Confirmation of Mike Ruppert's suicide

This provides the confirmation of what we already know.

First the irreverent article from the local Calistoga newspaper and then confirmation from Wes Miller, CEO of CollapseNet and Mike's attorney and good friend.

I can only confirm the words of Wes - that Mike has tried to leave this lifelong work of his behind several times - but as Wes says, "No good deed goes unpunished"

My sympathy goes out to Wes on his (and all our) tragic loss.

Sheriff: Author Michael Ruppert dies of self-inflicted gunshot wound

BODY DISCOVERED SUNDAY IN CALISTOGA

Napa Valley Register,

16 April, 2014

Nationally known author Michael Ruppert died Sunday of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in Calistoga where he had lived for a few months on a friend’s property. He was 63.

A former Los Angeles Police Department officer who later became a political activist, Ruppert was found dead Sunday on a property in the 1100 block of Tubbs Lane, where he had been staying in a trailer for a few months, according to information from the Napa County Sheriff’s Office and business partner Wesley T. Miller of Lake Oswego, Ore.

Ruppert’s writing delved into a number of political issues, including peak oil, climate change, 9/11, public corruption and the Central Intelligence Agency.

“It’s been hard to stop crying the last couple of days,” Miller said from Oregon.

Napa County Sheriff’s Capt. Doug Pike said deputies were sent to Tubbs Lane after the property owner asked for a welfare check at 8:49 p.m. Sunday. Ruppert was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, he said.

Miller said his friend shot himself after taping his last show for Progressive Radio Network, an Internet radio station. According to the radio station’s website, Ruppert hosted “The Lifeboat Hour.”

Miller posted his friend’s suicide note on Collapse Network, a news site Miller co-founded with Ruppert in 2010.

Ruppert had moved to Calistoga after leaving Colorado where he resided for 1 1/2 year, Miller said. A longtime Californian, he had also lived in Sebastopol.

In 2009, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries ordered Ruppert to pay $127,700 to a woman who had sued Ruppert for sexual harassment while he published and edited From The Wilderness, a website and newsletter

CollapseNet's Founder, Michael C. Ruppert, Has Committed Suicide - UPDATE 04-16-2014: MCR's Suicidal Tendecies and the Note He Left

http://www.collapsenet.com/free-resources/collapsenet-public-access/news-alerts/item/12454-collapsenets-founder-michael-c-ruppert-has-committed-suicide

UPDATE #2 on 04-16-2014

Below is a copy of the last e-mail MCR sent, to Jack Martin, Mike's friend and property owner of where Mike was staying, and also the man who found MCR's body. The e-mail address displayed for MCR was his private e-mail address. The message is authentic:

This is exactly the type of e-mail I feared receiving from Mike for about 4 years. Exactly what Jenna said below. It is what it is, and Mike would expect all his fans to not only ask questions, but to examine the facts and take them as they are.

I will post the coroner's report as soon as I receive it. And the police reports.

Mike and I agreed to investigate anything that happened to the other and go wherever it took us. I will absolutely honor that pledge, and show it to you here. But know that as it stands, I have no doubts whatsoever that MCR took his own life.

Jack was a good friend to Mike. I've met him, and Max Mogren, who lived on site with Mike for a year, knows Jack very well. Jack is one of the good guys, and his character or account of these events is not in debate at all amongst anyone with knowledge or who was close with MCR. He's on our side all the way, as one of Mike's closest friends.

Accept it, folks. Mike did this as his last message, as you can see from the Apocolypse, Man videos. He would be horrified if that message got lost in denial of any kind.

More to come as it comes in to me...

Wes

UPDATE 04-16-2014

Mike's Suicidal Tendencies

from Jenna Orkin

In response to the internet sages who have concluded, in the face of all known evidence from the people who were most intimately familiar with him as well as with the admittedly real dangers that had faced him over the course of his life as an investigative journalist, that Mike did not kill himself but was in fact murdered, his suicidal ideation goes back at least eight years.  As a small example, below are excerpts from a few of his emails sent from Venezuela in 2006.  In addition, he would call at any and all hours to be talked out of jumping from the roof or offing himself in some other way. 

