Kate Spade

Kelly Catlin

Kelly Catlin - who was born on November 3rd, 1995, in St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A. - was an American professional racing cyclist.  She was one of triplets born to Mark Catlin, a medical pathologist, and his wife Carolyn; her siblings were a brother, Colin, and a sister, Christine.  As children, the triplets had a strict upbringing, with their parents forbidding them watching television, and only allowing them to watch movies whilst running on a treadmill.  When they were eight, they would only receive their $20-a-month allowance if they exercised for thirty minutes a day, five times a week.  At high school, Catlin was a socially-awkward but driven athlete and student.  She earned a perfect score on her S.A.T. and was a first-chair violinist in her school orchestra, as well as being a competitive badminton player, and excelling at skiing, fencing, and shooting.  During her teens, Catlin became more withdrawn, preferring to study and train alone, rather than socialise with her peers.  Whilst still in 11th Grade, she began taking classes at the University of Minnesota, eventually earning two degrees there in mathematics and Chinese.  At seventeen, she took up cycling, and very quickly excelled at the sport.  She joined the Rally UHC Cycling team, winning Gold in the Team Pursuit at the 2016 UCI Track World Championship, and then finished second in the Team Pursuit at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics that same year.  In both 2017 and 2018, Catlin took first place in the Team Pursuit and third in the Individual Pursuit at the UCI World Championship.  In the Autumn of 2018, she matriculated at Stanford University, studying for a graduate degree in computational and mathematical engineering.  However, in October of that year, Catlin crashed and broke her arm, with another crash leading to a concussion.  She subsequently complained of headaches, dizziness, nausea, and light-sensitivity.  On January 31st, 2019, Catlin locked herself into her room with two helium canisters and attempted to commit suicide by inhaling the gas.  She passed out, but awoke several hours later, after which she was rushed to Stanford Hospital, where she was held for seven days.  After being released to her Stanford apartment, Catlin seemed to develop renewed optimism, and attended mandatory therapy classes.  She explored options for further psychological treatment, although these were not followed through.  Catlin's concussion symptoms, and hypoxic brain damage from her suicide attempt, began to make it difficult for her to train, which led to her being ruled out from competing in the UCI Track World Championship due to be held in Poland in late February.  She was devastated, and contemplated ending her cycling career.  On the morning of March 9th, 2019, Catlin's mother called Stanford police, concerned that her daughter had not responded to phone calls and texts for a couple of days.  On the police's arrival at the university, Catlin's lifeless body was found in her apartment.  She had committed suicide by helium asphyxiation the previous evening.  Kelly Catlin was just 23 years old.

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath - who was born on October 27th, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. - was an American poet, novelist, and short-story-writer.  After having her first poem published at age eight, Plath had numerous more printed in local publications over the next few years.  At age eleven, she began a journal, and showed early promise as a painter; she was also diagnosed with an I.Q. of around 160.  Raised as a Unitarian, Plath became ambivalent about religion after her father's death when she was eight.  Graduating from high school in 1950, she then attended Smith College in Massachusetts where she became editor of The Smith Review and guest editor of Mademoiselle magazine.  Becoming depressed and angry after failing to meet poet Dylan Thomas at a meeting, Plath slashed her legs to see if she had enough "courage" to kill herself.  Following electroconvulsive therapy for depression, Plath attempted suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping tablets on August 24th, 1953.  After six months in psychiatric care, she returned to college, graduating in June of 1955.  She was then awarded a scholarship to Cambridge University in England, where she spent the next two years.  Plath met the English poet Ted Hughes in February, 1956; the two were instantly attracted, and married on June 16th that year in London.  In June of 1957, the couple moved to the U.S.A., where Plath taught at her old college and resumed psychoanalytic treatment for her depression.  They travelled across the U.S.A. and Canada in 1959, returning to live in London, England that December.  Their first child, Frieda, was born on April 1st, 1960, with Plath's first volume of poetry, The Colossus, following in October.  In February, 1961, Plath's second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, with Plath later claiming that Hughes had beaten her two days earlier.  That August, Plath finished writing (it was published in 1963) her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, before the couple immediately moved to North Tawton in Devon, where Plath gave birth to her second child, Nicholas, in January, 1962.  Plath and Hughes had rented their London flat to two poets, Assia and David Wevill.  Plath had a car crash in June of 1962, which she described as one of many suicide attempts.  In July, she discovered that her husband was having an affair with Assia Wevill, and separated from him in September.  Plath now entered a period of great creativity, writing at least 26 poems between then and February, 1963.  In December of 1962, Plath returned to live in London with her children, her depression worsening during one of the coldest Winters in one-hundred years.  During January of 1963, Plath spoke to her doctor about her depression; he prescribed her anti-depressants, but failed to persuade her to enter hospital, instead arranging for a live-in nurse to help her look after her children.  The nurse tried to gain access to the property on February 11th, 1963, but was initially unable to do so.  With the help of a workman, she eventually broke in, only to discover Plath dead with her head in the gas oven.  She had sealed the rooms between her and her sleeping children to prevent them inhaling the fumes.  An inquest ruled that Plath had committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.  On March 16th, 2009, her son, Nicholas - a wildlife biologist - hanged herself after suffering from depression.  Sylvia Plath was just 30 years old.

