"- Tom Towles has passed away. He was 65 years old.
Towles was well known to horror fans for his roles in Zombie’s films House Of 1,000 Corpses as Lieutenant George Wydell. He was also in The Devil’s Rejects, Halloween, Prophecy II, and was Otis in Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer. He also portrayed Harry Cooper in the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead."
Towles was born and raised in Chicago and became an actor after a stint in the U.S. Marines, beginning with an uncredited performance in Dog Day Afternoon (1975). After the Marines, Tom attended Columbia College, Chicago as a theatre major. He appeared in film and television extensively beginning in the 1980s. He was probably best known for his turn in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer as a character modeled after Ottis Toole, Henry Lee Lucas' reputed accomplice in several murders.[2] He has also appeared in Night of the Living Dead, Fortress, Mad Dog and Glory, Blood in Blood Out, House of 1000 Corpses, and its sequel, The Devil's Rejects. He portrayed a drug trafficking gang leader in the big screen adaptation of Miami Vice and had a cameo in one of the faux trailers Werewolf Women of the SS in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse.
Towles' television credits included appearances in NYPD Blue, L.A. Law, ER, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (in the episode "Dramatis Personae"), Star Trek: Voyager, Seinfeld and Firefly.
Towles died on April 5, 2015 at the age of 65 in a hospital in Pinellas County, Florida..
