathtub drownings of her five children; by reason of insanity; in her second trial, after an appeals court last year threw out her 2002 murder conviction because of erroneous testimony; in Houston. Prosecutors argued Yates failed to meet the definition of insanity because she was fully aware that her actions were wrong. But Yates’ lawyers claimed severe postpartum psychosis made her so delusional that she thought the drownings were right. After 12 hours of deliberation, the jury sided with the defense. Following the verdict, Yates was committed to a state mental hospital.