The Paradise Syndrome: Celebrity Suicides

If you are the brother or sister, or son or daughter of a celebrity, notice of your death may begin with that link. Such was the situation that unfolded this week in two high profile incidents.

"The older brother of actor Richard Belzer jumped to his death from the roof of his 16-floor Upper West Side apartment building Wednesday," said the New York Post on July 30, 2014.

250 West 94th St.

After his award-winning Sesame Street director wife Emily Squires passed away at the age of 71 in November 2012, Leonard Belzer went into a depression.

Belzer, 73, who lived on the 11th floor of his building, jumped at 6:55 a.m. from the roof of his West 94th Street apartment complex. Belzer’s dad died by suicide in 1968.

It is a daunting statistic, but 50% of all people who kill themselves have had someone very close to them die by suicide. The person is usually in their immediate family. It is the copycat effect in its most easily understood form. A model for dealing with being in pain or being so depressed the blackness won't go away, is right there in the individual's life - and mind. They choose suicide as their "way out," as their escape from their psychological torment.

Leonard's brother, Richard Belzer, 69, is a co-star of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He also is the author of books, including UFOs, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don't Have to Be Crazy to Believe (Ballantine Books, 2000) and Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination (Skyhorse Publishing, 2013).

Leonard Belzer was a Columbia University grad and an Air Force Intelligence Service veteran.

Len Belzer and Emily Squires co-wrote Spiritual Places In and Around New York City (2000), and Spiritual Places In and Around New York City: UPDATED EDITION (2006).

"Spiritual Places In and Around New York City brings together places that Emily Squires and Len Belzer have found valuable in maintaining their own personal sanity amid the frenetic pace of the city. Each sketch lends spiritual insights and a sensual feel of the place that invites readers to plumb for themselves the mystery and depths of its sacredness. Entries on Communities, Day Trips, Gardens, Museums, Learning and Healing Centers, Libraries and Bookstores, Nature Walks, Restaurants, Overnights, as well as Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, and Sufi places of worship," noted the Paraview Press overview. (My friend Anomalist Books publisher Patrick Huyghe was the editor behind the publishing of the Squires/Belzer book and alerted me to his sad passing.)

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Meanwhile in California...

Jessica Barrymore (from left), half-sister Drew Barrymore and half-brother John Barrymore III together in 2004 in Joshua Tree, California. (Via Facebook)

Jessica Barrymore, via her Facebook page, on July 5, 2014.

A day before Belzer's death, another sibling of a celebrity died by suicide. Jessica Barrymore, half-sister of actress Drew Barrymore, was lifeless in her car surrounded by drugs, when two strangers found her, in a parked Toyota Camry blocking their driveway in National City, California, on Tuesday. The 47-year-old Barrymore had vodka, methamphetamine and various pills scattered on the passenger seat in her car. She had a SoBe energy drink between her legs, a witness told ABC 10News.

The Petco worker was found about 40 miles south of her San Diego County residence with no obvious ties to the street where she died, authorities said. Jessica Barrymore would have turned 48 on Thursday, July 31.

The woman was found inside the car in the 900 block of Hoover Avenue at about 6 a.m. Tuesday. The San Diego Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed late Tuesday night that firefighters responded and found her dead. Marta Lopez told local news she was trying to leave for work, but a car was blocking her driveway on Hoover and 9th Street. She got out and walked over to the woman behind the wheel. “You need help, you need help,” she told her, but the woman did not respond. Lopez said the seat was reclined and the woman had a SoBe energy drink between her legs. Then, Lopez looked at her neck to see if she was breathing, but something was terribly wrong. Over on the passenger seat, there was another disturbing image: dozens of white pills scattered around. That is when Lopez called police. Source.

Jessica's great-aunt, Diana (1921–60), one of the famed actor John Barrymore's two children, died by suicide. John Barrymore's other child, known as John II is the father of Jessica, Drew, and the son known as John III.