Charles Boyer

Charles Boyer - who was born on August 28th, 1899, in Figeac in south-west France - was a French-American actor who appeared in more than eighty films between 1920 and 1976.  The son of Augustine Louise Durand and Maurice Boyer, a merchant, Boyer was described as a shy smalltown boy who discovered movies and theatre at the age of eleven.  Performing comic sketches for soldiers whilst working as an orderly during World War I, Boyer's first film was the French silent movie L'homme du large in 1920.  With the coming of sound, his deep voice and French accent made him a romantic star.  Moving back and forth between France and Hollywood in the 1930s, Boyer married the British actress Pat Patterson only three months after meeting her in 1934.  His international breakthrough came with the film Mayerling in 1936.  He then played opposite Marlene Dietrich in that same year in The Garden of Allah and I Loved a Soldier, and with Greta Garbo in Conquest and Claudette Colbert in Tovarich in 1937.  In September, 1939, Boyer was drafted into the French army, but was discharged in November, with the French government believing he would be better employed making films.  However, by the early 1940s, Boyer had begun losing his hair and developed a paunch, whilst also being noticeably shorter than his leading ladies like Ingrid Bergman.  He became a naturalised citizen of the United States in 1942.  In 1943, Boyer's only child - Michael Charles Boyer - was born.  Continuing to star in films, such as Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten, during the 1940s, by the end of that decade Boyer was no longer the star he was, with the 1948 film with Ingrid Bergman, Arch of Triumph, failing at the box office.  He made his first appearance on Broadway in Red Gloves - which ran for 113 performances - in 1948-'49.  Boyer then moved into television, being made rich by becoming one of the pioneering producers and stars of the anthology show, Four Star Playhouse, which ran from 1952 to '56.  He continued to appear in films and on stage, in both the U.S. and France, throughout the 1950s and '60s.  He was nominated for the Tony award as Best Actor (Dramatic) in the 1963 Broadway production of Lord Pengo, which ran for 175 performances, although Man and Boy, during the same year, only went for 54 performances.  Boyer's son, Michael, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head at the age of 21 in 1965, after his girlfriend had left him.  Continuing into the 1960s and '70s, Boyer's career had lasted longer than many romantic stars, earning him the nickname "the last of the cinema's great lovers".  In March, 1970 - finding living in Los Angeles traumatic after his son's death - Boyer returned to live in Europe.  One of his last roles was in the 1974 French film, Stavisky, which won Boyer the New York Film Critics' Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor, and also received the Special Tribute at the Cannes Film Festival.  His last role was in the 1976 film, A Matter of Time, directed by Vincente Minnelli, and starring Vincente's daughter Liza Minnelli, as well as Ingrid Bergman.  After being diagnosed with a brain tumour, Boyer's wife died of cancer in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.A., on August 24th, 1978.  Distraught by her death, Boyer took an overdose of the barbiturate Seconal two days later whilst at a friend's home in Scottsdale, Arizona.  He was taken to hospital in Phoenix, where he died on August 26th, 1978.  Two days before his 79th birthday, Charles Boyer was 78 years old.  He was interred in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California, alongside his wife and son.

Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Michael Bourdain - who was born on June 25th, 1956, in Manhatten, New York City, U.S.A. - was an American celebrity chef, author, and documentarian.  The older of two boys born to Gladys and Pierre Bourdain, he described his childhood as being happy and loving.  Whilst on a family holiday in France in his youth, Bourdain tasted his first oyster on a fisherman's boat, which he credits as stimulating his love of food.  After graduating from high school in 1973, Bourdain enrolled at Vassar College in New York, but dropped out after two years.  His interest in cooking was kindled whilst he worked at several seafood restaurants in Massachusetts during his college years, and he subsequently trained at The Culinary Institute of America, graduating in 1978.  From there, he went on to run several restaurant kitchens in New York City.  Whilst at high school, Bourdain began dating an older girl, Nancy Putkoski, whom he described as "a bad girl" and "part of a druggy crowd"; the pair married in 1985.  Bourdain himself became a regular user of many recreational drugs, from cannabis to heroin.  His first book, a culinary mystery called Bone in the Throat, was published in 1995, but sold poorly, as did the follow-up, Gone Bamboo.  However, subsequent books, all about food as well as his travels around the world, were much more successful.  His 2001 book, A Cook's Tour - written to tie-in with his first television series of the same name - became a bestseller.  Bourdain thereafter hosted many food-themed television programmes, working for the Travel Channel from 2005 to 2013, and for CNN from 2013 to 2018.  He was known for his put-downs of other celebrity chefs, but was quick to praise those he admired.  Smithsonian Magazine described Bourdain as "the original rock star" of the culinary world, and he became known as a "bad boy" of cooking for his frequent use of expletives and sexual references on his No Reservations television show.  After twenty years of marriage, Bourdain divorced from his first wife in 2005, marrying Ottavia Busia in 2007.  Busia bore Bourdain his only child - a daughter named Ariane - that same year.  Previously a heavy smoker, Bourdain gave up cigarettes in 2007 for the benefit of his daughter's health, but started smoking again towards the end of his life.  Although Busia sometimes travelled with Bourdain, and even appeared in a few of his T.V. shows, the strain of Bourdain being away filming 250 days a year put a strain on the relationship, resulting in the couple separating in 2016, after which Bourdain entered into a relationship with Italian actress, Asia Argento.  In 1998, Bourdain became executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles restaurant in Manhatten, but the business went bankrupt in 2017.  In early June of 2018, Bourdain was in Strasbourg, France, filming an episode of his Parts Unknown programme.  On June 8th, his friend Eric Ripert became concerned that Bourdain had missed breakfast and dinner.  Ripert subsequently found Bourdain hanging in his room at the Le Chambard hotel in Kayersberg, near the city of Colmar, from an apparent suicide.  An inquest heard that Bourdain's body contained no traces of narcotics, and his suicide appeared to be an impulsive act.  Anthony Bourdain was 61 years old.

Laurie Bird

Laurie Bird - who was born on September 26th, 1952, in Glen Cove, New York, U.S.A. - was an American actress and photographer.  When she was only three years old, Bird's mother committed suicide at the age of 26.  Her disciplinarian father, an electrical engineer, severely restricted Bird's social activities, resulting in her running away from home many times.  In response, he had her placed in an institution for neglected girls.  Bird attended Jamaica High School in Queens, New York, until she was fifteen.  Described by Hollywood columnist Dick Kleiner as "look[ing] like an innocent Hayley Mills", Bird made her acting debut in the 1971 Monte Hellman-directed film, Two-Lane Blacktop, in which she appeared alongside James Taylor, Warren Oates, and Dennis Wilson.  Following this success, Bird appeared in another Monte Hellmann film, 1974's Cockfighter, again starring alongside Warren Oates.  Although this film was less commercially-successful, film critic Michael Atkinson was later to say, in his 2008 book Exile Hollywood, "In two films, she made more of an impression, left more of a synaesthetic presence, then many actors do in a career".  During this time, she developed a romantic relationship with Monte Hellman.  Bird was also the stills photographer on Cockfighter.  In 1977, she performed in her third and final film, taking a minor role as Paul Simon's girlfriend in the Woody Allen comedy, Annie Hall.  From 1974 until 1979, Bird was in a relationship with Simon's frequent musical collaborator, Art Garfunkel, the couple sharing an apartment together.  She appeared on the cover of Garfunkel's 1975 album, Breakaway, and also shot the cover photo for his 1977 album, Watermark.  On June 15th, 1979 - whilst Garfunkel was in France, making the Nicolas Roeg movie Bad Timing - Bird died from a deliberate overdose of Valium at their penthouse in Manhatten, New York City, U.S.A.  Deeply affected by her death, Garfunkel later said, "She was beautiful, in a lonesome, haunted way, and I adored her.  But I wasn't ready for marriage and she wasn't very comfortable being Laurie.  She wasn't happy with herself.  Her mother died by suicide at 26, and so did she".  Garfunkel dedicated his 1981 album, Scissors Cut, to Bird, with a photo of her appearing on its back cover.  Monte Hellman dedicated his 2010 film, Road To Nowhere, to her, also.  Laurie Bird was just 26 years old.