A foray into the seedier barrios of Caracas during a protest was one part journalistic adventure but one bigger part, courting danger.  For a hero's death was devoutly to be wished.  Failing that, he'd settle - as happened in the end - for death by any means available.  On one occasion, he confessed to having tied his necktie around his neck as part of an effort to hang himself - and you can be sure I would not put forth such an implausible notion if it were not true - from the shower fixture.  He said that he didn't go through with it because he wished to spare his roommate at the time, Carlos Ruiz, the trauma of finding him the next morning.

He finally left Venezuela in November, ending up, after a detour to Canada, at my apartment.  But his reprieve from the alien environment that had not welcomed him the way he had dreamed brought only brief respite.  For the next fourteen months, he contemplated suicide on an almost daily basis so that whenever I went to work or the grocery store, I made him promise not to kill himself before I came back.  His word - his "honor" - mattered to him more than anything so we took it one day at a time, a notion that was familiar to him from AA.

More on this period in due course.

To Jenna Orkin, 9-24-2006

...Every day I long for death because I just don´t see how this current limbo is ever going to end. I just keep waking up and going through motions. I wrote a new article today and start another tomorrow. I do miss the US and especially my loved ones but I know I can´t ever go home. That would betray my moral decision and put my life at greater risk than I feel it is here.

   I may wind up being the writer that no country wants. Then what?

   Sigh. I´ve been doing the anger thing, especially at those close to me who betrayed me so deeply. That´s what´s really taken the heart out of me...

To colleagues at Fromthewilderness.com,  9-26-2006

...I am flat out of energy, spirit and hope now...   

   I am ready to die and the only thing I want to know is that I am totally clean with all the people who are FTW.

   I saw a great documentary on Socrates last night. They made him drink hemlock because he kept throwing peoplés [sic] bullshit and sloppy thinking in their faces.

   Sounds a little familiar. I am not trying to torment or worry any of those who love me and care for me. I am hanging by a thread here.   best,  Mike

To colleagues regarding plans for dissolution of Fromthewilderness.com and Mike's possible return to the US, 10-19-2006 :

...anything I do now will be out of the public eye. Guidance yes, but I need to get offstage for a good long while. That is both a pressure and a drug I need to detox from...

  With the push of a button [referring to the 'send' key] the world leaves my shoulders.

Recipients unrecorded, 10-19-2006 21:32 

...The bridge is still calling. I say that not to threaten or pressure. I share it just to get it out of my head. I have had two close suicides and the breakup of an engagement in less than three years. Only now am I coming to grips with all of that and much more...

***********************************

From Wes:

It is my one affirmative goal in all of this mess to make sure that the truth be told, and that Mike’s death not be bastardized or be made the product of “conspiracy theory”, as had happened to his good friend, Gary Webb.

I can personally back what Jenna has said above. Mike threatened to kill himself on multiple occasions, verbally and in writing. As just one example, the following is an excerpt from an e-mail exchange I had with Mike on July 19, 2012:

“On 7/19/2012 7:14 PM, Mike Ruppert wrote:

You can just tell me how much came in and I can write myself a Collapsenet check for it.

I have been following very clear and specific spiritual direction since May. It could not have been more clear.

The weeks since have been, without exception, the happiest time and most growth-filled time of my life. All I did was farm and live with the land and pray. My leaving the company was essential so that you guys would have something to lean on. You have done well. You need the company. I don't.

48 hours ago I was well into planning suicide out back. I had nowhere to go.The crops are unbelievable. The corn is eight feet high. There will be 50 pounds of potatoes, watermleon, squash, pumpkins and we brought four trees back to producing that didn't do anything last year; peaches, plums, pears. It's wonderful.

Then Doug called and he had it all figured out, without even knowing how bad it was here. Mount Blanca is a sacred and very special place right now and I am being called there... no "ordered" there, with no more than what I can take in the Rav. I know this is true because I have already begun grieving for the loss of this place and the connection I have made here. Now I understand what it was like for the native people to lose their lands.

