LOS ANGELES, March 10 (UPI) -- More than 500 people attended a private memorial service in Los Angeles on Sunday for Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was abducted and slain in Pakistan.
The 38-year-old Pearl, whose wife is expecting their first child, had been on an assignment to look into alleged militant connections of shoe-bomber suspect Richard Reid. Pearl had been missing since Jan. 23.
Reid, a British national, is accused of trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic jet airliner with explosives concealed in his sneakers.
Pearl's body has not been found. But videotape viewed by U.S. authorities in late February confirmed that he had been killed. He had been missing since Jan. 23, and his editor and his wife all mounted public appeals for his return.
Pearl, the Journal's South Asia bureau chief, grew up in the Los Angeles area and attended Stanford University in Northern California.
Sunday's memorial at the Skirball Cultural Center, a venerable Jewish institution in the Brentwood section of the city, was closed to most of the press.
David Gill, a childhood friend of Pearl's, told reporters outside that few tears were shed inside and that the memorial service was devoted to celebrating the life of "a universally loved guy."
"We didn't want to mourn and cry and beat our breasts," said Gill, who said that Pearl had lived a full life.
"I think he was courageous because Daniel ... had the courage to live," said Gill.
Pearl's widow, Mariane, did not speak to reporters, but the lone pool reporter who attended the service said she had told the audience in her eulogy that, "Death is not going to separate us from Daniel."
