Hunter S. Thompson Dead, Suicide

[Dis]

how can a handgun be clean? somoene has to clean up that mess. Yeah I know there are cleaning companies that advertise to do that sort of work, but still.

I'd do it outside at least. Up in the mountains. But I guess he wasn't an outdoorsey type.

[-Jrabbit]

All is speculation.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Jesus, what a bunch of nutters...

Yep.

My favs when talking about suicide include:

"This is a triumph of his, not a desperate, tragic failure," Anita Thompson said by phone, recounting that she was sitting in her husband's chair he called his catbird seat in the Rockies.

or this entire article from

Rocky Mountain News

Thompson 'made this choice'
Family says writer didn't kill himself out of desperation

By Jeff Kass, © 2005, Rocky Mountain News
February 24, 2005

ASPEN — Hunter S. Thompson died Sunday as he planned: surrounded by his family, at a high point in his life, and with a single, courageous and fatal gunshot wound to the head, his son says.

His son and daughter-in-law could not be sadder. And they could not be prouder.

"Hunter did not do this in a moment of fear, desperation or despair. He certainly had those moments in his life," Juan Thompson said Wednesday night as he sat on a couch next to his wife in the guest cabin adjacent to his father's house.

But, he added, "He decided he'd done good work and was respected. His reputation as a serious writer has solidified."

Juan Thompson and his wife, Jennifer Winkel Thompson, were up from Denver at the property known as Owl Farm for one of their weekend visits. It was typical: They went sledding and watched The Maltese Falcon Saturday night. They were with their son, 6-year-old Will.

The couple chose to speak out for the first time since Thompson's suicide because they believe the act has been misunderstood.

"Some people said, 'How could he do this?' And we tell them, and they say, 'Huh?' " Juan Thompson said.

Dating back at least 10 years, Thompson had told his son and daughter-in-law that he planned to commit suicide. Even then, when Thompson would have been 57, the rollicking writer had outlived his own expectations.

"He thought he'd be lucky to make it to 21," Juan Thompson said.

"Then 30 was a big deal," Winkel Thompson added. "Forty was a big shocker."

From the time Thompson took an artful machete to literature in the 1970s, he has been seen as an icon, outlaw, dope fiend and singular genius. Those words begin to explain his suicide.

Few, if any, can conceive of Thompson's reasoning in committing suicide, according to his relatives. But it is a thought process with its own beautifully dark logic, they say.

"I've known for many, many years that this is how Hunter would go," Juan Thompson said. "There was just no question that when the time came he would choose to do it himself. The idea of Hunter lying in a hospital bed with tubes, gasping for breath, is so contrary to his whole life and purpose and drive.

"It was just a question of when. This was a big surprise and I didn't expect it to be now, but the means was exactly as we expected."

"Hunter lived by his own rules," Winkel Thompson added.

While Hunter Thompson had said that he would take his own life, he did not mention any date. And at least one detail will not fit into a neat and tidy box.

"I don't know why he chose this moment," Juan Thompson said. "But he was quite clear about what he was doing and he was going to go out on his own terms on his own time."

Thompson may have been content with his station in life, but why not push for more?

"There's always more to do, and this is just speculation, that he decided it was time for other people to take it up," Juan Thompson said.

"He'd done his work," Winkel Thompson said, adding, in Hunter Thompson's own words, "He was a road man for the lords of karma."

Juan Thompson added, "And you couldn't ask him what it meant."

But, said Winkel Thompson, it is the idea that her father-in-law watched over the powers that be and meted out literary punishment to "wrong people" and "wrong deeds." Now, it will be someone else's time behind the keyboard.

"I think maybe he wanted to go out before it stopped being fun," said Hunter Thompson's only son.

The fact that the relatives see Thompson's suicide in a different light has not lessened their pain — as evidenced by the roll of toilet paper on the couch filling in for the tissues they have used up.

Juan Thompson was dressed in jeans and a French blue, button-down shirt; his wife wore jeans and a black T-shirt with the Hunter Thompson "Gonzo" slogan and raised fist. The nearly two-hour interview was one of the longest stretches they had gone without breaking down.

"It's a tricky mix of sad, we're happy for Hunter. This is what he wanted," said Winkel Thompson. But, she later added, "I can't say it wasn't disturbing."