The objective is to save the crops and see them used lovingly and to get as straight as possible with the landlord and to get me to Colorado ASAP. Every time this has happened to me something even bigger has come from it. Every time.

There's a ton of shit in play right now on many, many levels.” (emphasis added)

But far more relevant than Mike’s past threats are the actual notes that he left before committing suicide - one for his friend who found him (Jack), and one for his life partner (Jesse). I have read them both, and can confirm that both are in Mike’s handwriting and both contain the same basic confession to suicide. His note to his friend, Jack, appears below. We will not publish the second note to Jesse, as it is personal to her and we want to respect her privacy as best we can.

This is MCR's note to Jack:

There is absolutely no doubt or question about it, Mike Ruppert took his own life.

Rest in Peace, my brother.

Wes

Wesley T. Miller

President & CEO

Collapse Network, Inc.

*******

I have been informed that MCR has committed suicide. I am devastated, and very, very sad...

We'll report more as information becomes available.

PLEASE DO NOT SPREAD SPECULATION!

MCR was my friend, my client (I was his attorney) and business partner in CollapseNet. We will gather and report THE FACTS about MCR's death, and nothing else. On my honor, the truth of MCR's death WILL BE TOLD, and his memory will be honored.

Media inquiries should come right here, to me, via ceo@collapsenet.com.

Rest In Peace Mike. I am so sorry that you are gone. You fought the greatest of fights, you opened thousands of eyes and you have earned your place in history, and in our hearts.

Much more to come...

Wesley T. Miller

*****

04-15-2014

From Jenna Orkin:

A brief Comment on Mike Ruppert's Death:

We always knew it could come to this.

To write about Mike requires the tranquility of recollection but at the moment, all is turmoil.

Mike, you told us, "Evolve or perish." Yet in Apocalypse Man you merged them, speaking of death as the ultimate evolution. One day we'll all find out whether that is, in fact, the case but it's not the message you used to impart!

Among the emails that have tumbled in this evening is a wonderful link which is sorely needed at such a time: Hope and Courage http://www.oilempire.us/hope.html. 

 Accompanying it, the following quote from Thomas Keneally's Schindler's List:

"Where's the electric fence?" Clara asked the woman. To her distraught mind, it was a reasonable question to ask, and Clara had no doubt that the friend, if she had any sisterly feeling, would point the exact way to the wires. The answer the woman gave was just as crazed, but it was one that had a fixed point of view, a balance, a perversely sane core.

"Don't kill yourself on the fence, Clara," the woman urged her. "If you do that, you'll never know what happened to you."

It has always been the most powerful of answers to give to the intending suicide. Kill yourself and you'll never find out how the plot ends. Clara did not have any vivid interest in the plot. But somehow the answer was adequate. She turned around. When she got back to her barracks, she felt more troubled than when she'd set out to look for the fence. But her Cracow friend had -- by her reply -- somehow cut her off from suicide as an option.
 http://www.amazon.com/Schindlers-List-Thomas-Keneally/dp/0671880314/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397569391&sr=8-1&keywords=schindler%27s+keneally

****

The hardest part of this, for me, is that everything I did with or for Mike was in an effort to prevent this day from ever happening. CollapseNet was literally formed to provide a means for Mike to make a living. In doing so, he was brought back into a world of despair that he thought he had retired from. He absorbed the pain of the world on a daily basis until he could not take it any longer, and he left CollapseNet when it got to be too much. But that pain kept following him, and there is nothing that anyone could do about it for him.

He told me many times that Jenna saved his life after Venezuela. I reached out to him in 2009 to help resurrect his career and his honor, and help get him back on his feet again. I know his death is not on me, but I still can't help feeling, unlike his experience with Jenna, that I failed...or that by "helping" him, it merely brought him back on his path of self-destruction.

My grandfather once told me, "Never mourn the death of a fool," and suicide has always fit into that category to me. But not this time...this time, it just really fucking hurts.

I'm so sorry you're gone, Mike. I hope you are finally at peace, and one with Gaia.

Wes