John Langley Dead While Competing In Off-Road Race: Tragic Cause of Death Confirmed [REPORT]

By Alexandria Reeves

Multiple news outlets confirmed his passing this week, saying that Langley passed away on Saturday. His representatives revealed that the director died of an apparent heart attack.

Langley was in the middle of an off-road race competition in the Coast of Baja, Mexico to Coast Ensenada-San Felipe 250.

His son, Zak, was with him at the time of his passing.

He is survived by his wife, Maggie; children Zak, Morgan, Sarah, and Jennifer; and seven grandchildren.

John Langley's Legacy

The renowned filmmaker started his career outside the film industry. In the early 1960s, he worked in the intelligence unit of the U.S. Army before graduating from Cal State Dominguez Hills.

Following that, he attended the graduate school of U.C Irvine.

He began his television stint through "American Vice: The Doping of a Nation" in 1986. The TV special documented live drug arrests on air.

Other crime flicks he created include "Las Vegas Jailhouse," "Street Patrol," "Inside American Jail," "Terrorism: Target USA," and "Who Killed JFK?"

He reached his biggest break ever when he worked with Malcolm Barbour for "Cops." In the early years after launching the series, it immediately got a nomination in Emmy Awards for the outstanding informational series category four times.

In February 2011, Langley scored a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

"Cops" originally arrived on the Fox network and continuously showed the first 25 seasons of it. However, it got canceled in May 2013 before finding a new home in Spike TV - which eventually became the Paramount Network.

The series, unfortunately, faced another cancelation in 2020 after George Floyd's death.

"Cops is not on the Paramount Network and we don't have any current or future plans for it to return," a network spokesperson said in a statement.

The network immediately stopped airing the show. Similar flicks like A&E's "Live PD" and "Body Cam" on Discovery's ID channel faced the same event.

Before "Cops" left the TV world for good, Fox executive Stephen Chao once doubted Langley's pitch. He also questioned whether he could really produce a weekly program that would only tell the story of police officers.

"He shrugged his shoulders. He said, 'I'm the pizza man. I can deliver every week.' It was such a stupid thing to say. I laughed, of course. None of us knew it was possible," Chao said, as quoted by Washington Post.