"Could anything be more ghoulish and egotistical than making your unsuspecting wife listen while you put a bullet through your skull? Absolutely: making your unsuspecting wife listen while you put a bullet through your skull -- and your son, daughter-in-law, and grandson are just a few yards away. Juan Thompson was in a nearby office when his father [Hunter Thompson] blew his brains out in the kitchen. Winkel Thompson and 6-year-old Will were playing in the living room next door. It takes a real sadist to arrange his suicide so that his loved ones are forced to hear him die. But what kind of degenerate inflicts something so traumatic on a child of 6? In Thompson's defense, it must be said that he was a hardened alcohol and drug abuser who over the decades had ingested, inhaled, and imbibed a staggering quantity and assortment of recreational poisons. The cumulative damage to his brain must have been considerable. By the time he fired his .45, who knows how clearly he was thinking about anything? But there is no defense for the treatment of Thompson's suicide as some sort of final gonzo coup by a rebel who never played by society's rules." --Jeff Jacoby