Chicago (AP) — Flamboyant private eye Ernie Rizzo, whose unorthodox style and attraction to celebrity cases made him one of the best-known investigators in Chicago, has died at age 64.

Rizzo died of a heart condition on Sunday at Northwestern Hospital, according to a statement released by family spokesman Thom Serafin.

A gregarious figure, he once disguised himself as a desert nomad and rode a camel as part of his search for a client’s missing daughter in Israel, the statement said.

One Chicago attorney recalled how Rizzo rented a helicopter in a divorce case to get pictures of a woman in a highrise apartment to prove she was cheating on her husband.

“He was excellent, he was very innovative, he’d always come up with gimmicks and ideas,” the attorney, Bernard Rinella, told the Chicago Tribune.

Rizzo was drawn to celebrity cases, though it sometimes appeared as though he was acting on his own.

He looked into allegations of sexual abuse against Michael Jackson, and even discussed the case on television, but it was unclear who, if anyone, had hired him.

The quick-witted Rizzo, who made a cameo appearance in “Lethal Weapon III,” encouraged comparisons to private eyes portrayed on television and in movies.

“I work somewhere between 007 and Inspector Clouseau,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 1999.

Rizzo wasn’t always on the right side of the law.

In the ’70s, he was convicted of illegal wiretapping. And in 1988, he was indicted and then acquitted for doing private detective work without a license. Rizzo claimed he’d been singled out for crossing paths with powerful politicians.