One of the greatest philanderers in Hollywood history, John Barrymore (1882-1942), would state that in his life that he was molested by his stepmother as a youth. John Barrymore's daughter, Diana (1921-1960), would claim in her biography that he had tried to rape her. As noted in the Feral House's 2007 book, Hollywood's Hellfire Club (by Gregory William Mank with Charles Heard and Bill Nelson), in their loveless life, womanizing was a competitive sport among John Barrymore and his friends, the "Bundy Drive Boys," which included John Decker, Errol Flynn, John Carradine, Vincent Price, and W.C. Fields. (H/t for the reminder from aferrismoon.)

The book notes:

It has come to our attention, though a conversation with John Barrymore III (1954- ), that his great-grandfather, born Herbert Blythe (1849-1905), renamed himself Maurice Barrymore after a historical character named Richard Barry, the 7th Earl of Barrymore (1769-1793). The Earl of Barrymore was born a little too late to become involved in The Hellfire Club, but on his own went against the rules of aristocracy by acting and becoming known as "The Rake of Rakes," and like Hellfire Club members, was an enthusiastic womanizer. The Bundy Drive Boys are the true latter-day version of the Hellfire Club.

Celebrities and suicides...

In a shadowy parallel to the suicide death of Margaux Hemingway on July 1, 1996, Jessica's sister Drew and brother John are expressing skepticism that the death was a suicide. This often happens in families where there is great denial that a suicide did occur. The Hemingways had seven suicides in their family. We know that the Barrymores had, at least, two, allegedly.

The Copycat Effect and the Paradise Syndrome go hand-in-hand, as I noted in this excerpt from The Copycat Effect:

The copycat effect may even play a role in the so-called "Paradise Syndrome." Reuters reporter Rachel Noeman explained the term in a 1996 news story: "They inherit celebrity names, appear to have it all and live apparently gilded lives, but what may at first seem like paradise can end in pain or even tragedy."
Noeman was reporting on the suicide death of Amschel Rothschild, 41-year-old chairman of Rothschild Asset Management and great-great-great-grandson of Nathan Meyer Rothschild -- who established in 1804 the merchant bank in the City of London that still bears his name. He hanged himself in a Paris hotel room ten days after Margaux Hemingway, who also was 41, was found dead.
Noeman was making the link between the two, in terms of the "Paradise Syndrome." While the modeling of a suicide on those most like the suicide victim is most often discussed in terms of people basing their suicide on that of a celebrity, descendants of celebrities may actually be the most vulnerable for the copycat effect. Amschel Rothschild’s widow Anita Rothschild repeated what is often said in the wake of such deaths, that it was “totally unexpected,” and the family was "shocked and devastated."

Some children of very well-known celebrities have died by suicide:

1965: Charles Boyer's son Michael Charles Boyer, 21, dies by suicide while playing Russian Roulette. In 1978, Charles Boyer takes his own life with a lethal dose of seconal.
1968: Robert Taylor's stepson Michael Theiss, 23, dies of a drug overdose in a LA motel room.
1969: Art Linkletter's daughter, Diane Linkletter, 20, dies when she jumps from a window at her apartment in West Hollywood. Linkletter blamed his daughter's death on LSD and proclaimed it not a suicide.
1975: Gregory Peck's son, news reporter Jonathan Peck, killed himself with a gun.
1975: Jim Arness's daughter, Jenny Lee Arness,24, also 25, dies due to a lethal dose of pills.
1976: Scientology mastermind L. Ron Hubbard and his third wife, Mary Sue Whipp's son Quentin Hubbard, 22, was dies by suicide.
1978: Paul Newman's son, Scott Newman, 28, an aspiring actor, was found dead in a hotel after overdosing on pills and alcohol.
1980: Mary Tyler Moore's son, Richard Meeker Jr., 24, "accidentally" shot himself dead with a sawed-off shotgun.
1981: Ray Milland's son, Daniel Millard, shot himself in the head in the bedroom of his Beverly Hills home.
1981: Louis Jourdan's son, Louis Henry Jourdan, 29, shot himself in his parent's home in Bel Air.
1988: Gloria Vanderbilt's oldest son, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, 23, jumped from the 14th floor terrace of his mother's Manhattan apartment.
1991, Willie Nelson's son Billy Nelson, 33, hanged himself in his family's Tennessee cabin.
1995: Marlon Brando's daughter, Cheyenne Brando, 25, hanged herself in 1995.
1995: Carroll O'Connor 's son, Hugh O'Connor, 32, shot himself dead.
2007: Burt Bacharach and Angie Dickinson's daughter, Nikki Bacharach, 40, suffocated herself, using a plastic bag and helium.
2009, 46 years after his mother's own suicide, Sylvia Plath's son, Nicholas Hughes, 47, hanged himself.
2010: Marie Osmond's 18 year-old son, Michael Blosil, jumped from the 8th floor of an LA apartment building.
Source.