Charles Roberts IV

Charles Carl Roberts IV - who was born on December 7th, 1973, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. - was an American truck driver who murdered five Amish girls, before killing himself.  The son of Charles, a policeman, and Terri Roberts, he earned a diploma through a homeschooling association.  In 1990, Roberts was employed as a dishwasher at the Good 'n' Plenty restaurant in Smoketown, Pennsylvania; two of his co-workers there were subsequently convicted of the murder of 16-year-old Laurie Show in 1991.  Although neither he nor his family were Amish, Roberts later earned a living as a truck driver, working nights collecting milk from dairy farms in a heavily Amish area near his home in the tiny village of Georgetown, Pennsylvania.  On the morning of October 2nd, 2006, Roberts dropped-off his children at their school bus-stop, before driving a pickup truck to the West Nickel Mines School, a one-room schoolhouse in Bart Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Instructing the schoolboys to help him carry ammunition and other supplies into the school, he then dismissed them, before barricading himself inside with the female pupils.  After making two phone calls - one to his wife, Marie, and one to the police - Roberts shot dead five of the girls, injuring the other five, and then killed himself.  Although obviously grieved at the loss of their offspring, the Amish's response to the tragedy was remarkably forgiving, refusing to show hatred for Roberts, and even setting up a support fund for his family.  Roberts had left four suicide notes: one for each of his three children, and one for his wife.  One note detailed the despondency he felt over the death of his daughter shortly after birth nine years earlier, and also stating cryptically that he had recently been having dreams of doing again what he had done twenty years ago.  Roberts had phoned his wife whilst barricaded in the schoolhouse, claiming to have molested two young female relatives two decades earlier, although the people concerned later denied that these events had occurred.  K-Y Jelly, a lubricant most often used during sexual intercourse, was found amongst Roberts's belongings in the school, possibly suggesting multiple motives for the murders.  One of Roberts's suicide notes spoke of his anger against God, whilst Roberts's co-workers spoke of a "change" in his temperament in the months leading up to the killings, although he apparently became calm again in the preceding week, with Roberts's neighbours reporting him to be unusually upbeat and jovial during his last days.  Charles Roberts was 32 years old.

Faron Young

Faron Young was an American country music singer, songwriter, and producer, as well as an actor, who was active from the early 1950s until the mid-1980s.  Born on February 25th, 1932, he was the youngest of six children born to Harlan and Doris Young in Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S.A.  Starting to perform whilst still at school, he initially imagined a career as a pop singer, before switching his allegiance to country music after watching Hank Williams on T.V.  After leaving college, Young's first releases were on Gotham Records, although by early 1952 he had signed for Capitol Records, where he was to record for the next ten years. Moving to Nashville, his first hit, Goin' Steady, reached number 2 on the U.S. Country Charts in October, 1952.  The following month, Young was drafted into the U.S. Army.  Whilst stationed at Fort McPherson, he met his future wife, Hilda Macon, whom he married in November, 1954, after being discharged.  The couple had three sons and a daughter together.  From 1954 to 1962, Young recorded mainly honky-tonk records for Capitol, the most famous being Willie Nelson's Hello Walls, which was a crossover hit in 1961, and won a gold disc for selling over a million copies.  In the mid-1950s, he also appeared as an actor in four low-budget films.  After drifting for a while musically, Young had a renaissance in 1971, when his song Four in the Morning gave him his fifth and final number-one hit on the U.S. Country chart, and was also a surprising number-three hit on the U.K. pop charts.  In 1972, he was charged with assault for spanking a girl in the audience whom he claimed had spat at him whilst he was singing on stage.  Young's later life was plagued with depression and alcoholism.  In 1984, he fired a pistol into the roof of his home.  When he refused to seek help for his drinking problems, Young's wife divorced him in 1986 after 32 years of marriage.  On December 9th, 1996, Young shot himself in the head at his home, dying in Nashville, Tennessee, the following day.  A combination of feeling he had been abandoned by the music industry, as well as despondency over his declining health, were cited as reasons for his suicide.  His ashes were spread by his family on land owned by singer Johnny Cash and his wife, whilst the Cashes were away.  Faron Young was 64 years old.

