Did writer Eugene Izzi really commit suicide?
On December 7, 1996, a doctor in Chicago looked out his window and immediately called the police to report the scene: a man in an adjacent building was hanging from a rope outside a 14th-floor window. That man was pulp fiction writer Eugene Izzi.
Izzi, known to his friends as “Guy,” was a native Chicagoan from an Italian-American family. Having had a rough childhood, Guy was a high school dropout and an Army veteran who found his passion writing crime stories in the vein of Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane. Despite his talent, he never achieved the recognition for his work that he so craved.
The scene of his death was unusual. Firefighters had to break down the door of his office, which was locked from the inside, to get to his body. Guy was hanging from a rough hemp rope that was tied to the leg of his desk and then wrapped around his neck multiple times before being tied into a slip knot. He was wearing a bulletproof vest and was in the possession of a set of brass knuckles and mace. A .38 caliber revolver was found on the office floor. He’d reportedly been carrying the gun for several weeks.
Inside his pockets, he had $481, three computer diskettes, and a transcript of a threatening phone call that was on his voice mail.
The coroner ruled Guy’s death a suicide, the cause of death was asphyxiation. But some still believe that he was murdered.
The Suicide Theory
Guy was a talented writer but had a rough few years in the 90s. One of his novels, Tribal Secrets, had been widely panned by critics after a massive PR campaign put on by the publisher, Bantam Books. Bantam pulled much of their support of the book once the bad reviews started coming in.
As a result, Izzi and Bantam split ways, though it’s unclear if Bantam dropped Guy or Guy walked away from Bantam. Either way, he owed Bantam Books the advance they’d given him and he couldn’t pay it. He’d been contracted for three books with them and for the next few years, published his writing under a pseudonym.
Guy was also suffering from clinical depression, seeing a psychiatrist, and was on anti-depressants at the time of his death. In the weeks proceeding, he’d become unusually jovial, as if wanting to make amends with people who had previously encountered his usually surly personality.
The threatening message on his voicemail was left by a woman claiming that his infiltration of an Indiana militia had been discovered and that he would die by “a flaming rope.” Police later traced the phone call not to Indiana, but to a pay phone outside Guy’s office building. They also believed that the threats were being read from a script, perhaps one that Izzi himself had written.
And most convincing of all was what the police found on the encrypted documents on the diskettes. Guy had been writing a long novel in which the hero infiltrates an Indiana militia, has his office broken into and is hanged by a rope outside the window. In the novel, however, the hero manages to climb back into the office and survive.
At this point, police began to believe that Eugene Izzi had crafted his own suicide as if it were his final pulp story.
Others have theorized that it was actually an accident. The coroner noticed deep bruises on Guy’s inner thighs that indicated that he’d be straddling the windowsill for quite some time. Could he have sat there, trying to summon the courage to jump? Or perhaps he was simply rehearsing the scene from his book and slipped?
The Murder Theory
While his family accepted the suicide theory, friends and fans have had their doubts over the years.
Guy was known for going above and beyond to research his novels, and the idea of infiltrating a militia was something he absolutely would have done, according to those who knew him. Could he have done it and really been caught? But how could his murderers have known about the scene in his novel that so eerily echoed the scene of his death?
People also point to his overwhelming fear of heights as an inconsistency with the suicide theory. Wouldn’t a man who was scared of heights have chosen a less harrowing way of ending his life? Especially since he had a revolver in his possession?
Guy’s career was also on an uptick. He’d just received the advance copy of a novel, one of three, that he was writing for Avon Books. He was reportedly extremely excited about this new series he was writing, and some have said that it was the best work he’d ever done. Being so close to the recognition he so desired, why kill himself?
Guy was also displaying paranoia beyond what was usual for him. Always cautious and distrustful of strangers, he changed his phone number constantly. He had begun carrying a gun. He moved his wife and children from their home into a hotel the month before he died. Many believe he was afraid of something, but what exactly that was is still unknown.
So did Eugene Izzi craft his own death or was he murdered by persons unknown? While the bulk of the evidence seems to indicate suicide, we may never know for sure.
Sources
Schmich, Mary. “Author's Sad Irony: Death May Prove To Be His Best Story.” The Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois). 15 December 1996.
Fountain, John W. “The End of His Rope.” The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.) 2 February 1997
Caputo, Philip. “Dangling Man.” Esquire. May 1997.
