Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson is best known for his 1972 narcotics-fuelled fantasia Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In some ways, his is a story of life imitating art. Thompson lived large, once saying: ‘I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.’ He killed himself in 2005, at the age of 67, fearing that health problems would ruin what was left of his life. His funeral was a grand, set-piece affair, costing $3 million and paid for by Johnny Depp with the swag from his Pirates of the Caribbean movies; it ended with Thompson’s remains being shot out of a cannon to Bob Dylan’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’. He went as he lived, in a blaze of glory. Except members of Thompson’s family are now telling a different story.
A new investigation into his death has led to speculation that, far from it being a final act of drama, it may have been murder, made to look like a suicide. It has been speculated by Jennifer Winkel, the ex-wife of Thompson’s son Juan, that he never intended to take his own life. This led Thompson’s widow Anita to ask the local sheriff, Michael Buglione, to investigate the case two decades after his death. Buglione said last September that ‘by bringing in an outside agency for a fresh look, we hope to provide a definitive and transparent review that may offer peace of mind to his family and the public.’
The major bone of contention is who might have killed Thompson – or at the least, hastened his passing in an act of freelance, possibly involuntary euthanasia. A recent New York Times story speculated that the notoriously poor relationship between Anita and Juan has led to a certain degree of animosity between both of them, and speculation as to who was responsible for what. The two were both in the house when Thompson died, and Juan has said that ‘there is nothing new to know about Hunter’s actual death … I do not know why she raised this’. His argument is that his father was in poor health, bedevilled with seizures and the legacy of a misspent life, and that he wished to depart in a manner and at a time of his own choosing.
Most would see this as uncontroversial – at least insofar as anything in Thompson’s existence might be described. It still seems likely that the writer died by his own hand, but there have been suggestions of odd behaviour by some of the parties involved. For example, Juan was heard discharging a firearm the night his father died; he told investigators that he was firing a shotgun in the air to honour the patriarch’s death. Meanwhile, Anita is viewed less in some quarters as the benevolent custodian of her late husband’s literary legacy and more as a money-grubbing carpetbagger. Her schemes include placing Thompson’s former home of Owl Farm on Airbnb for a punchy $550 per night and selling ‘authentic Gonzo’ strains of marijuana, which she claims to have harvested from the Hunter stash. Some feel that she has been detrimental to the reputation the gonzo writer built up over decades.
It may, of course, be that Buglione’s investigation, which is still ongoing, fizzles out, and that there is nothing to add to the official version of events: that Thompson wished to end an increasingly miserable life, and that his family chose to commemorate his end in an eccentric but appropriate fashion. Yet if someone did murder the writer – whether out of noble or mercenary motives – then this whole sordid affair seems almost like a Knives Out film. Whatever the truth of the case, Thompson must be looking down from his weed den in the sky and thoroughly enjoying this last great controversy.
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