Larry Walters

Lawrence Richard Walters - who later became publicly-known by the nickname "Lawnchair Larry" - was an American truck driver who was born on April 19th, 1949, in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.  After failing to become a pilot in the U.S. Air Force due to poor eyesight, Walters took employment as a driver for a television commercial production company.  He had dreamed of flying in an air balloon since the age of thirteen, and, on July 2nd, 1982, attempted to make his dream reality.  Walters strapped 43 helium-filled weather balloons to his garden chair in the backyard of his home in San Pedro, Los Angeles, before settling himself in, carrying only sandwiches, drink, a camera, a C.B. radio, a parachute, and a pellet gun which he intended to use to shoot out some of the balloons so he could descend gently to the ground after floating for a while over his property.  Unfortunately, the wire holding the chair to the ground broke prematurely, sending Walters shooting upwards, eventually reaching a height of about 16,000 feet (over three miles).  He had planned to fly 300 miles into the Mojave Desert, but instead found himself drifting into the approach path to Long Beach Municipal Airport, where he was spotted and reported by two passing aircraft.  Feeling cold and dizzy at such an altitude, Walters shot some of the balloons, and began descending, eventually becoming entangled in power lines in Long Beach, about ten miles from where he took off, and having been airborne for around an hour.  He was cut free by rescuers, the broken power line blacking out parts of Long Beach for twenty minutes.  Walters received a $4,000 fine for his troubles, which was reduced on appeal to $1,500.  He subsequently became a minor celebrity for a while, quitting his job as a driver, and guesting on mainstream American talkshows, and was briefly in demand as a motivational speaker.  Timex watches paid him $1,000 in 1992 to appear in print advertisements.  However, his girlfriend of fifteen years left him, and Walters could only find sporadic employment as a security guard, as well as doing volunteer work for the United States Forest Service.  He had a love of nature, and spent time hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains.  On October 6th, 1993, Larry Walters walked to one of his favourite spots in the Angeles National Forest, and took his own life by shooting himself through the heart.  He was 44 years old.

Kelly Jean Van Dyke

Kelly Jean Van Dyke - who was born on June 5th, 1958, in Danville, Illinois, U.S.A. - was an American actress and adult film performer.  From an acting family, she was the daughter of Jerry Van Dyke and his first wife, Carol Johnson; the niece of Dick Van Dyke; and the first cousin once removed of Shane Van Dyke.  As a child actress in the 1960s, Van Dyke appeared in the television series My Mother The Car and Accidental Family.  Under the stage name Nancee Kelly, she later emerged as a star of various pornographic movies.  She married Jeffrey Archer in 1981, before divorcing, and then wedded the actor Jack Nance in May of 1991.  In an unpublished magazine interview from 1990, Van Dyke claimed she was raped by her father Jerry Van Dyke from the age of 12, and that he would bring over his actor friends, Robert Mitchum and Martin Landau, to join in the fun.  She claimed that she began taking sleeping pills at that time to numb the pain, and that she had been addicted to some kind of drug ever since.  It was reported that - on November 17th, 1991 - Van Dyke was expressing suicidal thoughts whilst talking on the phone to her husband.  Unfortunately, a lightning storm knocked out the telephone lines in Bass Lake.  Her husband called the police, who broke into her Los Angeles apartment forty-five minutes later, only to find that Kelly Van Dyke had hanged herself.  She was just 33 years old.

Dana Plato

Dana Plato - who was born as Dana Michelle Strain, on November 7th, 1964, in Maywood, California, U.S.A. - was an American actress and model.  She was born to Linda Strain, an unwed teenager, but was adopted by Dean and Florine Plato in June, 1965.  At the age of three, her adoptive parents divorced, and she was raised by her mother.  Plato was included in a list of VH1's "100 Greatest Kid Stars", and became best-known for playing Kimberley Drummond in the popular television sitcom, Diff'rent Strokes, which aired from 1978 to 1986.  From the age of seven, Plato began appearing in T.V. commercials - over 100 in all - before going into acting.  Whilst a teenager starring in Diff'rent Strokes, she struggled with drug and alcohol problems, using cannabis and cocaine, and taking an overdose of diazepam at the age of 14. Later in her career, Plato appeared in various B-movies, while also posing for Playboy, and starring in softcore pornography films.  In December, 1983, she moved in with her boyfriend, rock guitarist Lanny Lambert, and married him on April 24th, 1984; she gave birth to her only son soon afterwards, which led to her being written out of Diff'rent Strokes.  After a series of personal problems, including her mother's death and her own divorce, Plato held-up a video store in 1991 with a pellet gun, demanding she be given the money from the cash register.  For this, she was given five years' probation.  In 1992, she was arrested again, this time for forging a diazepam prescription, serving 30 days in jail, and entering a drug rehabilitation programme.  Plato subsequently moved to Las Vegas, where she struggled with unemployment and poverty, and twice became engaged, including to her manager, with whom she lived in a motor-home in Florida.  On May 7th, 1999, Plato appeared on the Howard Stern Show, talking about her personal problems.  The following day - May 8th, 1999 - Plato took a lethal overdose of Lortab (a painkiller) and Soma (a muscle-relaxant), whilst visiting her fiancee's mother's home in Moore, Oklahoma, U.S.A.  She was 34 years old.

