Thompson widow recalls final days
By Troy Hooper/Aspen Daily News Staff Writer Gonzo journalist Hunter Stockton Thompson not only planned his suicide, he had been providing instructions on how he wanted his legacy preserved, his wife, Anita, said Thursday in her first public interview since his death.
Before leaving the fortified compound in Woody Creek known as Owl Farm to take a walk for the first time since her husband shot a .45-caliber bullet into his mouth Sunday night, Anita Thompson, 32, said she was finally overcoming the horror that the renowned writer she loved so deeply had purposefully ended his life.
"At first I was very angry. He was my best friend, my lover, my partner, and my teacher," she said. "But I know he is much more powerful and alive now than ever before. He is in all of our hearts. His death was a triumph of his own human spirit because this is what he wanted. He lived and died like a champion."
In recent months, Thompson, 67, had repeatedly talked of killing himself, she said, and had been issuing directives verbally and in writing of what he wanted done with his body, his unpublished work and his assets. His suicidal designs put an intense strain on their relationship, she said, but his motives were not rooted in desperation or fear -- he simply felt his time had come.
"He wanted to leave on top of his game. I wish I could have been more supportive of his decision. It was a problem for us," said Anita Thompson, who retreated to her parents' house in Fort Collins when the two would quarrel. There, she said, he would fax her love letters.
The couple, who married in April 2003, had a profound affection for each other, and even though they feuded over Thompson's death wish, friends say the couple always reconciled.
"Hunter loved Anita so much. They were a shining example of two people who couldn't keep their hands off of each other," said family friend Tim Mooney, a former manager for musician Jimmy Buffett who first met Thompson while working behind the bar at the Hotel Jerome in the 1970s. "Their affections dominated every mutual moment that they shared every day they were together. Hunter realized that Anita and Anita's level of love for him were allowing him to live 28-hour days."
Last weekend, Anita, who was working out at the Aspen Club & Spa, called Thompson, who asked her to come home so they could work on his weekly ESPN column. She said the two never said goodbye; rather, he placed the receiver beside his typewriter that sat on the kitchen counter, loaded his revolver, and pulled the trigger.
"I was on the phone with him, he set the receiver down and he did it. I heard the clicking of the gun," said the author's widow, adding that the clicking sounded as if he was striking the keys of his typewriter. She heard a loud, muffled noise in the background, but did not know what had happened. "I was waiting for him to get back on the phone." He never did.
"I'm going to miss him horribly, you can't even imagine. He was such a beautiful man."
Juan Thompson, a Denver resident and 40-year-old son of the famous author, his wife Jennifer Winkel Thompson and their 6-year-old son Will were the only ones in the house when the shooting occurred. They told investigators the shot sounded like a book crashing to the floor. Juan Thompson found his father slumped in the chair he sat in to pen many of his classic writings. The phone receiver was still resting on the kitchen counter, next to the typewriter and a glass of the author's favorite whiskey, Chivas Regal, said his widow, who took a van from the Aspen Club back to the house, where sheriff's deputies, and tragedy, greeted her.
The night before he killed himself, Thompson gave his son a medallion he once received from Oscar Zeta Acosta, a prominent Chicano lawyer, writer and speaker fictionalized as the Samoan in the 1972 classic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," as well as an emerald pendant Thompson had worn since 1976 -- the latter was for his wife. Anita said Thompson instructed Juan to give the pendant to her after he died.
She said none of Thompson's family members knew exactly when he planned on turning a gun on himself, a la his idol Ernest Hemingway, and that she would have intervened and "called in a SWAT team" if she would have known that the end was so near.
Now Anita Thompson plans to continue carrying on her husband's legacy as he instructed. "I have a lot of work to do, even more than before," she said, declining to reveal specific details of Thompson's last requests, except that Owl Farm is "more fortified than ever before."
But she did confirm the family plans to blast her husband's ashes out of a cannon on Owl Farm in spectacular fashion, as he had wished.
"I think we should," she said. "The more explosions, the better."
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OK, there is the story, I am not gonna post anymore about the matter.....RIP HST
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posted February 21, 2005 00:20
posted February 21, 2005 00:48
posted February 21, 2005 08:39
