Melville House Books

“Facing a barrage of calls from the media and the public,” the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office has issued a statement confirming the rumors “flooding” its office: former investigative report Gary Webb, a supposed suicide, had two gunshot wounds to the head. Nonetheless, a Sacramento Bee report by Sam Stanton says the Coroner also insisted that “Information and evidence gathered at the scene of death, including a handwritten note indicating an intention on the part of the decedent to take his own life, resulted in ‘suicide’ as the determined manner of death.” Webb’s ex-wife, Sue Bell, also said she believed he had killed himself using his father’s .38-caliber pistol. “The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide,” she said. She noted Webb “had been distraught for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper.” He had also experienced sadly hard times recently: “He had sold his house last week, because he could no longer afford the mortgage, and was upset that his motorcycle had been stolen last week,” Stanton says. Nonetheless, Stanton reports Webb’s reporting “spawned a following, including conspiracy theorists who have worked the Internet feverishly for days with notions that because Webb died from two gunshots he was killed by government agents or the Contras in retribution for the stories written nearly a decade ago.” Neither Stanton’s report nor the Coroner’s statement seem likely to stem those speculations, however: neither one explains how a man can shoot himself in the head twice with a .38.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.