Wendy O. Williams

Wendy Orlean Williams was an American singer, songwriter, and actress, who was born on May 28th, 1949, in Webster, New York, U.S.A.  At school, where she played the clarinet, Williams was recalled as a "shy and pretty girl" and "an average student".  She had the first of many run-ins with the law for sunbathing topless at the age of fifteen, and left R. L. Thomas High School in Webster before graduating.  Apparently feeling like an outcast, and misunderstood by her strict parents, Williams left home at age sixteen, hitchhiking to Colorado, and then onto Florida and Europe, taking several jobs on her travels, and also being arrested many times for shoplifting and possessing counterfeit money.  Arriving back in New York City in 1976, she met radical artist Rod Swenson, who became her manager, and she began performing in his live sex shows, and later in adult films.  Swenson and Williams became romantic partners for the rest of her life, with Swenson recruiting her to front his punk-rock band, The Plasmatics, in 1977.  Williams became known for her theatrical and sexually-provocative on-stage antics, resulting in several arrests and obscenity charges.  Although she drank and experimented with mind-altering drugs in her early-adult years, Williams later became more "straight-edge", giving up drug use and smoking, as well as being teetotal.  She had been a vegetarian since 1966.  Between 1984 and '86, Williams released two solo albums.  In 1985, during the height of her popularity, Williams was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.  In 1986, she starred in the indie-film, Reform School Girls, and in 1987 in the television show, The New Adventures of Beans Baxter.  Williams toured for the last time with The Plasmatics in 1988, and put out another solo album that same year.  She retired from the music business in 1990, and moved to Storrs, Connecticut, with Rod Swenson the following year, working as an animal rehabilitator and in a food co-op.  Williams attempted suicide in 1993 by hammering a knife into her chest, which lodged in her sternum; changing her mind, she asked her partner to take her to hospital for treatment.  In 1997, she tried again, this time by taking an overdose of ephedrine.  On April 6th, 1998, Swenson returned home to find Williams missing, having left a package for him containing some of his favourite things and sealed letters from her, including suicide notes.  Swenson began searching nearby woods for her, eventually finding Williams's dead body after about an hour as darkness fell.  She had shot herself in the head with a pistol, and had apparently been feeding wild squirrels moments before she died, as well as putting a bag over her head to spare her partner the horrible sight.  Wendy Williams was 48 years old. 

Del Shannon

Charles Weedon Westover was an American rock 'n' roll and country musician and singer-songwriter, best-known for his 1961 U.S. Billboard No.1 hit, Runaway. Born on December 30th, 1934, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S.A., Westover had several jobs, and played guitar and sang in several bands, before changing his name to Del Shannon, whereafter he had his biggest hit with his co-written song, Runaway, which hit number-one in several countries. After several more hits, Shannon's career began to stall in the 1970s, partly due to his alcoholism; and, despite continuing to record and perform, he began to suffer from depression during the 1980s.  On February 8th, 1990, Shannon shot himself dead with a .22 calibre rifle at his home in Santa Clarita, California, U.S.A.  He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered.  He was 55 years old.

Robin Williams

Robin McLaurin Williams was an American actor and comedian.  Born in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., on July 21st, 1951, Williams rose to fame in the 1970s in the sitcom Mork and Mindy.  He subsequently had a very successful career as a stand-up comedian and a film actor, including being nominated for four Academy Awards, winning the award for Best Supporting Actor in the 1997 film, Good Will Hunting.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Williams was addicted to cocaine, and later identified as an alcoholic.  In 2009, he had heart problems, having surgery to rectify the defects.
On August 11th, 2014, Williams committed suicide by hanging at his home in Paradise Cay, California, U.S.A., at the age of 63.  After Williams's death, his publicist, Mara Buxbaum, stated that Williams had been suffering from severe depression before his death; and his third wife, Susan Schneider, stated that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease shortly before he died.  An autopsy revealed he had diffuse Lewy body dementia, which may have contributed to the sudden appearance of anxiety, insomnia, memory loss, paranoia, and delusions, which became apparent in the year before his death.

