Andy Griffith dies aged 868:40 AM Wednesday Jul 4, 2012
Andy Griffith, who made homespun Southern wisdom his trademark as the wise sheriff in The Andy Griffith Show and the rumpled defence lawyer in Matlock, has died. He was 86.
Griffith died at his coastal home, Dare County Sheriff Doug Doughtie said in a statement.
"Mr Griffith passed away this morning at his home peacefully and has been laid to rest on his beloved Roanoke Island," Doughtie said, reading from a family statement.
The family will release further information, the sheriff said.
He had suffered a heart attack and underwent quadruple bypass surgery in 2000.
Griffith's career spanned more than a half-century on stage, film and television, but he would always be best known as Sheriff Andy Taylor in the television show set in a North Carolina town not too different from Griffith's own hometown of Mount Airy, North Carolina.
Griffith set the show in the fictional town of Mayberry, North Carolina., where Sheriff Taylor was the dutiful nephew who ate pickles that tasted like kerosene because they were made by his loving Aunt Bee, played by the late Frances Bavier.
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