Pioneering journalist Hunter S. Thompson definitely died by suicide and suicide alone, Colorado authorities have concluded after his widow cried foul play and sparked a divisive probe into his 2005 death.
“All speculative theories could not be substantiated,” the Colorado Bureau of Investigation wrote in a Jan. 23 report that finally closed the case, according to the New York Times.
“The body was not moved or ‘staged’ after death,” the report said. “Thompson suffered from significant depression and chronic pain.”
The Gonzo Godfather — famous for unhinged tomes such as “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “Songs of the Doomed” — died of a gunshot to the head in the kitchen-office of his Aspen home at age 67, after years of sharing plans for a self-inflicted demise with friends and family.
But Thompson’s wife Anita, whom he married two years before his death suggested something sinister was afoot from the get-go about the death of the man whose name is now synonymous with Gonzo journalism, or first-person participatory reporting.
She finally convinced CBI to re-investigate Thompson’s death in September after claiming his son and son’s wife were somehow involved and made the death “look like a suicide.”
Investigators spent months re-examining the former Rolling Stone journo’s death, interviewing numerous people involved in the original crime scene and going so far as to study bullet trajectory in the kitchen were Thompson’s body was found fallen over his typewriter.
In the end, nothing was found the support Anita’s theory that her husband had been either murdered by his family or assisted in the suicide.
“While we have always believed the original investigation was conducted properly, we recognized the importance of an independent review for the Thompson family,” Pitkin County Sheriff Michael Buglione said in a statement.
Anita has appeared to take the conclusions in stride, saying her own statement that she was “thankful for the kind and thorough work done by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation in their review of this case.
“This allows all of us who loved Hunter to move forward with a clean conscience,” she said.
But her search for answers caused a rift in the family, with Thompson’s son Juan left baffled by her years-long crusade.
“I do not know why she raised this. And I can’t imagine that the CBI would find anything to act on,” Juan, 61, previously told the Times. “There is nothing new to know about Hunter’s actual death.”
Juan was in the next room when his father killed himself and was the one who found the body, while Anita was on the phone with Thompson moments before the fatal gunshot was fired.
And Juan himself fired a shotgun in the air to honor his father before police arrived to investigate the scene — which some have suggested could have contaminated gunshot residue evidence at the scene.
Nevertheless, detectives on the second go-around came to the same conclusion they reached more than 20 years ago: Thompson died by suicide.
“CBI’s conclusions reaffirm the original findings and, we hope, provide reassurance and clarity,” Sheriff Buglione said.