Margaux Hemingway

Margot Louise Hemingway was an American fashion model and actress.  She was the daughter of Byra Louise (nee Whittlesey) and Jack Hemingway, the eldest son of the writer Ernest Hemingway, and was the older sister of actress Mariel Hemingway.  Born on February 16th, 1954, in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A., she became a successful and popular supermodel in the mid-1970s, appearing on many magazine covers, and becoming the spokesmodel for Babe perfume. She also had a career as an actress, appearing in various films between 1976 and 1996.  After a skiing accident in 1984, Hemingway gained 75 pounds in weight, ending up at nearly 200 pounds (about 14 stone), and became increasingly depressed.  In 1987, she checked into the Betty Ford Center for persons with substance dependence.  Attempting a comeback, she appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine in May, 1990, and took roles in several B-movies.  She was married twice, the first at age 21, the marriages lasting only three and six years, respectively.  Hemingway had fraught relationships with family members, and struggled with alcoholism, depression, bulimia, and epilepsy, as well as suffering from dyslexia.  It was also variously alleged that she had been molested by her Godfather and father. On July 1st, 1996, Hemingway's badly-decomposed body was found at her penthouse apartment in Santa Monica, California, U.S.A. The coroner's toxicology report ruled she had died from an overdose of phenobarbital, an epilepsy medication. Hemingway, who was the grand-daughter of Ernest Hemingway and the grand-niece of Leicester Hemingway - whose family had a history of drug abuse and suicide - was 42 years old.

Revilo P. Oliver

Revilo Pendleton Oliver was an American professor of classical philology, Spanish, and Italian, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Born on July 7th, 1908, in Corpus Christi, Texas, U.S.A., he later became a writer, becoming known as a polemicist for white-nationalist and right-wing causes. Oliver attracted national notoriety in the 1960s, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, when he wrote an article suggesting that Kennedy's murderer, Lee Harvey Oswald, was part of a Soviet conspiracy against the United States, for which he was called to testify before the Warren Commission investigating the murder.  On August 20th, 1994, suffering from leukemia and extreme emphysema, Oliver committed suicide in Urbana, Illinois, at the age of 86.

Leicester Hemingway

Leicester Clarence Hemingway was an American writer.  Born on April 1st, 1915, in Oak Park, Illinois, U.S.A., he was the youngest of six siblings, his older brother being the writer, Ernest Hemingway.  Leicester Hemingway wrote six books, including his first novel, The Sound of the Trumper, in 1953, based on his experiences in France and Germany during World War II.  In 1961, he published a well-received biography of his brother - My Brother, Ernest Hemingway.  This book brought Leicester recognition in his own right as a writer, as well as significant financial rewards.  In July, 1964, with the money earned from his work, Hemingway created the micronation of New Atlantis on a barge 12 miles off the coast of Jamaica.  He utilised the 1856 Guano Islands Act to claim half of the barge as a new nation, and half for the United States.  Hemingway also "wrote" a constitution, which was a copy of the U.S. Constitution with the words "New Atlantis" substituted for "United States".  New Atlantis's purpose was to generate money for oceanographic research by selling coins and stamps.  In 1966, the micronation was ravaged by a storm and then ransacked by fishermen.  After suffering for some years from Type II diabetes, which necessitated several amputations, Leicester Hemingway committed suicide by shooting himself in the head on September 13th, 1982.  His sister, Ursula, his brother, Ernest, as well as Ernest's grand-daughter, Margaux Hemingway, also committed suicide.  He was 67 years old.

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American writer, who was born in Oak Park, Illinois, U.S.A., on July 21st, 1899. Renowned for an economical and understated writing style, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.  Hemingway almost died after two plane crashes in 1952, which left him in pain and ill-health for much of the rest of his life. Hemingway - whose brother, Leicester, and sister, Ursula, also committed suicide - killed himself with a shotgun in the early-morning hours of July 2nd, 1961, at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, U.S.A.  He was 61 years old.

