SEATTLE (AP) — Paul Henderson, a reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize at The Seattle Times for a series of stories that kept a wrongly-accused man from prison, has died. He was 79.

Janet Horne Henderson, his lifelong partner and former reporter and editor at the Times, told the newspaper that Paul Henderson died Dec. 7. He had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer in September.

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In 1981, he took up the cause of a man, Steve Titus, who had been convicted in King County Superior Court of a sexual assault he insisted he didn’t commit.

Henderson wrote a series of articles which proved that Titus couldn’t have committed the crime. Another man ultimately confessed. Titus later died of a heart attack at age 36.

Henderson was awarded the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for local investigative specialized reporting.