This morning I received an interesting email.  It was a group email that included 11 other people that I didn’t know.  It was from a guy that I met years ago while doing casting director workshops.  A really, really nice guy in my experience, but I hadn’t seen or spoken to him in just over 10 years.  He was no longer pursuing a career as an actor and had moved on to becoming a photojournalist.  He often traveled to poverty stricken locales and took the most beautiful photos.

I had reached out to him about 5 years ago, just to check in on him to see how he was doing.  He responded, we caught up through email and that was that.

The email I received today almost seemed like his account had been hacked so I only “sorta” paid attention to it.

BUT.

The second line in the message read as follows: “But if you are receiving this now, it means that I am dead.”

Yeah, that’s exactly what it said.  I needed to get out of the house for an audition, but it stayed on my mind.

Audition: “ProActive” @ Ross Lacy Casting.  This was a fun audition, but at the same time I don’t think it went so well for me, go figure!  I don’t know, I just don’t think I was fully getting it. 

When I returned home I looked at it again and it started to haunt me.  It was suicide letter.

He included a link to the information he wanted us to have.  Part of me didn’t want to click on it, but I eventually did.  At first it didn’t seem to work, but I later realized that it was taking so long because there was so much content to be downloaded.  The package included photos, text messages, emails, audio recordings and 585 pages of written text.  Yeah.  Seriously.

Needless to say, I was shocked.  I didn’t know this person really well outside of seeing him at acting workshops, but to me, he seemed like a great guy.  I couldn’t figure how or why I was included in the group email.  It put me in a really dark place for so many reasons. 

Obviously, I haven’t read hardly any of the manifesto yet, but, in a nutshell, this is what he says happened.    Basically, he was a child actor and according to him, his parents used his earnings from aged 5-11 for their own personal gain to purchase real estate.  He says he was abused verbally and physically by his parents and sexually by a school official.  He says nobody stood up for him, even people that were supposed to by law.

So he spent the last 5 months of his life putting this package together to distribute to everyone possible.  I later found out that he also sent it to the police before taking his life along with the lives of his parents.

Yeah, it was murder-suicide.

I’m speechless.  I just don’t know what to say.  I really don’t.  I can’t imagine how I ended up on a list of people to include in this.  I literally hadn’t spoken to him in more than 10 years.    

If interested in more of what took place you can do an internet search of “suicide actor Las Vegas parents manifesto”. 

http://www.stephonfuller.com