Thompson died behind his typewriter in the kitchen — the area that doubled as his work space and tripled as a salon of ideas and celebrities who would drop by for a whiskey or call in on the famous speakerphone.

When Thompson fired his .45-caliber handgun at 5:42 p.m., Winkel Thompson was with Will in the adjacent living room. Juan Thompson was in a nearby office. Both thought the explosion was a book falling.

Winkel Thompson continued playing 20 questions with Will. Juan Thompson continued taking a photo.

Until a few minutes later.

"When I found him, he was in his chair, his head was slumped forward," Juan Thompson recounted. "It looked like he had fallen asleep. I saw him. I thought, 'Oh, did he fall asleep in his chair?'

"You never describe a gun as peaceful, but it wasn't violent."

Juan Thompson called Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis.

Was that because Braudis was a longtime friend of Thompson's or because he was the sheriff?

"For both reasons," Juan Thompson said.

Juan Thompson recalled that he said to Braudis: "Hunter shot himself."

Braudis, on his cell phone, replied, "I'm on my way."

Did Hunter Thompson have his favorite liquid sidekick, a glass of Chivas Regal on the counter?

"Of course he did," Juan Thompson said.

But he emphasized that his father was not in a state.

"He was rested," he said. "He got a night's sleep. He was calm. A lot of people figure it was the end of a five-night binge. It was a deliberate choice. It wasn't something made in a drug or alcohol fog.

"The guy was a warrior, and he went out like a warrior."

"He had a lot of courage, and he wasn't afraid to direct his life," Winkel Thompson said.

Guns were a Hunter Thompson trademark — he even used some of the approximately 20 firearms he kept in the house to make his own brand of artwork — and he had said he would use a firearm to end his life.

"It's fast," Winkel Thompson said. "He did not want to suffer. He wanted to control. This way was a sure bet."

"Hunter didn't always want a sure bet," she added, noting that he would make an outlandish, $1,000 bet with his now-deceased mother just for an excuse to send her money. "But this time he did."

Juan Thompson did not know why his father chose the particular gun he did. It is now in police custody, he said, given the cursory investigation. Juan Thompson expects to keep the gun, although he does not plan to fire it.

Juan Thompson has been firing other guns, however, for therapy over the past couple days. The support from friends and family also gets him through.

And there is one other thing.

"He made this choice," he said. "It's much easier than if he had been extremely depressed or unhappy and he had done this out of desperation."

Thompson was cremated Tuesday in the nearby town of Glenwood Springs. His son took care to put a portable radio in the car and play a compilation disc of Hunter Thompson's favorite songs on the trip there.

A memorial service for friends and family — "you know who you are," the family says — is planned for March 5 at The Belly Up club in Aspen. A public commemoration is planned for spring or summer.

Thompson's ashes are now in a wooden box in front of the typewriter in the kitchen. But like the writer himself, they may have a shocking future.

Hunter Thompson had spoken of having his ashes formed into a ball and fired from a cannon as far back as the 1970s in a BBC documentary, according to the family.

And over the years, somewhere between solemnity and humor, Hunter Thompson would take care to remind his loved ones about "the cannon."

Of course, this is no typical cannon: Thompson had talked of a 150-foot-long boomer in the shape of the gonzo fist. The family is still looking into the details.

Juan Thompson says the idea is "totally fitting. I was thinking the other day of Hunter lying in a coffin with ministers over him. Good God, that's wrong."

There might also be some issues to think about. "If it were realized exactly as Hunter described it, there could be something with low-flying airplanes," Juan Thompson said.

While Hunter Thompson's ashes would be scattered to the winds, his family said Tuesday that his house and property will stay. If his wife, Anita Thompson, does not stay on the place alternately called Owl Farm and a "fortified compound," they will preserve the house, land and cannon.

"It will be a permanent installation," Winkel Thompson said. "You don't dismantle it, then put it in the garage."

Previously unpublished works by Hunter Thompson also may be printed.

"That's all stuff to be decided," Juan Thompson said. "But the key is we'll try to determine to the best of our ability what Hunter wanted and what was up to his standards."

Details on the public celebration of Hunter Thompson's life are still open, but Winkel Thompson referenced his proclivity for a bit of cross-dressing.

The event could include music, readings and, she said, "lots of lipstick."

I guess its all fashionably hip to off oneself. Thankfully I'm old and stodgy.