Richard Belzer, stand-up comic and TV detective, dies at 78

FILE - Actors Dann Florek, left, and Richard Belzer from "Law & Order: SVU" attend the NBC Network 2013 Upfront at Radio City Music Hall, Monday, May 13, 2013, in New York. Belzer, the longtime stand-up comedian who became one of TV's most indelible detectives as John Munch in “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Law & Order: SVU,” has died at age 78. Belzer died Sunday, Feb. 19, 2023, at his home in Bozouls in southern France, his longtime friend Bill Scheft told The Hollywood Reporter. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

NEW YORK — Richard Belzer, the longtime stand-up comedian who became one of TV’s most indelible detectives as John Munch in Homicide: Life on the Street and Law & Order: SVU, has died. He was 78.

Belzer died Sunday at his home in Bozouls in southern France, his longtime friend Bill Scheft told The Hollywood Reporter. Comedian Laraine Newman first announced his death on Twitter. The actor Henry Winkler, Belzer’s cousin, wrote “Rest in peace Richard.”

For more than two decades and across 10 series — even including appearances on 30 Rock and Arrested Development — Belzer played the wise-cracking, acerbic homicide detective prone to conspiracy theories. Belzer first played Munch on a 1993 episode of Homicide and last played him in 2016 on Law & Order: SVU.