For more on the "Hemingway Curse," please click here.

Also, Hemingway & Gellhorn: War and Love.

Sandusky, Hellfire, and Lions

Jerry Sandusky was found guilty on 45 of 48 counts at 

the Centre County Court House in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania on June 22, 2012.

The Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal involves allegations made in 2011. The details of the incidents are horrific. Is a final act in sight? But, wait, was there a wider net that could have been thrown? I wrote earlier about whether there might be a large conspiracy here in "Does Sandusky Have Links To Hellfire Groups?" What reality is there to the hints of Sandusky scandal-linked suicides, which I discussed here?

Jerry Sandusky: "Jerry" = English, "holy spear warrior" + "Sandusky" = Wyandot Indian, "cold water."

The details of the case are well-known today, and concern charges against former Pennsylvania State University football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky and allegations of a university cover-up of those incidents. Sandusky, a longtime defensive coordinator under head coach Joe Paterno, retired in 1999 but retained access to Penn State's athletic facilities. A 2011 grand jury investigation reported that Mike McQueary, then a graduate assistant, told Paterno in 2002 that he had seen Sandusky performing a sex act on a 10-year-old boy in Penn State football's shower facilities. A holy spear in the cold water?

Paterno then reported the allegations to Penn State athletic director Tim Curley. In November 2011, Sandusky was arrested on 40 counts of molesting eight young boys over a 15-year period. By the time the trial started, the charges had reached over 50 counts.

Absolutely one of the best local Pennsylvania journalists to read (online and via Twitter) as the scandal and trial unfolded was Sara Ganim. The journalist best tracking this in the national media was Dan Wetzel. (Ah, just can't get too far from the Wetzel name game, I guess.)

In addition to the Sandusky-specific happenings, Curley and university Senior Vice President Gary Schultz resigned after being charged with failing to report the incident to police and lying to a grand jury regarding what they knew about the incident. Why the coverup? Is there a bigger picture that people are missing? Paterno and University President Graham Spanier were not charged, but both received criticism for their handling of the allegations. On November 9, Paterno announced he would retire at the end of the season, but hours later, he and Spanier were formally removed from their positions by the Penn State Board of Trustees. Paterno later died.

If you wish to read more of this history, see here, here, and here. If you wish to see how this scandal actually has now been dated back to, at least, 1995, see here. Regarding news that the victims were mostly young African-American males, for insights about that part of the story which has been ignored by the mainstrem media, see here. 

"The eyes are the window to the soul." ~ Ancient Proverb

Having worked as a psychiatric social worker, in the child protective and child welfare systems, I have been outraged by these events. Some of the testimony of the molested boys trying to be heard by adults who were supposed to have protected them has been the worst. Hopefully, good shall issue forth from these news stories in alerting people to how often such incidents do occur, and how we all need to protect our and other children from such predators.  

As I read of the scandal, the phrase "Nittany Lions" was used frequently. I wondered about the alleged origins of why the school picked this name for their mascot. The "Nittany Lions" are a modern urban legend that was reinforced via an article in the Philadephia Inquirer of January 24, 2006. The news item was about three new mountain lion cubs from South Dakota being placed at the Philadelphia Zoo. The story is only the most recent felid-linked source of the supposed alleged origin of “Nittany Lion” being due to the last puma killed on the mountain named Nittany (at the end of Nittany Valley). What do we really know about this tale?

  

 Is this the actual origin of the "Nittany Lion," 

the last mountain lion killed in Pennsylvania? 