Kurt Cobain

Kurt Donald Cobain was an American singer, songwriter, and musician, who was born on February 20th, 1967, in Aberdeen, Washington, U.S.A.  One of two children of Margaret (a waitress) and Donald (a mechanic) Cobain, Kurt came from a musical and artistic family, becoming interested in drawing and music from an early age.  At the age of nine, his parents divorced, which had a profound negative effect on Cobain.  Initially living with his father and his new wife, for the next few years he had an unsettled life, spending periods also living with his mother and with other family and friends.  When he failed to graduate from high school, Cobain's mother threw him out, and he subsequently had periods of homelessness in his late teens.  After forming musical bands with friends, Cobain eventually founded the group Nirvana in 1987.  They produced their debut album, Bleach, in 1989, although it failed to chart on initial release.  However, the 1991 follow-up, Nevermind, propelled by its lead single, Smells Like Teen Spirit, entered the mainstream, popularising what became known as "grunge" music.  Following relationships with Tracy Marander and and punk-rocker Tobi Vail, Cobain met Courtney Love of the band Hole in 1989 or 1990.  The pair married on February 24th, 1992, with Love giving birth to their daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, on August 18th of that year.  The Los Angeles County Department of Children's Services took the couple to court, claiming that the Cobains' drug use made them unfit parents.  Cobain had chronic bronchitis and severe pain from an undiagnosed stomach condition.  He began dabbling in drugs at the age of thirteen, and became addicted to heroin by the end of 1992, claiming the heroin helped alleviate his stomach pain.  In 1993, Nirvana released their third and last studio album, In Utero, which topped both the U.S. and British charts.  Despite these successes, Cobain continued his alcohol, drug, and solvent abuse.  He overdosed on heroin several times.  Whilst on tour in Munich, Germany, in March of 1994, Cobain was diagnosed with bronchitis and severe laryngitis, and flew to Rome for medical treatment.  The next morning, March 4th, his wife awoke to find Cobain had overdosed on champagne and Rohypnol.  After five days in hospital, Cobain was released and returned home to Seattle.  His wife claimed this was his first suicide attempt.  On March 18th, Cobain's wife called the police, saying he was suicidal and had locked himself in a room with a gun; police arrived, and confiscated several guns and a bottle of pills.  A week later, Cobain's wife organised an intervention, with Cobain eventually agreeing to travel to a rehabilitation centre in Los Angeles.  On March 31st, after one night at the centre, Cobain absconded from the facility and flew back to Seattle.  Over the next couple of days, Cobain was spotted at several locations around the city.  On April 8th, 1994, an electrician, who was visiting Cobain's property in Lake Washington Boulevard, Seattle, Washington, found the singer's dead body lying on the ground.  He had committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.  A high concentration of heroin and traces of diazepam were found in his body.  A coroner's report suggested he probably died on April 5th.  Kurt Cobain was just 27 years old.

Brad Delp

Bradley Edward Delp was an American singer, songwriter, and musician, best-known as the lead singer of the rock band, Boston.  Born on June 12th, 1951, in Peabody, Massachusetts, U.S.A., to French-Canadian immigrants, he was raised in Danvers, Massachusetts.  Boston's eponymously-titled debut album was released in 1976, selling 20 million copies, and spawning the rock standard, More Than A Feeling.  A multi-instrumentalist - playing the guitar, keyboards, and harmonica - Delp also formed his own band, RTZ, in 1991.  From the mid-1990s until 2007, whilst he continued to perform and record with Boston, Delp also played in a Beatles tribute band called Beatlejuice, as well as writing songs for other artists.  Delp was married and divorced twice, and had two children with his second wife, Micki Delp.  He was a vegetarian for over 30 years, and contributed to a number of charitable causes.  Sometime between 11 p.m. on March 8th and 1 p.m. on March 9th, 2007, Delp commited suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, in Atkinson, New Hampshire, U.S.A.  He had connected a tube to his car exhaust, and lit two charcoal grills, causing his bedroom to fill with smoke.  He left a suicide note, proclaiming that he was, "...a lonely soul."  The reason for Delp's suicide has been the subject of contradictory news reports and various lawsuits.  Interviews conducted by the Boston Herald  alleged that lingering hard feelings from Boston's disbandment in the 1980s, and personal tensions between Delp and bandleader Tom Scholz, drove the singer to commit suicide.  Scholz denied these claims, but lost the defamation suits he filed in response.  Court documents from the trials detail Scholz stating that Delp was plagued by personal problems.  Other who knew Delp, stated that he wanted to quit the band, but felt caught in an ugly conflict between Scholz and former bandmembers.  Also, for two-and-a-half years before his death, Delp was housemates with Meg Sullivan, his fiancee Pamela's sister.  On February 8th, 2007, Meg found a hidden camera in her room.  On confronting Delp, he admitted to planting the camera, before sending her a series of e-mails pleading for forgiveness.  Delp pledged to admit his wrongdoings to his fiancee, but instead purchased the grills and tubing and committed suicide.  Pamela found his body in the bathroom on March 9th, surrounded by several notes, one of which read: "I have had bouts of depression and thoughts of suicide since I was a teenager...[Pamela] was my 'ray of sunshine', but sometimes even a ray of sunshine is no substitute for a good psychiatrist".  Brad Delp was 55 years old.