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While I'm positive they would have suicided Hunter, I'm just not sure they actually did. If you go through these various bits, you will see that he went out just about exactly as he'd always said he would. Maybe the big boys who loved him let him do that, because it served them better than a messier way... leaving his widow to it and all. That is a distinct possibility.
But also I can feel, and could at the time, his demoralization, his supreme fatigue. There are sites still up that discuss the notion of his murder, which are mostly grasping at a Globe and Mail article I don't seem to be able to find that talked about him calling the man who wrote it the day before he left this vale, telling him he was scared, that they were after him, but it appears the writer was wishing he'd done that. So, even if that piece can be found to verify the rumors, I don't think that ultimately helps us that much.
I can well imagine that he would have been getting dark messages from scary types to try to warn him off his last subject. I can't forget how they were advising MLK to kill himself. I can't ignore the flash of insight from that picture of Robin and his wife from last year. It was a split second, but it was like lightning burning mortal danger into my psyche. Robin was dealing with a life and death problem when that picture was taken. It isn't in the picture, per se. It was what the image made flash in my head.
My first take was a killer was after him. My second take was stage IV cancer. Parkinson's would not have caused that lightning bolt. So, with that bolt striking me, and the original sheriff's report mentioning a plastic bag and being changed to omit that the next day, then the weird mode of hanging himself described so as to make it seem more like he was masturbating when he died, and then the widow telling about the Parkinson's... no. Robin didn't kill himself. He would have killed himself if there were nothing but abject misery for everyone left, but not, not, not, not, not before.
Except, if he'd gotten his way, been allowed to divest himself of his financial burdens and just do independent projects when he felt like it, a lot of people would have had to do without millions and millions and millions of dollars... or if word of Parkinson's got to those people they would have done that same math... but, no, definitely Robin didn't kill himself.
He may have actually physically done the deed... at gunpoint... and that's what might also have been the case with Hunter. I can't say for sure, but even when I muster up my mostest bestest "paranoia" about this stuff, I can still see that Hunter went out perfectly in accord with what he'd always told us. I saw somewhere someone doubting his suicide note, saying it was written four days before, and could be construed as something else, and I'm going, "Are you nuts?"
That note is 100% pure Hunter. Nobody else on earth could have written it, and there is not another interpretation in all the galaxies in all the universes. So it may have been put to Hunter to do it, or else, but he was planning it, and it was carried off to a tee.
Let's face it, these days, is there anyone left who wouldn't know it's game over — no way out — after an MLK letter or a skulky and pointed short phone call? Really? You don't think so? Think harder. Hunter might've picked that moment even if 9/11 never happened, or maybe someone had to come in and help him pick it. I guess my point is that all of us know what they do to people who fight them, and that's why we don't fight... why the problem isn't going away.
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Good ol' Marin County! Robin's not officially a suicide yet. Pending investigation.
always and any time....