First, why "Nittany"? “Nittany” was around before Penn State, but it certainly has been used by the school (and half of the local businesses within 20 miles) for years.

What is the etymology of the term? The origins of "Nittany" are a bit obscure, but most likely the word comes from a Native American term meaning, "single mountain." Since a number of Algonquian-speaking tribes inhabited central Pennsylvania, the term can’t be traced to one single group. The description applied to the mountain that separates what is today Penns Valley and Nittany Valley, with its western end overlooking the community of State College and Penn State's University Park campus. The first colonial settlers in the 1700s adopted this term, or a variation of it, in formally naming Nittany Mountain (see William Ames' famed photograph of this location, here). Thus by the time Penn State admitted its first students in 1859, the word "Nittany" was already in use.

Following the emergence of the Nittany Lion mascot in the early 1900s, Nittany gained even more public prominence. Today, the word helps to define a host of places, services, and other entities in the Nittany Valley.

   

 This is said to be the last Eastern cougar to have existed in Pennsylvania; it was killed in Pennsylvania in 1874 by Thomas Anson. The felid was formerly part of the collection of Henry Shoemaker. Photo: State Museum of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2006.

The standard line routinely goes something like this: "The Nittany Lion is the mascot of the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, USA and its athletic teams. It refers to the mountain lions that once roamed near the school, and to Mount Nittany, a local landmark. There is also a fight song played during sporting events on campus entitled 'The Nittany Lion.'"

   

The Nittany Lion mascot pumps up the crowd 

at the 2005 football game versus Cincinnati at Beaver Stadium. 

The Masonic connection is there, however. Well, at least, technically, although it is all about the name, not the Freemasons.

According to PSU sources, the mascot was the creation of Penn State senior H. D. "Joe" Mason in 1907. While on a 1904 trip to Princeton University, Mason had been embarrassed that Penn State did not have a mascot. Mason did not let that deter him: he fabricated the Nittany Lion on the spot and proclaimed that it would easily defeat the Princeton Bengal tiger. The Lion's primary means of attack against the Tiger would be its strong right arm, capable of slaying any foes (this is now traditionally exemplified through one-armed push-ups after the team scores a touchdown). Upon returning to campus, he set about making his invention a reality. In 1907, Mason wrote in the student publication The Lemon:

Every college the world over of any consequence has a college emblem of some kind—all but The Pennsylvania State College . . .. Why not select for ours the king of beasts—the Lion!! Dignified, courageous, magnificent, the Lion allegorically represents all that our College Spirit should be, so why not 'the Nittany Mountain Lion'? Why cannot State have a kingly, all-conquering Lion as the eternal sentinel?

These words later inspired the fight song known as "The Nittany Lion", which begins "Every college has a legend...".

Mountain lions had roamed on nearby Mount Nittany until the 1880s. The origin of the name "Mount Nittany" is obscure, the most commonly accepted explanation being that it is derived of Native American words (loosely pronounced as "neet-a-nee") named after the cougars that roamed the mountain or "single mountain" - a protective barrier against the elements. The name was readily accepted without a vote of the student body. In 1907, the first tangible lion symbols appeared with the placing of two alabaster African lion statues, left over from the Pennsylvania exhibit at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, atop the columns at the main campus entrance on College and Allen streets. They were affectionately dubbed by the student body as "Pa" and "Ma." In the 1920s, a pair of stuffed mountain lions was placed in the Recreation Building to watch over athletic events. One of these original lions is now located in Pattee Library on the Penn State campus. About that same time, the tradition was established of having a student dressed in furry-lion outfits appear at football games.

   

The Lion Shrine 

Given by the Class of 1940, the Lion Shrine is by sculptor Heinz Warnecke from a thirteen-ton block of limestone. The sculpture was formally unveiled on October 24, 1942.

In 1904, Joe Mason appears to have based the invention of the "Nittany Lion" on the African lion, not the mountain lions of Pennsylvania, but then, the urban legend around Penn State's "Lions" has a huge publicity relations machine behind it, even today. It will be working overtime as the verdict in the Sandusky trial comes in...