Thursday, April 19

CELEBRITIES WHO DIED IN BIZARRE CIRCUMSTANCES

Sonny Bono

Bono died on January 5, 1998 of injuries sustained when he hit a tree while skiing on the Nevada side of Heavenly Ski Resort near South Lake Tahoe, California. His death came just a little less than a week after Michael Kennedy, a son of Robert F. Kennedy, died in a similar skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado.

After Bono's death, Mary told an interviewer from TV Guide that Sonny had been addicted to and was seriously abusing prescription drugs, mainly Vicodin and Valium. Though Mary claimed that Sonny's drug use caused the accident, the autopsy performed by the Douglas County Coroner showed no indication of any substances or alcohol.

Natalie Wood

The Rebel Without A Cause actress died in 1981 at 43, after falling overboard on a boat sailing near California's Catalina Island. 

According to the autopsy report, Wood had dozens of bruises on her body, including injuries to her face and arms. The autopsy found that her blood alcohol level was .14, and an examining doctor stated that it was higher when she went overboard. They also found two drugs in her bloodstream: Cyclivine, a sea-sickness pill, and Darvon, a painkiller, which they believed caused a "much more drunken state" when combined with alcohol.

Officials ruled her death an accidental drowning, adding Wood had drank as many as eight glasses of wine, and was intoxicated when she died.

Detail: The West Side Story actress had developed a deep-rooted fear of water ever since her mother warned her as a child that she would meet her death by drowning in 'dark water'.

Marvin Gaye

The singer was fatally shot by his father, Marvin Gay, Sr. in the West Adams district of Los Angeles at their house on Gramercy Place (Marvin was living in his parents house at the time because he was depressed and suicidal). Gaye was shot twice after an altercation he had with his father after intervening in an argument between his parents over misplaced business documents. Gaye's wounds proved to be fatal and he was pronounced dead on arrival at the California Hospital Medical Center.

Gaye's father had reportedly been beaten by the singer prior to the shooting, and received five years of probation after pleading guilty to manslaughter charges. 

Gaye's death produced several musical tributes over the years including recollections of the incidents leading to his death. 

Michael Jackson

While preparing for his concert series titled This Is It, Jackson died at the age of 50 of acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication on June 25, 2009, after suffering from cardiac arrest. The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled his death a homicide and his personal physician was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. 

The day after Michael Jackson passed away, Lisa Marie Presley took to her blog on MySpace and posted about a conversation they had years ago where Michael Jackson stated that he was afraid he was going to end up like her father Elvis Presley.

Jackson's death triggered a global outpouring of grief, and as many as one billion people around the world reportedly watched his public memorial service on live television.

Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez

The TLC beauty, known for hits such as Waterfalls and No Scrubs, died of head and neck injuries at 30 in 2002, following a single-car accident in La Ceiba, Honduras.

A documentary on the final twenty-six days of Lopes's life, titled The Last Days of Left Eye premiered at the Atlanta Film Festival in April 2007. The film captured a car accident in which Lopes was a passenger and her assistant was the driver. 

Ten-year-old Bayron Isaul Fuentes Lopez walked into the path of the van driven by Lopes' personal assistant. The child had been trailing after his sisters and brothers and stepped off the median strip at the last minute. The boy was hit. Lopes' party stopped and found the boy critically injured. They loaded him into the car, and Lisa cradled the dying boy's bleeding head in her arms. Someone gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as they rushed him to a nearby hospital. The boy died the next day and Lopes paid for his medical expenses and funeral.

Earlier in the documentary, Lopes mentioned that she felt the presence of a "spirit" following her, and was struck by the fact that the child killed in the accident shared her last name, even thinking that the spirit may have made a mistake by taking his life instead of hers. The program also showed the last minutes of Lopes's life, including her swerving off the road.

Brandon Lee

The son of karate icon Bruce Lee died at 28 in 1993 in Wilmington, North Carolina after he was accidentally shot on the set of his film "The Crow" by a gun with malfunction.

One of the scenes shot for the film required that a gun was loaded, cocked and pointed at the camera but because of the short distance of the shot, live ammunition was real but with no gunpowder. After completion of this scene, the assistant wiped the gun dealer to remove the capsules, knocking one of the bullets in the barrel. The gun was loaded with blanks (which usually has two or three times more powder than a normal bullet to make a loud noise). Lee entered the set with a grocery bag containing an explosive bag of artificial blood. The bullet that was stuck in the barrel was accidentally shot at Lee passed through the bag he carried, causing holes in his internal organs and breaking his spine, causing his death by internal bleeding, even with the desperate attempt of a six-hour surgery to remove the bullet. There were rumors that the negatives with the filming of his death would have been destroyed without ever being revealed.

To this day, many questions exist regarding the circumstances of Lee's death.

David Carradine

The veteran star of classics like Kung Fu and Kill Bill died in 2009 when he was in Bangkok to shoot his latest film, Stretch. A police official said Carradine was found hanging by a rope naked in the room's closet, causing immediate speculation that his death was suicide. However, reported evidence suggested that his death was the result of autoerotic asphyxiation. Two autopsies were conducted and concluded that the death was not caused by suicide. The cause of death became widely accepted as "accidental asphyxiation".

Immediately following his death, two of his former wives, Gail Jensen and Marina Anderson, stated publicly that his sexual interests included the practice of self-bondage. Anderson, who had plans to publish a tell-all book about her marriage to Carradine, said in an interview with Access Hollywood, "There was a dark side to David, there was a very intense side to David. People around him know that." Previously in her divorce filing she had claimed that "It was the continuation of abhorrent and deviant sexual behavior which was potentially deadly."

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