A man tied to one of the most disturbing moments in Paula Deen’s past has been found dead in New York City, nearly four decades after he terrified the future TV star during a violent bank robbery.
Eugene Thomas King Jr., the man who once held a gun to Deen’s head during a 1987 bank heist, was discovered unconscious inside his Brooklyn apartment. Emergency responders arrived at the scene, but he was pronounced dead there.
According to the medical examiner, King died of natural causes. His official cause of death was listed as hypertensive and arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
Long before she became a household name, Deen was working as a bank teller when the terrifying robbery unfolded. In her statement to police at the time, she said the gunman kept the weapon directly in her face throughout the ordeal.
King was later convicted and served time for the crime. He reportedly told police he never meant to hurt anyone and even asked that Deen be told he was sorry.
The decades-old robbery returned to the spotlight in 2013 during Deen’s career-damaging racism scandal. During a deposition in a lawsuit accusing her of sexual and racial harassment, Deen was asked whether she had ever used racist language, including the N-word.
Her response immediately sparked outrage.
“Yes, of course,” Deen said, before referencing the bank robbery and claiming the remark had been made in anger after a Black man put a gun to her head during the heist.
The fallout was swift and brutal. Deen’s admission triggered a massive public backlash that helped derail her once-booming empire. She lost major endorsement deals, a book agreement, and her television show, as criticism exploded nationwide.
King himself later weighed in on the controversy, saying he felt sorry for Deen and suggesting she was being harshly judged over a single lapse in judgment.
Deen has since insisted the situation was taken out of context. In later interviews, she said being labeled a racist deeply wounded her and claimed the full story was never properly told.
She also addressed the scandal in the documentary Canceled: The Paula Deen Story, saying she never wanted that accusation to define her legacy.
The damage to her business, however, was lasting. In the years after the scandal, Deen’s brand took a major hit. Her long-running Savannah restaurant, The Lady & Sons, eventually closed, along with nearby sister spot The Chicken Box.
Even so, Deen said she and her family remain committed to Savannah while focusing on her remaining Paula Deen’s Family Kitchen locations in Pigeon Forge, Myrtle Beach, Nashville, and Branson.
Now, with King’s death, a dark chapter from Deen’s past is suddenly back in the spotlight — reviving the haunting robbery that would later become entangled in one of the biggest controversies of her career.
